The Unofficial Academy Awards Thread ( 2025 Nominations / 97th Oscars )

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Original Score

Volker Bertelman- Conclave
Daniel Blumberg- The Brutalist
Clément Ducol - Emilia Pérez
Kris Bowers - The Wild Robot
John Powell and Stephen Schwartz - Wicked

Best Animated Feature Film

The Wild Robot
Flow
Inside Out 2
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Memoir of a Snail

Best Visual Effects

Alien: Romulus
Better Man
Dune: Part Two
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
Wicked

Best Cinematography

The Brutalist
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Maria
Nosferatu

Best Adapted Screenplay

Peter Straughan - Conclave
Jay Cocks and James Mangold - A Complete Unknown
Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin and John “Divine G” Whitfield - Sing Sing
Jacques Audiard - Emilia Pérez
RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes - Nickel Boys

Best Original Screenplay

Sean Baker - Anora
Jesse Eisenberg - A Real Pain
Brady Corbet & Mona Fastvold - The Brutalist
Coralie Fargeat - The Substance
Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, Alex David - September 5

 

[Wor-Gar]

The Substance...!? Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress...and Best Screenplay???

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best International Feature Film

Emilia Pérez
I'm Still Here
Flow
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
The Girl with the Needle

Best Original Song

El Mal - Emilia Pérez
Mi Camino -Emilia Pérez
Never Too Late - Elton John: Never Too Late
The Journey -The Six Triple Eight
Like a Bird - Sing Sing

Best Production Design

The Brutalist
Conclave
Dune: Part 2
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best Film Editing

Anora
The Brutalist
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Wicked

Best Sound

A Complete Unknown
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Costume Design

A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Gladiator II
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

A Different Man
Emilia Pérez
The Substance
Nosferatu
Wicked

Best Documentary Feature Film

Black Box Diaries
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Sugarcane
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Best Live Action Short

A Lien
Anuja
I'm Not a Robot
The Last Ranger
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best Animated Short

Beautiful Men
In the Shadow of the Cypress
Magic Candies
Wander to Wonder
Yuck!

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Oscars: Conan O’Brien Will Host Hollywood’s Biggest Night

The beloved comedian will emcee the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 2, 2025, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and its broadcasting partner ABC

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/conan-obrien-host-oscars-2025-1236062805/

 

[Khev]

That's got to be the worst line-up of nominees I've ever seen.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Hollywood is really transitioning.

 

[choombaz]

Yeah half of those best picture nominees are amazing. The other half are complete trash.

Plus voters have very short memories. Challengers completely shut out. My fav movie of the year.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Animated Short

‘In the Shadow of the Cypress’ - Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi, Iran

A former ship’s captain is suffering from the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. He lashes out violently against his daughter, who lives with him in a small oceanside home. He’s taken it so far that she’s ready to pack up and leave when a whale washes ashore. She rushes to help, and her quest to save it becomes a potential lifeline for her father and their relationship — if he can muster the strength to take action.

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‘Wander to Wonder’ - Nina Gantz, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, France

In this delightful stop-motion animation short, Billybud, Mary and Fumbleton are the tiny human stars of “Wander to Wonder,” a 1980s children’s TV show. They are left to their own devices when the show’s full-sized human creator dies. Food is running out — they are down to their last pickle — and giant flies buzz around the house, but the trio remains committed to recording more episodes of the show (and watching old ones). Full-frontal animated nudity is involved, so maybe not for young kids, but this short, which just won a BAFTA, seems like a clear Oscar frontrunner for its sheer originality, exuberance and instant ability to tug on our ’80s and VHS-based nostalgia.


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'Yuck!' - Loïc Espuche, France

A coming-of-age short set around a group of children’s introduction to — yuck! — kissing. They laugh and point at the couples kissing around them until their lips also start glowing pink — are they next?!?


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'Beautiful Men'- Nicolas Keppens, Belgium, France and The Netherlands

This stop-motion film is about three brothers who travel to Turkey to get hair transplants. Things go haywire soon after their arrival, and there’s definitely a laugh or three to be had during their pursuit for lustrous locks. (This is another one with full-frontal stop-motion nudity.)


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‘Magic Candies’ - Daisuke Nishio, Japan

A boy named Dong-Dong is a bit of a loner, since he’s left out when other kids play. He gets a bunch of what he thinks are marbles, but are actually magic candies. Dong-Dong discovers that the candies have a transformative effect on people, animals and objects around him — each candy unleashes a different special power when he tastes them. He engages in some life-altering conversations as the magical sweets cut through silence to reveal previous unheard truths.

https://www.nj.com/entertainment/20...r-nominated-shorts-and-what-theyre-about.html

 

[MeatHookGekko]

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Live-Action Short

‘A Lien’ - Sam Cutler-Kreutz and David Cutler-Kreutz, United States

A possible Oscar frontrunner for its handling of a subject that is very much in the news. This short is based on the harrowing reality that people have been detained and arrested by ICE when they show up for their green card appointments. A family — wife, husband and young daughter — rushes to the husband’s green card appointment in New York only to face the threat of being permanently separated. It doesn’t matter that he’s lived in the city for almost his whole life, or that he was summoned to an office to be considered for a green card. His “alien” status as an undocumented immigrant is like a lien, a debt that he can never pay.

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‘Anuja’- Adam J. Graves, United States

This Hindi-language film, whose producers include Mindy Kaling and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, is about a young girl named Anuja and her sister Palak. They both work in a clothing factory in Delhi, India, but Palak knows her brilliant sister should not be confined to this work. Everyone is telling Anuja to take a boarding school exam that could change her life, but when the opportunist factory owner tries to capitalize on her genius, she has a choice to make.

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‘I’m Not a Robot' - Victoria Warmerdam, Belgium and The Netherlands

Are you a robot? It’s a familiar question to anyone who has taken a captcha test to fill out a form online or access a website. And if you’ve taken a captcha test, chances are you’ve also failed a captcha test and had to take it again. But what happens when you just can’t pass? Are you indeed a robot? Lara faces just this predicament one day at work. A series of failed captchas has her questioning the very nature of her existence.

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‘The Last Ranger’ - Cindy Lee, South Africa

This Xhosa-language and English-language film set during the COVID-19 pandemic is based on a real story of rhinoceros poaching at the Amakhala Game Reserve in South Africa. Khuselwa, the “last ranger” on the reserve, guards the rhinos against poachers. She takes a girl named Litha with her to work one day, then sees poachers on the hunt and tries to thwart an attack in progress. Litha, who watches the horror unfold, makes another unsettling discovery on the trip.

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‘The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent’ - Nebojša Slijepčević, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and France

This Croatian film, another standout at the Oscars that could well win, already won the Palme d’Or for short film at the Cannes Film Festival. The story is based on the Štrpci massacre of 1993 in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Bosnian Serb paramilitary group boarded a train and detained 24 Muslim Bosniak passengers, later killing them. “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” is told from the perspective of the passengers on the train. As the militants interrogate civilians and demand documents, one man bravely stands up to them and is taken off the train. The man represents Tomo Buzov, a Croatian retired officer from the Yugoslav People’s Army who stood up to the paramilitary group and was killed for doing so. Because Buzov resisted their orders, he saved the life of a 17-year-old boy.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Documentary Short

‘Death By Numbers’ - Kim A. Snyder, United States

This film won the documentary shorts competition at the Montclair Film Festival. “Death By Numbers” follows Sam Fuentes, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as she prepares to confront the shooter when she testifies in court. Fuentes wrote the film, which takes place four years after she was shot with an AR-15.

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‘I Am Ready, Warden’ - Smriti Mundhra, United States

This film follows the last days of John Henry Ramirez, who was on death row in Texas after being convicted of murder. Before his execution in 2022, Ramirez tries to make a connection with the son of the man he killed in 2004.

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‘Incident’ - Bill Morrison, United States

The film examines the 2018 police shooting of Harith “Snoop” Augustus in Chicago by officer Dillan Halley using bodycam footage and surveillance video.


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‘Instruments of a Beating Heart’ - Ema Ryan Yamazaki, Japan

This film follows Japanese elementary school students who create an orchestra and rehearse for a performance. The short examines the dynamics of teamwork and the cultural expectations of working together in harmony.


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‘The Only Girl in the Orchestra’ - Molly O’Brien, United States

This film is about the trailblazing double bassist Orin O’Brien. In 1966, she became the first woman to join the New York Philharmonic. Her niece, Molly O’Brien, directed the short.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

 

[MeatHookGekko]

No Other Land is a 2024 documentary film directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor in their directorial debut. The film was made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four activists in what they describe as an act of resistance on the path to justice during the ongoing conflict in the region....On 23 January 2025, the film was nominated at the 97th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Feature Film.

Premise - A young Palestinian activist named Basel Adra has been resisting the forced displacement of his people by Israel's military in Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank, since he was a child. He records the gradual destruction of his homeland, where Israeli soldiers are tearing down homes and evicting their inhabitants in order to create a military firing zone. He befriends Yuval, a Jewish Israeli journalist who helps him in his struggle. They form an unexpected bond, but their friendship is challenged by the huge gap between their living conditions: Basel faces constant oppression and violence, while Yuval enjoys freedom and security.

The documentary was filmed over four years between 2019 and 2023, wrapping production in October 2023....Although the film could not find a U.S. distributor after being picked up for distribution in 24 countries, it had a one-week Oscar-qualifying theatrical run at Film at Lincoln Center in New York City

Critical response - On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 63 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "An elegantly assembled diary of the Palestinian experience, No Other Land is a harrowing document that leaves traces of hope for a better future."

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Anora is a 2024 American comedy drama film produced, written, directed, and edited by Sean Baker. It follows the beleaguered marriage between Anora Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a sex worker, and Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch....Anora premiered on May 21, 2024, at the 77th Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim, and was released theatrically on October 18 by Neon. It grossed $38.1 million worldwide on a $6 million budget, becoming Baker's highest-grossing film...It also received six nominations at the 97th Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and five nominations at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical).

....The director, Sean Baker, said Anora was inspired by a story from a friend about a Russian-American newlywed who was kidnapped for collateral. He was also inspired by his work in 2000 and 2001, when he edited wedding videos, including ones of Russian-Americans in New York...On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 326 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10.

Reaction from sex work community - Others felt that the film reverted to regressive stereotypes about sex workers as downtrodden and "in need of saving."....A UK-based sex worker commented that the film "rehashes the 'traumatized, vulnerable sex worker' trope, which we've seen a thousand times before"..... Marla Cruz opined that little is revealed about Ani's life outside of sex work, and that an exploration of the "boundary between Ani the person and Ani the worker" is absent.....wrote that it is debatable "whether Ani becomes more clear-eyed about her relationship to power, men, and money throughout the film"....

 

[MeatHookGekko]

The 2025 Oscars: Best Bets and Predictions for the 97th Academy Awards - Betting Picks for the 2025 Oscars

Best Picture

Anora -200
Conclave +260
The Brutalist +650
A Complete Unknown +2900
Emilia Perez +5000
Wicked +5500
Nickel Boys +10000

Sean Baker's Anora (-200) emerged as the early favorite last May after winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes. The film's hype train experienced some mechanical issues -- even getting shut out at the Golden Globes .... picking up key precursor wins for best feature film at the DGA, PGA, and Critics' Choice Awards. The PGA (Producers Guild Awards) has predicted 14 of the last 20 Best Picture winners, so it's no surprise to see Anora atop the list here....In the last 10 years, the PGA (7) and SAG Award (6) have the two highest correlations with the Best Picture winner.....Moreover, Conclave is the odds-on favorite to win Best Adapted Screenplay (-900) and Best Film Editing (-140) this Sunday. Since 2000, eight different films have won the Academy Award for film editing and screenplay (adapted or original). All but one of these films (The Social Network) went on to win Best Picture.....Anora and Conclave were the only two films to pick up big wins outside the Golden Globes and therefore the top options to consider in this market. Ultimately, I give a slight lean to Conclave.....





Best Director

Sean Baker (Anora) -195
Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) +145
Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez) +2300
Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) +2900
James Mangold (A Complete Unknown) +2900

As mentioned, Sean Baker took home the top prize at this year's Directors Guild Awards....Notably, 18 of the last 20 DGA winners went on to win Best Director at the Oscars. That's good for a 90.0% hit rate -- up from the 66.1% implied probability on Baker's -195 odds. It could be as simple as that.


https://www.fanduel.com/research/th...s-and-predictions-for-the-97th-academy-awards

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Actor

Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) -240
Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) +185
Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) +2600
Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice) +4500
Colman Domingo (Sing Sing) +8000
Timothee Chalamet (+185)

Chalamet's promotional tour for A Complete Unknown struck a perfect balance. He was giving out sharp picks on College GameDay and citing Parker Navarro's completion percentage all in the name of getting the masses interested in a Bob Dylan biopic they maybe wouldn't have seen otherwise, and his press skills didn't go unnoticed. He capped it all of by poking fun at his award L's during his Saturday Night Live monologue and performing some Dylan deep cuts for the day ones. However, ushering in a comeback seemed out of reach after Adrien Brody received the best actor nod at the Golden Globes, BAFTA, and Critics' Choice Awards for his performance in The Brutalist.....Since 2004, 18 out of 20 SAG winners for outstanding actor in a lead role went on to win Best Actor at the Oscars. It is the single-most important precursor award to speak of and makes Chalamet an intriguing bet at +185.





Best Actress

Demi Moore (The Substance) -240
Mickey Madison (Anora) +200
Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) +1400
Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) +5000
Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez) +6500

Moore took home the best actress hardware at the Golden Globes, Critics' Choice Awards, and SAG Awards. The SAG Award for female actor does not show as much overlap with the Oscars as it does in the male category. Even still, 9 of the last 12 SAG winners followed it up with a Best Actress victory at the Oscars.....Since 2000, 14 different actresses have won the SAG and Critics' Choice Award outright. All but two of them went on to win Best Actress at the Oscars. Add in that the Academy isn't known for being friendly to newcomers, and this award seems like Demi's to lose.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Best Adapted Screenplay


The line "although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears" walked hand-in-hand with a vape-fiend cardinal. For that, Peter Straughan is expected to be rewarded....Conclave has -900 odds to win Best Adapted Screenplay this weekend.






Best Costume Design


Here's one for the Wicked faithful....If press junket performances could win you an Oscar, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo would have one more Academy Award than Paul Thomas Anderson....Although Wicked won't pick up any of the marquee awards this weekend, the film is a heavy favorite in the design categories, including Best Costume Design (-1100).






Best Film Editing


Conclave (-140)....Isabella Rossellini didn't have many lines in Conclave. The heavy lifting of her character was done through thoughtful editing. The film's editing helped turn the dial up on its thriller qualities. I think it should be a heavier favorite here, and we can back it at bettable odds.





Best International Feature Film


I'm Still Here -160
Emilia Perez +125
The Seed of the Sacred Fig +2200
Flow +2200
The Girl with the Needle +4500


Emilia Perez's fall from grace is one for the history books....The film was already getting some guff before lead actress Karla Sofia Gascon's problematic tweets resurfaced. She even threw shots at Selena Gomez -- her co-star in the movie....The "scandal" broke after Oscar nominations were voted on and helps explain why Emilia Perez leads the way with 13 nominations. Even still, it doesn't make sense that Emilia Perez (+125) has longer odds than I'm Still Here (-160) for Best International Feature Film. Both movies are nominated for Best Picture, but the former (+5000) has shorter odds than the latter (+10000) in that category....Bad press has set Emilia Perez back more than 15 yards, but for a film that received so much love from this very Academy, I have to imagine it is still in good standing to pick up Best International Feature Film.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

I'm Still Here (Portuguese: Ainda Estou Aqui ) is a 2024 political biographical drama film directed by Walter Salles from a screenplay by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva's 2015 memoir of the same name. It stars Fernanda Torres and Fernanda Montenegro as Eunice Paiva, a mother and activist coping with the forced disappearance of her husband, the dissident politician Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), during the military dictatorship in Brazil....At the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, Torres won the Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama category while the film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, a category in which it was also nominated at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards and the BAFTA. At the 97th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best International Feature Film, Best Actress (Torres) and Best Picture, becoming the first Brazilian-produced film to ever be nominated in that category....By February 2025, the film had surpassed 5 million admissions, and became the highest-grossing Brazilian film since the COVID-19 pandemic, with earnings of US$25.2 million....

Critical response - Fernanda Torres garnered critical acclaim for her performance and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress....I'm Still Here received overwhelming praise upon release by the public, film critics and the Brazilian and international press; praise was mainly directed to Fernanda Torres' performance.....On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 166 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10.....Filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón named it one of his favorite films of 2024, stating "Watching a Walter Salles film is to be embraced in generosity, is like experiencing a gravitational pull, both lifting and grounding us at the same time with an invisible yet undeniable force. With I'm Still Here, this effect is even more compelling."