Best Picture Noms Lift ‘Licorice Pizza,’ ‘Belfast,’ ‘Drive My Car’ – Specialty Preview

Awards season just loves drama, doesn’t it? After months of barely a peep of any real controversy, the past few weeks have seen both the Academy and – sorry, checking my notes – ah, yes, Sam Elliott come under fire. And, in the biggest surprise of all, the latter’s unexpected comments have a shot at affecting a seemingly tight Best Picture race (maybe).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticThe Oscar campaign for “CODA” has touted the film as “history-making.” If you wanted to be a literal-minded curmudgeon about it, you could say that the history it’s talking about was already made — when Marlee Matlin, in 1986, became the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award for best actress, for her great, ardent, wounded performance in “Children of a Lesser God.” Matlin deserved to win (the other nominated actresses that year were Jane Fonda for “The Morning After,” Sissy Spacek for “Crimes of the Heart,” Kathleen Turner for “Peggy Sue Got Married,” and Sigourney Weaver for “Aliens,” which is the only one I’d put in Matlin’s league).Nevertheless, history works in waves. Sidney Poitier made history by becoming the first Black actor to be a Hollywood star, as well as the first to win an Academy Award for best actor (in 1963, for “Lilies of the Field”).

Sasha Urban editorThe Hollywood Critics Association held its fifth annual awards on Monday in-person at the Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles, Calif.Siân Heder’s “CODA,” which won for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture at the SAG Awards Sunday, took the top award for best picture, with Heder winning for adapted screenplay and Troy Kotsur winning for supporting actor. The HCA also honored the cast of the film with a spotlight award, while the best cast ensemble award went to the cast of Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast.”“Dune” led the evening with four awards, including the best director tie between Denis Villeneuve and “Power of the Dog” helmer Jane Campion.

Clayton Davis The SAG Awards may have signaled a shift in the Oscar season and the switch of support for the streamers.After landing 12 Oscar nominations, Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog” looked to be the odds-on favorite to win best picture, a prize the streamer has coveted since its historic run for “Roma” (2018). However, the streaming giant went home empty-handed on the film side of the house, just one year after becoming the second studio to garner the most nominations for ensemble with three.Apple Original Films’ “CODA” had a momentous evening, winning cast ensemble and supporting actor for Troy Kotsur, who’s the first deaf actor ever to be nominated and win.

Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of the Oscar-nominated movie Licorice Pizza, is finally responding to the backlash the film received for scenes in which an actor uses a fake Asian accent.

As Oscar nominees circulate in theaters, exhibitors are studying where and when to play Best Picture contenders during the long run-up from nominations February 8 through the awards March 27, juggling holdovers and new releases. (See this weekend’s specialty box office offerings below).

EXCLUSIVE: CODA, the film that traveled the longest road among the Best Picture nominees, will get a new surge. Apple and its Original Films division will re-release the inspirational film for free in theaters from next Friday, February 25 through Sunday, February 27. All free screenings to feature open captions to be fully accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing

Clayton Davis The most shocking snub of the Oscar noms was Denis Villeneuve’s omission from the best directing category for his science-fiction epic “Dune.”The film’s 10-nomination haul includes best picture and adapted screenplay, the latter perceived to be its most difficult to attain. Yet, Villeneuve’s lack of recognition for directing could rally widespread support from Academy voters and result in the film tying or surpassing a 50-year record held by “Cabaret” (1972).Bob Fosse’s classic adaptation of the Broadway stage musical set a record at the 45th Academy Awards for the most Oscars received without winning best picture.

Todd Gilchrist The push-pull relationship between an individual developing his or her sense of self and the external forces trying to steer them — be they parental, professional, political or cultural — creates a tension that is common, and formative, to many people’s lives. Despite the wildly different stories that they tell, many of this year’s best picture nominees vividly illustrate this universal conflict, examining the challenge of retaining or asserting one’s identity while the world around them attempts to impose pressure or exert its influence.As perhaps the most fantastical of the nominees, “Dune” sends young Paul Atreides ( Timothée Chalamet) on a journey that owes no small debt to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, but director and co-writer Denis Villenueve weaves a complex tapestry between the lineage into which the character was born, the overlapping but sometimes dueling ambitions of his mother and father, the feudal aristocracy of the film’s futuristic setting, and the almost primal sense of home and harmony that Paul feels once he arrives on the desert planet of Arrakis.

only playing in select theaters.However, just in time for the Oscars on March 27, “Drive My Car” is getting a streaming release next month on HBO Max. The service revealed Monday that “Drive My Car” will be streaming on HBO Max starting March 2, as a result of WarnerMedia OneFifty acquiring the drama for streaming.Directed and co-written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “Drive My Car” is based on the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami and follows a widowed actor/director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) as he makes a multilingual production of “Uncle Vanya” in Hiroshima while also dealing with the sudden death of his wife.

record-breaking Oscar nominee Kenneth Branagh, “Belfast” is a semi-autographical film about a young boy named Buddy who lives in Belfast, Ireland in the late 1960s. His childhood is uprooted when civil war hits, forcing his tight-knit, working-class family to choose whether they should leave their longtime home.

No Spide-Man? No Peace! At least according to director Kevin Smith, who has xpressed his vehement displeasure about the Oscar snub of Spider-Man: No Way Home from the Best Picture Oscar nominees.

here. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, “Drive My Car” revolves around Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a recently widowed theater artist who is offered to direct a production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” at a theater festival.

Films from Belfast to Drive My Car, from The Worst Person In The World to Nightmare Alley saw ticket sales pop after Academy Award nominations and as distributors kick into high gear for this weekend and beyond, juggling theater counts and ramped up media campaigns that now have a shiny new imprimatur.

Elle Driver has acquired world sales rights outside Spain and France to “La Maternal,” the second film from Pilar Palomero.Palomero’s 2019 film “Schoolgirls” (“Las niñas”) made her only the fifth first-feature director to win a Spanish Academy best picture Goya.BTeam Pictures is handling distribution in Spain.“Schoolgirls” also won Goyas for director, original screenplay and cinematography (Daniela Maciela), establishing Palomero as a leading light of Catalonia’s newest — and often female — generation of cineastes, making movies that are grounded in authentic local realities, but alert to broader social trends.Produced by Spain’s Inicia Films (“Schoolgirls,” Carla Simon’s “Summer 1993”) and BTeam Prods., “La Maternal” sees Palomero once more explore the borders between child and adulthood. Billed as a “sensitive and heartbreaking journey into teenage parenthood,” the film follows a pregnant Carla, fleeing social ostracism, eventually arriving at La Maternal shelter.There, she’ll learn to live with her teen classmates and prepare to be a mother.

Those theatrical motion picture studios earning Oscar Best Picture nominations today will put their best foot forward at the box office, and increase the cinema footprint of their contenders in an effort to capitalize on their success and raise the pics’ profiles.

Beginning with our review coverage all the way back to the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, through Cannes in July, Venice and Telluride in the late summer, and finally to late-breaking holiday-season releases that qualified just under the gun for Oscar eligibility, Deadline has been on the front lines of opinion for this year’s eventual 10 nominees for Oscar Best Picture.

Clayton Davis Streamers, jaw-droppers, Princess Diana and heartbroken Little Monsters sum up the 2022 Oscar nominations.It’s unclear what was more shocking — the snub of Lady Gaga or the over-performance of Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog,” which has put the streaming giant in the best position to nab its first best picture trophy, something its been seeking for years.For the second year in a row, the best actress is completely wide open and turned upside down, even more than last year’s race that had a different winner at all the televised award ceremonies. This year, only Gaga’s turn in “House of Gucci” was nominated at the BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globes and SAG Awards, leaving many to assume that she would be walking away with her first acting Oscar.

The Searchlight Pictures noir drama Nightmare Alley is a Best Picture nominee, one of four noms for the film that stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and an ensemble that includes Willem Dafoe, Ron Perlman, Toni Collette, David Strathairn, Richard Jenkins, Colt McCallany, Clifton Collins Jr, began its theatrical run as a color film, but now an atmospheric black and white version is in theaters. This is the first film del Toro has directed since The Shape of Water, which won him Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. Before that, he was nominated twice for Pan’s Labyrinth. He wrote Nightmare Alley with Kim Morgan, adapting the William Lindsay Gresham novel.