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A note from Scott: Now that the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals are in the rearview mirror, and with the New York, Hamptons, Newport Beach and Savannah film festivals just around the corner, I’ve decided to update my charts to reflect recent developments — and to include five categories that weren’t in the prior version, best cinematography, costume design, film editing, original score and production design.
Since the last check-in, special honors were bestowed in Venice upon Sony Classics’ The Room Next Door (best film, the first major fest honor ever won by Pedro Almodóvar), A24’s The Brutalist (best director Brady Corbet) and A24’s Babygirl (best actress Nicole Kidman); and Toronto attendees voted to give their fest’s audience award to Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck. Emilia Pérez and Anora placed second and third.
In other news, the hottest sales title at the fall fests, September 5, landed at Paramount, as we were the first to report, which could have major implications for the race (see below). The release of Clint Eastwood’s next film, Juror No. 2, was moved up by Warner Bros. from 2025 into 2024. The stars of Universal’s Wicked, we learned, will not be going head-to-head this season — Cynthia Erivo will be pushed in the lead actress category, Ariana Grande in supporting. And Demi Moore was the toast of the town on Monday night following the L.A. premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, which happens to be my personal favorite movie of the year so far.
Finally, a shoutout to Kidman, who had to miss the Venice awards ceremony and all of TIFF due to the passing of her mother, but was the surprise guest at a Q&A that I moderated following Babygirl’s first L.A. screening, at CAA, on Saturday night. The evening attracted a full house packed with the likes of Brad Pitt, Olivia Wilde and Catherine Hardwicke, who showed up expecting to see the film and a Q&A with filmmaker Halina Reijn, but went nuts when Kidman came out as well — a sign, I think, of how they feel about Kidman’s performance and her.
Please remember: You can bookmark this URL and return to it at any time to see my latest picks — I intend to update it once a week, usually on Mondays. Think of me like a meteorologist — my aim is to correctly predict what will happen, not to advocate for what I think should happen. My picks are arrived at by screening films, consulting with voters, analyzing campaigns and studying results of past seasons. I do not rank things that I have not seen, because doing so is just silly. And now for my current forecast…
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