Academy Awards (Oscars)

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      An Underrated Nominee

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      Plus, news about David Leonhardt and the Morning. My colleagues and I started this newsletter almost five years ago, in the early weeks of the Covid lockdowns. And running it has been one of the best jobs I’ve had. I’m grateful to all of you who make time in your day for The Morning.But I’ve learned during my 25 years at The Times that change is healthy, and I will be switching to a new job this week on the Opinion side, overseeing the writing and editing of Times editorials.You will be in great hands here at The Morning. This newsletter has always been a group project, produced by a spirited team of journalists in New York, Washington, London and elsewhere, and The Times will name a new lead writer soon. Starting tomorrow, I will join you as one of The Morning’s many readers.Now onto the rest of today’s newsletter.María Jesús ContrerasClose encountersThe Brazilian film “I’m Still Here” is up for three trophies at tonight’s 97th Academy Awards. If I had my way, which the academy year after year for some reason sees fit to deny me, “I’m Still Here” would win best picture. It’s the movie that thrilled me the most, the movie I can’t stop thinking about and recommending and wanting to watch again. Our all-seeing awards season columnist Kyle Buchanan tells me best picture is probably going to “Anora,” but he thinks the star of “I’m Still Here,” Fernanda Torres, will win for best actress.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yura Borisov Was a Star for the Kremlin. Now He Could Be One at the Oscars.

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      Yura Borisov, who is nominated for an Academy Award on Sunday, is pulling off a rare feat: pleasing audiences at home in Russia as well as in the West.On the face of it, the Russian actor Yura Borisov was an unlikely actor to land an Oscar nomination in 2025.Just a few years ago he played a guileless soldier in a Kremlin-sponsored movie that celebrated a Soviet tank model. Later, he starred in a biopic of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the man who invented the Russian automatic rifle.But after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he stopped playing in militaristic movies. Last year, Western audiences fell in love with him as a tight-lipped but sentimental mafia errand boy in “Anora,” a Brooklyn-based indie dramedy about a stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch.At the Academy Awards on Sunday, Borisov is up for best supporting actor for the role.The war in Ukraine cut many Russian artists off from the West, but Borisov has been among the few who managed to transcend the dividing lines. He has continued a career in Russia, without endorsing or condemning the war, while in the West, he has evaded being seen as a representative of state-sponsored Russian culture.“Borisov hasn’t picked a side,” said Anton Dolin, a leading Russian film critic. “Maybe he is just very smart, or maybe he thinks he is not smart enough,” Dolin said by phone from Riga, Latvia, where he now lives in exile.“It doesn’t matter,” Dolin added. “His behavior and strategy have been impeccable.”Borisov at the BAFTA Film Awards in London this month. Over the past weeks, he has been on the road campaigning for awards for “Anora” and attending ceremonies. Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gotham Awards Go to ‘A Different Man’ and ‘Sing Sing’

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      The kickoff to awards season has a mixed record but can help lift small films like the two surprise winners.“A Different Man,” a dark indie comedy starring Sebastian Stan, was the surprise best-feature winner at the 34th annual Gotham Awards, which took place Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.Directed by Aaron Schimberg, the film stars Stan as an actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes an experimental surgery to remove tumors from his face, giving him a more conventional appearance. That makeover puts him in danger of losing a leading role to a local bon vivant (Adam Pearson) who also has neurofibromatosis but owns his appearance without shame.Though “A Different Man” is distributed by the hot studio A24, it was considered the lowest-profile contender in its category. Most pundits expected the Palme d’Or winner “Anora” to cruise to victory here and even Schimberg was caught off-guard by the win. “I think I’m not the only person in the room who’s totally stunned by this,” the director said onstage, admitting he had not prepared a speech in advance, fearing it would be “hubris” to do so.In a very fluid Oscar season, the Gotham win could raise the chances of Stan, who also stars in the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” and Pearson, a dark-horse supporting-actor candidate. Though the Gothams’ effectiveness as an Oscar bellwether can fluctuate, three of the four most recent films to triumph there — “Past Lives,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Nomadland” — also went on to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars.The Gothams are most valuable when it comes to helping smaller films like “A Different Man” that rely on an awards-season run to stay in the conversation. Though the ceremony recently lifted its $35 million budget cap for eligible contenders, its nominating juries, which are mostly made up of a handful of film journalists, still tend to favor movies that were made on a shoestring.That includes “Sing Sing,” a prison drama that won the night’s lead and supporting-performance honors for Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin. (The Gothams are gender-neutral.) “Let’s keep doing work that really matters, that makes a difference,” Domingo, who starred in “The Color Purple” and “Rustin” last year, told the audience. “That’s what we can do right now. That can be a light in the darkness.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Sunday Read: ‘The Blind Side’ Made Him Famous. But He Has a Different Story to Tell.

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      Emma Kehlbeck and Maddy Masiello and Listen and follow ‘The Daily’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioIt was an overcast Monday afternoon in late April, and Michael Oher, the former football player whose high school years were dramatized in the movie “The Blind Side,” was driving Michael Sokolove on a tour through a forlorn-looking stretch of Memphis and past some of the landmarks of his childhood.In the movie, Oher moves into the home of the wealthy white couple Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy. They take him shopping for clothes, help him obtain a driver’s license, buy him a pickup truck and arrange for tutoring that helps improve his grades and makes him eligible to play college football. In real life, Oher went on to play eight seasons as a starting offensive tackle in the N.F.L. and won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens.Now, Oher is suing the Tuohys, claiming that they have exploited him by using his name, image and likeness to promote speaking engagements that have earned them roughly $8 million over the last two decades — and by repeatedly saying that they adopted him when they never did.There are a lot of ways to listen to “The Daily.” Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with ”The Daily,” write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan. More

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      Gena Rowlands, Actress Who Brought Raw Drama to Her Roles, Dies at 94

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      Gena Rowlands, the intense, elegant dramatic actress who, often in collaboration with her husband, John Cassavetes, starred in a series of introspective independent films, has died. She was 94.The death was confirmed by the office of Daniel Greenberg, a representative for Ms. Rowlands’s son, the director Nick Cassavetes. No other details were given.In June, her family said that she had been living with Alzheimer’s disease for five years.Ms. Rowlands, who often played intoxicated, deranged or otherwise on-the-verge characters, was nominated twice for best actress Oscars in performances directed by Mr. Cassavetes. The first was the title role in “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974), in which her desperate, insecure character is institutionalized by her blue-collar husband (Peter Falk) because he doesn’t know what else to do. The critic Roger Ebert wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times that Ms. Rowlands was “so touchingly vulnerable to every kind of influence around her that we don’t want to tap her because she might fall apart.”Her second nomination was for “Gloria” (1980), in which she starred as a gangster’s moll on the run with an orphaned boy.Ms. Rowlands and John Marley in “Faces,” which Renata Adler of The New York Times called “a really important movie” about “the way things are.” Like many of her movies, it was directed by Ms. Rowland’s husband, John Cassavetes.United Archives, via Getty ImagesBut it was “Faces” (1968), in which she starred as a young prostitute opposite John Marley, that first brought the Cassavetes-Rowlands partnership to moviegoers’ attention. Critics spread the word; Renata Adler described the film in The New York Times as “a really important movie” about “the way things are,” and Mr. Ebert called it “astonishing.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Anthea Sylbert, Costume Designer Who Became a Producer, Dies at 84

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      Her career unfolded in three phases: as the creator of costumes for movies like “Chinatown,” as a studio executive and as a producer, largely with her friend Goldie Hawn.Anthea Sylbert, the Oscar-nominated costume designer of the films “Chinatown” and “Julia,” who left Hollywood fitting rooms to be a studio executive and, later, Goldie Hawn’s producing partner, died on June 18 at her home on the Greek island of Skiathos. She was 84.Robert Romanus, her stepson, said the cause was complications of emphysema.Ms. Sylbert began designing costumes for films in 1967. Over the next decade, she collaborated with A-list directors like Mike Nichols, Roman Polanski and Elaine May and conceived what Jack Nicholson wore when he starred in “Chinatown,” “The Fortune” and “Carnal Knowledge.”“Jack Nicholson actually gave me the best compliment I ever got as a costume designer,” she said in “My Life in 3 Acts,” a forthcoming documentary about Ms. Sylbert directed by Sakis Lalas. “He said, ‘When “The Ant” does your clothes, you don’t have to act as much.’” (“The Ant” was short for Anthea, she explained.)Ms. Sylbert envisioned Jake Gittes, the natty, determined private detective played by Mr. Nicholson in “Chinatown” (1974), as a dandy.“I thought he would be interested in fashion,” she told Sam Wasson for his book “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood” (2020). “The one who would be noticing what the stars were wearing when he went to the races.”Deborah Nadoolman Landis, chair of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled a vivid scene in “Chinatown” in which Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway, sit together in a red restaurant banquette.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert Towne, Screenwriter of ‘Chinatown’ and More, Dies at 89

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      Celebrated for his mastery of dialogue, he also contributed (though without credit) to the scripts of “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Godfather.”Robert Towne, whose screenplay for Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” won an Oscar, and whose work on that and other important films established him as one of the leading screenwriters of the so-called New Hollywood, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.His publicist, Carri McClure, confirmed his death on Tuesday. She did not cite a cause.Mr. Towne’s Academy Award was part of a phenomenal run. He was nominated for best-screenplay Oscars three years in a row; his “Chinatown” win, in 1974, came between nominations for “The Last Detail” and “Shampoo,” both directed by Hal Ashby. He had also worked as an uncredited script doctor on “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) and “The Godfather” (1972).He was widely regarded as a master at writing dialogue, though he was less gifted at meeting deadlines — he was notorious for delivering long, unshapely scripts way past their due dates. The film historian David Thomson called him “a fascinating contradiction: in many ways idealistic, sentimental and very talented; in others a devout compromiser, a delayer, so insecure that he can sometimes seem devious.”Mr. Towne speaking at the Writers Guild Awards in Los Angeles in 2016.Phillip Faraone/Getty Images North AmericaMr. Towne later directed a few movies, and occasionally appeared onscreen, but he left his most lasting mark as a writer. And although he remained active into the 21st century, his reputation is based largely on the work he did in the 1970s.Beginning in the late 1960s with cutting-edge movies like “Midnight Cowboy” and “Easy Rider” and running through “Raging Bull” in 1980, the New Hollywood was a pinnacle for American directors, who followed the French auteur model of making idiosyncratic, personal movies, and also for talented screenwriters like Mr. Towne and a small army of gifted actors, like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, who did not fit the old Hollywood mold.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Which Cannes Films Might Become Oscar Contenders?

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      Films backed by the studio Neon have won Cannes and gone on to Oscar nominations regularly in the last few years. That’s one reason to keep an eye on “Anora.”Last year’s Cannes Film Festival was practically a one-stop shop for Oscar voters, premiering three major films — “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Zone of Interest” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” — that would go on to be nominated for best picture.Does this year’s crop of Cannes movies have the same juice?At the 77th edition of the festival, which concluded Saturday, Sean Baker’s “Anora” was named the winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or. Three of the last four Palme winners went on to receive a best-picture nomination — “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Triangle of Sadness” and “Parasite” — and all of them, like “Anora,” were distributed by the studio Neon. That’s an astonishing streak that positions “Anora” in the best way possible, lending a veneer of prestige to Baker’s raucous comedy about a Brooklyn stripper who marries into Russian wealth.In 2018, Baker’s “The Florida Project” came awfully close to a best-picture nomination. If voters are more amenable to his indie sensibility this time around, expect robust campaigns for the lead Mikey Madison and for Baker’s script and direction. More of a long shot but equally worthy is supporting actor Mark Eydelshteyn as the live-wire heir our title character weds: Though Oscar voters rarely reward young men, this kid’s a total find, like a Russian Timothée Chalamet.Zoe Saldaña shared the best actress award at Cannes with three other female co-stars of “Emilia Pérez,” which is so much more than a musical.VixensIn a surprise move, the Cannes jury split the best actress award four ways, honoring the main female cast of the talked-about musical “Emilia Pérez.” That means the ensemble member Selena Gomez now has a Cannes trophy that has eluded the likes of Marion Cotillard, though I suspect more fruitful Oscar campaigns would be waged on behalf of the leading lady Zoe Saldaña, who’s never had a more robust role, and especially Karla Sofía Gascón, who could become the first trans actress to be nominated for an Oscar. (The fourth winner was Adriana Paz.)Netflix has picked up “Emilia Pérez” and will certainly give it a significant awards push, though the streamer’s stewardship could have drawbacks. It’s true that this is a hard-to-classify film — equal parts crime drama, trans empowerment narrative and full-blown movie musical — which would have made it a difficult theatrical sell. But some of its more outrageous moments are certain to be memed and mocked as soon as it makes its streaming debut, which could hobble the film’s reputation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More