Oscars 2025

Scott Hardie | January 23, 2025
This year's contest has begun. Good luck!

Any thoughts on this year's nominees? Maybe it's because the nominations are spread around so much, but it feels like a much harder year to predict that usual. Am I wrong?

Evie Totty | January 25, 2025
I have to admit - I'm WAY behind on the films nominated. Like - I've seen Dune 2 (thank you, MAX), A Real Pain (thank you, Hulu), Inside Out 2 (Disney+) and Nosferatu.

I just got access to Peacock so I can watch The Wild Robot and Conclave. Wallace and Gromit is also "somewhere"? Seems like Emilia Peréz is on Hulu? But a buddy of mine hates it so much - it's going to be hard for me to watch lol.

(He gets to vote in the SAGs, so he's seen all of them already, lucky guy.)

Not sure how many more I'll get to see bc school is about to ramp up :/.

Scott Hardie | January 26, 2025
Yeah, Emilia Peréz has the most nominations but seems like it will have an uphill battle to win much. The people who don't like it really don't like it, it's on Netflix which is a handicap in an industry that loathes Netflix, it has been criticized for its negative depiction of Mexico and the filmmakers' decision not to film in Mexico, it's a musical up against Wicked and A Complete Unknown, and at the risk of mentioning politics, it tells a story about being transgender in a way that pisses off both the left and the right. Being so widely nominated is the honor it's going to get, I think.

I, too, haven't seen many of the nominees. Anyone who read my list of the best 2024 movies that I saw should not be surprised that I'm pulling for Flow to win in at least one of its categories. I'm not remotely surprised to see Deadpool & Wolverine, one of the year's most popular films, completely ignored even in the technical categories, but what a hoot it could have been for Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman to host the show.

Erik Bates | January 26, 2025
[hidden by request]

Erik Bates | January 26, 2025
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | January 27, 2025
Thanks for catching that broken link for me. :-)

Kelly and I might watch some of the nominees before the Oscars, but it won't be many. We watched the trailers for all of them in one sitting (excluding the few we've seen already), and the movies look relentlessly bleak and depressing. Life is bleak and depressing enough right now, so I prefer escapism and comfort. Kelly and I don't watch horror movies because they're so miserable and unpleasant to sit through, and what are dramas about war and rape and abortion and forced disappearance and systemic abuse if not real-life horror movies? When the least-depressing Oscar nominees of the year are about a singer becoming an asshole as he becomes famous, racism and misogyny experienced by WWII officers, and a buddy-road-trip comedy about the fucking Holocaust, then it might be a good year to sit out for your own psychological well-being.

Scott Hardie | February 6, 2025
Speaking as someone who is liberal but neither a Democrat nor an activist, and someone who is very tired of Democrats and activists picking sanctimonious proxy fights over trivial culture-war nonsense that affects relatively few people while vastly more important and widespread (and election-winning) problems go ignored, I am deeply disappointed but not remotely surprised by the furious controversy over Karla Sofía Gascón's old tweets. Sure, the president is issuing orders that redefine the constitution, the federal government is being dismantled, mass deportation is about to upend millions of lives, our economy is facing numerous serious threats... but let's all fight about one barely-known actress's racist hot-takes from a few years ago and whether she's sufficiently sorry now. Because THAT'S fucking important. Even for an industry that is notoriously self-obsessed and out of touch with ordinary Americans, this is some next-level fiddling while Rome burns.

Samir Mehta | February 6, 2025
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | February 6, 2025
Sorry to have been imprecise. I should have limited my criticism to activists (using that term very loosely) since they, and the industry insiders trying to game the Oscars by jumping on the bandwagon with them, are the ones involved in this particular case. But way too many other times, I have seen Democrats get distracted by relatively trivial nothingburgers while staying mum on big important news stories that matter to vastly more people (ie. voters). I get why it happens, but it's still so frustrating to watch. Anyway, that's what I was trying to get at by mentioning them.

Am I a hypocrite for writing that earlier today? I post about frivolous things here and elsewhere instead of devoting my full energy to opposing what's happening in the government right now. I don't know. As much as I try to avoid the news, plenty of it finds its way to me, and lately it feels like one unprecedentedly heinous thing after another... and then I see yet another headline about what some celebrity thinks about Gascón's tweets (always framed as A Very Important Matter That I Take Seriously) after what feels like two weeks of coverage of this non-issue, and I can't help but think, "This?! THIS is the topic you want to discuss right now?! THIS is the principled stance that you're taking at this moment in history?" Something in me just snapped today.

Our annual "Predict the Oscars" contest usually attracts a lot of outsiders and new members every year, and that page links to this discussion. So, to anyone who wandered in here and is apprehensive about participating in Funeratic given my harsh tone towards Trump et al, or about my left-wing opinions, being that I'm the website admin: All opinions and viewpoints truly are welcome here, as long as they're expressed respectfully with regard to other website participants. I want a diversity of opinions here, and I want us to be able to engage with each other. I might or might not be able to agree with your take on current events, but at the very minimum I want to understand it. Not wanting to scare off potential new participants was the reason I wanted to avoid politics in this discussion in the first place, and perhaps I should have stuck to it. Too late now.

Scott Hardie | March 3, 2025
Last night was a weird one for me personally. I forgot to enter until only 7 minutes remained in the contest. (Cut me some slack; I just got home from vacation and haven't even unpacked yet.) I rushed through my picks and got lucky early with a good bet on Flow. By the time only two categories remained at the end of the night, I led the entire field by 4 points... and then it all fell apart, because I was way off on those big two final categories. :-) I haven't been able to pay attention this Oscar season and I totally missed the groundswell of support for Anora that would have led me to pick it more consistently. I also realized too late that its director Sean Baker is not the same person as Mentalist actor Simon Baker, who has been accused of sexual harassment and drunk driving and being difficult to work with, and thus who I couldn't fathom the Academy supporting widely. Big silly mistake on my part.

Still, I'm happy for Flow and the other winners. I don't know if there was a single disappointment in the bunch. I have some good movies to catch up on!

Any thoughts on the winners or the show?

Evie Totty | March 3, 2025
I also forgot :(

Was happy for Flow. I guess I'll see what the hubub is about Anora when it's on Hulu in a week or two.

It was nice to see the awards spread out among different films. Happy for Zoe for sure.

I didn't have a way to see it live - so I'll have to wait until the key moments are up on YouTube later though.