To go along with the wacky awards season, the “anonymous Oscar ballot” features have also been especially chaotic this year. There is literally only one consensus choice in all of the big categories: everyone agrees that Kieran Culkin should and will win the Oscar for Supporting Actor. People really loved that special performance in a quiet little movie, and that makes me very happy. But the rest of the categories? Utter shambles. Entertainment Weekly did an Oscar ballot feature with four Oscar voters: an indie director, a screenwriter of film & TV, a publicist and a casting director. Their votes and their rationales for their votes are chaotic. Some highlights – you can read the full piece here.

The publicist on Karla Sofia Gascon: “I am utterly disgusted at the racism and hatred. I feel like the Academy should rescind that nomination. It is abhorrent, vile hate speech that has no place in the excellence that the Academy illuminates and underscores. It left such a bad taste in my mouth that I think, with the exception of Zoe, who I’ll be voting for, the film lost me…. If you kick the tires a little bit, people have known that she tweeted this s— out…. Latin American Twitter has been saying this for a while. It’s not just an opinion; it’s true hate speech. It doesn’t matter if the actress is cis, trans, I don’t care — there’s no place for that kind of talk. I think it has derailed the campaign. The film has already had strong detractors to begin with. Yes, it has the most nominations, which speaks to the power of the Netflix awards machine, but all machines don’t always work well. From what I’m hearing from fellow Academy voters, it will affect their decision.

The director on Dune 2: “I’m bummed because I haven’t seen The Substance or I’m Still Here yet. The first Dune, I couldn’t get through; I’m not rushing for another three hours of Dune. There’s still time to re-evaluate, but I really struggled. Knowing myself, Anora or The Brutalist I’d expect myself to vote for, but I found one of them a bit silly, one of them exploitative. I’m sad to say, it’s a process of elimination guiding me [to A Complete Unknown] and not passion for these works. Hearing myself say these things, perhaps I should abstain. I think, after a talk with my therapist, I will probably abstain [altogether].

The writer on Anora: “There was very little about Anora that I responded to. It seemed really implausible and like one of those aughts movies that felt very male-gazey about a young woman’s journey that was seen from a male point of view, and really was all about her sexuality. I say that with respect toward her and the director, but not enough to carry a whole movie. Halfway through I was like, why am I watching this? I’m surprised I saw the whole thing. It feels really old-fashioned in a terrible way. Here’s another movie about a guy’s idea of what a woman’s experience of this is like, down to her f—ing him in the car in the end. This is how we fix things, right? The whole thing was so not for me.”

The publicist was bored by Dune: “With Dune: Part Two, I’d seen the David Lynch version of Dune, and I saw [Denis Villeneuve’s] first one, which I was super bored by. I place it on myself; when I walked into the theater, I wasn’t in the right headspace. It wasn’t compelling to me. I’m open to sci-fi, but I think it had something to do with whatever I’d gone through that day…. My goal is to see everything on a big screen, so as much as I can watch on a big screen, great, so I waited on The Brutalist and finally saw it last week. It was too long. I want to spread the wealth and I think I’m giving [Best Director] to Brady Corbet because it does have nuanced characters, [a tight] budget, production design — my vote is going to him. In terms of the film, it could’ve been way shorter and still impactful.”

The writer on The Brutalist: “I’m very mixed on The Brutalist. It has more to do with what the movie stands for. I like Adrien Brody fine; I can’t say I’m a huge fan of him in general, and that’s probably impacting my dislike for the whole movie. This movie is by another straight white dude who sort of gets to do what he gets to do and then talk about final cut at the Golden Globes, you know? It felt like poverty p0rn, the whole thing. Brody is a good actor, but, at the end of the day, how much more suffering are we going to see over here? What is the point of this?”

The director on the Best Actress race: “My apologies to Fernanda Torres [for not seeing I’m Still Here], and I’ve also not seen The Substance, which is important to this category. Maybe I should abstain until I do.”

Casting director on Best Actress: “I’m voting for Mikey Madison for Anora. I very much loved the whole performance. She was incredibly deep and layered. From one end, you can see her hope and dreams shattered, and you can believe every second of the film that she’s going through all of this…. I haven’t seen the performance of Demi Moore in The Substance. It’s not my cup of tea, the genre. But, I have seen parts of it. My taste in acting is in a more realistic style. I haven’t seen the full thing, just parts of it, but I felt that the acting there was on the surreal side. I loved that Mikey was so realistic. I can imagine knowing that person.

[From EW]

It truly shocked me to see how these voters dismissed Dune 2. Am I on crack? Dune 2 was one of the best films of 2024! Lowkey it was in my top three films of the year. What Denis Villeneuve is doing with these adaptations is extraordinary and the Dune films are some of the “prettiest” and most aesthetically-pleasing films to come out in the past decade. Like, real “magic of filmmaking” stuff. I actually hated all of the writer’s bad takes on the films except for The Brutalist – she was actually spitting facts on that one. The Brutalist does seem like poverty p0rn, or more specifically, suffering-p0rn. There was a moment in the second half where I literally had to stop the film and just take a mental health break because of all of the terrible sh-t that was happening. Also: this piece really exposed how Oscar voters are barely watching even half of the nominated films/performances.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.