THB #637: The Moral Imperative Of Oscar Is Non-Existent

Owen Gliberman got a lot of intention inside the Oscar stadium with his Variety opinion piece, Why It Would Be Really Dumb for the Oscars Not to Nominate ‘Challengers’ for Best Picture.

Most of the people who I have heard from about it leaned into the “I think he just found the worst way of saying what he really meant, which is that he personally loves that movie and sees it as very mainstream and arty at the same time,” notion.

But in a time where virtue signalling has a shockingly high level of sincerity, the fact that a veteran film critic would post a story taking a position like that on any one film was kind of a smack in the head to me.

The lovely and talented Bilge Ebiri wrote the other day, “No NICKEL BOYS on the Sound shortlist is actionable.” Which is funny, because just last night, seeing The Brutalist on an IMAX screen, in my imagination, I thought he had tweeted it about The Brutalist… which he could have with the same logic. But, of course, it is not actionable or a sin. …