7 Oscar Thoughts/Rants/Musings
Congrats to Kate Hudson's publicist.
Let’s start this all off with a hearty congratulations to Jurassic World Rebirth, one of the worst movies of 2025 and now an Oscar nominee. Sure, it made the cut for Best Visual Effects—the dinosaurs are dinosauring to be fair—but there should be a certain level of non-shittiness for a movie to make it to the Academy Awards.
That hasn’t stopped the Oscars before, and I’m sure this won’t be the last time. I mean, Crash once won Best Picture, so everything’s on the table.
Anyway, that’s my first thought after this morning’s Oscar Nominations announcement. And I’ll give that one to you for free. Won’t even count towards the seven in the title. That’s how magnanimous I am.
Oh, also, in case you’re wondering (and I’m betting you are), here’s how I did with my predictions in the eight major categories:
Now, onto the aforementioned seven thoughts/rants/musings…
Kate Hudson over Chase Infiniti is a crime
It’s very funny that One Battle After Another has 13 nominations, and the Academy somehow missed on maybe the best performance in the movie: Chase Infiniti as Willa Ferguson. The entire movie depends on Infiniti’s arc, and Paul Thomas Anderson has said as much.
And yet, when you can nominate a biopic performance starring a famous woman playing a member of a tribute band, you’ve gotta do it. Which is why Kate Hudson from Song Sung Blue is (for some reason) still in the mix for an Academy Award.
We saw Song Sung Blue as a family on Christmas. And, I’ve gotta be honest, it’s bad. It’s a mix between a Lifetime holiday movie, a shoddy biopic and one of those “don’t drink” PSAs they show you in high school. It makes a lot of sense that the older (and probably white) subsection of the Academy loved this performance. It’s just a real shame that Infiniti missed out.
Putting a different spin on it: She’s 25, starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and flirting with Jacob Elordi. She’ll be okay.
Sinners is here
One Battle is still in pole position, but it seems clear that Sinners is a clear second. From the nominations for Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo to the cheering in the room for every Sinners selection, the Ryan Coogler thriller is clearly beloved by the Academy. There’s a real chance that it wins the whole damn thing, and there’s another world where it goes home with a few below-the-line wins, and kind of disappears from the conversation.
The Delroy Lindo pick was a real surprise, as he wasn’t getting much in the precursors and seemed to be blotted out by Miles Caton when it came to the Supporting Actor category. It’s something I would’ve picked, so it’s cool as hell to see it actually happen. The man has been acting for over 50 years now and just missed out for Da 5 Bloods, so it’s really cool to see him get his flowers.
Best score is missing the best score
I’m not sure how you nominate Marty Supreme nine times and skip out on Daniel Lopatin’s phenomenal score. The movie doesn’t work without the composer’s eclectic, anxiety-inducing music, and we’d be just fine to switch it in for Frankenstein or Hamnet.
The Losers
Wicked: For Good and Jay Kelly missed out completely, which is a real bummer for one of these movies. And that movie is very much not Wicked. After 10 nominations last year, the second-half money-grab was blanked and for good reason. Even the fans of the first Wicked movie were mixed at best on this one. It’s time for us all to move on from Oz.
Other tough misses include Paul Mescal (who’s solid in Hamnet but doesn’t need a nom), It Was Just An Accident for Best Picture and Best Director, the always-perfect Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee, Adam Sandler in Jay Kelly, everyone in No Other Choice and Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in the not-very-good The Smashing Machine.
Okay, it’s time to talk about:
Julia Roberts (somehow) wasn’t enough
We don’t get to see the votes, but I’d reckon that Sorry, Baby was oh so close to a Best Original Screenplay nomination. It’s not impossible that Eva Victor was in sixth or seventh place for Best Actress, as well.
A24 didn’t do much to push the phenomenal dramedy around awards season, instead focusing on Marty Supreme, and yet there was no better promotion for a movie all year than Julia Roberts shouting out Eva Victor from the Golden Globes stage.
She single-handedly put Sorry, Baby back in contention, and although it wasn’t enough, it was a hell of a boon for the small movie and a reminder for voters (and non-voters) to check it out. Eva Victor will return. No doubt about it.
Sentimental Value is back
I’m not sure if it’s just my TikTok algorithm, but I sometimes get these videos of fictional (maybe it’s Roller Coaster Tycoon) roller-coaster creations that are essentially man-made death traps. They’re basically people with way too much time creating the worst possible roller coaster made to give riders concussions and back problems. That’s how it felt watching Sentimental Value’s awards run this Oscar season.
One week, it’s the favorite. Next week, it’s dead in the water. The critics loved it. The actors couldn’t care less about it. So, it was anyone’s guess to see how it fared with Academy voters.
Well, they rightfully loved it.
Renate Reinsve is a Best Actress nominee. Stellan Skarsgård is the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor. And both Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning got in for Best Supporting Actress. It ultimately got nine nominations.
Sometimes, the Academy gets it right. This is thankfully one of those times. If Renate Reinsve missed out for Kate Hudson’s lifetime achievement nom, I’d be in a much worse mood.
We’ve gotta stop doing this to Diane Warren
Diane Warren just got her 17th Academy Award nomination for Best Song—this time for “Dear Me” from the documentary Diane Warren: Relentless—and she’s never won. This is her ninth consecutive year receiving a nomination in this category, and thankfully, she was given an honorary award back in 2022.
She’s been up for Oscars for Pearl Harbor, The Six Triple Eight and Flamin’ Hot. Yes, that’s the movie about a guy who’s claimed to invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. She’ll most likely never win, despite being nominated every year for movies that no one cares about. It’s almost a curse at this point. Let her move on.
I have much more to say, but that’s enough. I have an actual job to get back to. If you have any thoughts (or even questions), feel free to reach out below. Or just text me, if you’re lucky enough to have my phone number.
Thanks for reading. And, as always, fuck ICE.