We Must Discuss…The 97th Academy Awards

Brittany at We Must Discuss x Michel at TV Scholar talk movies!

Telephiles, I invite you to open your minds for a hot minute. The one and only tvscholar is dropping by the We Must Discuss HQ again but this time, it’s all about the movies.

This Sunday welcomes the Oscars — a hotly anticipated conclusion to a scandalous awards season, and one that has also delivered some stunning, momentous, and ambitious films. The duality of Hollywood!

Michel Ghanem is here to help me unpack a season of film-going and talk about our Oscar winners. It’s been a big year for The Movies and we have much to discuss.

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B: Michel, welcome back!! Thank you for popping over to chat Oscars with me.

M: Thank you so much for having me back over here, Brittany! As tvscholar hive knows, I would pick television over film any day — but I submit a ballot for the Dorian Awards’ film slate every year, which I take as a very serious responsibility (not as seriously as Kirsten Dunst but I try my best). What I love about film is the social connection. I always watch movies with friends or crushes and I feel it creates an unshakable, permanent bonding experience.

B: Totally! Not to be too earnest off the top, but I love that we watched Nickel Boys together! I feel like watching such an intimately heartbreaking film really sealed the deal on our friendship!

M: Absolutely! Over sushi and non-alcoholic drinks for Dry January. What a special experience it is to share a meaningful film together.

Meanwhile, my television time is my own. Leave me alone, I need to clock in at the screenshots factory! But since I rarely write about film (and don’t post about it on Instagram like my career depends on it), it’s a bit of a reprieve.

B: This might be kind of an insane question to ask you from the jump, but what are your favourite films and performances in the running this year?

Some wins feel locked in—Kieran for A Real Pain, Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, and Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez—but a few categories are still up for grabs. Conclave surprised at the BAFTAs, taking Best Film over The Brutalist, and Timmy finally got a televised win at SAG for A Complete Unknown. Oh, and Mikey Madison beat out Demi for the BAFTA! Love them both, so I refuse to pit them together.

M: Don’t let me yap away, let’s fire up my Letterboxd. My film watching kicked off with a very generous press pass from the Vancouver International Film Festival which debuts quite a few buzzy films every year (that’s where I saw Anora at a press screening all the way back in September), and continued with the steady stream of screeners I receive leading up to films being actually available in theatres (humble brag, but thank god I get to work ahead).

There’s a solid selection this year but I still feel rocked by The Substance. I have a very high threshold for horror but I made the mistake of quickly eating a massive bowl of poke before heading into the theatre and immediately felt nauseous watching Dennis Quaid slurp down those shrimp in the opening scene. Nasty.

Nickel Boys, directed by RaMell Ross. Photo courtesy of VIFF.

B: Holy moly – when I wrote about The Substance with Marta McFly we talked about how The Substance really made food look utterly disgusting. That scene post-poke would be a bit of a nightmare. But I agree – The Substance rocked my ass in a good way! I loved it so much. I look forward to cheering on Demi’s win. I hope Pilaf gets to come on stage!

M: Exactly! I feel like Pilaf would have so much to say. As a Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle truther it feels sooo correct to see Demi seize this moment for a performance worth all the praise (I’d like to petition the Razzies to withdraw her “award” for Worst Supporting Actress in that movie, btw). I need her to win the Oscar just for another inspiring speech about how I shouldn’t give up on my passions (we all need that energy right now).

I’m also partial to Anora. I understand the critiques (and apparently Sean Baker follows a bunch of right wing accounts on social media, as if we didn’t need more drama this Oscars season) — but I somehow feel like a proud father having witnessed Mikey Madison’s growth over five seasons of one of my favourite shows, Pamela Adlon’s auteur project Better Things, and seeing her come into her own is so wonderful.

I’m Still Here, directed by Walter Salles. Photo courtesy of VIFF.

My other favs this season were I’m Still Here, which is a beautiful movie that had me tearing up; Flow — which blows The Wild Robot out of the water, sorry; Nickel Boys, which is weirdly flying under the radar but deserves praise at the very least for some of the most unique cinematography I’ve ever seen on screen; and No Other Land deserves that documentary win at the very least to finally get some U.S. distribution (don’t get me started on that). I liked Conclave and The Brutalist but probably less than others did.

No Other Land, from directors Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal. Photo courtesy of VIFF.

B: –sorry to interrupt, but I have to agree here. I do not know how to talk about The Brutalist. I keep saying it’s an incredible piece of cinema like I’m some kind of tiny toque art bro—and it is, but I didn’t enjoy watching it. It was grueling and upsetting, and absolutely gargantuan in its script, story… the trauma. But I also know that what I took in was a weird kind of marvel, especially at a $10 million budget. Does that make sense?

Adrien Brody in The Brutalist.

M: Exactly! The second half was so dark. And as someone who spent years of my twenties in the coldest cave-like classrooms and libraries at two brutalist-inspired Canadian university campuses, I came into the movie preloaded with my own biases against brutalism as an architectural style — but I guess that’s another story. I would have slayed in the editing room of that movie (or like, most Oscar-nominated movies). Hire me to slash and burn 45 minutes off your movie today! I will be ruthless and audiences will be so much happier.

I did not need to spend my entire Saturday evening on The Brutalist. This is sounding like I hated it — I didn’t! I gave it a very solid 3.5 stars on Letterboxd. I’m just not quivering over how evocative it was, nor do I think a story about an immigrant and the American dream and the exploitation of an artist is thaaaat unique. And it had a really brutal rape scene that I was not warned about nor read ANYTHING about in the press which caught me off guard and deeply disturbed me.

B: Yes, the rape scene was devastating, and was a tough pill for me to swallow. I continue to be befuddled, as well, that no one has said a damn thing about it. Is there just too much to process in The Brutalist?

M: I remember when the rape scene in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo made headlines that Oscars season — I couldn’t help but wonder if in a post-cancel culture/Trump’s America we have a different level of tolerance for it. Ironically I didn’t expect the rape scene in The Apprentice either.

Anyway, I also have no comment on Wicked at this time.

Brittany’s film the year — of course.

B: Thank you for keeping your Wicked comments to yourself, I’d like to salvage our relationship!

What would you say would be an upset at the Oscars? What would break the internet? I’m curious to know who and what you’re rooting for. I feel like I could predict your picks, but maybe you’ll surprise me!

M: The Substance winning Best Picture. But I’m guessing that would only happen in the tvscholar parallel universe. That category does feel like something of a toss-up though if votes are split between Anora, The Brutalist, and Conclave. I also think there is a small chance of Mikey or Fernanda winning over Demi? Twitter people say that the Oscars have a habit of not giving out awards for “career wins” and preferring the up-and-comers. I guess Emilia Pérez winning anything beyond Supporting Actress would be sufficient to break a very fragile internet right now. This fancam of Karla gave me an ijbol though (in light of being funded by Netflix to attend the Oscars after everything + that cringe Hollywood Reporter guest column).

B: Oh my god, I am cackling. We’ll get to the Karla Sofía Gascón of it all in a hot minute here.

They say sci-fi has a grip on awards season after Everything Everywhere All At Once—who knows, maybe The Substance could pull off a Best Picture win. If Emilia Pérez takes it, I’m walking straight into the ocean. But if Best Picture is about a film excelling across the board, I’d be on board with a Conclave win—it’s nothing if not a fully realized, solidly crafted Good Movie.

You mentioned earlier that you are partial to Anora, and I am too. Like you, I’ve been taking in the award season films for a hot minute now, with many thanks to VIFF as well. Anora is one of the earlier films I watched in the running and still a favourite. It’s a film I think about a lot and one I know will actually become a permanent part of my arsenal of favourites.

Mikey Madison in Anora, directed by Sean Baker. Photo courtesy of VIFF.

Mikey Madison has an incredible face.

I love to see sex work on screen as work, as power, as fun, as messy. Anora was exploited by Vanya, but not by Sean Baker’s lens if that makes sense? But I am a bit of a Sean Baker apologist, mind you.

Admittedly, it’s also been hard to shake off recency bias. I saw I’m Still Here this week, and I was flattened by the script, and Fernanda Torres’ powerhouse performance. That final-ish scene where Eunice sees her husband on that television documentary? Come ON.

M: My friends and I sat down for that movie knowing absolutely nothing about it, and we were all floored. I’m not sure if we would have watched it if it weren’t for its nominations, so thank you Oscars season! I agree though, recency bias is real.

Brittany, I’m curious if there are any movies or performances you feel should have been nominated? Like obviously Queer and Challengers were huge oversights in my opinion (both excelled at the Dorian Awards — alongside Problemista and I Saw the TV Glow, both unsung films this year). I also wouldn’t have minded nods for Dìdi (at least for Twin Peaks alum Joan Chen’s performance), and I keep seeing chatter about Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s performance in Hard Truths, which I still need to see (there are only so many hours in the day, okay!). I’m also an Alien: Romulus stan — a reminder that the original Alien won an Oscar for visual effects, so not beyond the question for it to make a reappearance. I also thought Hugh Grant got kind of close to a nomination for Heretic, but I guess that would have been too powerful for the future of horror. On the other hand, my least favourite films of this season, Babygirl and The Last Showgirl, didn’t get anything — and I am at peace with that.

B: I will not accept The Last Showgirl slander. I loved Babygirl as we’ve talked about – but I’m sorry, it wasn’t an Oscar film. And neither was The Last Showgirl when you look what it was up against.

Yes, Challengers, specifically the score snub was a huge bummer and I have heard the cries for Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s snub, but I haven’t seen Hard Truths yet, either!

I would have loved to have seen Chinese film Black Dog in the International Feature Film category. It was one of the best films I saw at VIFF – a moody, brooding, absolutely poetic film that celebrates misunderstood creatures and unlikely pairs. And the star of the film, Eddie Peng, adopted Xin the dog after filming. You’ll always get me with a story like that!

Black Dog from director Guan Hu. Photo courtesy of VIFF.

Obviously, I was disappointed that Margaret Qualley was left out of The Substance nominations. I feel like she carried that film just as much as Demi did. Justice for her!

M: Agreed on the Babygirl/The Last Showgirl front. I need to watch Black Dog! Let me add it to the watchlist…

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B: Okay, let’s talk controversy shall we? There are two key pieces to unpack, at least for me: The Brutalist’s AI debacle, and the evil, Karla Sofía Gascón.

Somehow, someway, Emilia Pérez is leading the pack with 13 nominations. Amidst awards season, journalist Sarah Hagi unearthed Gascón's old tweets and when I say this woman was tweetinggggg.

This isn’t a scandal of decades old commentary. Her tweets were recent – mostly posted in 2020 and 2021, and were strewn with Islamophobic vitriol, and bizarre, racist takes on George Floyd, and, hilariously (ironically?) the Oscars diversity efforts.

“More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M…Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala,” Karla Sofía Gascón tweeted after the 2021 Oscars ceremony – four years before her nomination would make history.

I wasn’t sure when I was going to talk about this on my newsletter because I knew this story would develop for a long time — although Hunter Harris’ newsletter and podcast interview with Hagi is a great way to get caught up to speed on more details.

Despite all of this, Gascón plans to attend the Oscars and apparently, Netflix is footing the bill. Whether Emilia Pérez will take away with Best Picture or trip over its own controversy remains to be seen…

Michel, thoughts please.

M: CRINGE.

I don’t even know what to say, except that maybe actors should be vetted more closely? Like did her PR team not notice and/or just hope the tweets would never surface? I saw something about Netflix considering a closer vetting of their actors, but it’s all coming at such a messy time when bigots are feeling more emboldened than ever — I shudder thinking of those young Republicans quoted in that New York Magazine piece who are taking a victory lap post-election solely for the new “cultural allowance” to make racist jokes. The attacks on DEI, spaces of discourse and progress being co-opted, and Karla apologists all feel linked in the worst ways. That being said — I would be floored to see Emilia Pérez walk away with Best Picture after all of this mess. Let the record state I don’t think it deserves it in the first place!

B: Here, here!

Now, can you tell our dear readers about The Brutalist’s AI snafu, and what your thoughts are here?

M: I personally don’t think AI has any place in the making of art, a field that is already so precarious to work in (as Sean Baker pointed out in his speech at the Indie Spirit Awards).

I get messages on tvscholar all the time from those in the industry who are struggling to find work and book gigs. I can’t even manage to make enough money to quit my full-time day job — despite having a monthly column and publishing regularly. To use AI in art is to cannibalize your own artistic communities and contribute to the eventual erasure of being able to work in this industry. There are probably actors with killer Hungarian accents who would have given up a kidney for a role on The Brutalist, and talented artists that could have been commissioned to create the László Tóth’s renderings of blueprints without blowing their (considerably small) budget. It’s all a slippery slope, it’s taking up precious environmental resources, these creators are willingly abandoning their artistic communities, and for what?! To train generative AI to take over even more filmmaking jobs? I don’t know, it all feels very icky to me and it’s also something quickly progressing way beyond the levels of my comprehension.

Ironically, it feels incongruent with the themes of the film, too. AI is Harrison Lee Van Buren, you idiots. James Cameron is planning on having a title card that will indicate to viewers his films haven’t been made with AI, and I hope the tides turn to leaving it out of the art world. Ugh, sorry, this brought up more than I thought.

B: You’ve given me a lot more food for thought, thanks Michel. While I fundamentally agree with everything you’re saying, I had a narrower lens upon first learning about how The Brutalist’s editor Dávid Jancsó used AI in the film.

On the dialogue front, (I have no wiggle room on the AI-assisted renderings of László Tóth’s blueprints) according to Vanity Fair, Respeecher—an AI voice-generating technology—was used in the editing room to make Jones and Brody sound more authentic when speaking Hungarian. To me, at first glance, this felt as “harmless” as using Grammarly or letting Google Docs format a document. It sounded, basically, like auto-tune for actors. But I hear you—maybe this is a good ethics check for me too. AI leniency like this could be a gateway drug, one that edges real artists out of opportunities. Lots to think about!!

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B: I know we didn’t get to talking much about The Apprentice – god, I feel so complicated about that movie–but if we want to end this very long Oscars chat on one of my favourite performances of this awards season, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong and what they brought to that film. I was completely repulsed by the two of them for two hours.

Which means they did their job.

I would like to see Jeremy take the Oscar, despite all signs pointing to Kieran (who was great in A Real Pain, too but it wasn’t a Jeremy Strong transformation!). Maybe we’ll see the Eldest Boy end up on top.

I know that Timothée Chalamet won’t take the Oscar either, but his performance in A Complete Unknown radicalized me and I really respected his SAG speech. You’re one of the greats to me, Timmy!

Sugarcane from directors Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie. Photo courtesy of VIFF.

Oh, and it’s not a performance, but I am rooting very, very hard for documentary nominee, Sugarcane. One of the most important films I’ve ever seen, and mandatory viewing in my opinion.

M: I need to see Sugarcane too and watch more documentaries in general!

B: Me too! 2025 resolution?

M: Thank you so much for having me Brittany, this was fun (as always!). Fingers crossed for a decent Oscars show.

B: Such a blast. See you this time next year? Looking forward to more sushi and movie dates in our future!

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The 97th Academy Awards airs on Sunday, March 2. I’ll be watching! 📺