Jacques Audiard’s daring musical “Emilia Pérez” about a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender-affirming surgery to turn into a woman, nominated for the 82nd Academy Awards. Golden Globes on Monday, earning 10 nods that put it ahead of other competitors comparable to the musical hit “Wicked,” the papal thriller “Conclave” and the post-war epic “The Brutalist.”

The Globe nominations, which will probably be televised on CBS and stream on Paramount+ on January 5, Mindy Kaling and Morris Chestnut announced Monday morning.

The Fighting Globes, which are not any longer awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, are still in return mode after years of scandals and organizational upheaval. This 12 months, we’re working to the Globes’ advantage: a particularly wealthy list of nominees. Nominated were Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig, Denzel Washington, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Glen Powell and Selena Gomez.

The young Donald Trump’s drama “The Apprentice” he also received nominations for two fundamental performances – Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. The president-elect called “The Apprentice” a “politically disgusting piece of work” done by “human scum.”

It’s unclear how much of an impact the recent presidential election could have on Hollywood’s awards season. During the primary awards ceremony of the season, the Gotham Awards, Trump was not mentioned, although he was mentioned at times. Stan also received a nomination on Monday for the dark comedy “A Different Man.”

While “Oppenheimer” and, to a lesser extent, “Barbie” entered the Globes nominations because the clear heavyweights of the awards season, no favorites emerged this 12 months – and that is with the exception of “Mean,” most contenders have much lighter box office results. The Globes don’t often align with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a much larger group that a lot better reflects the film industry. However, they may give movies a significant boost and good fodder for awards marketing.

Netflix dominates

Netflix, which acquired “Emilia Pérez” after its debut on the Cannes Film Festival, dominated the nominations, leading all studios in each the film (13) and tv (23) categories.

“Emilia Pérez”, Fr (*10*)an operatic film that ignores genres combining elements of a drug thriller, a Broadway musical and a trans drama, it was nominated in three categories: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña and Gomez.

Brady Corbet’s “Brutalism” earned seven nominations, including best picture, drama and acting nods for Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce. The soon-to-be-released film by A24 is amazingly ambitious and lasts three and a half hours, including an intermission.

A24 narrowly edged out Netflix within the film categories, earning a total of 12 nominations, including best lead actor in a drama for Hugh Grant’s darkest-ever performance within the horror film Heretic. Grant, in a statement, thanked directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods “for recognizing my need to kill.”

Close behind was Edward Berger’s “The Conclave,” with Ralph Fiennes as a cardinal tasked with leading a conclave to elect a recent pope. It earned six nominations, including best picture, drama and an acting nod for Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini.

“Anora” by Sean Baker, winner of the Palme d’Or starring Mikey Madison as a Brooklyn prostitute who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, it was nominated for five awards, including Best Picture, Comedy or Musical, and Best Female Actress for Madison and Best Supporting Actor for Yura Borisov.

The Globes will probably be hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser, who earned her own nomination within the Outstanding Stand-Up Special category. CBS, which began airing the “Globes” last 12 months under a recent deal, is hoping Glaser can do higher than last 12 months’s emcee, Jo Koy, whose profession has received wide response.

Who are this 12 months’s top Globes nominees?

The nominees for Best Dramatic Film are: “The Brutalist”; “Total Unknown”; “Conclave”; “Dune: Part Two”; “The Nickel Boys”; “September 5”.

The nominees for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy are: “Wicked”; “Anora”; “Emilia Pérez”; “Challengers”; “Real Pain”; “Substance”.

What stood out?

Coralie Fargeat’s bloody body horror satire “The Substance,” which stars Demi Moore as an actress who goes to extremes to remain young in beauty-obsessed Hollywood, earned a total of 5 nominations, including nods for each Moore, in addition to her younger doppelgänger, Margaret Qualley.

Among animated movies, DreamWorks’ “Wild Robot” also had a particularly good day. The tale of a crashed robot ship earned 4 nominations, including one within the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement category, a relatively recent category that features big ticket sellers like “Deadpool and Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2.” The strong showing suggests that the opposite animated nominees – “Flow”, “Inside Out 2”, “Memoir of a Snail”, “Moana 2”, “Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” – can have a hard time beating out “The Wild”. . Robot.”

Bob Dylan’s film “A Complete Unknown” starring Chalamet also had much to have fun. With the support of Dylan himself, the film earned nominations for Chalamet, Edward Norton (as Woody Guthrie) and best movie drama.

Pamela Anderson also earned her first Golden Globe nomination. In “The Last Showgirl,” Anderson plays an aging Las Vegas showgirl, which led to one of the best reviews of Anderson’s profession. She was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama alongside Jolie (“Maria”), Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”), Tilda Swinton (“The Room Next”), Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”) and – in a surprise twist – Kate Winslet (“Lee”).

What about TV categories?

“The Bear”, which dominated the 2024 Globes, led all series with five nominations after the third season. These included nods to Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Liza Colón-Zayas and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. The hardest competition this 12 months may come from FX’s “Shogun” (4 nominations, including acting nods for Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada) or Apple TV’s “Slow Horses” (nods for Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden).

“Only Murders in the Building” won again within the Comedy or Musical category, with nominations for stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Gomez; her second nomination, along with a nomination for “Emilia Pérez.”

What’s the deal with the Golden Globes anyway?

The Globes aren’t at all times completely drama-free, but things have calmed down for the struggling awards committee. After the Los Angeles Times reported that HFPA voters included no Black members, most of Hollywood boycotted the show and the 2022 ceremony was canceled.

January’s Globes were the primary after the dissolution of the HFPA and their takeover by Dick Clark Productions and billionaire Todd Boehly’s private equity firm Eldridge Industries. But earlier this fall, the Ankler reported that former HFPA members had submitted a letter to the California Attorney General’s office questioning the “validity of the purchase.”

Although the 2024 Globes were mostly postponed, rankings improved. According to Nielsen, some 9.5 million watched, which led CBS to sign a five-year deal with the series.

What’s recent this 12 months?

Last 12 months, the Globes introduced two recent categories that remain this time: the award for film and box office achievement and the award for best television stand-up comedy performance. This time, one amendment concerns lifetime achievement awards. This 12 months it’s going to occur Ted Danson (for the Carol Burnett Award) i Wiola Davis (for the Cecil B. DeMille Award). They will probably be distributed at a gala dinner on Friday, January 3, two days before the Globes.

I’ll be honest — I have not desired to talk much about politics since November 6. It’s not that she doesn’t have lots to say, but like many black women who’re sounding the alarm about the state of the country, I now lean on Tricia Hersey’s philosophy that “the rest is resistance” and decided to prioritize my local communities and issues near home.

So imagine my surprise once I went to look at the movie “Wicked” to loosen up – as a complete novice who had no experience with the movie, book or Broadway show (apart from seeing the popular green face poster plastered in every single place when there was no I can afford a ticket) — and I discovered that the film had a political message embedded in two hours and 40 minutes of spectacular singing, dancing and acting by Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande and the entire forged.

It seems Gregory Maguire, writer of “Wicked” relies on, was inspired by political events from the late Nineteen Nineties and early Nineteen Nineties – including the Gulf War between Bush and Saddam Hussein, asking questions about how people characterize “good” and “evil” and how “others” are treated. Maguire wrote his adaptation based on Frank L. Baum’s famous film “The Wizard of Oz,” which also had political undertones. The political apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

McGuire did what the great Toni Morrison did he advised artists to accomplish that in difficult moments, saying: “There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no place for fear. We speak, we write, we use language” because “this is how civilizations heal.” It was a timely message that made sense in 2004, when Morrison had his epiphany following George W. Bush’s re-election victory, and it makes just as much sense in 2024, when the former president was re-elected, threatening to usher in a brand new level of “retribution.” ”, confusion and unrest in America.

Perhaps that is one of the key lessons we must always draw from the election: that history predictably repeats itself. In fact, the story is so predictable that a Broadway show like Wicked, which has been running for over 20 years, discusses the details of this 2024 political moment in such detail that you’d think the writers involved were individuals with the ability paranormal, not only the authors. .

That said, listed below are five of the many lessons from “Wicked” that felt like a political sermon as I sat in the theater and watched Elphaba and Glinda fly over our screens, warning us that “something bad” was happening in Oz… but in addition here on the home front .

(*5*)1. Just as certain books and knowledge were banned in Oz, Black history and other stories are banned or censored in order to rewrite our understanding of ourselves and our country

Wicked is all fun and games until things begin to get real in Oz, specifically when some of the professors, who’re real animals, are told they will now not teach certain classes. Dr. Dillamond, the goat, strives against all odds to teach his students, but even Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) discovers that she must meet in secret with other animals to freely discuss the truth.

“We, the animals, are now blamed for everything that goes wrong, forced to miss work and told to be silent,” he told the other animals.

Americans are observing in real time the ban on publishing books in libraries and schools, threatening librarians with dismissals and even arrests for allowing access to certain works. While some media outlets have labeled these examples “culture wars,” they’re proven signs of threats to democracy.

When AP African American History closes in Florida and classes on slavery portray enslaved Africans as benefiting from the skills they’re learning, it’s an actual try and keep people in the dark about what got here before so that they cannot connect with the present .

2. When individuals are offended, they appear for a scapegoat (no pun intended)

Throughout Wicked, we see Elphaba being feared because of the color of her skin – an ideal analogy for what Black people around the world undergo each day.

But Elphaba wasn’t the just one who faced ostracism because of her appearance. The animals and the top goat, Dr. Dillamond, got here to be seen as other individuals who didn’t need to be taught, let alone listened to, because they were of a distinct species.

This election cycle, now we have been bombarded with news of “invasions” and attacks on America attributable to illegal “aliens.” While experts agree that the U.S. immigration system is definitely broken, the dehumanization of immigrants and false claims that legal Haitian immigrants “eat pets” were intended to create a scapegoat for voters to get offended at.

Immigration has gone from being a lower-priority issue in public polls to a top-priority issue for a decade, and that didn’t occur by accident. The news and social media were used to create even greater concern about the border, making immigrants of color seem like our country’s biggest problem. Meanwhile, little was said about immigrants from European countries.

The “wicked” movie would have been much more on point if not less than one of the animals had been characterised as not smelling like these – because those other animals must have been sent back to the forest from which they got here!

3. True allies might be there for you; others all the time resort to privilege

Watching Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship transform throughout the film felt like watching a real friendship blossom. The once self-centered, wealthy and socially acceptable Glinda appeared to have developed an actual relationship with the green-skinned, micro-braided Elphaba – once she got over her own selfish motives, of course. Glinda even went up to now as to be seen with Elphaba in places where they might normally keep their distance – performative alliance where?!

But in the end (again, spoiler alert) the need for acceptance and the established order ultimately won out, and Glinda simply couldn’t rebel alongside Elphaba.

Similarly, at the height of the 2024 election, Black women voters appeared to have a tough time getting a powerful enough show of allyship from women with different tastes and beliefs, although all women were in the same boat on the post-Roe rollback of reproductive rights.

Much ado was made about the coalition of Black, (non-Black) Latino, Asian, and white progressive voters who had the power to place a Black woman in the White House in the event that they stuck together. Despite Harris’ efforts to win over white voters and her success in persuading college-educated white voters to support her, 53% of white voters still supported the other candidate.

For Harris, the percentage of non-Black Latina women was 58%, but still not a game-changing majority

Meanwhile, 92% of Black women who voted for Harris were left alone on the shelf with our capes, while many of our allies said they understood our common fight, but the price of eggs was the most significant thing and Trump’s racism and sexism just…t that’s it, to defy gravity.

4. The authorities want society to be distracted and preoccupied with trivial matters, so that there is no such thing as a room or energy for fighting

There is a scene in “Wicked” where the Wizard explains that he knows learn how to make people blissful and do what’s best for them: by simplifying their decisions and keeping them busy.

For the 2024 elections, now we have seen a serious break with the tradition of relying totally on traditional media to deliver fact-checked and accurate political news. Instead, partisan voices further dominated the conversation, with many individuals mindlessly consuming propaganda, memes, and podcasts produced by almost anyone (mostly unverified sources) based on whatever the algorithms presented to them.

One man even paid billions to own a literal algorithm, burying the platform often called Twitter and resurrecting it as “X”, then allowing it to be flooded with false information and radical hate speech.

At times, the political news was so controversial, ridiculous, and silly (did we actually need to read headlines about Arnold Palmer’s genitals and Vice President Harris’ race?) that many individuals ended up checking it out.

You would think this was by design.

5. As soon as the “other” demands his rights, he becomes public enemy primary.

One of the most striking scenes in Wicked comes when Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) jumps on the speaker and condemns Elphaba – the very young woman she promised to mentor and look after – when Elphaba had something she wanted.

You can see the pain and look of betrayal on Elphaba’s face as regardless of what she does or says, she is portrayed as the enemy.

At this point, he has no alternative but to flee or accept his fate.

This sense of betrayal is something that black Americans, especially descendants of slavery in the United States, experience time and time again.

We felt it during the continued enslavement after the Emancipation Proclamation, the oppression during Reconstruction or during the civil rights movement, and now as we see DEI initiatives being rolled back, affirmative motion being overturned, and all the guarantees of the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter era evaporating into thin air. As politicians use the word “woke” against communities that have merely challenged America to maintain its guarantees, we’re greater than used to it.

Black Americans currently look as much as the Madam Morribles of America who call us “woke” and unpatriotic, and those that may look down on us or make us the butt of jokes – very like Elphaba did when she listened to her former mentor “sic the Flying ” monkeys at her, calling her an enemy.

Symbolism is what makes a personality like Elphaba and a story like “Wicked” so powerfully moving decade after decade, regardless of who dons the green face paint.

As I used to be leaving the cinema, the last lesson stuck with me the most.

Elphaba’s calmness, coupled with the public’s commitment to not understanding her and her decision to defy expectations of assimilation or conformity – moderately than standing up for higher principles – are reminders of the price of courage.

The cost is real, especially as 2025 approaches the inauguration of a president who has promised to punish those that stand in his way.

So many Black individuals who showed up in the 2024 elections, giving their all for the cause of freedom and democracy, know the cost of courage.

They now prioritize safety, survival and self-care, while others decide to stay and fight a distinct fight in the coming era.

Each alternative might be seen as defying gravity – an idea the legendary writer wrote about long before the characters in Wicked sang about it.

To quote Toni Morrison again:

“If you want to fly, you have to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

Over the past few weeks, “Wicked” has actually had the “Barbie” effect, taking control of what seems almost… In a sea of ​​pink and green gadgets and gravity-defying musical riffs, Elphaba’s portrayal in Cynthia Erivo’s latest adaptation of the musical shines a singular light on black women and their experiences on the planet.

During an appearance on the Red Sea Film Festival, the Oscar-nominated actress reflected on Elphaba’s intentional portrayal as a black woman.

“Green stands for every person who feels different,” Erivo said. for a change. “There’s a layer of who I am underneath, and Black women are stepping into spaces that aren’t necessarily welcoming. It was important to tell that story and have it as a layer.”

“I didn’t want to remove myself from Elphaba” – Erivo he previously told the publication. “I wanted to combine the two.”

According to the “Wicked” actress, one of the primary things she asked for when considering her character’s look was so as to add braids and nails. Not wanting Elphaba’s classic green complexion to remove from her blackness, Erivo said she very consciously assumed Elphaba would have micro braids.

“The way we put it together, it’s a really sweet love song,” Erivo explained during an appearance on CultureCon. “I asked for these micro braids… It was an actual discussion… it was the very first thing I knew what I wanted for her. I believed, “I don’t want long braids.” I would like micro braids because they’re very special and there’s a bunch (of viewers) who recognize them immediately.

Elphaba’s micro braids allowed the actress to honor the character’s classic long black hair while also honoring the culture. Erivo says she and her stylist intentionally took care of the smallest details of the hairstyle, from the curled edges to 1B’s “natural black” hair color (for those who know, you already know).

“I needed it to be related to me as a black woman. I wanted to show how versatile braids can be and how much fun you can have with them.” she added.

Additionally, Erivo made sure that her heroine had a full set of intricately designed nails that: Black woman actually made. While her nails reflected the sweetness practices she employs in her life, Erivo revealed that Elphaba’s nails were equally inspired by Margaret Hamilton’s 1939 performance of “The Wicked Witch”. in the primary film adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz”, whose heroine also had long claw-like nails.

“I knew the history of nails was so complex and complicated, but it was deeply, inextricably linked to (black women),” Erivo said, explaining her selection of manicure. “(But) it was placed on other people. And only when it’s on other people’s bodies (it’s) considered fashionable or elegant, but when it’s on us, it’s something completely different.

Erivo understood the powerful message of having “a green girl with micro braids and a full ensemble” at the middle of such a big production, saying she felt responsible not just for the character, but additionally for anyone who happens to seem in her role.

“That scene when (Elphaba) finds out the green is a problem? These tears were real. It comes from my understanding of what it feels like,” Erivo said, explaining her deep connection to the character. “Elphaba is a challenging character because you want to make sure that people see her sensitivity and her humanity… With Elphaba, I had a beautiful challenge of humanizing her and even the greenery in which she lives. He is a special character to me.”