MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
After a series of delays due to the wildfires in Los Angeles, nominations for the 97th Oscars were announced this morning. "Emilia Perez" received 13 nominations, followed by "Wicked" and "The Brutalist" with 10 each. Here to tell us all about it is NPR pop culture correspondent Linda Holmes. Linda, good morning. Welcome back.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you so much.
MARTIN: So let's start with "Emilia Perez," one of the clear favorites heading into today.
HOLMES: Yes, absolutely. It picked up 13 nominations. It is the most ever for a film that is not in English. Karla Sofia Gascon becomes the first out trans actor to be nominated. This is also obviously a big deal for Netflix, which has wanted for many years to get a best picture win - has never gotten one. I'm sure they're feeling quite good about that. "Emilia Perez" was nominated not just in those kind of topline categories but also for things like score and cinematography. It was just broadly embraced by the people doing the nominating. It was kind of a divisive movie that a lot of people didn't like, but academy voters absolutely went for it.
It's part of an increasing embrace of non-English language movies at the Oscars. You can count films like "Roma" and "Parasite." Last year, both "Anatomy Of A Fall" and "Zone Of Interest." So this is, in some ways, an extension of that. And we should note, by the way, that "The Brutalist" and "Wicked" all got 10 nominations each, which, in any other year, would be, you know, newsmaking totals. Also it's just a year where a small number of movies took up a lot of the oxygen.
MARTIN: Anything you were surprised about?
HOLMES: The only real surprise in the best picture category is probably "I'm Still Here," which is a Brazilian drama about a woman coping with the death of her husband, who was a political dissident. Voters chose that film over things that were maybe a little bit more favored, like "A Real Pain," which is kind of a road movie about two cousins with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin.
I was really surprised that the excellent score of the tennis movie "Challengers" wasn't nominated. That was my favorite score of the year. Same goes for the cinematography of the drama "Nickel Boys," which is wonderfully evocative and creative and wasn't nominated. And Marianne Jean-Baptiste wasn't nominated for the Mike Lee film "Hard Truths." I think that was a heartbreaker for a lot of folks.
Probably my happiest maybe surprise was the original screenplay nomination for "Sing Sing," which is a wonderful film about the theater program at Sing Sing Prison. Some of the real incarcerated people who were part of that theater program appear in the film and helped work on the screenplay. And it was wonderful to see some of those names in the nominations list.
MARTIN: Right, right, Colman Domingo for best actor for "Sing Sing."
HOLMES: Hundred percent. That movie is great. I hope everybody will seek it out. It's wonderful.
MARTIN: It's always - I don't know if surprising is right - the right word, but, you know, 10 pictures nominated for best picture, but only five nominees for best director. And so you're always wondering, OK, so you got best picture nominee, but not the director. Like for "Nickel Boys," for example, he wasn't nominated, even though...
HOLMES: Absolutely. And as I said about the cinematography, that's just a wonderfully creative film. They did some amazing things with the visuals of the...
MARTIN: Yeah.
HOLMES: ...Filmmaking. Another one I hope people will seek out. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Ten best pictures. Only five directors.
MARTIN: OK, so when do we find out who won?
HOLMES: So the ceremony is on March 2, and while there have been a few rumbles about whether they should go ahead with it, given obviously the fires that have been causing so much devastation in the LA area, it looks like that will go ahead right now. So there's a little more than a month for a fresh round of speculating about which of these nominations will actually emerge as winners.
MARTIN: That is Linda Holmes. She hosts NPR's podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour. Thanks, Linda.
HOLMES: Thank you, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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