With two weeks left until the Oscars, Oppenheimer flies towards the night of the stars: on the evening of the actors' union awards, Christopher Nolan's film about the father of the atomic bomb won in three categories out of four nominations: for best cast, for best protagonist, Cillian Murphy, and best supporting actor, Robert Downey Jr. There were 15 statuettes up for grabs.
Lily Gladstone, the Native-American star of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, has blocked the path to Emma Stone of Poor Creatures!, increasing her chances of winning at the Academy Awards on March 10 and adding a pinch of necessary suspense.
No surprises however in the ceremony for the first time streaming on Netflix from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for the best supporting actress category: Da'vine Joy Randolph, the cook mourning the death of a son in Vietnam from The Holdovers, confirmed the mathematical certainty of a victory as best supporting star having won 36 since Alexander Payne's film with Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa debuted at the Telluride festival.
On the TV front, Sag confirmed the Emmy verdict: Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri triumphed for The Bear (also voted best comedy) like Ali Wong and Steven Yeun for Beef, while Succession was confirmed as best drama .
Pedro Pascal went on stage half drunk: he didn't expect to be chosen for The Last of Us, while Elizabeth Debicky surprisingly won for The Crown.
Barbra Streisand moved with a tear-jerking speech while accepting the lifetime achievement award from her colleagues: "I dream of a world where racial prejudice is a thing of the past", she said after recalling that Hollywood was built by titans like Samuel Goldwyn and Louis Mayer who fled from antisemitism in Europe.
Returning to the Oscars, the game is almost over at this point: the producers' association award will add the last piece to the mosaic next Sunday.
The winner of the Sag statuette for best cast has won 'best picture' at the Academy Awards only 14 times out of 28: of these, however, in all three of the latest editions with Parasite, Coda and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Nolan's film, which last week swept the British cinema Baftas after winning at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, continues to be undermined - but less so with each passing ceremony - by the commercial success of the summer - Greta Gerwig's Barbie - on which even critics have spent rivers of ink, mostly favorable.
We will therefore see next Sunday whether the saga of the Los Alamos physicists will have the most coveted recognition of the most coveted Hollywood awards in its pocket.
Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA