OSCARS WATCH 2025 – The Substance: Youth, Body, Women, Success (Part Two)

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – The Substance: Youth, Body, Women, Success (Part Two)

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards. In this in-conversation piece, Do Own (Donna) Kim, Utsav Gandhi, and Gabrielle Roitman exchange critical, intercultural, and personal readings of The Substance (2024). In Part One, Donna opened the conversation with the “love yourself :(“ South Korean (henceforth Korean) Internet meme. Now, in Part Two, Gabrielle and Utsav expand on her reading by exploring other connections, from American pop culture to immigrant experiences and queer bodies. “Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger. More beautiful. More perfect….The one and only thing not to forget: you are one. You can’t escape from yourself.” (excerpt from “The Substance” product introduction video) Is “love yourself” the solution? Can we? How? We welcome you to join our conversation.

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – The Substance: Youth, Body, Women, Success (Part One)

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – The Substance: Youth, Body, Women, Success (Part One)

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards. In this in-conversation piece, Do Own (Donna) Kim, Utsav Gandhi, and Gabrielle Roitman exchange critical, intercultural, and personal readings of The Substance (2024). In Part One, Donna opens the conversation with the “love yourself :(“ South Korean (henceforth Korean) Internet meme. Then, in Part Two, Gabrielle and Utsav expand on her reading by exploring other connections, from American pop culture to immigrant experiences and queer bodies. “Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger. More beautiful. More perfect….The one and only thing not to forget: you are one. You can’t escape from yourself.” (excerpt from “The Substance” product introduction video) Is “love yourself” the solution? Can we? How? We welcome you to join our conversation.

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – Anora

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – Anora

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards. With this video essay, Green and Red perform a poetic analysis of both the style and content of nominee Anora, evoking Kogonada's use of the dotted line and the driving poetic force of Catherine Grant's "Carnal Locomotive."

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – Political Fears and Fantasies in Edward Berger’s Conclave

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – Political Fears and Fantasies in Edward Berger’s Conclave

This post is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards. The political thriller is a genre that most effectively exists in close proximity to history. Regardless of whether its narratives are based on actual events, they draw on the political fears and paranoias of an era. It is why, historically, we have seen the genre congregate around moments of significant political tension or fear. We live in such an era now, with the divisive unorthodoxy of Trump being but the most prominent of numerous international examples of the growing divide between left and right and a breaking down of previously accepted political norms. That being the case, it should not be surprising to see a political thriller, Edward Berger’s Conclave, find its way into what is a notably political Best Picture field for this year’s Academy Awards.

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – I’m Still Here: A Harrowing Retelling and Warning

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OSCARS WATCH 2025 – I’m Still Here: A Harrowing Retelling and Warning

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards. Fouquet weaves connections between nominees I'm Still Here, A Complete Unknown, and The Apprentice as well as real-world political events in Brazil and the United States. She questions whether we are ready today to prevent the tragedy that befell the Paivas and the hundreds of families affected by disappeared Brazilians, as there is every sign of history repeating itself.

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — Video Essay Reflections on Character in ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — Video Essay Reflections on Character in ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards. This post features two video essays responding to Oppenheimer, one by Kai after Kai and one by Ella Wright. Both focus in on the film's depiction of character, asking how we are meant to understand them in moral terms. I encourage you to pay particular attention to the sound in each piece, the careful dichotomies between loudness and silence in “Fission, Fusion, and Character in Oppeneheimer” and the menacing yet also space age-y melodies of Kai after Kai’s original music in “The Guilt of Oppenheimer.” Both essays use sound to reinforce their critical points, rather than simply to ground their audiovisual timelines--an example of the sophisticated analysis going on in the world of video essays and videographic criticism.

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — Feminist Frankensteins

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — Feminist Frankensteins

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards. In this dialogic post, Henry Jenkins and Kris Longfield dissect three recent feminist re-tellings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Lisa Frankenstein, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, and Poor Things. By centering women in traditionally male roles, these newer Frankenstein films ask different kinds of questions, renewing the story by mapping alternative meanings onto its core figures.They're continually asking “what are we taking from the past and what are we taking from the present?” so their leading ladies can solve problems.

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — “Based on ‘Barbie’ by Mattel”: Adaptation, Franchising, and 'Barbie' (2023)

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — “Based on ‘Barbie’ by Mattel”: Adaptation, Franchising, and 'Barbie' (2023)

This piece is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards. Barbie is nominated in eight categories in the 2024 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. This critical response has been provoked by the discourse surrounding its eligibility in the Adapted Screenplay category, rather than Original Screenplay, and explores questions of adaptation and franchising in Barbie. The Barbie doll’s perceived lack of story or character suggests that Barbie is an original screenplay, but it is still based on a pre-existing intellectual property and an opening title card recognizes that Barbie is “Based on ‘Barbie’ by Mattel”. As an adaptation and a franchise Barbie draws from a material, industrial and historical story that works in concert with the polysemic, ambiguous and open nature of Barbie as a toy. Barbie is therefore shaped by the creative interpretation of Barbie as a culturally iconic toy and ‘Barbie’ as a franchise property owned by Mattel.

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — World on Fire: Reflections on 'Oppenheimer' (2023) and Contemporary Hollywood

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OSCAR WATCH 2024 — World on Fire: Reflections on 'Oppenheimer' (2023) and Contemporary Hollywood

Welcome to the first of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards. This piece explores the timeliness of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023), a biopic about the so-called “father of the atomic bomb”, by relating the film’s story and imagery to the contemporary threat of nuclear war, judged to be greater than at any time before by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists setting its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight. In addition to indicating the film’s impressive success with critics, the piece explores the film’s chances at this year’s Academy Awards with regards to the Academy’s love of biopics and of Nolan. Oppenheimer’s surprising commercial success is situated within decades-long trends at the global box office. The film marks a triumphant return to the tradition of blockbusting historical epics, combines talking heads with spectacular visual effects imagery, places 20th century science and engineering within a mythological framework, and raises many questions about its protagonist, steadfastly refusing to provide clear cut answers.

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