Oscar, 11 nominations for Joker by Todd Phillips

Joker, The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, 1917 and Parasite are among the five films that will be the big stars of the Oscar night, Sunday 9 February at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. With 'Joker', the absolute star, having obtained eleven nominations. Coming less than a month before the awards ceremony, the final choices of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which celebrates the best film production of the last year, give Todd Phillips' film, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the role of big favorite. Joaquin Phoenix, who has just won the Golden Globe for best performance in 'Joker' and last night collected another award, the critics' award, seems destined to make it a hat-trick. Ten nominations also for Tarantino, with 'Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood', Martin Scorsese, for 'The Irishman' and Sam Mendes, '1917' and great success of nominations for 'Jojo Rabbit', 'Marriage Story' and 'Little Women' which obtained six nominations but not the one for the direction, by Greta Gerwig, the only woman among the possible protagonists. Among the finalist films are two films produced by Netflix, the one by Scorsese and 'Marriage Story', but 'The Two Popes' does not make it, which however promotes Jonathan Pryce, among the leading actors, and Anthony Hopkins, among those supporting. As per tradition, there is no lack of excellent rejections. If in 'Marriage Story', a dramatic film about the end of a relationship, the two protagonists, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, and the supporting actress, Laura Dern, earned nominations, in Scorsese's 'The Irishman', an existential drama about the 'after' in the life of an old gangster, the big loser is Robert De Niro, who remained out of everything, while among the supporting actors Al Pacino and a reborn Joe Pesci entered.
On the rise is Mendes' film, '1917', a film about the First World War, with an initial sequence shot that left viewers stunned and which in the US grossed more than the blockbuster 'Star Wars'. Among the films that will draw new life from the nominations is certainly 'Parasite' by Korean Bong Joon-ho, a splatter portrait of the cruelty of capitalism, which entered the finalists for best director, ninth film in the main category and finalist in the foreign film section, where the Polish 'Corpus Christi', the Macedonian 'Honeyland', the French 'Les Miserables' and the latest by Pedro Almodovar, 'Pain and Glory' appear. No Italian films in the competition, but it was all expected after the film indicated by Italy, 'The Traitor', by Marco Bellocchio, focused on the life of the mafia informer, Tommaso Buscetta, played by an extraordinary Perfrancesco Favino, did not pass the selections.