Oscar Plea: I Preferred 'Anora' to 'The Brutalist,' But It Doesn’t Have the Weight a Best Picture Winner Should

Happy Tuesday, folks!

I celebrated 41 years on the planet yesterday, and oh, what a ride it has been…

For all the trouble my big mouth has gotten me into, I actually didn’t say a thing about Kanye West when he was popping off on Twitter last week. Such is his right (and mine, when I please). And as I’ve said in the past, I will defend a Nazi’s right to free speech. You can’t pick and choose when it comes to free speech — unfortunately, it’s all or nothing.

However, on Twitter, I have the choice to mute or block Kanye, such is my right. So even though I didn’t necessarily agree with David Schwimmer, who called for Elon Musk to remove Kanye from the platform — I’m glad he’s gone, for the record.

But we already knew Kanye was crazy.

The real problem I had was with Fox and the NFL, who allowed West to advertise his website to an audience of 120 million people without, apparently, vetting the website, or knowing that West would soon be selling t-shirts with swastikas on them — again, such is his right.

You won’t hear me saying Kanye shouldn’t be allowed to sell those disgusting t-shirts, because, to me, the problem lies more with the people buying them. But for Fox and the NFL to have an active role in helping Kanye move that merch is even more disgusting.

It’s Fox and the NFL who should be ashamed of themselves. Kanye is just a troll riding the coattails of someone else’s ugly ideology in a desperate bid to be relevant again since his music certainly isn’t doing the trick these days.

As for the Super Bowl itself, I thought the game was a total dud, and while I appreciated the concept, direction, and choreography of Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, as well as the singer’s oddly magnetic charisma, I can’t say the music itself did much for me — but I suppose with Kendrick, it’s less about the music than the message.

The message received in Hollywood this weekend is that Anora is the frontrunner to win Best Picture — but more on that below.

Earlier today, Deadline confirmed last week’s scoop about Paul Giamatti playing Art Bell, while adding that new CAA clients Radio Silence are attached to direct — an element I sat on for the agency last week. Tsk, tsk…

Deadline also confirmed my recent scoop about Peter Dinklage starring opposite Michael C. Hall in Dexter: Resurrection, adding that he’ll play a billionaire venture capitalist who is also a villain — as if there’s any other kind!

Meanwhile, over at THR, the trade confirmed my other scoop about Steven Yeun joining the cast of Ben Affleck’s kidnapping thriller Animals, though as it turns out, Kerry Washington will be playing Affleck’s wife — not Gillian Anderson. Instead, the X-Files alum will play a political fixer. As for Yeun, he’ll play Affleck’s campaign manager — the same role he was poised to play when Matt Damon was slated to star in the project last year.

I know Washington is a Netflix favorite between American Son, the recent Tyler Perry movie The Six Triple Eight, and the upcoming Knives Out sequel Wake Up Dead Man, but I can’t really stand her, as I find her acting style to be far too theatrical. Her casting in Animals seems to have been generated by a Netflix algorithm and to be honest, I’m not a fan, though I’ll still be there on Opening Day for my Boston brethren Ben.

Tonight’s newsletter features a belated birthday wish/plea to Oscar voters as to why A24’s The Brutalist deserves to win Best Picture over Anora — though I’ll still be happy if Sean Baker takes the Academy’s top prize given his remarkable consistency over the years.

I also wonder aloud what Christopher Nolan thought about Universal pulling the plug on Michel Gondry’s Golden last week.

Plus, there are items about Ben Stiller heading to HBO, Casey Affleck chasing Miles Teller, Natalie Portman teaming up with Lena Dunham, a new Yorgos Lanthimos project, the latest addition to Nolan’s The Odyssey, and my thoughts on the trailer for A24’s comedy Friendship starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd.

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