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The studio tried to say the kid was the only lead in Belfast, but did all the voters buy it? Dench and Hinds are pretty obviously Supporting (and in roles that are total Oscar catnip), but I'm guessing some voters saw Balfe especially as a lead. She probably got votes in both categories, but not enough to put her over the top in either. Often, when there have been two Supporting Actress nominations from the same movie, there's yet another actress being pushed as a lead: The Favourite, The Help, Doubt, Chicago. And it's one thing in an awards campaign where the movie is a 10-piece ensemble or the sole lead is a George Clooney, to say "everyone else is supporting," but when it's an unknown child actor as the lead, maybe that doesn't work as easily.

Three Oscar nominations: Best Animated Feature Best Original Song Best Original Score

That Best Picture nomination will really help the HBO Max/Hulu run... Cinema and Scorsese for the win!

He did get nominated today (as a producer on Nightmare Alley), but it won't win, so he'll be 0-for-9, and you'll have some people saying he was unfairly snubbed for his acting this year. It adds to his overall overdue narrative with Maestro in a couple of years, though nothing's ever guaranteed, and watch it be the same year of the Michael Jackson biopic. Going to be interesting to read the "Why They Were Snubbed" articles. A couple of years ago, they got cranky old AMPAS members who unloaded about why they found JLo and Eddie Murphy unworthy, so the Gaga commentary is sure to be something else...

Soundtrack update:

Despite both starring Bruce Willis and Chad Michael Murray, Survive the Game (2021) is not a sequel or related to Survive the Night (2020). The whole cheap action movie industry is really something:

I just discovered the whole world of "geezer teasers" last month and watched a few. Any awards watcher bellyaching about Belfast/King Richard/Being the Ricardos/etc. being the worst of the year really needs to watch Hard Kill or Cosmic Sin and that ilk. Just generic action in one location for an hour thirty while Bruce films all his scenes sitting in an office or a limo. The actual star is Jesse Metcalfe or Chad Michael Murray or some other C-lister doing the heavy lifting. Many are produced by a guy who was engaged to Lala from Vanderpump Rules and he put her in a bunch of them. True garbage. LOL, Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly started the grand love affair on one of these things.

They thought their big Oscar play was Black Swan: Princess Diana Edition...oops. Awards voters like their biopics extremely conventional, a shock to no one except KStew fans and millennial awards bloggers. And Neon, apparently. I saw Belfast in theaters this afternoon (it's on PVOD as a $19.99 rental, but a matinee ticket was less than half as much) and in a world where the 50+ audience was back to pre-pandemic attendance levels, the floor is $50 million. Total catnip for the AARP crowd. It is big the UK, naturally, it's going to have a very good night at the BAFTAs, whatever the Oscars do.

By its third weekend Sing 2 was on PVOD here in America, so it's hung on pretty well, considering. The UK box office seems to have had a broader recovery compared to the US.

Gilles Marini: the basis of his "stardom" back then was his stint the summer before as Samantha's naked neighbor in the first Sex and the City movie. Even by DTWS standards, the claim to actual fame was a reach, but he turned out to be an extremely good dancer despite no experience and nearly won his season. Superstardom didn't await, but he went on to become a regular on network and cable dramas, and headline a Hallmark-type movie or two. It gave him a boost for a while. It's funny you mention Julianne Hough's fame: in addition to the movie star push, they also tried turning her into a country singer. One season, her "celebrity" partner was then-boyfriend Chuck Wicks, another country artist, but in reality, Julianne was far better known. Of the two George Clooney ex-girlfriends who've appeared as "stars" on the show, Elisabetta Canalis was cast shortly after their split. The show always refers to how the stars are famous throughout their season, like "NFL superstar Kurt Warner" or "music legend Patti LaBelle" or whatever. Elisabetta was a "model and actresss", which was accurate, but DWTS fans would joke it should've been, "George Clooney's ex". The show has also cast Paul McCartney and Donald Trump's ex-wives while trying to maintain a polite pretense about it. That's how you got Marla Maples in the spring of 2016 as an "actress and television personality". Sure. I'll say Dancing with the Stars and The Masked Singer know who's still watching in the largest numbers, and that's why the political stunt casting on those shows mostly tends to lean GOP.

No Way Home was ineligible because Sony wouldn't put a copy on the BAFTA streaming platform: There's an Academy portal but I don't think it's a requirement with Oscar the same way.

Just watched the deleted storyboard scenes online: all interesting in their own ways except for Isabela's, which was horrendous, kudos to whoever averted that disaster.

West Side Story has done all right in the UK, though, nothing record-breaking but far better than its relative box office position in the US. The UK audience loves musicals, but they don't vote on BAFTAs. WSS has been missing what were thought to be gimme nominations for it with other precursors. It might end up with a good Oscar nomination haul, but it doesn't seem to be the Top 3 contender people were predicting (and maybe that was their mistake from the start).

She's hit all the precursors and her movie actually did okay at the box office, great for a pandemic drama. It would be her second acting nomination, and for a very different role than the other nod. Even people in the industry seem to view her on a different, exalted level of celebrity... I think the predictors would see this win coming from a mile away if not for the Gaga of it all. Of course, with this chaotic season, watch her miss next Tuesday. I mean, Kidman was just the frontrunner and the Best Actress race was done, until these nominations came out. * They really don't like remakes of classics...at least not for awards. Sorry, Steven, should have done a behind the scenes movie about the making of West Side Story and you would've been all good. Odd that Mike Faist finally gets in at BAFTA, given the movie's overall performance there. And the opposite with Bradley and Licorice Pizza, though the BAFTA jury system makes it hard to read much into the acting races besides the Top 2 in any category. Denzel still snubbed at BAFTA. But they got in Will Smith and Mahershala Ali, so it's not a thing against Black American men, just him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not surprised Redeeming Love had a meh hold-it's adapted from a romance novel (OW fan rush) and the content is a bit edgy for the typical Christian movie audience (it's based on a Bible story that deals with prostitution). The King's Daughter not totally tanking in Week 2 shows just how empty theaters are right now.

Once Don't Look Up was a huge streaming hit, I thought the Moonfall ad campaign would be more overt about taking shots: "The planet's in danger: here's a movie where the heroes fight till the end!" or something like that. Like how Wendy's says their burgers are never frozen or how the Victoria's Secret competitors used to make digs about Angels. There's always an audience for disaster movies. Whether it's much of a theatrical audience these days, who can say...

Roethlisberger got like a whole day in the sun as the retiring future Hall of Fame quarterback before Brady overshadowed him again...

Just get The Asylum's version from the comfort of your home... * Theaters are pretty empty right now, and Moonfall might somewhat appeal to the demo still going to movies. The opening probably won't be amazing, so there's no need for distributors to get greedy (if thats what is happening). Stanley Tucci was supposed to be in this?!

Sixteen costuming nominations and still Spencer got snubbed? Yikes. I guess the industry really hated the Princess Diana biopic for going all Black Swan on them.

Any old source material can be problematic, it's just a matter of how you adapt newer versions. Black Panther the movie renamed/revamped M'Baku from the original comics, and there wasn't a big controversy when the movie came out. This version of Snow White hasn't even started filming yet and has anyone seen a script? The "Seven Dwarfs" in this version could be a family instead of seven dudes, people with proper names, different jobs, well-rounded character development, some dialogue about respectful treatment - we have no idea. Even before Dinklage said anything, I doubt Disney was planning to roll out Sleepy, Doc, et al, without some consideration that it's the 2020s and this movie will have to endure intense scrutiny over the story elements. On the other hand, the depiction of dwarfism (real or imagined) in entertainment through the years has been pretty stereotypical and frequently insulting overall, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in particular has undoubtedly led to a lot of "jokes" and bullying for people of short stature in real life. It's not that shocking if Peter Dinklage just wants the property of Snow White to be launched into the sun and never see any version of it again. That doesn't mean everyone with dwarfism feels the same way, or that Disney had been planning for this new version to depict a bunch of offensive tropes until just now.

A total blanking would be more of a surprise now than two weeks ago: so far, it's showing up more with the guilds than expected, you have Scorsese publicly advocating and the movie's top talent is hitting the awards media circuit in time for Oscar voting. This can milk the "real cinema is being crowded out by theme park spectacles, so vote for us" narrative more than its competitors--I mean, they weren't canceling opening weekend screenings of King Richard or The Last Duel for a $260 million opener. I doubt it was the plan all along, but maybe flopping so late in the game and so epically vs Spider-Man might be weirdly helpful for Nightmare Alley's awards run. We'll see on Oscar nomination morning...

The streaming date for Nightmare Alley was already announced, and it was released after West Side Story. I think Disney/Fox will hold out for one last box office gasp when Oscar nominations are announced (February 8). So, we're doing this again, huh? They're getting ratioed, at least.

There are fans of this who aren't going to watch a movie that's R-rated for sex (Passion of the Christ was merely violent, which is totally fine for kids to watch, lol). Even with the PG-13, you see tweets from Christians saying it’s a sacrilegious treatment of the Bible and that watching actors in (tame) love scenes can stir up lust, so the movie should be avoided. I've read that in the Golden Age of Hollywood, the religious epics got away with more skimpy costumes and implications of sex because the producers could argue it was Biblical. It's wild that the same sort of thing is still happening in 2022.

So, Redeeming Love is based on a racy, best-selling Christian novel... Surely, the Christian media are more positive? Eh...

Bradley dropped by Colbert last week and is taking part in Variety's "Actors on Actors" series. Maybe they figured the movie would flop at the box office anyway, so let's save our big promo efforts until they start voting on industry awards?