Wicked has more of a hill to climb for Best Picture at the Oscars next year.
If you’re hoping for Wicked to win Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards, you might want to sit down.
The smash-hit adaptation of the Broadway musical surprisingly took home the National Board of Review’s Best Film award on Wednesday, which puts Wicked well in line to land a Best Picture nomination next month.
Most of the NBR’s recent winners, sans 2020’s Da 5 Bloods and 2014’s A Most Violent Year, over the last decade have gone on to get nominated in the Oscars’ biggest category.
However, only one film since 2008 has actually won Best Picture after winning the NBR’s Best Film honor: 2018’s Green Book.
That puts Wicked at a historical disadvantage, as the NBR’s Best Film award is a rather curious note of bad luck for any Best Picture contender.
The honor only lined up with the Academy in Best Picture during the 2000s on two occasions: 2007’s No Country for Old Men and 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire.
If you’re looking for an idea of how the New York City-based NBR operates, know their Best Film category typically rewards distinctly American films with its top prize and isn’t afraid to honor a blockbuster like it did in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick and in 2015 with Mad Max: Fury Road.
Wicked is a classic crowd-pleaser, but it’s also a work of American intellectual property and adapted from a gigantic Broadway show. Best Picture hasn’t gone to a work of IP since 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and hasn’t gone to a Broadway adaptation since 2002’s Chicago. The broadening international impact in the Academy’s voting body doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a film like Wicked winning Best Picture, either, as international voters typically prefer more auteur-driven, arthouse-friendly fare like 2019’s Parasite, 2020’s Nomadland, 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once and 2023’s Oppenheimer.
However, 2021’s CODA proved how crowd-pleasing films with a musical slant can succeed in Best Picture as of late. But that’s a film firmly grounded in reality and surged late in the Best Picture process.
These historical stats slip up all the time, so don’t assume this as Wicked‘s kiss of death. Meanwhile, the NBR’s inability to predict where Best Picture is going over the years does make you wonder if Wicked has a ceiling.
Wicked is most certainly going to be a popular film at this year’s Oscars, but don’t necessarily count on it as the clear frontrunner. This one has much more to defy than you might expect, and the “NBR Best Film curse” is now one of them. It’ll be one of the contenders, but really don’t call it a lock right now.
What an amazing throw by Bo Nix and a great catch and run by Marvin Mims!
In the third quarter of Monday’s 41-32 win over the Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix connected with wide receiver Marvin Mims on a 93-yard strike to take a 28-17 lead.
The All-22 end zone angle of the throw reveals a perfectly-placed ball from Nix over a linebacker and away from the defensive back where only Mims has a chance to catch it.
We could watch this all day:
The endzone view of the Bo Nix to Marvin Mims 93-yard TD was everything I hoped it’d be. pic.twitter.com/NtG8SSXKWA
“We hit that turkey hole” coach Sean Payton said of the play after the game. “Sometimes that ball might go outside. It was a heck of a throw and catch and a huge play.”
Mims had 0.4 yards of separation when the ball arrived and he reached a top speed of 20.68 mph on the play, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
“It was kind of a read-the-field route for me. They ended up being in a cover-2, and I had the middle open and they kind of just shot it. [QB] Bo [Nix] ended up trusting me and putting the ball in a perfect place, literally. It ended up being a big play for us.”
The ball traveled 44.3 yards in the air yards, according to NGS. Nix broke down the play after the big win.
“We knew it was third-and-long,” Nix said. “We were trying to be aggressive and go for the first down. We just kind of had three verticals getting to three spots down the field. [They played] 2-Tampa invert. Their corners were going back. As soon as I saw the ‘Mike’ kind of carry, they only do that in Tampa-2, so I knew it was a two-on-one to the field. Marvin with his speed, just had to get it out there. He did a great job splitting the field. Their guy couldn’t get to it. Just kind of heard the crowd go crazy, and it was one of those awesome plays that you don’t get often, but they’re pretty fun.”
It’s time to head back to Oz for the film adaptation of the Broadway hit Wicked.
The long-awaited film is now playing in theaters, leaving fans of the musical and Wizard of Oz lore in general excited to see Elphaba and Glinda’s origin story on the big screen.
However, should you hang out during the credits to see if there’s one last scene before the lights come up?
Not this time around. While there is technically a post-credit movie waiting for you next November when the second half of Wicked hits theaters, there is not any extra scene at the end of this first installment.
If you want to stick around and hear the end credits music, that’s fine and dandy. Just don’t expect a tease for the second film or an extra scene.
Rather than just recline in the comfy theater seat, eat some Goobers and soak in the film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Wicked, The New York Times reports that some Wicked fans are treating early screenings of the film as their personal sing-along space.
Oh yes. People are going to a movie theater, a place where thousands of public announcement videos have aired before movies to encourage you to please just shut up for two hours and enjoy the show, and belting out their favorite Wicked songs as if they’re auditioning for a community playhouse.
As much as rampant cell phone use and idle chatter are heinous crimes in the filmgoing space, loudly singing a Broadway tune around other people who have absolutely no desire to hear your voice is a cardinal sin of going to the movies. It is a gross violation of a sacred space. It is just flat-out wrong.
Sure, historically, people have sang songs in theaters in the past. That’s typically reserved for midnight movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or specifically designated sing-along screenings.
Hearing a theater major loudly belt “Popular” right next to you while you’re just trying to drink your Diet Coke and enjoy the IMAX movie you paid good money for is like having someone blow cigarette smoke in your face while you’re trying to enjoy a nice steak dinner.
If it’s really that important to you to sing Wicked songs loudly with strangers, Universal will be offering sing-along screenings starting this Christmas. It’s then when you can dress like your favorite Wicked character and sing all the songs you want in a public space with other people without driving the rest of us bonkers.
For the love of Oz, please don’t do it before then. This is going to be one of the most packed houses this holiday season at the movies, and there are a lot of people who just want to hear trained professionals sing the songs. No disrespect, but if you’re getting such an outrageous itch to sing the Wicked songs loudly at the movies, you’re probably not a trained professional.
Just wait until Christmas to open your pipes and sing at the movies. We all pay a good amount for the movie ticket, and we all deserve the decency to enjoy the movie in silence. If you defy that silence and use the movies as your personal audience to sing, you deserve to be splashed with water.
Facing a 2nd-and-7 in the second quarter of Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Falcons, Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix threw a 33-yard strike to wide receiver Devaughn Vele to pick up a first down.
Nix threw over a linebacker and inside a safety to deliver a perfectly-placed ball for Vele. The All-22 film became available on Monday and the behind the end zone angle is absolutely beautiful:
“We got some shell and some two-deep safety looks today which opens up the middle of the field,” Nix said after the game when asked about throwing over the middle of the field. “I feel like we have been confident with those throws all year long. Today we got through the progressions and got to some of them. Two off the top of my head was Vele over the middle between the safeties. I thought that was extremely courageous to go through there knowing you can possibly be hit.”
This is presumably one of the Vele catches that Nix referenced:
On 2nd and 15 Denver shows their swing screen look with Mims in the backfield, Bo uses his eyes to manipulate the linebacker before firing in the free access slant to Vele who was fantastic in this one. pic.twitter.com/glx6NyriBC
Courtland Sutton (seven receptions for 78 yards) and Vele (four receptions for 66 yards) were Nix’s favorite targets on Sunday.
“Those two are just typical of what you get from them every day,” Nix said. “They are always battling to find ways to get open. They do not care if they are going to take a hit. They are willing to go through there for the betterment of the team. Football is a tough game played by tough people. We know that we are going to have to continue to do that kind of stuff in all spaces of the field to have success. Sometimes you have to take what they give you and they were giving us some over the middle shots today.”
Here are a few more angles of Nix’s two impressive passes to Vele:
Okay, Bo Nix. I guess we’re ripping tight-window throws on time at this level now. (The second throw made me laugh when I saw the end zone angle). pic.twitter.com/voEGgTnupz
Broncos coach Sean Payton praised Nix’s impressive pass during his Monday conference call with reporters.
“There’s never been — on his part — a lack of confidence, relative to his location,” Payton said. “He’s extremely accurate, but the windows are just quicker [and] faster in our league. They’re open for a shorter period of time. I think that’s one example of many, but one example where, ‘Does he make that throw Week 1 or Week 2?’ I don’t know, but certainly we’re all getting a chance to see growth as it plays out week by week.”
Nix finished the game 28-of-33 passing (84.8%) for 307 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions. He has made huge strides from earlier this season and continues to make a case for Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Brothers is a gloriously stupid hidden gem. It’s on Amazon Prime Video now.
Twenty years ago, a movie like Brothers would open on a blustery October Friday, make about $15 million on opening weekend, play for about a month as a modest word-of-mouth success and eventually hit Blockbuster shelves for high schoolers to sneak-rent for a howler of a weekend evening with friends.
Far more Farrelly Brothers than Coen Brothers, Brothers is the kind of stupid crime comedy we used to get in bulk, back in the days film studios realized that people enjoyed watching funny movies in theaters with other people.
The cruel irony and/or sign of the times for Brothers is that it opened to little fanfare on Amazon Prime Video last month and has skipped out of the public consciousness as yet another movie skipped over on the routine streaming search. May it not be so, not with the perfect Thanksgiving movie ready to fire up with the adult members of your family you love but can’t always stand to be around.
Brothers is gloriously stupid, a movie so cartoonish and buffoonish that it hides in some pretty relatable themes about how you can’t choose your family, but sometimes, it’d be nice if they chose you for once.
Comedies like this have always been unfairly dinged for their lack of sophistication, as if aiming for the low-hanging fruit to make you belly laugh is some sort of genre crime. Brothers functions perfectly as both a silly farce and an excellent showcase for normally stoic actors to flex their funny bones.
Josh Brolin, Peter Dinklage and Glenn Close aren’t typically the people you see in Happy Madison-y movies, but getting them in a comedy directed by Palm Springs‘ Max Barbakow and written by I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore‘s Macon Blair should’ve been heralded as a grand arrival.
Brolin and Dinklage are irresistible together, as the former plays dorky dad far better than you’d expect and the latter in a refreshingly low-life mode we don’t normally get to see him in. Marisa Tomei shows up for a wacky few scenes, and this is one of the last times we’ll get to see the late, great M. Emmet Walsh show up in the kind of supporting role where he always thrived.
Some NSFW language to follow.
However, the film belongs to recent Oscar winner Brendan Fraser. Fraser has always been a genius at finding his groove in any comedic setting. He’s perfectly capable of playing the smartest and dumbest person in the room, often in the same scene. Here, he gives what just might be the most hysterical performance of his career, one so wild and free in a way we haven’t seen Fraser in so, so long.
Combining the drool-mean menace of Rugrats‘ “Big Boy” Pickles and the foolish tenacity of a yippy puppy that can’t control its bladder, Fraser transforms himself into a Looney Tunes failson goon for the ages. Quite literally every single one of his scenes is funny, throwing in off-kilter line deliveries and gleefully reckless physical comedy to create a go-for-broke performance that is so special.
It’s one of the great recent post-Oscar performances, one so free of any ego and so in love with its own idiocy. Fraser is having unreal amounts of fun again in a good comedy, a wonderful sign nature really is healing.
If you want to turn your brain off for just a bit and enjoy a studio comedy with good actors and wily creative minds behind the camera, Brothers is an oasis in the desert. We need more stupid, mid-budget comedies like this, ones that aren’t doing anything new to make you laugh but still get the giggles in spades.
Nolan’s next project has reportedly been dated for July 17, 2026, with fellow Oscar winner Matt Damon in talks to star and reunite with the director for a third time, per Deadline’s Justin Kroll.
As is typical with Nolan films, this next project will reportedly feature an IMAX release, per Deadline.
Kroll added that an early 2025 shoot for the new movie is expected, which means further casting will start to filter in in the months to come.
Megalopolis is absolutely remarkable filmmaking from a stark-raving mad genius.
Having spent $120 million of his wine fortune to bring his multi-decade passion project to life, Francis Ford Coppola seemingly wanted to play by his own rules with Megalopolis.
The polar opposite of a trendy studio lob with box office baked in, Coppola finally realized his great white whale by breaking through the glass ceiling of what even a resplendent imagination like his is capable of conjuring.
Rather than pay self-homage to his grand works, Coppola plucks your head off your shoulders, puts it on a game board and spins it like a top around his kaleidoscopic fable of two worlds, one from his wildest dreams and another from his worst nightmares.
Somehow playing like a Robert Zemeckis reimagining of Citizen Kane, a head-over-heels romance out of the French New Wave and a thornily politicized episode of Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories, the towering director is trying to take whatever strands of cinema he has left to invite a societal plunge into something new, fresh, perhaps bewildering in formal grasp.
Occasionally, it’s unwieldy and free-flowing like Dadaist community theater. Occasionally, it’s basically Coppola endearingly cribbing from Orson Welles, William Wyler and Frank Capra with the unburdened visual splendor of the Wachowskis. Occasionally, it’s so gonzo-bonkers public access delirium you start to wonder if Coppola is trying to emulate the after-midnight block of Adult Swim.
It’s formally daring and occasionally lost in its own train of thought, a film guiding its audience like the ghosts of Roman Art-Deco past, present and future through what Coppola thinks we can be and what he’s pretty darn worried we’re veering toward. While the film carries the exhaustion and sloppiness of a great pitcher making one last, triumphant stand at the mound before his arm gives out, it still coalesces into an outrageous achievement in the medium by one of its all-time architects.
While Megalopolis’ plot mechanics operate with the same discipline of an errant gob of Flubber, Coppola’s general template is pretty easy to grasp.
One character (Adam Driver) represents a beautiful future, one where we’re not afraid to let go of what we have and reach for the sky, even if we occasionally falter and lose our way. Another (Giancarlo Esposito) represents holding firm to the practical past and the status quo, suspending moral and imaginative potential for the same neon lights that guide the public and private. Two more (Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf) just want to scheme their way into power, using the media available to them to manipulate the citizenry.
Coppola knocks around these characters-as-pillars of thought like Kaijus in a Godzilla movie, which can play as so obvious that even a fifth-grader could write a compelling essay on Megalopolis’ themes. Perhaps that’s the point? Freeing himself, for better and worse, from the complexities of progress, Coppola might not fulfill philosophical brilliance as much as he absolutely soars in the realm of using film to make you feel his message all over.
That’s the power of movies, after all. Even the shakiest of scripts and outlandish of approaches can stir together in a big, boiling pot to make for something special and delicious. Coppola even tears through the fourth wall when the film is rendered in its intended form, as a person in the actual theater has a brief-yet-stirring dialogue with Driver’s character on screen.
Courtesy of Lionsgate
That hasn’t been attempted anywhere else but Muppet*Vision 3D when a Disney Parks cast member in a Sweetums costume pops out from behind the stage with a flashlight to look for a wayward Bean Bunny. Like Jim Henson, Coppola is a true visionary who isn’t afraid to scramble your expectations in real time with mirth and chaos.
Your mileage, to be very clear, may vary.
Megalopolis isn’t a great movie in the same way Dune: Part Two and Challengers are great movies. Coppola’s film isn’t as meant for mass appeal as it is for the most adventurous and generous of audiences, ones who can withstand the film every now and then hewing closer to The Room than The Godfather. There is a real intent, whether purposeful or accidental, to the film’s most slack-jawed moments, as if Coppola is trying to grow his warning for a grim American future in the same soil Mike Judge used for Idiocracy (you know, the one watered with Brawndo, which has what plants crave).
It’s that 2006 comedy masterpiece powered by electrolytes that Megalopolis may well share its most kinship with of any other film, as Coppola and Judge both have roughly the same idea of where we’re headed if we can’t dig a little deeper and dream a little bigger. Whereas Judge took more of a drooling Brutalist, King of the Hill from Hell approach, Coppola really seems to have borrowed heavily from the cringe-laugh Tim and Eric aesthetic as much as anyone when trying to ridicule his society crumbling on a hill. This movie is absolutely hysterical when it wants to be, and don’t assume it’s by mistake.
In contrast, his most optimistic moments feel like they’re born out of the latter Matrix movies and the collective works of Robert Rodriguez, a computer-generated utopia utilizing whatever technology is available to welcome us into something lush, peaceful and plentiful. It’s in those scenes where Coppola throws caution to the wind and leaves himself at his most sweet and vulnerable, where the man who made more than one great American epic just speaks from his heart, however awkward and messy that might get.
Courtesy of Lionsgate
At times gleefully crass and indulgent, at times disorienting to the point of slight vertigo, at times so genuine that it hurts, Megalopolis feels like the culmination of a fever dream for a filmmaker finally getting one last chance to challenge us, as the vox populi and as the moviegoer, to want more for ourselves. In an era where studio movies have become so homogenized and serialized, it’s downright whiplash to go from comfort food to a eleventy seven-course tasting menu whipped up by a stark-raving mad genius chef.
That’s the beauty of Megalopolis. As soon as its rushed ending immediately zooms you into a better future, the credits roll and you feel as if you’ve woken up from a deep sleep. You might not be able to put this film back together like a puzzle in your mind, but you won’t be able to shake the feeling you just witnessed something monumental, either. It’s in your bones.
Whether you think it’s monumental gold or monumental garbage is up to you, but Coppola can rest easy knowing he did it his way. In this day and age, that’s a pretty remarkable thing to behold. Even if you quibble with the logic and assembly, you cannot deny the singular, awestruck vision.
Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s latest film looks sensational.
More than half a decade after his 2019 film Parasite became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture, Oscar-winning auteur Bong Joon-ho is finally back, and he’s swinging for the galactic fences.
Leveling up in terms of budget, scope and star power, Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 looks like one of his most original and out-of-this-world wacky efforts right out the gate.
Starring Robert Pattinson as a man who joins a company where he regenerates with a new body each time he dies in the name of science, Mickey 17 looks like a fascinating switch-up from Parasite and reminds us a good bit of his previous films like 2014’s Snowpiercer and 2017’s Okja.
Honestly, this looks like Joon Ho’s most outwardly comedic film since his 2000 debut Barking Dogs Never Bite and absolutely not a typical Oscar film.
It also looks like an absolute blast, the kind of truly daring, wildly original sci-fi film with a massive budget that we just do not get anymore in theaters. It’s absolutely thrilling that we’re getting a movie like this from a major studio in the month of January. Like, this does not happen.
Just one trailer in, and it’s already clear that Joon-ho used his Parasite director cache and a bunch of Warner Bros. Discovery’s money on his version of a Paul Verhoeven-coded Star Trek movie. How cool is that?!?
The film comes out on Jan. 31 next year, and we cannot wait to see what’s in store.
What’s it feel like to die? From director Bong Joon Ho, comes Mickey 17 – only in theaters January 31, 2025. #Mickey17pic.twitter.com/C3mRquxllY
Check out what Brian Baldinger had to say when he broke down #Chiefs WR Xavier Worthy’s preseason performances.
Blazing-fast rookie wide receiver Xavier Worthy was a notable acquisition for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2024 offseason and has already logged 62 receiving yards on three receptions and scored a touchdown in two preseason appearances.
The Texas product looks like he will be a key contributor in the Chiefs’ receiving corps for this season, especially if his speed can help bring the deep passing game back to Kansas City’s offensive game plan.
This week, NFL Network analyst Brian Balndinger broke down the film of Worthy’s performance against the Detroit Lions and provided valuable insight about the Chiefs’ rookie receiver on Twitter.
Though it is unclear how much playing time Worthy will get against the Chicago Bears on Thursday night, fans can look forward to seeing him suit up for his regular season debut when the Kansas City faces the Baltimore Ravens on September 5.
