Oscars 2023: Dear Oscar, Hear My Plea

With ballots in hand and one day left for Oscar, what is your ultimate wish? Tell it to Academy voters now: Dear Oscar, hear my plea…

Kim Basinger, Kate Winslet and Mira Sorvino are just some of the high-profile names going to bat for Andrea Riseborough for To Leslie, from World of Reel:

Jennifer Aniston, Charlize Theron, Sarah Paulson and Edward Norton have hosted screenings, with more recent showings booked by Gwyneth Paltrow and Courteney Cox. After Paltrow’s screening, attended by the likes of Demi Moore along with Morris and Riseborough in attendance, the Goop founder called it a “masterpiece of a film” and went so far as to say that the title star should win “every award there is and all the ones that haven’t been invented yet.”

Some of the other actors name-checked who are pushing hard for a Riseborough nom: Susan Sarandon, Bradley Whitfield, Mia Farrow, Helen Hunt, Zooey Deschanel, Melanie Lynskey, Mira Sorvino, Debra Winger, and Patricia Clarkson.

The Critics choice and many high-profile names are hoping for some Oscar attention for RRR. An Oscar nomination would mean the world to the filmmakers and many fans who love the movie. Can that crack the Oscar race? The New York Times or network news picking up the story would have helped this film a lot…

The Oscars and the films in the race might be less interesting for the public at the moment, but for lots of people an Oscar nomination would still mean the world to them.

I’ll say it straight up: Dear Oscar, hear my plea. Don’t ignore the people. Top Gun Maverick was a miracle. It is well deserving of Best Picture, Best Director, Screenplay and Actor nominations. Show the public that you still have one foot in the real world. Show them you still care about them and you aren’t just the First Class section of an airplane existing in your utopian diorama.

And to that point, RRR is a cultural phenomenon in India, a country where movies still matter to the people, not just the cultural elites. You have the chance to bring joy to their lives and show them that you have heard them and have seen that a movie like this could rise even without the Oscar machine behind it. You, voters, have that power to make someone’s whole year.

While we’re at it, you’re not going to ignore Edward Berger’s masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front I hope. You can’t be that daft, Academy. Don’t ignore excellence.  Every aspect of this film is operating at 100% – writing, acting, directing, cinematography. If you don’t want to watch it with subtitles, watch the British dub, it’s good.

Okay, Oscarwatchers, your turn.