This past week, the Oscar’s neverending quest for relevance hit a new low, when the Academy introduced a new category, the Twitter-initiated “fan favorite” award. We were all wondering how that would work exactly, and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s turning into a total disaster.
Pete Hammond has the inside scoop that there was an initial tsunami of votes for “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”, the original four-hour recut of the 2017 DCEU epic, even though it isn’t even eligible since it’s a director’s cut. Its only real competition during the first few days of voting was “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the underseen Johnny Depp indie “Minamata.”
However, now Hammond is being told that Amazon’s misbegotten musical, “Cinderella,” starring Camila Cabello is the runaway No. 1 at the moment. And it’s not even close. It turns out, Cabello fans were flooding the Academy’s voting site. I hadn’t really heard of the actress until this peculiar story popped in my email inbox this morning. Supposedly, she has a very large die-hard following?
Such a fiasco could prevent this ridiculous category from ever happening again. “Cinderella” has a 41 on Metacritic, is 42% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes and a terrible 4.2 rating on IMDB. Have fun with that, Oscar.
I can confirm that Joel Coen’s “Jack of Spades” is based on Frances Frederica Montrésor’s 1901 novel “The Alien: A Story of Middle Age.” It’s a ghost story. A gothic mystery.