Ajit Karn
Los Angeles: At the Academy’s drunken annual luncheon on Monday, over 200 of this year’s Oscar candidates gathered to celebrate and assess their rivals, with Tom Cruise living up to his reputation as the “last real movie star.” There was no denying that Cruise remained the greatest attraction in a room full of celebrities like Steven Spielberg and Cate Blanchett, with a line of well-wishers that stretched the length of the event, from Hollywood heavyweights to Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. As a producer of “Top Gun: Maverick,” in which he also appeared, Tom Cruise is nominated this year. Hollywood’s most coveted award, the best picture Oscar, is seen to be increasingly going to the movie.
“It’s been amazing… I just want to get audiences to the cinemas “said Tom Cruise to AFP.
He pointed to the Beverly Hills ballroom, which was crowded with Oscar candidates and Academy members and furnished with enormous golden statuettes and open champagne bars, saying, “But this is magnificent.”
On March 12, the 95th Academy Awards will be presented.
Oscar voters this year nominated a number of box office successes, including Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, giving rise to optimism that Oscars TV ratings could rebound.
The Oscars televised event will once again be produced by Glenn Weiss, who said, “The awards gods have smiled on us; there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Janet Yang, the president of the Academy, expressed her desire to move beyond the “extraordinary” uproar that Will Smith’s notorious slap of Chris Rock on the Oscars stage last year caused during her statement at the luncheon.
“It was very unacceptable what took place on stage. And our organization’s reaction was insufficient “She spoke.
After hitting Rock, Smith was permitted to stay at the Oscars and claim his best actor award; he was only thereafter barred from the Academy Awards for 10 years.
Yang declared to cheers, “The Academy must actively respond compassionately and decisively” in times of crises.
Also read: Actor Javed Khan Amrohi is No More
Following lunch, the names of the 182 candidates who were in attendance, together with the directors who were representing their nations in the international feature film category, were announced. The nominees then sat for the customary, enormous “class portrait.”
The film with the most nominations this year, Everything Everywhere All At Once, a whimsical sci-fi with a mostly Asian cast that many experts believe will win best picture, garnered some of the loudest applause on Monday.
