With Oscar nomination voting having ended two days ago, the just-out 2022 BAFTA nominations won’t be influencing anyone about anything. If you ask me they’re only “meaningful” as a clear indication that Kristen Stewart, whose BAFTA snub of her Spencer performance follows the SAG omission of a few weeks back, is almost certainly finished as a Best Actress Oscar nominee.**
On top of which the BAFTA nominators ignored Parallel Mothers‘ Penelope Cruz…what is effing wrong with these guys? We’re talking about a thoroughly degenerated set of aesthetic values. They don’t even nominate the year’s finest female performance?
The BAFTA Best Actress nominees are House Of Gucci‘s Lady Gaga (a premonition that she’ll probably win the Best Actress Oscar is truly soul-crushing), Licorice Pizza‘s Alana Haim (rounding out the pack), CODA‘s Emilia Jones (forget it), The Worst Person In The World‘s Renate Reinsve (superb performance, great part), After Love‘s Joanna Scanlan (who?) and Passing‘s Tessa Thompson (minimalism, no voltage, no nothing).
Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone: “Reading anything into the acting categories is basically like fan fiction role play for Film Twitter.”
All but one of BAFTA’s Best Film nominees are the usual nod-outs — Belfast, Dune, Licorice Pizza and The Power Of The Dog. The surprise (to me at least) is the nomination of Don’t Look Up, which has run hot and cold across the board. It got in, I’m guessing, because it says the right things about political imbeciles and climate change. Meanwhile I am still deeply, deeply depressed about the likely triumph of The Power of the Downer Dog
Outstanding British Film nominees are After Love, Ali & Ava, Belfast, Boiling Point, Cyrano, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, House Of Gucci, Last Night In Soho, No Time To Die and Passing. I can’t muster the passion to even speculate. God, this is so boring.
Sasha Stone’s bottom line: “The BAFTAs aren’t really the BAFTAs as we once knew them. Meaning [that] they aren’t really a consensus vote. They are a tightly micromanaged jury vote to spare the membership embarrassment or bad headlines for not being inclusive enough.”
BAFTA declaration: “Juries are made up of industry experts, with each jury comprised of BAFTA members from a diverse range of backgrounds, experience, gender, location and age groups.” Translation: “It’s more important for the BAFTAs to be sensitive and supportive of artists representing historically marginalized cultures and tribes than to select the ‘best’ in this or that category, whatever that actually means.”
In other words, a signification portion of the BAFTA nominees have been decided upon by woke-minded jurors. It’s basically political bullshit. The BAFTAs used to be about the usual factors — popularity, the “due” factor, estimations of quality, reflections of Academy sentiments. Now they’re almost worthless — woke whores, a dog-and-pony show by way of Twitter.
** BAFTA’s Stewart snub can also be read as a rejection of Pablo Larrain‘s flourishy, “Diary of a Mad Princess” fantasia.
