Three prognosticating know-it-alls — Jeff Sneider, Scott Feinberg and Clayton Davis— are predicting that Lily Gladstone will take the Best Actress Oscar after all.
May I ask what happened to the Emma Stone wave? Stone is an absolute total knockout in Poor Things, and it’s an actual lead performance as opposed to Gladstone’s supporting, half-somnambulant, less-is-less performance as Mollie Burkhart.
I’m not saying that anything has necessarily “happened” to Stone’s support, but I’ve been sensing that Stone and her people seem afraid to campaign with serious vigor, apparently out of fear that they might be seen as anti-Gladstone or anti-Native American or something in that realm, which is ridiculous.
Do I have to say this again? Enough with the damn DEI campaigns. The world is quaking, the woke thing is receding (just ask Bob Iger), and we all have to turn the cultural corner and get back to honoring performances based upon actual acting merit.
Yes, other political factors have always gone into wins but ethnicity has become too much of a thing, and it’s time to cut that idea down to size.
Gladstone has had a great bountiful time over the last several months (or since last May if you count the Cannes debut of Killers of the Flower Moon) and has derived a huge career boost. It’s been a happy chapter all around, and she’ll be completely fine in the years to come.
Enough with the ethnic-identity-warrants-awards mindset. We did that between ’17 and ’23, and now it’s over. Move past it, get with the new program, enough. We are here to go.