HE wants Poor Things‘ Emma Stone to win the Best Actress Oscar on Sunday night, and if not Stone then Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Huller…please.

I’m just looking forward to a day in which identity won’t count for that much in Oscar voting. If you dip into your soul and bring the stuff that matters, then you’re eligible to be nominated and perhaps even likely to win. Quality, quality, quality of delivery.

Academy members voting to reject commonplace prejudice or blanket dismissals in decades or centuries past is primarily about them and not the actor or performance in question. Wokesters have been playing this trendy little game for six or seven years now, and it’s time to shut it down.

When the day comes that quality is valued more than equity or virtue-signalling, actors like Lily Gladstone will have to sink or swim based on their own chops, instincts and abilities…whether or not they can bring the necessary craft, depth and soul…a performance constructed from deep within or not at all.

Does anyone think that Da’Vine Joy Randolph‘s locked-in Best Supporting Actress win has anything whatsoever to do with identity? Okay, maybe a little but she’s been winning all season long because of how good she is in Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers…period. I knew she was a slam-dunk Oscar nominee a half-hour after the film had begun screening in Telluride’s Werner Herzog theatre. I leaned over and muttered this to Sasha Stone.

Does anyone think that May December‘s Charles Melton was an early Best Supporting Actor favorite because he rode an identity horse (South Korean lineage + being a symbolic stand-in for underaged victims of sexual assault)? You’d better believe it, and thank God that nag gave out on him.

Does anyone believe that Sayonara‘s Miyoshi Umeki won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar over identity, way the hell back in 1958? She won because she played a selfless, devotional wife who died (along with Air Force husband Red Buttons**) due to racial prejudice. Plus her performance was significantly more affecting than the ones given by Carolyn Jones (The Bachelor Party), Elsa Lanchester (Witness for the Prosecution), Hope Lange (Peyton Place) and Diane Varsi (Peyton Place).

I realize that Gladstone’s identity campaign has stirred a sizable army of woke gladhanders and that the odds favor her winning, but this shit has to stop. It really does.

From Brian Rowe‘s “Five Reasons Why Emma Stone will still win Best Actress for Poor Things“, a Gold Derby articled dated 3.8.24.

Posted by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy on 3.6.24: “Can Gladstone win the Oscar despite not being nominated by BAFTA and her role being a supporting turn? She appears in less than 1/3 of Killers runtime (56 minutes), whereas Stone is practically in every scene of Poor Things. If Gladstone had been campaigned in the Supporting category then she’d already have that Oscar in the bag.”

** Buttons’ performance resulted in a Best Supporting Actor win.