It is the one award no Hollywood star wants to win. The Razzies on Saturday unveiled their annual list of the year’s most dreadful movies, with the critically slated musical Cats at the top — or arguably rock bottom — of the charts.
Among its nine unwanted nominations, Cats landed acting nods for Judi Dench, James Corden and Rebel Wilson.
The film — an adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical — used computer-generated effects to morph its all-star cast into deeply unnerving half-human, half-cat hybrids.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It received stunningly bad reviews. The Guardian called it a “dreadful hairball of woe,” while for the Wall Street Journal it was “a confusing litter box of intentions.”
Cats received a further two nominations in the worst screen combo category — for “any two half-feline/half-human hairballs” and “Jason Derulo & his CGI-neutered bulge.”
Also racking up the nominations were Sylvester Stallone’s disastrous latest Rambo sequel, and The Fanatic, a not-so-thrilling thriller starring John Travolta and directed by former Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst.
Formally known as the Golden Raspberry Awards, the Razzies are usually handed out the day before the Oscars, serving to mock the following night’s self-congratulatory Tinseltown pageantry.
This year, with the Oscars unusually early and the entire award season curtailed, organizers settled for just announcing the Razzies nominees instead.
Meanwhile, over at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, Lulu Wang’s family drama The Farewell took the top prize, while Adam Sandler and the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems also landed awards.
The win for The Farewell was a surprise, but also a fitting finale to a Spirit Awards that exalted female filmmakers and put forth a far more diverse field of nominees than the Oscars.
Wang referenced the conversation around the dearth of female filmmaker nominated by the Academy Awards in her speech. “You don’t have to encourage women. There are lots of women making films, in film school,” Wang said. “What women need is just the job. Give them the freaking job!”
The Spirits, put on by Film Independent, a nonprofit group of about 7,000 film enthusiasts, and held in an ocean-side tent on the Santa Monica, California, beach, cap their indie nominees at a budget of US$22.5 million.
In her opening, host Aubrey Plaza alluded to the different perspective of the Spirits.
“The Independent Spirit Awards are always cooler than the Oscars,” Plaza said. “It’s the daytime, we’re on the beach, we recognize female directors”
The Farewell also won best supporting performance by a female actor for Zhao Shuzhen (趙淑珍), the grandmother in the film.
The boutique studio A24 dominated the Spirits, winning trophies for The Farewell, Uncut Gems and The Lighthouse.
Uncut Gems led all films with three awards, including best performance by a male actor for Sandler, best director for Josh and Ben Safdie, and best editing.
Only one Oscar favorite among the actors was also competing at the Spirits: Renee Zellweger. She won for her performance in the Judy Garland drama Judy.
Just one movie up for best picture at the Oscars was nominated for the Spirit Awards’ top prize: Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story.
It won for Baumbach’s screenplay and was awarded the Spirits’ ensemble award, dubbed the Robert Altman Award.
Olivia Wilde won best first feature for her high-school comedy Booksmart, best documentary went to American Factory, Willem Dafoe won best supporting actor for The Lighthouse, which was also honored for Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography.
South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite won a single award, for best international film.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in