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One Surprise after Another? Oscars Night Set to Be Unpredictable

An Oscars ceremony hosted by Conan O'Brien will feature several nail-biting reveals, culminating in the announcement of the year's best film, which remains anyone's guess. Frederic J. Brown / AFP
An Oscars ceremony hosted by Conan O'Brien will feature several nail-biting reveals, culminating in the announcement of the year's best film, which remains anyone's guess. Frederic J. Brown / AFP
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One Surprise after Another? Oscars Night Set to Be Unpredictable

An Oscars ceremony hosted by Conan O'Brien will feature several nail-biting reveals, culminating in the announcement of the year's best film, which remains anyone's guess. Frederic J. Brown / AFP
An Oscars ceremony hosted by Conan O'Brien will feature several nail-biting reveals, culminating in the announcement of the year's best film, which remains anyone's guess. Frederic J. Brown / AFP

With "Sinners" and "One Battle After Another" neck-and-neck for best picture and several acting races far too close to call, this Sunday's Oscars gala is shaping up to be the most unpredictable in years.

A Hollywood ceremony set to feature music from "KPop Demon Hunters" and Conan O'Brien as host will feature several nail-biting reveals, culminating in the announcement of the year's best film, which remains anyone's guess.

Until "the final envelope is opened for best picture, we're not going to know who's going to win," said Variety's awards columnist Clayton Davis.

"Both have a huge opportunity in order to break multiple Oscar records," he told AFP.

"Sinners," a smash-hit vampire period horror film from director Ryan Coogler, has already made Academy Awards history with its whopping 16 nominations.

The blues-inflected race allegory has a chance to chase down the most Oscar wins by a single movie, shared at 11 between "Ben-Hur,Titanic" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."

Coogler, previously best known for "Black Panther," could become the first ever Black person to win best director, in the 98 years of Oscars history.

"He's only the seventh ever nominated," noted Davis, who spoke to many Oscars voters and says "the love for Coogler is undeniable."

But the frontrunner of this awards season has long been "One Battle," a zany thriller about a retired revolutionary looking for his teen daughter.

Set against a wild backdrop of radical violence, immigration raids and white supremacists, it earned 13 nods and could also break the overall wins record.

Its director Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the greatest auteurs of 21st century US cinema, but has never won any of his 11 previous nominations for films including "There Will Be Blood" and "Boogie Nights."

Though "Sinners" was the bigger commercial hit, the exciting race between two "popular movies that people will know at home" should be good for ratings, Davis predicted.

'Steamroller'

While suspense about best picture doesn't happen every year, what is truly unusual this time is the amount of uncertainty surrounding the acting prizes.

A year after narrowly losing best actor honors with his uncanny Bob Dylan portrayal in "A Complete Unknown," Timothee Chalamet had long appeared a lock for his pushy ping-pong player "Marty Supreme."

But a series of ill-advised comments, most recently dismissing ballet and opera as art forms that "no one cares about," have seen the 30-year-old golden boy's chances plummet.

"Sinners" star Michael B Jordan, who plays two roles as twin brothers, won the important Screen Actors Guild's Actor Award this month, just before Oscars voting closed.

"This is a movie star performance that we don't get very often... he's really two steps away from the finish line," said Davis, who also does not rule out Leonardo DiCaprio ("One Battle") or Ethan Hawke ("Blue Moon").

The supporting acting prizes are also up for grabs.

Sean Penn could win a third acting Oscar for his comic yet terrifying soldier in "One Battle."

But he is up against international arthouse favorite Stellan Skarsgard ("Sentimental Value") and veteran Delroy Lindo, earning his first Oscar nod at 73 for "Sinners."

Supporting actress could see a rare horror villain role rewarded for Amy Madigan in "Weapons," or go to "One Battle" revolutionary Teyana Taylor or "Sinners" Hoodoo healer Wunmi Mosaku.

The only sure thing appears to be Jessie Buckley, who plays William Shakespeare's wife in "Hamnet."

"It's been the steamroller all season. That's the one thing you could take to the bank," said Davis

KPop, Redford tributes

Best international film is arguably the hardest to call of all, with Norwegian family drama "Sentimental Value" up against Brazil's surreal political thriller "The Secret Agent."

O'Brien returns to host the Oscars for a second year running, while Barbra Streisand is rumored to be singing a tribute to her "The Way We Were" co-star Robert Redford, who died in September.

Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, the singing voices behind "KPop Demon Hunters" fictional girl group HUNTR/X, will perform the Netflix smash film's Oscar-nominated song "Golden."

The Oscars will air live on ABC and Hulu from 4:00 pm in Los Angeles (2300 GMT).

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Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Is a Gonzo Good Time

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
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Movie Review: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Is a Gonzo Good Time

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

At the end of the block in David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street,” is a cul-de-sac with a telephone pole in the middle and wires radiating out like the cables of a big top. It’s a fitting touch for a breakneck, carnivalesque movie made with throwback showmanship.

Summer movies, of course, are not known for lacking in circus-like mayhem. But much of the pastiche delight of the 1980s-set “The End of Oak Street,” a mid-August surprise, is how it absorbs an Amblin-style blockbuster spirit and conjures, without winking irony or belabored homage, a summer thrill ride seemingly designed for the drive-in.

Mitchell’s breakthrough was the nifty 2014 horror “It Follows,” which he followed up with an admirably ambitious but shaggily self-indulgent Los Angeles neo noir, “Under the Silver Lake.” But any indulgences in “The End of Oak Street,” about a 1980s suburban family whose neighborhood is transported through time, are for the audience. “The End of Oak Street” is a bonkers blast.

It’s best going in not knowing anything about the movie’s twists, so tread carefully on the rest of this review. That’s not to say that an enormous amount of “The End of Oak Street” isn’t immediately familiar, starting with the central family.

The Platts live in what looks like a San Fernando Valley neighborhood full of split levels and tidy little streets. Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) have two kids and a dog named Starbuck. Audrey (Maisy Stella) is a teenager and Brian (Christian Convery) is her younger brother.

But from the moment we meet them, during a neighborhood fair, there are obvious cracks in their all-American life. Greg is working a side job delivering pizzas while Denise is secretly typing up a maybe-aspirational novel about a woman dreaming of leaving her family. The kids have their own secrets, too. They suspect their parents are on the cusp of divorcing, and so, seemingly, do Greg and Denise.

Such a framework for sci-fi cataclysm is, naturally, Spielberg 101. But while “The End of Oak Street” is sure to test and restore their familial bonds, Mitchell, who also wrote the script, takes a route that leans more into horror, absurdism and outright silliness.

In any case, yes, there are dinosaurs. It’s both skillful and a lot of fun how Mitchell teases them out. The first signs are mysterious. A flash of light. A strange exotic flower in a neighbor’s backyard. A giant mount of feces in another’s. But soon, the Platts find that their neighborhood is overrun with primordial beasts and surrounded by jungle: Oak Street is suddenly a suburban island in a prehistoric world.

It’s a perfectly “Twilight Zone” plot that inadvertently solves the problems that have plagued the “Jurassic Park” movies for 20 years. If those films have struggled to find an off-island setting, “The End of Oak Street” instead brings the dino isle straight into suburbia. Encounters with raptors and worse transpire across front porches and shag carpets.

You could chalk it all up to good dumb fun. And it is mostly that, with set pieces built to make an audience groan in anticipation or cheer for the successful swing of a sledgehammer. But where “The End of Oak Street” succeeds where so many others fail is in the sincerity it has for its characters. Ridiculous and over-the-top as the concept is, the Platts are firmly grounded. (Hathaway, especially, helps in this department.) The combination of an earnest family drama with CGI hijinks, plus increasingly nutty plotting, make “The End of Oak Street” a fairly nonstop hoot.

Composer Michael Giacchino does his best John Williams impression to match. But Mitchell’s film also increasingly detours from the Spielberg playbook. Only Mitchell would take a moment for a freaked-out Audrey to sneak into the car to pop a cassette in and listen to Steve Winwood’s “Valerie.”

And while it would be pushing it to say there’s that much underneath “The End of Oak Street,” its characters are united in keeping certain things secret out of fear that their spouse or kids or parents can’t handle the truth. The swiftness that the dinosaurs invade their neighborhood could be symbolic of any ecological disaster, but the subsequent challenges prove each member of the family can handle quite a bit more than expected — even when the parental assurance that everything's going to be OK, like when a giant snake is slithering through their home, is laughably disputable.

It adds up to a gonzo good time that gives an old-school family adventure a darker, modern spin. Mitchell has quickly made suburbia his evident domain, where “it,” or something else, is sure to follow.

Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Is a Southern Fried Flick with Too Many Ingredients

This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
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Movie Review: ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Is a Southern Fried Flick with Too Many Ingredients

This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)

It turns out that the honey business isn't as sweet as it sounds: In the new movie “The Rivals of Amziah King,” beekeepers steal from each other, poison rivals' insects and rip folk off. “It’s not full of kind people,” the title character warns.

“The Rivals of Amziah King” isn't as sweet as it thinks it is, either. Instead of picking a single variety to explore, the movie is a maddening mishmash of genres — blending Quentin Tarantino's sudden brutality, a coming-of-age tale, a heist flick, a revenge fantasy and a sweet, music-filled country hoedown.

Matthew McConaughey returns to the big screen playing the title character in what can only be called Matthew-McConaughey-turned-up-to-11 mode, pure Cheshire Cat smile, rascally wink and buttery, Southern gentlemanly charm. Suspenders and scruff on, cowboy boots snug, McConaughey is the one who makes everyone's life instantly better just by showing up.

Written by Andrew Patterson and James Montague and directed by Patterson, “The Rivals of Amziah King” follows McConaughey's honey-producing King as he negotiates his patch of rural Oklahoma until he inexplicably leaves the movie at the hour mark and hands it off to Angelina LookingGlass, making her film debut.

We meet King ordering chicken fried steak sandwiches and cherry Cokes as he plays the banjo in a quartet of musicians at a beloved food joint. That gets interrupted when authorities need his knowledge to find out who abandoned $250,000 worth of honey barrels on the road and King starts to investigate. Then someone gets a chunk of their skull — including ponytail — ripped off in an industrial accident and that takes over. Settle in, the whiplash is just beginning.

King soon connects with his former foster daughter — that's LookingGlass, fierce and preternaturally grounded — who he gets to mansplain in the local ways, like what to eat at the potluck (“There's a story in every dish”), life lessons (“Patience is better than being smart”) and beekeeping (“Every queen is a survivor”). Bees here, if you didn't already get from the clunky writing, represent community, sharing and caring.

Cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz's camera techniques never settle down in this movie, like a puppy forever pulling on its leash. Early sequences employ frozen shots irritatingly dropped into the mix and later we have furious close-ups, quick cuts, quirky flashbacks, ethereal river sequences and lingering poetic images of close-up bees like from a documentary, a kinetic approach that seems not to have much faith in the actual story keeping viewers' interest alive. Music supervisor Winslow Bright swamps many scenes with loud choirs, loud banjo and loud strings.

Maybe that's because as soon as you've settled down for one genre, it gets hijacked by the next. Warm and extended moments of communal song — the great T Bone Burnett had a hand in some of the outstanding Americana tunes like “Quill” with McConaughey exuberant, and “Johnny Come Outside” — are undercut by seeing kids smash their heads on school bus roofs or a cool Western-like tracking of a honey-stealing local rascal that is marred by his horrific, boiling-to-death murder. There are so many montages of honey production that viewers may qualify for a beekeeping certificate.

Great turns are produced by Kurt Russell as a lethal local kingpin who schmoozes his way past the law, and Jake Horowitz, a former Marine who knows how to plan a theft with military precision, mostly shirtless. One brazen theft here is of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and, however you liked that movie, you realize now how hard it was to actually pull off.

Patterson likes to remind viewers of his Oklahoma bona fides, but much of the overlong movie was shot in Alabama. And that hints at what's wrong with “The Rivals of Amziah King” — it just doesn't feel authentic, either in place or in story. Forget honey, it sort of leaves a vinegary taste behind.

Entertainment

Rod Stewart Cancels Tour Dates After Heart Surgery

Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)
Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)
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Rod Stewart Cancels Tour Dates After Heart Surgery

Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)
Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)

British rock star Rod Stewart, 81, has cancelled forthcoming US tour dates after having a heart operation, his social media announced.

A message posted late Tuesday on his Instagram page said the raspy-voiced rocker has "successfully undergone a routine coronary stent procedure".

This procedure is to widen blocked or narrowed coronary arteries by interesting a tube that allows blood to flow more freely.

He had been due to play a series of US tour dates this month including in Las Vegas.

Now, "on the advice of his doctors, he will take the next four weeks to recuperate and regain full fitness before returning to the stage," his management said.

"Unfortunately, this means he will be unable to continue his current tour dates".

The spiky-haired singer and songwriter, who had a string of megahits in the 1970s and 1980s, has kept up a busy touring schedule despite his age.

He wrote in 2025: "I love what I do, and I do what I love. I'm fit, have a full head of hair and can run 100 meters (330 feet) in 18 seconds."

Stewart has recently cancelled several US shows over ill health, however, most recently on Sunday in Cincinnati, described at the time as due to "an unforeseen but minor medical procedure".

In June, he cancelled a concert in California at the last moment after contracting laryngitis, but faced criticism for attending a World Cup match the next day.

Later in June he was seen receiving oxygen during a show in Utah and told the audience he had nearly fainted.