Martin Scorsese has made the ultimate western, showing the racism, greed and corruption on which America was really founded. It’s a world-changing work

• Oscars 2024: best picture nominees – reviews, awards and where to watch

Ever since he started making films, 60-odd years ago, Martin Scorsese has always wanted to make a western; instead, he may have killed the genre. And that’s no small thing for this most American of forms. Over the past century, westerns have cemented the founding myths of American identity; how white settlers subjugated and massacred the continent’s indigenous population and tamed the wild west, with God and guns (and cinema) on their side. So it takes guts to unpick that mythology with a true story of just how evil and racist white Americans really were – especially in a political climate where such histories are being actively suppressed in the US. We’ve had plenty of “revisionist” westerns in recent years; you could call this a destructionist western. It cuts to the dark heart of colonialist greed and capitalist corruption on which America was really founded. In terms of revolutionary cinema, nothing else in this year’s Oscar crop can compete.

For the uninitiated, the setting is 1920s Oklahoma, where the discovery of oil on their land made the Osage Nation the richest people on the planet. The fact that they were required by law to have white guardians to help them manage their wealth is just the beginning of the injustice heaped upon them here. Robert De Niro ’s two-faced patriarch William “King” Hale, hatches a plan for his dim nephew Ernest ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) to marry Osage heiress Mollie ( Lily Gladstone ), then systematically bump off her family and seize her oil rights – aided by pretty much the entire white community. Blinded by love, and wealth, Mollie and her people take far too long to figure out what’s really going on.

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Christopher Nolan’s biopic is precision tooled to tick all the right boxes – epic scale, lavish spectacle, meticulous craft, plus: explosions! The bookies have it as 1/25 on for a good reason

‘OK, so here’s how we win the Oscar for a biopic about a theoretical physicist. [ Sounds of manic scribbling on a blackboard. A large circle is drawn and tapped with a piece of chalk. ] In here, we put as many thespian-coded Hollywood stars as we can. Dozens, hundreds. We might not give them much to do, heck Josh Hartnett will just be patting people on the shoulder, but everything they do do will be poignant. Meanwhile [ a shuffle of feet, another, bigger circle drawn ] in here we have all the aspects of contemporary cinema production that work exceptionally well on those big screens you have to pay £10 extra to get into. We take all these aspects, sight, sound, scale – spectacle! – and we use them lavishly to recreate the first successful test of a nuclear weapon and hint at its terrifying consequences. [ A big swoosh of white chalk under the word “Trinity ”. A pause for effect. ] I can also confirm today that we will definitely, at some point, have Albert Einstein standing by a pond [ a thunder of feet pounding wooden benches ]. And the rest? The rest we pad out with extended scenes of cross examination from a hodgepodge of tribunals. People? Let’s get to it.”

This may not be a faithful account of the process by which Christopher Nolan’s new movie came into existence. But the feeling of Oppenheimer being a precision-tooled construction that blends the fascinations of Hollywood’s last commercially successful auteur with the interests of the Academy remains. Serious themes, serious people, an unflinching dedication to both the craft and the medium of cinema, Oppenheimer ticks the boxes. Bookmakers are duly offering odds as short as 1/25 on for it to take home best picture.

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The overall Academy Award nominations for each of the 10 best picture films, along with The Guardian’s reviews, interviews and notable prizes earned so far

• Oscars nominations 2024: the full list

The Globes and Baftas are done and dusted, the Critics Choices packed up for another year. But the big one, the Academy Awards, is yet to come, and with it the ultimate prizes the film industry can bestow on its peers.

So how are the big contenders shaping up in the race for glory? We sort through the nominees for the best picture Oscar , assessing each one’s chances and – God forbid you haven’t seen them all yet – how you can track down any gaps in your knowledge.

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The daily lives of Chang Li hua, 86, and Yi Yan Fuei, 97, were filmed by their grandson. The result is Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó, an Oscar-nominated documentary

The two elderly Taiwanese women are leaning in towards the Zoom screen, sitting side by side and wearing complimentary smart red outfits. In an adjoining screen their grandson, film-maker Sean Wang, sits on a couch looking slightly nervous as they speak to a dozen or so journalists in Taipei.

“This feels surreal, doing a press conference with my grandmothers and seeing them answer all these questions while I’m just kind of sitting here,” he laughs. “And leading up to the Oscars … I say it out loud and it doesn’t feel like a real sentence.”

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‘Do you remember who won best film of the year before last?’ the actor said in an interview, shrugging off Barbie’s Oscar snubs. Challenge accepted, Mirren

Do you know your Moonlight from your Spotlight ? Do you know your Birdman from your Irishman from your BlacKkKlansman ? Do you remember the Matt Damon movie The Martian ? (If so, you may be entitled to compensation.)

According to Helen Mirren, it doesn’t matter anyway. The Academy award-winning actor and Barbie narrator isn’t losing any sleep over Oscar snubs, especially when it comes to Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar doll-a-thon, up for eight awards including best picture – though it notably missed out on best director and best actress for its star Margot Robbie.

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The Oscars are the most anticipated movie awards show of the year, as the elusive statue is widely regarded as Hollywood’s highest accolade.

The winners are selected by Academy members following extensive screening sessions. In the past, copies of advance screeners leaked en masse, creating an annual bounty hunt for online pirates.

OscarTorrents…

The troubling relationship between the Oscars and pirates reached a peak in 2007 when The Pirate Bay promoted an alternative voting process. Through Oscartorrents.com , pirates could download the nominated films, review them, and vote for their favorite.

This rogue Oscars alternative taunted Hollywood by attracting over 100,000 ‘pirate’ votes and many more illegal downloads. In the end, both pirates and Academy members picked The Departed as the Best Picture, with Martin Scorsese voted the best director.

After its first award show, OscarTorrents never returned, but that doesn’t mean that pirates have lost their interest in the annual event. While Oscar screeners no longer leak online today , most contenders are already available on pirate sites.

Piracy Boost for Oscar Contenders

Looking at the download numbers for all ‘Best Picture’ contenders, we can see that the annual nominations boost is still intact. An extensive dataset of BitTorrent downloads shows that ‘smaller’ films enjoy the relatively largest piracy spikes.

“Poor Things” has a 124% increase in downloads if we compare the numbers this Tuesday and Wednesday, to the same days last week. “Anatomy of a Fall” saw a 71% spike in downloads, followed by “Maestro” and “Past Lives” respectively.

Below is an overview of all findings. This includes all Best Picture nominees except “The Zone of Interest” and “American Fiction,” which either aren’t available yet or had small download numbers.

Movie	Increase (Jan 16/17 vs. 23/24)
Anatomy of a Fall	71%
Barbie	4%
The Holdovers	18%
Killers of the Flower Moon	30%
Maestro	53%
Oppenheimer	3%
Past Lives	48%
Poor Things	124%

Overall, we can see that relatively smaller films get a bigger piracy boost. For Oppenheimer and Barbie, the nomination effect is minimal and likely not statistically significant. These movies do have more downloads and streams on pirate sites overall, of course.

Pirates are People Too

This spike in interest for lesser-known films likely isn’t limited to pirate sites. The extra exposure from the Oscar nominations generally boosts interest in the films through legal channels as well. This shows that, in addition to prestige, an Oscar can also bring in revenue.

The numbers reported here once again illustrate that pirates are not dissimilar to their non-pirating counterparts. They are just as susceptible to advertising and media attention as everyone else.

With this in mind, we can confidently predict a massive piracy spike if one of the smaller films wins the Best Picture Award in March. A win for Oppenheimer, on the other hand, is not expected to move the needle much.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

L'Académie des Oscars durcit le ton face aux plateformes de streaming comme Netflix, Prime Video et Apple TV+. De nouvelles règles visent en effet à rendre plus difficile la participation et la victoire d'un film de ces plateformes à la prestigieuse catégorie du « Meilleur Film », viennent d'être formalisées.

L’organisation des Oscars resserre les règles de participation pour les plateformes de streaming

The Oscars are the most anticipated movie awards show of the year, closely followed by hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world.

This year’s Academy Awards ceremony received plenty of attention as well, with one film standing out from all the rest.

With seven awards overall, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress, ‘ Everything Everywhere All at Once ‘ was the star of the night. The independent film impressed the voters, despite having a relatively tiny budget compared to competitors including ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Avatar: The Way of Water.’

The success didn’t come as a complete surprise. The film had already scooped up dozens of accolades , including two Golden Globes, but winning seven Oscars was an entirely different level.

Oscar Boost

Renewed attention from the press and film fanatics boosted interest among the broader public. This typically increases legal sales and views on streaming platforms, especially for relatively small releases.

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is no longer running in theaters, so there is no bump there. That said, there is another area where we observed a massive spike in interest, although that’s unlikely to please the filmmakers.

The Oscars typically have a direct impact on piracy activity, and the big Oscars winner is no exception. Based on a sample of torrent activity tracked by IKnow , we can report that pirated downloads of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ skyrocketed this week.

Oscar Piracy

Before discussing the numbers, it’s important to highlight that pirated copies of the Oscars winner have already been circulating for months. The first high-quality copy leaked last May and it was in the top ten most pirated films for several weeks in a row .

Since its release, the film has been illegally downloaded and streamed millions of times. In January of this year, we observed two modest spikes in downloads , once after the Golden Globes win and again when the Oscar nominations were announced. After that, downloads leveled off again.

These earlier piracy boosts are notable, but they pale in comparison with the download boost observed in our sample this week. On Monday, pirated downloads of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ increased by 761% compared to the week before.

This isn’t just a relative increase either; serious demand from pirates made the Oscar winner the most pirated film worldwide on Monday, beating many newer releases and blockbusters.

Interest dropped off on Tuesday, but there was still a five-fold increase in downloads compared to a week earlier. By then, however, Cocaine Bear had taken over the spot for the most pirated film.

More Oscar Effects

Oscar-related surges are nothing new. Last year we spotted a similar effect for Best Picture winner ‘CODA’ with a tenfold increase in downloads. In absolute numbers, it didn’t come close to this year’s winner, even when correcting for sample size.

The Oscar boost isn’t limited to the Best Picture winner either. Runner-up ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ won four Academy Awards and a 268% boost in pirate downloads. Meanwhile, Best Picture nominee ‘The Triangle of Sadness’, which didn’t win an award, failed to see a massive download boost.

The chart above shows the estimated number of pirated downloads for each of the three films over the past weeks, with ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ standing out with the most pronounced download surge.

In closing, we should stress that all data reported here are estimated based on a large sample of millions of global daily torrent connections. These numbers are not exact nor do they include other forms of piracy, such as pirate streaming sites and direct downloads.

It’s clear, however, that the Oscars continue to be a defining event for film enthusiasts, including those who can’t or don’t want to pay.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Oscars are the most anticipated movie awards show of the year, closely followed by hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world.

Next month, the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where millions of movie fans will see the crowning of this year’s “Best Picture”.

There are currently ten contenders in the race for the prestigious award. The nominees range from blockbuster titles such as “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Top Gun: Maverick, to lesser-known gems such as “Tár” and “Triangle of Sadness”.

Oscar Pirates

An Oscar nomination is a big deal for the latter category. The press attention opens the door to a new audience, which ultimately translates into additional revenue. However, there’s also a darker side to this phenomenon in the form of online piracy.

Pirates come in all shapes and sizes but their consumption habits show a lot of overlap with the rest of the population. This means that if a movie is generating positive headlines, more people will be interested in downloading or streaming a pirated copy.

To demonstrate this phenomenon, we looked at the estimated number of downloads through torrent sites for all best picture nominees, excluding “Women Talking,” which hadn’t been pirated yet.

The Nomination Boost

These data, collected with help from Iknow , reveal a clear Oscar boost for the nominated titles. On the first full day after the announcement, the downloads for nearly all films increased compared to a week earlier. This Oscar-boost effect ranges from 10% to 90%, as shown in the overview below.

Movie	Increase (18/25 January)
All Quiet on the Western Front	61%
Avatar: The Way of Water	-9%
Elvis	43%
Everything Everywhere All at Once	60%
Tár	89%
The Banshees of Inisherin	63%
The Fabelmans	58%
Top Gun: Maverick	15%
Triangle of Sadness	68%

There are two main outliers in this list; “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Top Gun: Maverick”. These are the biggest blockbusters, already seen by millions, and the extra exposure didn’t do all that much.

The effect is markedly different for “Tár” and “Triangle of Sadness”, with interest almost doubling for both following the Oscar nominations. The other titles ended up somewhere in the middle, still with significant increases.

The chart above shows daily download estimates for the Oscar nominees, excluding the two blockbusters. This clearly shows the spike starting on the 24th of January, which lasted for a few days. After that, pirate interest in these titles went back to normal.

More Awards?

When we first looked at the data we couldn’t immediately explain why there was a separate increase in downloads on January 11th for “The Fablemans”, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, and “The Banshees of Inisherin”. That was two weeks before the nominations. Could there be something wrong with the data?

While we can never completely rule out errors, the more likely explanation is another awards show. On January 11th “The Fablemans”, “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won multiple Golden Globes , beating all other films.

These data show that awards shows are still a big deal, also for pirates. However, the effect is the most pronounced for smaller releases that gain most from additional media exposure. If one of these scoops up the best picture award next month, another major piracy boost is likely.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.