The race for the Oscars is already starting to get dirty

The race for the Oscars has started… and it’s already getting dirty after Emma Stone’s sensational turn in Poor Things!

Let the games begin! The Oscars will be handed out on March 10 next year but campaigning began with a bang in Venice this week – and simultaneously across the ocean at the Telluride festival in Colorado.

It’s a four dimensional and very expensive game of chess at the best of times, with screenings, suppers, armies of publicists and carefully placed media stories in play as everyone jockeys to get their film and their actor up on the stage at the Dolby Theatre.

This year though, with everyone’s hackles raised by the actors’ and writers’ strikes, the signs are that it’s going to be a dirty fight.

Emma Stone’s sensational turn as the uninhibited Bella Baxter in the Yorgos Lanthimos film Poor Things — premiered at both festivals — has her as an early favourite to be named Best Actress for the second time (after La La Land in 2017).

Lanthimos, who directed The Favourite with Olivia Colman, is also expected to be nominated for his wildly original film — adapted from a book by Scottish author Alasdair Gray.

Emma Stone’s sensational turn as the uninhibited Bella Baxter in the Yorgos Lanthimos film Poor Things has her as an early favourite to be named Best Actress

The picture contains over a dozen explicit sex scenes and a huge amount of foul language

The picture contains over a dozen explicit sex scenes and a huge amount of foul language.

Lanthimos chuckled when I asked him about the sheer quantity of bonking and said: ‘Why isn’t there more sex in all movies?’

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Director Ed Berger, an Oscar winner last year for All Quiet On The Western Front said: ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before. It blows my mind.’

But some have been sucking their teeth over Emma Stone who — despite the actors’ strike — showed up in Telluride.

She was careful not to attend any promotional events and pointed out that she did so ‘on her own dime’ with the humble objective of watching new movies . . . but some feel that it was inappropriate to do even that, while negotiations remain deadlocked and heated.

Meanwhile an anti-Poor Things whispering campaign has started, with some saying that the use of the word ‘retard’ early on in the movie is problematic — as is Stone’s depiction of Bella in the initial period, after her brain has been swapped with that of her unborn baby. We shall see if that controversy takes off.

Stone’s nearest competition for the best actress Oscar will likely be Annette Bening, 65, whose new film Nyad premiered in Telluride. The movie tells the story of marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, who swam from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64. Bening, Oscar-nominated four times but never a winner, would be a sentimental favourite.

But stand by for the backlash . . . or should that be backsplash. On the day of the premiere, the LA Times published an investigation into Nyad which suggested she exaggerated her achievements, possibly had assistance with her swims and even told falsehoods. The swimmer admitted telling untruths to the paper and expressed her regrets.

Annette Bening as Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll in NYAD

German actress Sandra Huller is in the running for Zone Of Interest (pictured), a powerful film set in Auschwitz, and Anatomy Of A Fall, a stunning courtroom drama

It was clinically timed. Spinners for the film are saying that voters should separate the flaws of the character from the achievements of the film.

Meanwhile German actress Sandra Huller is in the running for Zone Of Interest, a powerful film set in Auschwitz, and Anatomy Of A Fall, a stunning courtroom drama.

Hitherto a complete unknown, I’m told Huller is now being looked after by a Hollywood publicist — and she just made the cover of The Hollywood Reporter, which ran a long and flattering piece about her.

Last year an eruption came just before the ceremony when the Academy investigated the campaign which landed micro-movie To Leslie a nomination for the performance of its lead, British actress Andrea Riseborough.

I hope they are ready for a busy period between now and March.

Actor Bradley Cooper is being widely hailed for Maestro, the Netflix film about conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, which had its premiere in Venice and attracted glowing reviews, despite nearly being overshadowed by a row over Cooper’s prosthetically-enhanced nose.

Cooper (pictured) produced, wrote, directed and stars in the picture, which comes out on November 22 — and his talents don’t stop there. Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the Canadian conductor who was a consultant on the film, praised the star’s conducting, saying that Cooper had learned to imitate Bernstein’s freestyle method of handling the baton.

Cooper even played the piano for real in the movie. Bernstein’s daughter Jamie commented: ‘He’s quite a musician.’

Sweeney is no shrinking violet and this week also appeared writhing around on the back of a car for a Rolling Stones music video

One of the talking points in Venice — so to speak — was the return of the silent film star. There were plenty of glamorous stars in Venice for the film festival this year… but none of them wanted to speak, lest they be deemed to have breached the actors’ strike, which has been going on since mid-July. 

White Lotus and Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney and Stranger Things actress Sadie Sink both went to the huge Armani fashion show and party — the starriest of the festival — and Sweeney was seen grooving away to a set by British DJ Mark Ronson. 

Sweeney is no shrinking violet and this week also appeared writhing around on the back of a car for a Rolling Stones music video. 

Also at the Armani bash was actress Jessica Chastain, who is in Venice promoting the film Memory. The film has an interim agreement which allows actors exemption from the strike. It premieres tonight. Sources indicate that she flip-flopped over coming until the last minute. 

Penelope Cruz was going to come, to bang the drum for Ferrari this week, but then cited personal reasons for staying away. Actor Adam Driver was one of the few to make the trip to the Lido. 

Adam Driver has irritated some Italian actors by winning the roles of Maurizio Gucci in House Of Gucci in 2021, followed by Enzo Ferrari in the forthcoming film Ferrari (pictured). 

Actor Pierfrancesco Favino quipped: ‘The Guccis had a New Jersey accent, didn’t you know?’ He added: ‘There’s this idea of cultural appropriation. I don’t understand how actors like Toni Servillo, Adriano Giannini and Valerio Mastandrea are not being cast in these roles. Instead, they’re going to non-Italian actors who use these exotic accents. Why can an American play an Italian?’

Actor Bradley Cooper is being widely hailed for Maestro, the Netflix film about conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, which had its premiere in Venice and attracted glowing reviews, despite nearly being overshadowed by a row over Cooper’s prosthetically-enhanced nose.

Cooper (pictured) produced, wrote, directed and stars in the picture, which comes out on November 22 — and his talents don’t stop there. Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the Canadian conductor who was a consultant on the film, praised the star’s conducting, saying that Cooper had learned to imitate Bernstein’s freestyle method of handling the baton.

Cooper even played the piano for real in the movie. Bernstein’s daughter Jamie commented: ‘He’s quite a musician.’

Director Wes Anderson has become almost a part of the Dahl family. He said this week that he got to know Roald’s widow Liccy, as well as his children and grandchildren, while making the 2009 film Fantastic Mr Fox — and those relationships stood him in good stead when he was developing his film of Dahl’s short tale The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar, which comes out on September 20.

‘I’ve known Luke (Dahl, Roald’s grandson) since he was a little boy. He held the Henry Sugar story for me for years, as I loved it.’

By the time the film was made — with Ralph Fiennes as Roald Dahl and Benedict Cumberbatch as Henry Sugar — the author’s works had been sold to Netflix, but Anderson (pictured in Venice) still let Luke know about the project. ‘He was excited when I told him Ralph was going to be Dahl,’ Anderson said.

The 38-minute film puts Dahl’s language at the forefront, and Anderson’s filmed three more short stories: The Swan, Poison and The Rat Catcher.

‘Director Wes Anderson has become almost a part of the Dahl family’

In director Woody Allen’s new film, Coup de Chance, there are a number of scenes in which the villain of the piece — a wronged husband — is seen playing with a huge train set in his Paris apartment. The model railway takes up an entire room in the flat.

It’s an unusual motif and may cause some unease, because Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan accused him of abusing her when she was seven years old . . . while she played with a train set in the attic of Mia Farrow’s Connecticut house.

Why Allen, 87, might choose to apparently refer, even tangentially, to the accusations that created such a storm — and which he has always strenuously denied — is a mystery.

In 1991 his relationship with actress Mia Farrow broke up after it emerged that he was in a sexual relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, Mia’s 21-year-old adopted daughter.

A vicious custody battle ensued, in which Mia won custody of the three children she shared with Woody: Satchel (who now goes by his middle name Ronan), Moses (a boy) and Dylan (a girl).

Allen married Soon-Yi (pictured with him in Venice) in 1997 and they have adopted two daughters, Bechet and Manzie, who accompanied him on the red carpet.

Caleb Landry Jones, who was Banshee in X-Men: First Class, astonished many by speaking with a Scottish accent in Venice, even though he is from Texas. 

Landry Jones, promoting Luc Besson’s oddity Dogman, said he is preparing for a new film and didn’t want to ‘break character’. 

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos was not quite so at home north of the border. He referred to Willem Dafoe’s accent in Poor Things as ‘Glasgowan’ and when told that the correct term is ‘Glaswegian’ sputtered: ‘What! What the hell?!’ 

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