The Envy Awards honor tap dancing, Spartacus, and George Clooney and Brad Pitt

The weird, the wonderful, the what-the-heck? These are the elements of so many movies that rarely receive acknowledgement during awards season. Fortunately, the Envy Awards are held (in these pages) every year to honor all of those underappreciated moments. This season, we make sure to give special mention to a medal, a tap dance — and women who spend all of their screen time staring at men. Please enjoy the 2024-25 Envy Awards!

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Oscars flashback: Raising a glass to ‘Sideways’

By definition, the Academy Award for adapted screenplay will go to work previously created in another form. But at the 77th Oscars, held on Feb. 27, 2005, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, the source material for the five nominees was particularly wide-ranging: a novel (“Sideways”); a short-story collection (“Million Dollar Baby”); a memoir and a biography (“The Motorcycle Diaries”); a play (“Finding Neverland”); and characters created for a 9-year-old prequel film (“Before Sunset”).

A certain amount of less adept adaptation went into the introduction of the nominees in the category too. Adam Sandler strode onstage to read the contenders list, with Catherine Zeta-Jones being announced as planned to help him along. But no Zeta-Jones was on hand, intentionally. That allowed host Chris Rock to join his fellow “Saturday Night Live” alum and pretend to be Zeta-Jones — the object of Sandler’s scripted leering.

But at last, it was time for Sandler — once Rock left the stage — to read out the nominees, handing the award to first-time winners Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor for Payne’s “Sideways,” a film about two friends going on a bender in the Santa Ynez Valley ahead of one of them tying the knot.

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How ‘Dune’ and ‘Wicked’ could upend Oscar history

Something unusual’s going on in this year’s list of Academy Award Best Picture nominees. Namely that one of the films aired its first installment in theaters mid-2021 pandemic… and another hasn’t even released its second half yet. Those films? Dune: Part 2 and Wicked. Should either overcome long odds — Wicked is tied for fifth in the Gold Derby ranking, while Dune is ninth in the 10-film race — it would be the first time that one half of a two-parter took home the biggest prize of the film season.

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Oscars flashback: Hilary Swank goes 2 for 2

Even when an Oscar moment is meant to focus on the best actresses in the business … it often becomes about the actors.

Early in the opening monologue for the 77th Academy Awards, held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on Feb. 27, 2005, host Chris Rock struck a chord with at least a few actors in the audience. He compared Tom Cruise with Jude Law and then asked, “Who is Jude Law? Why is he in every movie I have seen in the last four years? … He’s in everything.”

It was a callout that much later in the show Sean Penn, who was onstage to read out the nominees for lead actress, decided to address. Going off-script, Penn said, “Forgive my compromised sense of humor, but I did want to answer [Rock’s] question about who Jude Law is. He’s one of our finest actors.” Only then did he pivot to focus on the women: “What Jude and all talented actors know is that for every greatly talented actor, there are five actresses who are nothing short of magic. And the Academy’s favorite five this year are…”

After that segue, it was time for a small bit of history to be made, when Hilary Swank earned her second Oscar.

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Oscars flashback: Animation — and Pixar — have an ‘Incredibles’ night

Starting in 2002, feature-length animated films were included in awards season in the same way their short animated film compatriots had been since 1932 — with their own dedicated Academy Awards category. The new category was a breakthrough at the time, though in the years since it has also been controversial: Does having a dedicated animated feature category exclude worthy films from being included in the best picture discussion?

That discussion has swirled annually since the late 2010s — but it wasn’t part of the discourse on Feb. 27, 2005, when the 77th Academy Awards were held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles and “The Incredibles” took home Pixar’s second of a series of Oscar wins in the category.

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Oscars flashback: 20 years ago the director race was fierce

The big guns come out late in any Academy Awards broadcast — and the 77th Oscars, held on Feb. 27, 2005, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles — was no different. Except on this night, there was fierce competition between (and a lot of speculation about) the five best director nominees.

Would it be Clint Eastwood for “Million Dollar Baby,” which had already won for lead actress (Hilary Swank) and supporting actor (Morgan Freeman), and which would go on to win best picture shortly after this award? Would Martin Scorsese (“The Aviator”) finally earn his first Oscar? Could it be Taylor Hackford, who had directed Jamie Foxx into a lead actor award? And what about the indie spoilers, Alexander Payne (“Sideways”) and Mike Leigh (“Vera Drake”)?

And then Julia Roberts made the winner clear: The award would go to Clint Eastwood.

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Oscars flashback: Sandy Powell prevails over Colleen Atwood

It’s a truism worth repeating: If you’ve done stellar costume design in a contemporary film, you may as well plan to stay home on Oscar night. It’s been 30 years since the academy has awarded a costume design statuette for work on a non-fantastical or non-period film — and that was for the fairly fantastical-if-contemporary “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” — with the second most recent example being 1979’s “All That Jazz.”

Films with contemporary costumes didn’t even score a nomination 20 years ago. But the battle between multi-award-winning veterans Sandy Powell (“The Aviator”) and Colleen Atwood (“A Series of Unfortunate Events”) made for a tense competition — as did the appearance of one of the more famous animated costumers, “The Incredible’s” Edna Mode, at the Feb. 27, 2005, ceremony.

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Send in the celebrities! Guillermo del Toro, Jane Fonda, and more hop on the Oscars campaign trail … for other people’s movies

The glut of movies released in time to be in the running for award season means one thing: Every small theater in every studio, guild, hotel, and club around Los Angeles and New York (and sometimes London) is likely to be booked solid with screenings for potential voters (or members of the press). But with so many screenings every week, how does any strategist get their clients’ films to stand out?

Send in the celebrities!

In an increasingly common move, A-listers are turning out to host, moderate, and otherwise sponsor key award season screenings. Whether it’s Christopher Nolan stepping up to help out Ridley Scott with Gladiator II, Jane Fonda backing Kate Winslet with Lee, or Guillermo del Toro backing … well, it seems like everyone else, celebs who have no stake in a film’s current award success are routinely turning up on invitations to these events.

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‘Hard Truths’ star Marianne Jean-Baptiste breaks down the film’s cryptic ending

If you’re paying attention to this year’s film awards season, you’ve probably heard of Mike Leigh’s new British drama called “Hard Truths.”

Set in London, the 97-minute film centers on Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a woman deeply unhappy with the world and takes it out on everyone around her, including her long-suffering husband Curtley (David Webber), her adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who lives at home, and even her seemingly happy sister Chantelle (Michele Austin).

With the film’s release in theaters on Jan. 10, there will be many who see the film who’ll likely have a slew of questions as the final credits roll. Namely, happened to Pansy and Curtley and what is the takeaway?

Let’s dive a little deeper, and hear from the film’s star, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and directer to understand the film’s cryptic ending.

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Who is Jerry Springer’s daughter, Katie Springer?

The new Netflix documentary “Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action” is notably absent of new footage from its title star. Springer, the reporter-turned-politician-turned-controversial talk show host, died in 2023.

But the documentary does include some rare words from his only child, daughter Katie Springer.

Read on for what Katie and Jerry Springer shared about their relationship.

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