‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is Oscars frontrunner

Between successful the highest honors on the Directors Guild Awards final weekend and the Producers and Screen Actors Guild awards this weekend, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” crew met at NeueHouse Hollywood on Saturday for one final Los Angeles academy screening of their trippy, sci-fi household drama.

The movie’s star, Michelle Yeoh, slumped on a settee within the foyer, having simply arrived from London. Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan embraced, buying and selling tales concerning the freakishly chilly L.A. climate. And the indefatigable Jamie Lee Curtis walked proper as much as me, squeezed my hand and, not letting go, launched herself as a “weapon of mass promotion” after which spent the following hour backing up her boast with charming — and virtually alarming — power.

“It’s a movie for a generation,” Curtis advised the viewers through the post-screening Q&A, evaluating the response to “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to how her period felt about “The Graduate.” “It’s literally the best movie for a generation.” The room eats this up. “The more times you say the word best — best, best, best, best — is a good thing to be saying at this moment in time.”

Curtis isn’t the one one saying it. Over the weekend, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” turned the tenth film to comb the producers, administrators and Screen Actors Guild awards, establishing it because the overwhelming favourite to win the most effective image Oscar on March 12. Of the 9 earlier movies to hit that awards season trifecta — an inventory that features “Birdman,” “No Country for Old Men” and “Argo,” just one, “Apollo 13,” did not go on to win the Oscar.

The film’s dominance with these key precursor guilds wasn’t anticipated, even after “Everything Everywhere All at Once” scored a number one 11 Oscar nominations final month. Some reacted simply as co-director Daniel Kwan’s mother did. “Don’t you think 11 is too much?” she advised him on the telephone. It appeared cheap to suppose “Everything Everywhere” would win the SAG Awards’ solid prize, whereas a extra conventional studio movie like “Top Gun: Maverick” would prevail with the producers (it did save the theatrical business!) and a extra established filmmaker, say Steven Spielberg, would discover favor with the Directors Guild.

But awards seasons that seem wide-open when the calendar turns typically have a method of coming into an irrevocable focus simply as Oscar voting is about to start. And that’s not simply the case with the most effective image race. The SAG Awards, as they typically do, crystallized the 4 performing classes, together with, in fact, Quan, who has been locked since audiences noticed his multiverse-jumping flip in “Everything Everywhere” and heard him share his comeback story, which detailed his return to performing after quitting for many years as a consequence of a scarcity of alternative.

Quan’s co-star, Curtis, pulled off a little bit of a shock, prevailing for supporting actress, a class that Angela Bassett had been favored to win for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Both girls are legends deserving an ideal Oscar second. A common fatigue — and a little bit snobbery — that some voters really feel towards Marvel motion pictures might tip the scales for Curtis.

Brendan Fraser had been an early favourite within the actor class, following the breathlessly timed standing ovations he obtained at fall movie festivals for his affecting flip in “The Whale.” And, like Quan, he possesses a profession revival story. Austin Butler delivers a showier (and deeper) efficiency in “Elvis,” a a lot better film. He might nonetheless win the Oscar, however Fraser is now the favourite.

Cate Blanchett had received almost each lead actress award this season for enjoying the monstrous maestro in “Tár,” a efficiency so commanding that Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel instructed that Lydia Tár succeed him because the group’s subsequent music director. But SAG-AFTRA voters went with Yeoh, who had a long-overdue showcase in “Everything Everywhere,” permitting her to dip a toe into a luxurious Wong Kar-wai romance and play a frazzled mother attempting to transcend the mundane, amongst a number of different issues.

When the Oscars lastly roll out the purple carpet exterior the Dolby Theatre in a few weeks, it is going to be a 12 months and a day since “Everything Everywhere All at Once” premiered at South by Southwest. (“I watched last year’s Oscars in a hotel bar while promoting this movie,” Daniel Scheinert tells me earlier than the Q&A, laughing.) Save for a summer time break that prolonged into the early fall, the movie’s core group has been reuniting for screenings and occasions frequently. What are they going to do after the Oscars?

“It’s going to be weird, like leaving summer camp — that’s always hard,” Kwan says.

“This is the biggest, most intense bonding we’ve ever done with a cast,” Scheinert provides. “We have known these actors as long as I knew my friends in college. It’s been a four-year adventure.”

Quan wanders over. “I’m still talking with my friends from ‘The Goonies,’ and that was 40 years ago!” he says.

“Forty years from now, do you think we’ll all be doing that?” Kwan asks him.

“And which one of us is going to be the ass— you don’t want to see?” Scheinert replies. “That’s a leading question. It’s gonna be me.”

After the prolonged Q&A, which left everybody, particularly the actors, in tears (it is a group very a lot in contact with their feelings), the ensemble entered a convention room to take a few photographs. High on a bookshelf, Curtis noticed an artwork print. To a impartial observer, it seemed like concentric circles. For Curtis, it was most positively a bagel, a key image in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

“That’s a sign!” she shouts. “That’s a sign!”

After this weekend’s clear sweep and its full dominance on the SAG Awards, the film doesn’t really want a lot in the best way of luck. But till the Oscar is in hand, Curtis will settle for each good omen the universe has to supply.