Oscar rivals gather for Academy Awards annual luncheon

LOS ANGELES

The casts of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” gathered Feb. 12 at the annual Academy Awards nominees luncheon alongside dozens of first-time Oscar hopefuls for handshakes, hugs, a huge group picture and instructions on nailing an acceptance speech.

The event at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, U.S. is a warm, feel-good affair where nominees in categories like best animated short get to rub shoulders and share tables with acting nominees like Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, whose snugs for best director and best actress, respectively, for “Barbie” caused a major stir, both showed up for the nominations they did get, and were all smiles.

Gerwig, nominated for adapted screenplay, was surrounded by selfie-seekers as soon as she entered the banquet hall while Robbie, up for best picture as a “Barbie” producer, beamed nearby as she hugged and chatted with a woman who got one of the best actress spots, Sandra Hüller of “Anatomy of a Fall.”

The centerpiece of the event is a class photo of the entire group of nominees. Nearly all of them usually attend, both as part of the Oscars experience and as part of their unspoken campaigns for votes.

Gerwig and Robbie got some of the loudest cheers of the afternoon when their names were called during the class picture roll call that is the day's most egalitarian tradition. The names are read and nominees called up to risers in an order that seems to make no accounting for fame.

In one typical trio, Carey Mulligan, best actress nominee for “Maestro,” was summoned to the risers between David Hemingson, who was nominated for writing his first film, “The Holdovers,” and James Price, nominated for production design on “Poor Things.”

Martin Scorsese, nominated this year for best director on “Killers of the Flower Moon,” may have gotten the loudest ovation of the day when he was called up. He sat between the favorites in the actress category, Da'Vine Joy Randolph of “The Holdovers” and Lily Gladstone from his film. Both towered over the shorter Scorsese. “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan reached across Gladstone to shake his hand as he sat down.

"Oppenheimer" is widely thought to be leading the race for best picture at the Academy Awards on March 10, but Steven Spielberg, a producer on rival movie "Maestro," said it had also been a banner year beyond Christopher Nolan's atomic age drama.

"This has been a great and eclectic year for films, one of the best years in terms of high quality, in my opinion, of the past decade," he told AFP.