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Despite a traumatic beginning of the year from the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, Los Angeles is ready to celebrate one of its largest exports: movies. Hollywoods biggest bash, the 97th Academy Awards presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will air tonight, March 2, at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET. The action is taking place at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. Lets get up to speed so you can watch like an A-lister: How the L.A. fires impacted the 2025 Oscars The fires delayed the Oscar nominations announcement twice and extended the nominations voting period. And though the actual awards ceremony date was not affected, the annual Oscars Nominees Luncheon was canceled out of sensitivity to the Southern California community, and the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony had to be rescheduled from February 18 to April 29. Notable 2025 Oscar nominees Emilia Pérez dominates the Oscars with 13 nominations, making it the most nominated non-English movie in Oscar history. Jacques Audiards crime musical was once considered a tight contender for best picture, but controversy surrounding its star Karla Sofía Gascón’s raft of offensive tweets is expected to impact its chances (although it just won best film and best director at the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, on Friday in Paris). Gascón is the first openly trans actor to be nominated for an Oscar. Tied for second place with 10 nominations is Brady Corbets immigrant story The Brutalist and Jon M. Chus musical Wicked, both nominated for best picture. This is the first time two musicals have been in the best picture category since 1969 with Oliver! and Funny Girl. (Oliver! won.) With eight nominations each, A Complete Unknown and Conclave are also up for best picture. You can find a complete list of the 2025 Oscar nominees on the Academy’s website. Who is hosting the 2025 Oscars? Comedian, former late-night host, and podcaster Conan OBrien is taking on hosting duties this year for the first time. The two-time Emmy Awards host revealed that he’s never even attended the Academy Awards before. “I only agreed to host so that I could get invited,” O’Brien said (jokingly?) during a news conference Wednesday. He will get backup from presenters including Oprah Winfrey, Ben Stiller, Sterling K. Brown, Willem Dafoe, John Lithgow, and Amy Poehler. Keeping with tradition, last years top acting winners, Robert Downey Jr., Cillian Murphy, DaVine Joy Randolph, and Emma Stone will also present. Who are the musical performers? Historically, the best original song nominees were performed during the ceremony. This year, the Academy is shaking things up and having songwriters share their personal reflections instead. That doesnt mean the music stops. Wickeds Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande will open up the night with a musical performance. Lisa of Blackpink, Queen Latifah, Doja Cat, and Raye are also cooking up something special. Who are some favorites to win this year? There have been lots of twists and turns leading up to the big night. Some categories, such as best supporting actor and actress, feel almost inevitable. Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaa will almost certainly walk away with Oscars in these categories. Best picture, actor, and actress are more unpredictable. In the actor race, Oscar-winner Adrien Brody seemed the front-runner until last weekends SAG Awards upset when Timothée Chalamet took home the honor for his portrayal of Bob Dylan. Traditionally, the Oscars don’t like to honor younger artists, but the times could be a-changin’. In the actress category, Demi Moore of The Substance and Mikey Madison of Anora have split the precursor awards. Moores heartfelt speeches at SAG, Critics Choice, and the Golden Globes ceremonies charmed audiences. But don’t count Madison out; she took home the BAFTA and Independent Spirit Awards trophies for best actress. Further complicating the issue, some critics are predicting a surprise third choice, Im Still Heres Fernanda Torres. This is truly anyones race. Best picture is also uncertain. Sean Baker’s Anora seemed to be a safe bet because of its PGA, DGA, and WGA wins, but Conclaves SAG and BAFTA wins might make a case for Edward Berger’s papal thriller. How can I watch or stream the 2025 Oscars? There are many ways to see what film comes out on top. The most straightforward for those with traditional cable TV subscriptions is to tune into ABC at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m ET. You can also watch it for free on ABC with an over-the-air antenna. For the first time ever, cord-cutters can also stream the Oscars live directly on Hulu, which is offering a free trial for new subscribers. Or catch the show on one of the live-TV streaming services that offer ABC as part of a bundle: Sling TV (in some markets) Fubo TV YouTube TV Hulu + Live TV
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Sometimes, authenticity can be a films most special effect. It took months for Best Actress front-runner Mikey Madison to learn how to pole dance like the titular exotic dancer in Anora and for her fellow nominee Timothée Chalamet to passably play guitar as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. The naturalism of both performances helped keep audiences under the spell cast by their surrounding films. So, it should probably come as no surprise that a backlash has emerged in response to several of this years Oscar-nominated films using AI, paradoxically, to achieve authenticity. The reaction began on January 11, when editor Dávid Jancsó revealed in an interview that he and director Brady Corbet had used AI voice technology to make Oscar favorite The Brutalist. The film stars Adrien Brody as Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth, who, after surviving the Holocaust, emigrated to the U.S. where he is joined years later by his wife, Erzsébet, played by Felicity Jones. Although both actors, each of whom are nominated for Oscars, underwent vocal coaching to make the Hungarian dialogue roll off their tongues, according to Jancsó it just didnt work. The creators ended up using Respeecher, a Ukraine-based AI voice-cloning tool, to enhance Brody and Joness accents. This revelation provoked an online uproar so intense that Corbet issued a statement to The Hollywood Reporter days later, downplaying AIs significance in the making of the film. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicitys performances in another language, not to replace or alter them, and done with the utmost respect for the craft, the director said in his statement. In the weeks since The Brutalist came under the microscope, similar revelations have tumbled out regarding other Oscar-nominated films. In a recently surfaced French-language interview from last years Cannes festival, for instance, rerecording mixer Cyril Holtz disclosed that trans musical Emilia Pérez, the most-nominated film in this years Oscar crop, also used Respeecher to enhance star Karla Sofía Gascóns singing voice. (Emilia Pérez has far bigger fish to fry in terms of backlash, however, given Gascóns shocking history of inflammatory tweets.) Leaning on AI to zhuzh up an actors performance has proven controversial this year, due to the technologys rapid encroachment into traditionally human-created art. Some worry that AI will deprive film workers at various levels of jobs in the name of cost-cutting, while others fear it will usher in an era of cinematic soullessness. (Those folks have apparently never seen any of the ostensibly AI-free blockbusters shot entirely on green screen.) Indeed, part of the reason the writers and actors strikes of 2023 went on for so long was because of the difficulty in securing protections against AI. Ultimately, the strikes succeeded in placing guardrails around the techs use in generating scripts and requiring consent and compensation for using an actor’s likeness. Visual artists and animators have won no such protections yet, though. Considering all the looming fears about an unemployment crisis in film and TV art departments, its no wonder the use of AI in visual effects has proven especially unpopular recently. The acclaimed 2024 horror film Late Night with the Devil came under fire last spring for using AI to quickly create three briefly shown images; around the same time, the A24 thriller Civil War generated controversy for using AI just in its poster art. Now, the debate about the ethics of movie imagery that uses AI has reached the Oscars too. Since the brouhaha began over The Brutalists AI vocal enhancement, revelations have spilled out about other films using AI for visual effects. (Brutalist editor Jancsó also claimed in his infamous interview that some blueprints and finished buildings depicted in the film were partially AI-generated, though director Corbet disputes this.) When Australia-based Rising Sun Pictures submitted its work on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga for an award at the 2025 Visual Effects Society Awards, the company boasted about using its Revize machine learning toolset to create effects for A Complete Unknown, adding a new dimension to the Oscars AI conversation. (As an individual familiar with the film told Indiewire, “The technology was used to assist in three brief wide shots on a motorcycle, not involving performance or creative enhancements. This technology is commonplace for making stunt people resemble their actor in films.) On a similar note, another film nominated for multiple Oscars and starring Chalamet, Dune: Part Two, also used machine learning to create the striking ice-blue eye color of its Fremen characters. How much should any of this matter? Perhaps not that much. Its not as if whole chunks of any of these films were created using OpenAIs text-to-video tool Sora or Googles Veo 2. Instead, the AI-infused visual effects are minimal and seem in line with the kind of VFX ork thats been rocking multiplexes for decades. Furthermore, the vocal tune-up in The Brutalist is limited to the few scenes where Brody and Jones actually speak in Hungarian. (For the bulk of the film, they talk in heavily accented English.) And as for Gascóns juiced singing in Emilia Pérez, Rami Malek won an Oscar in 2019 for playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, and only a stunt vocalist contributed any real singing to that film. But at least the stunt vocalist was human. As the use of AI seems increasingly inevitable in film and TVs future, despite the pronounced ongoing backlash, purists might decide to draw a line in the sandboycotting any and all projects that utilize it. As if to accommodate them, the Motion Picture Academy is reportedly weighing a rule that would require filmmakers to disclose when their films use AI. In the meantime, some arent waiting around for such rules to be implemented and are instead taking the opposite tact. When the A24 horror movie Heretic came out last fall, it bore the following caption in its end credits: No generative AI was used in the making of this film.
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Gen Z workers have been branded as demanding, unmotivated, and even entitleda word that was used not too long ago to describe millennials. In an Intelligent.com survey last fall, 60% of employers said they had fired Gen Z workers not long after hiring them, and one in six managers said they were hesitant to hire recent college graduates. Its no surprise that Gen Z continues to be misunderstood, or that older employees might rely on lazy tropes as they try to make sense of a new generation. While its true that Gen Z employees may have higher expectations for the workplace, that isnt necessarily a bad thingin fact, it may just be a necessary corrective in the face of questionable leadership. What many have labeled [quiet] quitting is actually a rational response to workplaces that lack fairness, structure, and alignment with employee values, leadership strategist Jeff LeBlanc wrote recently. Instead of writing off an entire generation, leaders should be asking: What are we doing wrong? As baby boomers age out of the workforce, its imperative that employers find a way to better understandand courtGen Z employees, who will be a key part of the next generation of workers. So what can employers do to not just attract Gen Z workers, but make sure they stick around? Understand how Gen Z employees are different Rather than typically dismissing the concerns of Gen Z or painting them as difficult to work with, companies and managers should consider why younger employees might differ from their older counterparts when it comes to their expectations of the workplace. Gen Z grew up amid economic uncertainty, social justice movements, and an increasing focus on mental health, LeBlanc wrote. They dont just want jobs; they want workplaces that prioritize psychological safety, transparency, and fairness. Research indicates that Gen Z is far more socially conscious than previous generations, and that these employees prize diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and employee wellness. What older employees may perceive as being demanding is actually about advocating for themselves. This is also a generation of workers who grew up on the internet. Gen Z is used to putting every thought out for others to like, dislike, and amplify, wrote Amelia Dunlop, chief experience officer for Deloitte Digital. When they show up at work, they expect their voice and opinions to be heard and taken into consideration. Consider the impact of the pandemic Gen Z has also come of age during a period of intense upheaval, changing their experiencesand perhaps expectationsof the workplace. Many of these young workers finished college or started working at the height of the pandemic, which meant they had to acclimate to professional life while working from home. While there are benefits to young workers being in an office setting, many of them are also seeking more flexibility and want the option of working remotely. Flexibility in the workplace is not just a perk for Gen Z, it is a necessity, wrote leadership expert Cheryl Fields Tyler. Despite this, many organizations operate with the assumption that Gen Z employees need to work in traditional office settings to ‘earn the right’ to have flexibility. Think about what they want out of a job Gen Z employees do tend to have higher expectations of their colleagues and managers. That can be a shift for older employees who might expect them to pay their dues or show more deference. Unlike previous generations, Gen Z may not be as satisfied with an inspirational leader. Instead, they prize qualities like psychological safety and fairnesswhich includes equitable pay and access to professional opportunitiesas well as a high degree of transparency, according to LeBlanc. Gen Z also wants to find meaning in the work they do. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to managers who have already worked alongside millennials. Thats also why younger workers may expect their employers to not just engage with social issues, but also align with their own personal values. In fact, research shows that Gen Z employees are three times more likely to stay at a job if they believe in the mission. And while work-life balance is important to other generations as well, its a major priority for Gen Z. As Andrew Roth, who runs the Gen Z consulting firm dcdx, explained: Quiet quitting or stronger pushes for work-life balance are not threats or insults to tradition, but merely calls for respect, protection of our health, and the desire for a more fulfilling life for a generation growing up in this always-online world. In many ways, Gen Z is simply looking for qualities that all employees should hope to find in their workplace, including transparency, clear expectations, and equitable treatment. Companies that take their concerns seriously are likely to cultivate more loyal, committed employeesof any age.
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