MY favorite 2025 movie was “F1.” And not because it starred Brad Pitt.
Zoom to the present and it now has four Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, and Best Film Editing. See? I wasn’t the only one who swooned over Brad, er, “F1.”
The movie with the second — most number of nominations — thirteen! — is “One Battle After Another” that starred Leonardo DiCaprio. It had an unforgettable scene that made my jaw drop to the floor, and perhaps the same thing happened to the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, thus, the nominations.
Hollywood bigwigs do lobby for the Oscars through “For Your Consideration” (FYC) campaigns since it’s impossible even for Academy members to watch all the eligible films.
If I were an Academy member, I’d be happy receiving ribeyes from FYC lobbyists. Oops. There goes the Pinoy voter’s ulan-ulan reveal.
It’s actually raining while I’m writing this, so, ulan-ulan pa more.
It’s 2026, two years before 2028 which is the presidential election year. Sara Duterte has already announced that she’s running for president. And she made that reveal on Ash Wednesday, perhaps to give her frenemies the chance to repent for their sins against her. Number one on that frenemies list is, hmmm, do I need to write it here?
There are rumors that Duterte’s vice presidential candidate is the sister of her top frenemy. The partnership will make their “Team Itim” a possibility. But the one who is most interested to be her VP is Sen. Robin Padilla.
Padilla was nominated for and won acting awards in the past. Now that he’s a senator, if he eventually becomes Pinas’s vice president, that can be his biggest win by then.
Meanwhile, “Wicked’s” second installment, “Wicked: For Good,” didn’t earn an Oscar nomination, helping it morph from good to bad. Tsk tsk.
Its FYC lobbyists were found wanting in their campaign strategies? The Academy members have had enough of Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) after the Grande-Erivo promotional tours that sparked romance rumors? Fans preferred to watch Dorothy in Part 2? But then, that would require changing the title from “Wicked: For Good” to “Wicked No More.”
Wicked no more. That can be a political campaign slogan for — Let’s see — pronounced as the Spanish word for milk — who among the 2028 presidential and vice-presidential candidates is the perfect fit for that slogan.
Campaign season is here, there, and everywhere with or without the world of politics as proven by the Oscars. And even as proven by lobbyists for carbohydrate associations especially now that the Food Pyramid’s current inverted version in the US Dietary Guidelines has put carbs at the narrowest bottom of the pyramid, indicating them as the least essential among the food groups.
But the worst campaign strategies happen in politics where desperate times call for desperate measures such as the ulan-ulan: may the highest bidder win.
