Oppenheimer: After a string of indie winners, a blockbuster takes the biggest prize in cinema

3/10/24 7:00PM

Anatomy of a haul

‍Christopher Nolan’s explosive epic Oppenheimer cleaned up at the 96th annual Academy Awards last night, taking home 7 statues, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, in the joint-most successful Oscars haul since Slumdog Millionaire won 8 in 2009.

While Nolan’s movie dominated proceedings, Poor Things scooped a not-inconsiderable 4 gongs, among them another Best Actress award for Emma Stone, while Greta Gerwig’s Barbie picked up just 1 Oscar: Best Original Song for Billie Eilish’s emotional ballad “What Was I Made For?”.

‍Expensive things

‍The sweeping nature of Oppenheimer’s Oscars success this year wasn’t the only impressive aspect of the movie’s awards-storming performance either — it also became the highest-grossing film to take home Best Picture since the final installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy swept the awards show 20 years ago.

Indeed, the 2023 biopic grossed just shy of $961 million worldwide, in a clear sign that — despite recent years suggesting otherwise — the eyes of the Academy can still be drawn by unapologetically barnstorming blockbusters, and not just low-budget or independent arthouse pictures.

‍Big selluloid: Barbenheimer accounted for some 88% of the 10 Best Picture nominees’ collective domestic haul.

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Tamagotchis are making a comeback, 3 decades after first becoming a global toy craze

If you were a ’90s kid, you might remember the craze around little egg-shaped toys with an 8-bit digital screen, displaying an ambiguous pet-thing that demanded food and attention.

Now, on the brand’s 30th anniversary, the Tamagotchi — the Japanese pocket-sized virtual pet that launched a thousand cute and needy tech companions, from Nintendogs to fluffy AI robots — is making a minor comeback.

Tamagotchi Google Search Trends — Sherwood News

Looking at Google Trends data, searches for “tamagotchi” spiked in December in the US, up around 80% from just six months prior, with the most search volume in almost two decades.

While the toys are popular Christmas gifts, with interest volumes often seen ticking up in December each year, the sudden interest might also have something to do with the birthday celebrations that creator and manufacturer Bandai Namco are putting on, including a Tokyo exhibition that opened on Wednesday.

Game, set, hatch

More broadly, modern consumers appear to have a growing obsession with collectibles (see: Labubu mania), as well as a taste for nostalgia (see: the iPod revival, among many other trends).

But, having finally hit 100 million sales in September last year, the brand itself is probably just glad to exist, giving a whole new generation the chance to experience the profound grief of an unexpected Tamagotchi death.

Oppenheimer: After a string of indie winners, a blockbuster takes the biggest prize in cinema

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