Oscar nominee 'CODA' screens for free this weekend at Deer Park theater
Complimentary tickets are available for Friday, Saturday and Sunday screenings of "CODA," one of this year's 10 Best Picture nominees.
Just one theater in the Chicago area is participating - Century 16 Deer Park Town Center, 21600 W. Field Parkway, Deer Park. There are three showings each day this weekend; free tickets are available at coda.film/tickets.
These screenings of "CODA," which stands for Child Of Deaf Adult, will be presented with open captions. Nominated for three Academy Awards, the family drama film stars Emilia Jones as a teenage singer who is the only hearing member of her family. Her parents are played by Troy Kotsur, who this year became the first deaf man to be nominated for an acting Oscar, and Morton Grove native Marlee Matlin, the first and only deaf actress to win the Academy Award, for 1986's "Children of a Lesser God."
You can watch "CODA" at home, too - it's streaming on Apple TV+.
Really, Academy?!
Why do the people in charge of the Oscars keep trying to cater to an audience that no longer cares?
Three and a half years after the "Best Popular Film" debacle in August 2018 - an award created in an obvious attempt to pander to "Black Panther's" sizable audience, only to be ditched a month later - the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences cooked up this year's "Fan Favorite" award to ensure that box office champ "Spider-Man: No Way Home" would take home an award on March 27. (Its sole nomination is for visual effects, and "Dune" has that in the bag.)
This latest attempt to win over those elusive young viewers is already failing: With up to 20 votes allowed per day per person via Twitter or oscarsfanfavorite.com, it's easy for a mobilized fan base to take over the race. According to a report at deadline.com, the leading vote-getter as of Feb. 18 was not the Marvel mashup that has made almost $2 billion globally - it's "Cinderella," the dire Amazon musical starring pop singer Camila Cabello and late-night bane-of-my-existence James Corden. (I voted for "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar." Trish would approve.)
Woe is the celebrity tasked with awarding the first ironic Oscar at a telecast that, according to Tuesday's letter from Academy President David Rubin, won't include live airings of eight categories: film editing, production design, sound, makeup and hairstyling, documentary short, animated short, live-action short and original score(!?!). Another terrible idea, one likely to be quashed when people far more famous than Rubin start complaining.
The Oscars refuse to stop chasing viewership numbers that are now impossible for any awards show in the age of YouTube and streaming. They should be pleasing their core audience, not pandering to one that doesn't exist.
• Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who stayed up late to watch the Oscars even when he was in kindergarten.