A Star Is Born: reviews, news, and analysis of a classic Hollywood tale retold

One of the weirdest Oscar seasons in recent history continues thanks to a weird list of Oscar nominations, one filled with great movies but also shocking snubs and heartening surprises.

Roma and The Favourite are at the top of the heap, with 10 nominations each; Vice and A Star Is Born are in second place with eight apiece. Black Panther, the first superhero movie ever nominated for Best Picture, is in third with seven.

At last, the nominees for the 2019 Oscars have been announced, and eight films earned the lucky Best Picture berth. They’re an eclectic bunch, ranging from a quiet family drama set in Mexico (Roma) to a kooky, dark arthouse comedy (The Favourite) to obvious crowd pleasers (Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book) to the first superhero film ever nominated (Black Panther).

While some of the films are still playing only in theaters — or returning to theaters for limited runs, thanks to their new status as Best Picture nominees — others are available to stream, to rent digitally, or to buy to watch at home. So if you want to catch up with all of the Best Picture nominees before the 91st Academy Awards on February 24, here’s how to do it.

“Take it off,” Bradley Cooper supposedly said to Lady Gaga.

“It” refers to the tiny bit of makeup Gaga was wearing at the screen test for what became her Golden Globe-nominated turn in the latest reboot of A Star Is Born, according to a widely circulated story in the LA Times.

In each of the four versions of A Star Is Born that Hollywood has produced since 1932, the story has never been about the woman at its center — not really.

Sure, she’s got dramatic moments and big songs, and the narrative is superficially about her rise to stardom. But the story of A Star Is Born has always been about a man — about the psychology, troubled past, addiction, and ultimate downfall of the man she loves, the man who helps her to succeed but who ultimately is unable to handle her success.

This weekend’s box office returns, the biggest ever for an October opening weekend, were propelled by a pair of musicians and a pile of black alien goo.

Two very different movies — Venom, based on the Spider-Man associate of its title, and A Star Is Born, the fourth iteration of the classic melodrama — posted ticket sales over the weekend that were much higher than projected, combining for a massive, record-breaking weekend at cinemas.

Like a martini, or a bowl of chili, A Star Is Born is a staple that welcomes reinvention. All iterations of the film — including the latest, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper and Lady Gaga — sing the same tune, but each version has new variations on the theme, flourishes and inversions that reinterpret the old story.

Spoilers for the basic plot of A Star Is Born, in all its iterations, follow.

The long-lasting appeal of A Star Is Born, which receives its fifth-ish telling with the new Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper remake arriving this weekend, may be baffling to anyone unfamiliar with its storied legacy of troubled productions and the litany of creative divas (of all genders) who’ve had contentious relationships to the subject matter while working on it.

The basic storyline — a troubled entertainer whose star is fading discovers a magnetic new ingenue whose career he helps launch — has remained essentially the same across five different film versions of the story, ranging from 1932’s What Price Hollywood?, generally considered to be the first “star is born” template, through the four subsequent films we have today. But there’s one thing the 2018 production has given us that sets it apart from the fabled histories of its predecessors: memes.