This Sunday: ‘The Bear’ or Da Bears?

Fourteen earthquakes this year at or above a 4 magnitude? Reminds me of that great brunch scene in Steve Martin’s “L.A. Story” where Victoria Tenant reacts with alarm as she experiences her first earthquake. The dishes and glassware on the tables rattle while everyone at the restaurant carries on their conversations unfazed. How strong is it? Martin shrugs. “I’d give it a 4.”

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter. Did you feel yesterday’s quake? I didn’t. I mean ... it was a 4. Let’s look at the week’s news.

Final Emmy predictions ahead of Sunday’s show

The Emmys these last few years have been a model of all or almost nothing at all.

To follow the last ceremony, held in January after the writers’ and actors’ strikes postponed the event for a few months, you really needed to be aware of only three shows — “Succession,” “The Bear” and “Beef.” They won Emmys for series, writing and directing in their respective categories, and their casts took eight of the 12 acting awards. While the winners were (mostly) worthy, it made for an evening almost entirely devoid of drama, unless you were worried that Matty Matheson might pass out onstage during that long kiss Ebon Moss-Bachrach planted on him after “The Bear” won comedy series.

This year, if you’ve watched “Shōgun,” “The Bear” and “Baby Reindeer,” you’re pretty much set. If you haven’t, well, our old friend from USC, Caleb Williams, will be leading the Bears against the Texans on “Sunday Night Football.” I’m sure I won’t be the only one with a couple of screens active that evening.

Here are my final predictions for the 76th Primetime Emmys on Sunday, airing at 5 p.m. Pacific on ABC. (Bonus pick: Texans by 7.)

Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning in “Baby Reindeer,” a favorite to prevail at Sunday’s Emmys.

(Ed Miller/Netflix)

With the fall film festivals over, is there an Oscar front-runner?

This time last year, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” were taking a victory lap after saving cinema. We spent the summer swooning over Celine Song’s heartbreaking love story “Past Lives” while Cannes and the fall film festivals unveiled the likes of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “The Zone of Interest,” “Poor Things,” “Maestro,” “The Holdovers,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “American Fiction.”

Those 10 movies became the finest group of best picture Oscar nominees we’ve had since the motion picture academy expanded the category in 2009. A mix of critical favorites, audience crowd-pleasers and the raw material for a dozen different Halloween costumes, this class was impeccable and, at least for the near future, unrepeatable.

Which brings us to 2024, where, at the moment, the two movies that have most thrilled audiences at Cannes and the fall film festivals are Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” a musical soap opera about a Mexican cartel boss looking to transition to being a woman, and Sean Baker’s “Anora,” the madcap, generous story of a Brooklyn sex worker who impulsively marries the young son of a Russian oligarch. Both films premiered earlier this year at Cannes, where “Anora” won the festival’s highest prize, the Palme d’Or.

“This isn’t exactly a mainstream movie,” Baker said at Cannes, both stating the obvious and expressing the tone of the upcoming awards season in a mere half-dozen words.

From the size of the crowds standing outside theaters showing “Anora” at Telluride, you might have suspected Baker was underselling his movie a bit. Hundreds were turned away, a notable (and happy) contrast to the divisive reception that Baker’s last movie, “Red Rocket,” received at the festival two years ago.

Have audiences become more open and adventurous? We’re about to find out as we enter an Oscar season that seems as unsettled as any in recent memory, dominated by international auteurs, indie offerings and, fingers crossed (because we could really use a maximalist miracle), Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II.”

How unsettled is it? Take a look at my column examining the films that did the best and worst at the recent festivals. Right now, the year looks a little soft, but there’s still time for things to turn around. The good news: Gaga will have time to tour instead of campaigning for an Oscar.

The cast of “Emilia Perez”: Édgar Ramírez, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz and Zoe Saldana.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Times goes to TIFF

Our team has pushed back their last plate of poutine and returned from Canada, where they saw dozens of movies and talked to the filmmakers and stars of this year’s Toronto Film Festival.

So much great work, including Meredith Blake explaining why you shouldn’t mansplain the new Amy Adams motherhood movie “Nightbitch” and countless video interviews at the Los Angeles Times Studios at RBC House, including the cast of the celebrated Spanish-language French musical crime comedy soap opera (it’s a lot of movie) “Emilia Pérez” talking with Mark Olsen about the making of the film. Mark, Meredith and Matt Brennan also shared their favorite films from the festival, including “Eden,” the most demented movie Ron Howard has made in his career, which makes it a picture I’m dying to see.

I’ll talk to you again Monday after the Emmys.

Ron Howard, director of “Eden.”

(TIFF)