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Trump and Travolta nominated for worst in film in 2018

January 21, 2019

While filmmakers dream of winning awards at the Oscars or at the Cannes or Venice film festivals, there's one ceremony they'd prefer to avoid: the Golden Raspberry Awards, celebrating the worst in film.

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US Filmpreis Goldene Himbeere
Image: picture alliance/ZUMA Press/a75

Created in 1980 to counterbalance the Oscars ceremony, the tongue-in-cheek Golden Raspberry Awards, also known as the Razzies, will once again honor the worst in film. This year's nominees were announced on Monday.

John Travolta's mob movie flop Gotti is among the most-nominated film, while President Donald Trump received a nod as "worst actor" for appearing as himself in the 2018 documentary Death of a Nation, from conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9.

"With a stumbling stock market, a possible impending Presidential impeachment, raging wild fires, devastating floods, mass shootings and a litany of plagues that reached near Biblical proportions, 2018 was a year overfull with disasters," said Razzie founder John Wilson in a statement. "And then there were last year's movies," he added.

Also garnering nominations was the new Sherlock Holmes comedy Holmes & Watson which received six mentions for being generally terrible. Its stars, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, were cited for "trashing two of literature's most beloved characters."

The White House crew is well-represented in this year's nominations. Melania Trump and White House aide Kellyanne Conway both got nods in the worst supporting actress field for their archival footage in Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9. Donald Trump himself is no stranger to Razzie fame, having taken one home for his cameo role as a businessman in the 1989 crime comedy Ghosts Can't Do It, starring Bo Derek.

Although it somehow managed to take in $4.3 million at the box office last summer, Gotti, a film about the late New York Mafia boss John Gotti, is up for six Razzies, including worst picture, screenplay, actor and worst screen combo for stars Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston.

If they attend the ceremony held on February 24, the eve of the Academy Awards, winners will take home a gold, spray-painted trophy.

sh/eg (Reuters, dpa)