Double Digit nomination trivia

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anonymous1980
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by anonymous1980 »

Mister Tee wrote: and the visual effects people stuck to their "no Marvel/no-how" principles -- and in all cases, ended up checking off The Revenant.
Though I'm not a super fan of The Revenant, I'm gonna have to defend its Visual Effects nomination here. One of the most talked about sequences in the film is the bear attack scene. It genuinely impressed the Visual Effects branch because it was brutally realistic and one example of visual effects being used in a supporting role which the VFX branch love to nominate (and even occasionally award) from time to time. It wasn't a lazy, rote, check-it-off nomination a la The Revenant's nominations in the Design categories.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Sabin »

Mister Tee wrote
In fact, The Revenant is a shining overall example for this theory. Once the touted film opened to gang-buster box-office numbers, no one doubted it would be a best picture/director candidate. But was ever a film more over-rewarded in other categories? Not just (arguably) Hardy -- the film was nominated for costumes (costumes!), production design (for, I guess, designing the forest), both sounds, visual effects, make-up. Why? I'd argue it's because the costumes branch, playing the same best picture-dominated game, never got around to Suffragette or Far from the Madding Crowd; production design people never took the time for Crimson Peak; the sound folk didn't catch up with Love and Mercy (which was every bit a monument to the science of sound that Sound of Metal was, only without the best picture campaign); and the visual effects people stuck to their "no Marvel/no-how" principles -- and in all cases, ended up checking off The Revenant.

I think that's how we end up with so many nominations to such a limited number of films.
Your points about The Revenant are well taken. I think one could make the argument that Joker isn't far behind considering its nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Makeup could have been copied and pasted from 2008... 1988...

I also think one could make the case for La La Land.

I also think you had it with Best Supporting Actor in 2015. At the time, I remember thinking "This is the most wide open race I've ever seen." There were at least ten contenders for a nomination that year. It has to be the only time that two contenders (Elba, Shannon) got Globe and SAG nominations and both missed out for nominations (to two generally under-rewarded contenders that year, Ruffalo and Hardy). Why? Because they weren't from movies that weren't in the conversation and likely went unsee. Given that, I think it's entirely possible that Sylvester Stallone barely elbowed his way in.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Big Magilla »

Mister Tee wrote: I know your loathing for Adam McKay runs deep, but there's no way in hell The Big Short -- winner at PGA and WGA, easy winner for adapted screenplay -- would have missed a best picture nomination that year. It was easily top 3 - 4 at lowest. Room, on the other hand, feels like a classic lone director (and I say that despite Room being my favorite film of that year).

Vice is closer; it's hard for me to see that as a lone director film. And, like it or not, it got directing/writing/editing, all of which are a pretty strong indicators of a best picture nod. But who cares? 2018 was such a weak year, it's hard to make an argument for any of the films as sure things.

And you're crazy to think Midnight in Paris would have been omitted. It got all the glamour precursors, and was a popular screenplay winner. I think The Help is a far more likely omittee, though it might be Moneyball.
You could be right.

I did consider Room in place of The Big Short in 2015, but I guess I let my loathing get the better of me.

I also considered Moneyball and The Help, as well as The Descendants, along with Midnight in Paris in 2011 but it was a really tough call. I almost went with Moneyball.

1918 was easier considering that the I think all five that were left - The Favourite, Roma, Black Panther, BlacKKlansman, and Green Book - would have been nominated in any case. Vice had to go, my personal dislike for the damn thing or not.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Mister Tee »

Big Magilla wrote:
mlrg wrote: Since the expansion the following have received double digit nominations:
2018: The Favourite, Roma (10 x2)
2015: The Revenant (12), Mad Max: Fury Road (10)
2013: American Hustle, Gravity (10 x2)
2012: Lincoln (12), Life of Pi (11)
2011: Hugo (11), The Artist (10)
2010: The King's Speech (12), True Grit (10)

Would any of these miss a best picture nomination in a field of five nominees?
Probably not. These seems to me to be the films that would have lost out on a Best Picture nomination:
2010: Inception, The Kids Are All Right, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, Winter's Bone
2011: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life; War Horse
2012: Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty
2013: Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Philomena
2015: Brooklyn, The Martian, The Big Short
2018: Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born, Vice
I know your loathing for Adam McKay runs deep, but there's no way in hell The Big Short -- winner at PGA and WGA, easy winner for adapted screenplay -- would have missed a best picture nomination that year. It was easily top 3 - 4 at lowest. Room, on the other hand, feels like a classic lone director (and I say that despite Room being my favorite film of that year).

Vice is closer; it's hard for me to see that as a lone director film. And, like it or not, it got directing/writing/editing, all of which are a pretty strong indicators of a best picture nod. But who cares? 2018 was such a weak year, it's hard to make an argument for any of the films as sure things.

And you're crazy to think Midnight in Paris would have been omitted. It got all the glamour precursors, and was a popular screenplay winner. I think The Help is a far more likely omittee, though it might be Moneyball.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Mister Tee »

mlrg wrote:
Mister Tee wrote: I think there's a circumstantial aspect beyond that: the combination of the need to nominate up-to-ten best picture contenders AND the much-shortened nomination period makes voters concentrate ever more on the best picture field, with little bandwidth left for other contenders.
I agree with the shortened nomination period but disagree on the need to nominate up-to-ten best picture contenders.

Since the expansion the following have received double digit nominations:
2018: The Favourite, Roma (10 x2)
2015: The Revenant (12), Mad Max: Fury Road (10)
2013: American Hustle, Gravity (10 x2)
2012: Lincoln (12), Life of Pi (11)
2011: Hugo (11), The Artist (10)
2010: The King's Speech (12), True Grit (10)

Would any of these miss a best picture nomination in a field of five nominees?
You read my comment exactly backwards. I'm not saying these films got best picture nominations because they got 10+ nominations; I'm saying they got 10+ nominations because they were best picture contenders.

Here's how I see it:

I'm an Academy voter. Regardless of what branch I'm in, my ballot allows me to nominate best picture. I have my favorites on the year -- say, 3-5 movies I really like. But my ballot allows me up to 10, and I want to have as much influence as I can on the full slate. So, in my brief late-year window (with ballots due early-to-mid-January), I prioritize watching any movies I've heard touted as best picture possibilities.

In that one example I gave -- 2015 -- I watched all the movies that got nominations, plus some more that had some hype but didn't make it (Carol, Creed, Steve Jobs, Inside Out). Say I'm a voter in the acting branch. I also need to nominate supporting actors. But I never got around, in this tight window, to watching Love and Mercy, Beasts of No Nation, or Sicario, which I didn't see as best picture likelies. When I fill in my ballot, I play honestly and only vote for films I've seen. And there are others like me. So, when the nominations are revealed, we find none of those candidates from obscurer films made the cut, but four guys from the best picture field did: Bale, Ruffalo, Rylance, and the not-especially-praised Hardy.

NOTE: I don't want to argue your individual preference; I'm sure there are some who think Hardy is way better than Elba or Dano. You're welcome to your opinion. I'm saying, as a matter of statistics, the best picture contenders have become way more advantaged in competing for these spots.

In fact, The Revenant is a shining overall example for this theory. Once the touted film opened to gang-buster box-office numbers, no one doubted it would be a best picture/director candidate. But was ever a film more over-rewarded in other categories? Not just (arguably) Hardy -- the film was nominated for costumes (costumes!), production design (for, I guess, designing the forest), both sounds, visual effects, make-up. Why? I'd argue it's because the costumes branch, playing the same best picture-dominated game, never got around to Suffragette or Far from the Madding Crowd; production design people never took the time for Crimson Peak; the sound folk didn't catch up with Love and Mercy (which was every bit a monument to the science of sound that Sound of Metal was, only without the best picture campaign); and the visual effects people stuck to their "no Marvel/no-how" principles -- and in all cases, ended up checking off The Revenant.

I think that's how we end up with so many nominations to such a limited number of films.
Last edited by Mister Tee on Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Big Magilla »

mlrg wrote: Since the expansion the following have received double digit nominations:
2018: The Favourite, Roma (10 x2)
2015: The Revenant (12), Mad Max: Fury Road (10)
2013: American Hustle, Gravity (10 x2)
2012: Lincoln (12), Life of Pi (11)
2011: Hugo (11), The Artist (10)
2010: The King's Speech (12), True Grit (10)

Would any of these miss a best picture nomination in a field of five nominees?
Probably not. These seems to me to be the films that would have lost out on a Best Picture nomination:
2010: Inception, The Kids Are All Right, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, Winter's Bone
2011: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life; War Horse
2012: Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty
2013: Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Philomena
2015: Brooklyn, The Martian, The Big Short
2018: Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born, Vice
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by mlrg »

Mister Tee wrote: I think there's a circumstantial aspect beyond that: the combination of the need to nominate up-to-ten best picture contenders AND the much-shortened nomination period makes voters concentrate ever more on the best picture field, with little bandwidth left for other contenders.
I agree with the shortened nomination period but disagree on the need to nominate up-to-ten best picture contenders.

Since the expansion the following have received double digit nominations:
2018: The Favourite, Roma (10 x2)
2015: The Revenant (12), Mad Max: Fury Road (10)
2013: American Hustle, Gravity (10 x2)
2012: Lincoln (12), Life of Pi (11)
2011: Hugo (11), The Artist (10)
2010: The King's Speech (12), True Grit (10)

Would any of these miss a best picture nomination in a field of five nominees?
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Sabin »

Greg wrote
Sabin, in 1976 it was Rocky that received 10 nominations, not All The President's Men.
Yes, sir. Changed.
Mister Tee wrote
And, remember, those 92nd Awards were the earliest of the era -- February 9th -- meaning voters were pressed to finalize their choices even more rapidly than usual. It's no wonder the same films kept getting marked down -- they were practically the only films many voters had time to watch.
Perhaps, but I have a hard time imagining that a more relaxed calendar does much to negatively affect 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Those nominations were probably locked up. The Irishman and Joker were more likely on the bubble in some of its categories. It's conceivable that both of them fall out of double digit territory, but just as conceivable that Little Women is the beneficiary and it rises into it.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Greg »

Sabin, in 1976 it was Rocky that received 10 nominations, not All The President's Men.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Mister Tee »

Big Magilla wrote:They were all popular films that impressed voters from all fields, some well beyond their individual merits.
I think there's a circumstantial aspect beyond that: the combination of the need to nominate up-to-ten best picture contenders AND the much-shortened nomination period makes voters concentrate ever more on the best picture field, with little bandwidth left for other contenders. This is why, for instance, there are fewer stray acting nominees these days --as in 2015, when highly-lauded supporting actor possible Idris Elba, Paul Dano and Benicio Del Toro were all ignored for four guys from best picture nominees plus Sylvester Stallone.

And, remember, those 92nd Awards were the earliest of the era -- February 9th -- meaning voters were pressed to finalize their choices even more rapidly than usual. It's no wonder the same films kept getting marked down -- they were practically the only films many voters had time to watch.
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Re: Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Big Magilla »

They were all popular films that impressed voters from all fields, some well beyond their individual merits.
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Double Digit nomination trivia

Post by Sabin »

Sometimes when the Oscar nominations come out, we look down the list and it feels like we see the same movie titles again and again. But some years, it REALLY happens. At the 92nd Academy Awards, four movies got double digit nominations. I don't believe this was remarked upon by anyone at the time. Everyone wrote about how Joker got the most nominations and how unbelievable that was. But really, Joker got 11 and The Irishman, Joker, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood got 10 each. That's 41 nominations between four films. When you exclude categories like shorts, International/Doc/Animated Feature, those 41 nominations make up over a third of the total nominations that year. That seems pretty high.

I never did a deep dive into the history of movies with double digit nominations before but, yes, four movies with double digit nominations is the most we've ever seen that happen. Let's go down the list and see what else we have:


FOUR DOUBLE DIGIT NOMINATIONS
2019: Joker (11), 1917, The Irishman Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (10 x3)


THREE DOUBLE DIGIT NOMINATIONS
1977: Julia, The Turning Point (11 x2), Star Wars (10)
1964: Mary Poppins (13), Becket, My Fair Lady (12 x2)


TWO DOUBLE DIGIT NOMINATIONS
2018: The Favourite, Roma (10 x2)
2015: The Revenant (12), Mad Max: Fury Road (10)
2013: American Hustle, Gravity (10 x2)
2012: Lincoln (12), Life of Pi (11)
2011: Hugo (11), The Artist (10)
2010: The King's Speech (12), True Grit (10)
2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (13), Slumdog Millionaire (11)
2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (11), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (10)
2002: Chicago (13), Gangs of New York (10)
2000: Gladiator (12), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (10)
1998: Shakespeare in Love (13), Saving Private Ryan (11)
1985: The Color Purple, Out of Africa (11)
1984: Amadeus, A Passage to India (11)
1982: Gandhi (11), Tootsie (10)
1981: Reds (12), On Golden Pond (10)
1976: Network, Rocky (10)
1974: Chinatown, The Godfather: Part II (11)
1973: The Exorcist, The Sting (10)
1972: Cabaret, The Godfather (10)
1970: Airport, Patton (10)
1967: Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (10)
1965: Doctor Zhivago, The Sound of Music (10)
1961: Judgment at Nuremberg, West Side Story (11)
1953: From Here to Eternity (13), Roman Holiday (10)
1950: All About Eve (14), Sunset Boulevard (11)
1942: Mrs. Miniver (12), The Pride of the Yankees (11)
1941: Sergeant York (11), How Green My Valley (10)
1939: Gone with the Wind (13), Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington (11)
Last edited by Sabin on Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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