Oscar Nominations

[Big Magilla]

I can't remember the last time I was as pleased by the nominations as I was this year.

Maybe it's because I saw most of the nominees prior to the announcement since I can't remember when. Maybe it's because all five of my top five choices were included for Best Picture (including Nightmare Alley) even though none of my second tier (The Last Duel, Last Night in Soho, Cyrano, Mass, Passing) were given any attention except for one accorded Cyrano. Maybe it's because it's so rare to have one of my underdogs receive a surprise top category nomination (Nightmare Alley in Best Picture, Dench in Best Supporting Actress, Plemons in Best Supporting Actor). Plemons seemed like such a lost cause that I took him out of my last forecast.

I was so pleased that even those nominations I disagreed with didn't bother me. The one that would have, Jared Leto in House of Gucci, thankfully didn't happen.

As for the snubs, Dinklage, Dornan, Balfe, and Negga have vibrant enough careers to be back in the mix soon as hopefully will near-misses Faist, Dowd, and Plimpton. Same for Wes Anderson whose French Dispatch was such a disappointment that the one thing that deserved recognition, the film's glorious set design, was ignored.

Villaneuve I don't consider a snub. Someone had to go to make room for Hamaguchi. As I said before, it might have been any of the DGA nominees except Campion.

As for Spider-Man: No Way Home and the Marvel curse, I see that more as a resentment of the mindset of the current moviegoing public. Had there been ten nominees for Best Picture in 1978, I'm fairly certain Superman would have been one of the nominees. Someday the barrier will be broken as it was for other genres including animated feature when Beauty and the Beast broke the barrier in 1991.

[Big Magilla]

The sole anomaly was Nightmare Alley, which has to have the oddest nomination profile of any best picture nominee under this recent system: cinematography/production design/costume design/film. Someone mentioned Black Panther as antecedent, but that had a somewhat broader panoply of categories -- both sounds, song and score, in addition to costume & production design. To have just three visual techs wouldn't have seemed a strong formula to me. Maybe we need to credit Fox Searchlight, who've done very well in this category over the past decade-plus.

I liked NIGHTMARE ALLEY more than CODA, DON'T LOOK UP, KING RICHARD, and WEST SIDE STORY but I am absolutely baffled by how it was able to find itself at number 1 on at least 5% of ballots. Was this the voters in the technical branches flexing their muscles like someone here (I forget who) mentioned recently?

I was worried Disney was going to eliminate Searchlight after the Fox acquisition but perhaps they will continue to fund projects if they bring in Best Picture nominations and (last year) wins.

The 5% rule was suspended in order to assure a ten picture count.

[Reza]

I was going to list Four Good Days as a film I needed to watch when I discovered I had already seen it. One of those obscure independent films starring Glenn Close as the concerned mother of a drug addict played by Mila Kunis. Weird that its song would be singled out for a nomination. The Academy really loves Diane Warren to keep nominating her for the most random of songs.

[anonymous1980]

Anyone want to argue for another year?

I think one year that is comparable is 2003. I don't think ANYONE was expecting those City of God nominations to happen. Keshia Castle-Hughes getting a Best Lead Actress nomination (after being campaigned in Supporting) was a bit of a shock too. In the other acting categories, I do believe Marcia Gay Harden's and Djimon Honsou's respective nominations were also largely unexpected.

[Mister Tee]

40 hours or so later, serious question: was this the most entertaining/surprise-filled nominations morning we’ve seen? At least since the immortal 2012, but I’m not sure this one didn’t surpass it in the overall –- there were surprises up and down the categories: lower-tier things like The Rescue not making documentary or A Hero missing from International, up to the top categories, where even questions for which we thought we were prepared (the directing and actress scrambles) turned out unexpected ways.

Some of you may know: there are now people who record reactions to nominations in real-time for YouTube. I’m not proud of this, but I watched a few, last night; the viewing confirmed my take: this set of nominations discombobulated the minds of the Oscar community more than I’ve ever seen.

It happened in such rolling fashion, you could almost swear it was orchestrated. Right off the bat, there was that whammy: Jessie Buckley, then, one name later, Judi Dench. Instantly, the supporting actress slate -– one of the few that seemed set – had expectations thoroughly upended. On the videos, you can see “Wait – what?” reactions take hold -- first hearing a name considered a long shot, then one barely in consideration. It was like a fight where the challenger lands a surprise harsh blow in the opening seconds; the champ staggers a bit, just hoping to get his footing back.

The next couple of categories –- costumes, makeup, sound, score –- offered some respite. Makeup was the rare category where nearly everyone nailed all five nominees. People noted the presence of Parallel Mothers in score (along with the absence of French Dispatch), but that was in a normal range of misses. And adapted screenplay, which had seemed murky a month or so ago, actually aligned pretty easily (at least for those who’d assumed writers, if anyone, would be Drive My Car’s champions).

But original screenplay threw its curve, which some were slow to pick up on -– the category was two or three names in before it registered: Whoa!; Belfast was first, meaning no Ricardos. What was taking its place? The list went down to the end…and suddenly there was Worst Person in the World –- a movie whose campaign every Oscar watcher had considered a disaster. Maybe NEON wasn't such an incompetent campaigner.

Then, we were on to supporting actor, which again tossed out early expectations (Affleck, Cooper), making Hinds (who, let’s not forget, missed SAG) the first name read out. And instead of, later, Leto, it was Jesse Plemons, and then…J.K. Simmons! How could that be? The Ricardos had missed screenplay, it was crashing. This didn’t make sense.

We went into the five-minute interval not really sure where things were headed. Unexpected results in many above-the-line categories. Were there more to come? (Spoiler: yes.)

In round two, editing offered surprises, but the sort only true Oscar geeks understand -– Belfast and Licorice Pizza were excluded (along with West Side Story), bad news for them; King Richard and tick…tick…Boom! were in their stead. Surely this was good news for tick…tick’s best picture hopes?

For those who were aware of Diane Warren’s authorship, “Somehow You Do” elicited a will-they-never-learn? For those unversed, it was what-the-hell-is-that?

Most of the blogging community had only recently realized something BJ taught us long ago: Oscar voters are really stingy with nominations for Marvel, even for visual effects. So, naturally, with people blithely predicting everything but Marvel, the branch went with them twice. A small-potatoes surprise, given the context, but, remeber: these are people who live to predict everything right. (Side note on the TV presentation: that firefighter who read the nominees was introduced as a long-time movie fan; he sure proved he was, kicking off his recitation with “The envelope, please” –- a phrase not heard at the Oscars this millennium.)

The visual categories flew by with just the blip in production design (another thing many picked up on in retrospect -– “Something’s missing; oh, god, it’s French Dispatch!”) International Film and Documentary, though, had those major omissions (Flee’s unprecedented triple came at the expense of A Hero and The Rescue). Many had warned the documentary branch was known to leave out top contenders, but Summer of Soul was the source of the concern; people were still sighing with relief the movie had survived when they realized it was The Rescue that had been sandbagged. (It was supposed to be the movie that won when Summer of Soul was omitted.)

Finally came the top categories. Best actor, which could have done something interesting with its one weak slot, chose the path of least resistance. But best actress…I don’t think I need to tell you. The candidates I’d heard most often mentioned as apt to miss the cut were Chastain, Cruz and Stewart -– and there they all were, nominated. On the videos I watched, there’s a bunch of “wow”’s when Cruz’s name pops up, but when Kidman comes next…and then Stewart follows…I think the Oscar universe spun off its access. (And we’ll now not know, at least till she comes up for consideration again, where they’d have alphabetized Lady Gaga.)

But we weren’t done yet; it was on to director. As a long-time believer in Hamaguchi, I wasn’t surprised he turned up. But even I wasn’t prepared for what came next. The announcers moved right to PTA, about which I was thrilled…but then, as with supporting actress, there was a general “Wait – what?” It’s not as if no one had predicted Villeneuve could be snubbed -– but he had seemed to many of us least likely (after Campion) to be the victim of the directing shuffle. It was as if the directors’ branch had thought, Hey, it’s a morning of surprises; we deserve to get in on the action.

I said in the alphabet thread, best picture was liable to be anti-climactic after the acting races, and it was…but it still had a small surprise left. The Ricardos, completing its bipolar day, was immediately gone from the chase. Drive My Car answered the “can it really make it?” question in the affirmative, leaving suspense down to which of the late-alphabet movies –- Tragedy of Macbeth or tick…tick…Boom! –- was going to grab the last open slot. Most people seemed sure it would be the musical...until, utterly unexpectedly, Nightmare Alley slipped in. Not a shocker on the scale of what we’d seen over the preceding half-hour, but a final declaration that the damned precursors weren’t in charge. Completing a morning that, I’ll repeat my contention, contained more surprise end-to-end than any year I can recall.

Anyone want to argue for another year?

[Franz Ferdinand]

Apologies if someone has brought this one up earlier, but Kenneth Branagh has now been nominated in a record 7 different categories:
- Best Picture (his first nomination)
- Best Director
- Best Actor
- Best Supporting Actor
- Best Adapted Screenplay
- Best Original Screenplay (his first nomination)
- Best Live Action Short

[Big Magilla]

It's not likely, but possible that this will end up a year like 1952 when the front-runners for Best Picture were a western (High Noon) and a film set in Ireland (The Quiet Man), both of which were nominated for Best Director (with one winning), while the surprise winner turned out to be a box-office hit whose director was not nominated (The Greatest Show on Earth).

DeMille was nominated Best Director for Greatest Show.

Drat! I was misremembering. It was The Ten Commandments he wasn't nominated for four years later.

[OscarGuy]

I knew Woodstock was in for Film Editing, but I had forgotten Sound. I'd say Flee has the more impressive set of three nominations, but three nominations is three nominations.

[anonymous1980]

Flee is the most nominated documentary ever

It's tied with Woodstock. Both have 3.

NOTE: Watching the shorts (doc, live-action and animated) will NOT give you a leg up on predictions. I saw most of the shortlisted films this year (all but 3 of the animated and 4 of the live-action) and I only managed to correctly predict 2 in doc and animated and 1 in live-action. Going by your personal opinion will only get you so far and it's damn near impossible to gauge and speculate what Academy voters who vote in this category are looking for. You will probably do just as good just eenie-mean-maynie-mo-ing it every year and hope for the best.

[Greg]

The sole anomaly was Nightmare Alley, which has to have the oddest nomination profile of any best picture nominee under this recent system: cinematography/production design/costume design/film.

During the recent Best Picture expansion, Selma got just song/film.

[Eenusch]

It's not likely, but possible that this will end up a year like 1952 when the front-runners for Best Picture were a western (High Noon) and a film set in Ireland (The Quiet Man), both of which were nominated for Best Director (with one winning), while the surprise winner turned out to be a box-office hit whose director was not nominated (The Greatest Show on Earth).

DeMille was nominated Best Director for Greatest Show.

[rolotomasi99]

The sole anomaly was Nightmare Alley, which has to have the oddest nomination profile of any best picture nominee under this recent system: cinematography/production design/costume design/film. Someone mentioned Black Panther as antecedent, but that had a somewhat broader panoply of categories -- both sounds, song and score, in addition to costume & production design. To have just three visual techs wouldn't have seemed a strong formula to me. Maybe we need to credit Fox Searchlight, who've done very well in this category over the past decade-plus.

I liked NIGHTMARE ALLEY more than CODA, DON'T LOOK UP, KING RICHARD, and WEST SIDE STORY but I am absolutely baffled by how it was able to find itself at number 1 on at least 5% of ballots. Was this the voters in the technical branches flexing their muscles like someone here (I forget who) mentioned recently?

I was worried Disney was going to eliminate Searchlight after the Fox acquisition but perhaps they will continue to fund projects if they bring in Best Picture nominations and (last year) wins.

[Jefforey Smith]

....a hearty disagreement with those who said the presentation this morning was good. I found Leslie Jordan insufferably cute, and his mispronunciation of names so egregious, I retroactively apologized to Tiffany Haddish. Not knowing how to pronounce Denis Villeneuve’s name at this point is unforgivable. I don’t know why they feel we need banter along with these things; the information is plenty on its own.

Agreed about the presenters this morning. Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra were much better last year. As were John Cho and Issa Rae two years ago. I especially liked the nominations announcement in 2017.

[Big Magilla]

As for Magilla sticking by Judi Dench… yeah, congratulations on your prediction – though it’s somewhat easier when you predict her for every single movie she makes.

Not even close to being true.

I find her an exasperating presence in many films, especially in remakes of such classics as The Importance of Being Earnest, Pride & Prejudice, Murder on the Orient Express, and Blithe Spirit. I was underwhelmed by her performances in many things she has been nominated for including Iris, My Week with Marilyn, J. Edgar, Nine, Tulip Fever, Victoria and Abdul, and others. I thought she was an embarrassment in Tea with Mussolini which her friends Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith knocked out of the ballpark. How she won an Emmy for Cranford over Eileen Atkins I have yet to figure out. But, when she's good, she's good, and she's grand in Belfast, her best performance since Philomena.

[Mister Tee]

As always, a ton to comment on. A real smorgasbord of a slate -- I'd say everyone was very right about some things, and very wrong about others. Which tells me the voters did their jobs this year: whatever else, this was not just a cut-and-paste job of assorted precursors; the categories were thought through individually. I wonder if the extra time in the calendar had something to do with that?

My 2009/10-derived theory about best picture -- that it would be dominated by screenplay nominees, with directing candidates added -- proved out: 8 from the best picture slate were screenplay-slotted, and Spielberg made it 9. The sole anomaly was Nightmare Alley, which has to have the oddest nomination profile of any best picture nominee under this recent system: cinematography/production design/costume design/film. Someone mentioned Black Panther as antecedent, but that had a somewhat broader panoply of categories -- both sounds, song and score, in addition to costume & production design. To have just three visual techs wouldn't have seemed a strong formula to me. Maybe we need to credit Fox Searchlight, who've done very well in this category over the past decade-plus.

Belfast did okay -- around what the less-sanguine among us predicted months ago (we'll pass over the "Could get 15 nominations" contention.) It had a somewhat random run -- missing cinematography, picking up an oddball sound, while failing at editing. And, of course, getting its older generation of actors cited while missing with the younger leads. More on that further on.

Drive My Car lived up to best-realistic expectations, and proved critics still have SOME sway. It's the fourth year in a row there's been a foreign-language nominee for best picture; new territory. It's also the 4th year in a row with at least one foreign-language director nominee, one short of the 1972-1976 streak. (Truly impressively, the years 1968-76 had only one year -- 1971 -- without a subtitled director. Which is nothing on the writers' branch, which had a foreign-language nominee -- often more than one -- each year from 1959 through 1980.)

BAFTA was pretty misleading even with its non-juried categories, as you'd have thought from there that Licorice Pizza was going to rock and West Side Story would crash. The former did sort of bare minimum -- though, if you're going to be limited to 3 nods, film/director/screenplay are the ones to get. West Side didn't exactly soar -- it still missed the editing nod that once seemed in its win-grasp -- but it got back the cinematography nod it had missed throughout the season, and Spielberg survived the directing musical chairs game.

Denis Villeneuve did not and, as okri says, category-competition disparity or not, it's ridiculous for him to be nominated as screenwriter but not director, when the preponderance of evidence is way tilted the other direction. Two schools of thought on this: 1) This is Christopher Nolan/Inception; he's just not taken seriously enough for this branch; 2) This is Peter Jackson/The Two Towers -- knowing there's a part two coming, the directors may be waiting to honor him for the full project. (Before you sneer: most of us laughed off "They're waiting" with Jackson as a ludicrous excuse, and damn if he didn't come back and win it all.)

The Power of the Dog, with its notable cast, had strong potential for close-to-10 nominations, but making it to 12 is pretty remarkable. I can’t be the only one who did a double-take at the production design nomination. It’s clearly the front-runner, but, with all that, I do know people (in the business) who don’t like it at all, so I wouldn’t be ready to declare the race over.

To the acting. SAG had, I believe, its worst year ever in forecasting the four categories, but best actor was a 5/5 match. I guess it helps to start with 4 more or less locked in. As noted below, it’s the first best actor slate filled with all previous nominees since 1980 – including Denzel’s 9th citation, which elevates him into a group anyone’d be proud to join: Tracy, Pacino, and Newman. Only the mighty five of Streep, Hepburn, Nicholson, Davis and Olivier stand above him.

In the predictions thread, I said I’d prefer my two alternates (Cruz and Stewart) to Gaga and Kidman, so I got ¾ of what I wanted – unfortunately losing Alana Haim in the process. Like Sabin, I can’t wait to see who’s declared the can’t-lose candidate today, now that Gaga has been eliminated. It’s hilarious that, just when the bloggers were ready to declare BAFTA the top precursor, they came up with a slate that includes zero Oscar matches. A lot of these folk spend time patting themselves on the back for their accuracy rate in predicting Oscars, but they’re really only good at copy-and-paste – last year, with a fractured best actress race, they flubbed pretty badly (both Davis and Mulligan getting predicted more often than McDormand), and I expect this year, with scattered portents, will go much the same.

By the way, even with ten candidates. no best actress contender came from a best picture nominee. Even more remarkable: only two best actor candidates did. This has got to be statistical rarity.

Yes, it’s cute that both the lead and supporting categories will have couples nominated.

J.K. Simmons turned out the only real surprise in supporting actor. He was part of Ricardos’ up-and-down morning –- missing screenplay, getting both uncertain acting nods, failing under picture. I’m very pleased to see Jesse Plemons –- my Who’ll Be Back choice a year or two back – get noted. Also happy for Hinds, who’s had a long and honorable career. And I agree with danfrank that, much as I like Licorice Pizza, I didn’t get the love for Bradley Cooper in it, and will be much happier for him to win for something more deserving down the line.

When supporting actress (our first main category announced) started out with Buckley, the template was out the window from the start. Two names later, Judi Dench meant we were actually getting a below-par match to precursors –- an unexpected result in the category that seemed closest to set. Negga’s omission was my biggest regret of the day: she was my choice for the win, and her absence leaves me without a rooting interest. As for Magilla sticking by Judi Dench… yeah, congratulations on your prediction – though it’s somewhat easier when you predict her for every single movie she makes.

Adapted screenplay, which looked tricky a month ago (and was made trickier by all those WGA disqualifications) ended up pretty straightforward. The biggest screenplay surprise was The Worst Person in the World –- haven’t seen it yet, but cheers for Trier. And kudos to NEON who, despite our grousing, got its two big candidates (Stewart and Worst Person) on the slate.

Sabin’s theory, that you need a production design nomination to win cinematography, won’t be tested this year, as the two categories match 5/5. Has this ever happened before? I can recall at least one year (1969) where costumes/production design lined up perfectly, but I can’t think of one where this happened. Of the choices: the voters for once resisted black-and-white (Belfast), but perhaps only because they already had their fix with Macbeth. I think Dune has to be favored for production design, but cinematography could go Dog, Dune or Macbeth. Oh, and leaving off French Dispatch for production design is one of the day’s outrages.

Editing omitted both the anticipated Licorice Pizza and the kind-of-needed-it Belfast, but included tick…tick…Boom! – making one wonder if the latter was close to making the list of ten best pictures.

So, Alexander Desplat doesn’t get nominated EVERY year. And Alberto Iglesias continues to have fans in that branch.
As does Diane Warren. Is she even faintly embarrassed by the clear toady-ism the songwriters keep showing her? It’s so for naught; she’s never in with even a chance to actually win.

Hey, I’ve already seen three of the visual effects nominees, and a 4th (Spider Man) I would have watched anyway. Much less pain than usual in this category.

My tip, to always go for old guys in prosthetics, paid off, as Coming 2 America crashed the make-up list. And Tammy Faye brings Jessica Chastain into the best actress contest with at least one other nomination as support.

Cool that Flee made all three categories. Big question: is it likely to compete for any of them? And, which? Hard to believe it could catch Drive My Car. And it seems an underdog in the Encanto/Mitchells vs. the Machines face-off. But could it vie for the doc feature prize? I’m happy Summer of Soul survived the branch’s quirky exclusion tendency, but don’t rate it a sure winner.

And it took me a while to notice that The Rescue – not long ago touted as hot winner prospect – did fail to make the cut. As, of course, did A Hero, which was one of the day’s bigger surprises. I don’t like any of the foreigns I’ve seen as much as Drive My Car, but I’d have picked A Hero over Hand of God.

Finally (yes, this opus is finally drawing to a close), a hearty disagreement with those who said the presentation this morning was good. I found Leslie Jordan insufferably cute, and his mispronunciation of names so egregious, I retroactively apologized to Tiffany Haddish. Not knowing how to pronounce Denis Villeneuve’s name at this point is unforgivable. I don’t know why they feel we need banter along with these things; the information is plenty on its own.

Believe it or not, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things; if so, I’ll be along with them later. For now, this is my exhaustive take.