1. This is the most predictable Best Picture field I can remember, a carbon copy of the PGA nominations, and proof that either these were all really good nominees (honestly, they were more mainstream acceptable than a lot of masterpieces, though I still haven't seen them all) or, more likely, Oscar is getting less creative in the post-Covid era.
2. It's impossible to know who was in 11th place, and we'll probably discuss it for years (same with who was in 10th), but I'm guessing for posterity it was either The Color Purple (based on precursors) or May December/Napoleon (based on today's nominations). Hell, it could've been something that had a total shutout like Origin, Air, or All of Us Strangers for all I know.
3. I will unveil my Top 10 on Sunday, so you'll know how much overlap I have.
4. Justine Triet bumps out Alexander Payne (sorry, Gerwig was probably in seventh) to ensure we don't get an all-male Best Director lineup.
5. There's several longtime character actors getting their first nominations for Best Actor (Colman Domingo, Jeffrey Wright, Cillian Murphy), which is pretty cool, but collectively this is one of the duller Best Actor lineups I've seen in a while. Not bad, but dull.
6. I was right to predict Annette Bening (who pushed HARD for this nomination even though she had no shot at winning...likely trying to bank for a future, more plausible bid), but wrong to think it would be Carey Mulligan missing. Instead it was Margot Robbie.
7. Annette Bening has a weird streak of being the "probable second place" in all of her campaigns, which ends with Nyad.
8. The internet was losing its minds over Ryan Gosling making it but not Margot Robbie and saying it was anti-feminist. Three problems with that. One, Gosling was better than Robbie (sorry, but that's just reality if you saw the film-no knock on Robbie, but Gosling steals the picture). Two, they aren't in the same category-it wasn't Gosling who took her nomination. And three, it was likely Annette Bening, pioneering actress of another era, who took Robbie's nomination, and she took it for playing a trailblazing female athlete (hardly a death to feminism moment). If you're mad about "Ken getting in but not Barbie" and think that makes this morning's nominations anti-feminist...maybe go outside?
9. I have a kind of pact with myself to not get mad at actors for their first nominations, because it can take decades to achieve that moment, and we should celebrate that, but Sterling K. Brown is genuinely bad (and homophobic) in Rustin. I'm not someone who needs gay people played by gay actors, but he is not believable as a gay man in that movie, and his performance is dreadful. There were so many stronger options in that field that were from in-play films...why did he get in for such dreck? Worst of the 20 nominated performances, by a lot.
10. Emily Blunt, after nearly two decades of trying, finally gets the nomination she should've gotten in 2006 for The Devil Wears Prada. Doubt she gets the win she deserved at the time, though, as the supporting trophies already have Downey & Randolph printed on them.
11. Really want a reunion photo with Scorsese, Foster, & De Niro before this season is done.
12. Killers of the Flower Moon getting bumped from Adapted Screenplay kind of makes me wonder if there's any statue it'll actually win...that Gladstone miss at BAFTA hurt her chances.
13. The Taste of Things becomes the annual "should've gone wide in the US sooner" release from a predicted International Feature Film contender that doesn't get nominated and is now quickly ushered out of theaters. Io Capitano, The Teachers Lounge, and Perfect Days all get $1+ million added to their box offices now though.
14. Disney misses ANOTHER Animated Short field, its longest drought since 1998-2000. On top of only getting one Animated Feature Film in and only one MCU nomination with three contenders...it's a dark day for the Mouse House.
15. Disney Animation also missed both music categories. In fact, all animated films (despite three shortlisted contenders) got skipped for Original Score.
16. We're eventually going to have congressional hearings over how Diane Warren keeps getting nominated for the strangest movies known to man. I suppose in a year where we gave 8 nominations to a movie about a doll, we can spare one nomination for a movie about Cheetos.
17. John Williams scores his 54th (and potentially final) Best Score nomination for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. We talked at length about Williams' quest for this nomination, so click there if you want more thoughts, but I'm very excited for him, and a little melancholy over this. Listening to the 5 nominated scores, it has to be said that while you can quibble over who is best of the five (there is more than one right answer), at 91, Williams is still capable of putting out great, memorable music.
18. He won't win though. Oppenheimer will. Oppenheimer might sweep every tech it's up for save Production Design (one of two wins Barbie will get, along with Original Song).
19. El Conde proves you should never ignore the ASC and Golda proves that the Makeup branch will never change, even when their behaviors have become more predictable (everyone I know called that nomination).
20. In a morning with honestly no big shocks (we only had one No Globe/SAG with America Ferrera, and she was my #1 guess in that article), the truly shocking thing was Mission Impossible getting in for Sound & Visual Effects when none of the previous six films have done so. Other than X-Men, there's really no precedence for a movie 4+ films into a series getting Oscar nominations without some sort of reboot involved like Mad Max: Fury Road.
21. Speaking of droughts-Godzilla finally got to the Oscars today. Godzilla Minus One was a prediction I made that I had zilch confidence in, and am thrilled to see (it'll make My OVP Ballot when I get to it). This is the first nomination for the monster.
22. A friendly reminder that the last time that Ryan Gosling sang an Oscar-nominated song, he had John Legend fill in for him, so I'll believe "I'm Just Ken" when I see it.
23. The Visual Effects category may be the most open I've ever seen it? Honestly-with no Best Picture nominee (there's not even a film nominated for acting) in this list and no big blockbuster frontrunner, it's impossible to guess. Will it be Napoleon (most Oscar-bait picture?), Godzilla (it's the fan favorite), Mission Impossible (could this be a way to honor the series ala The Bourne Ultimatum?), The Creator (that Sound nomination indicates wider support than expected) or Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 3 (with Disney not in play anywhere else, will they push hard to finally get the MCU an Academy Award, and also get a sendoff for one of the few branches of that universe that fans haven't tired of yet?).
24. I assume The Boy and the Heron will get the win over Spider-Verse and Elemental, but what does a girl have to do to see Robot Dreams? They picked the film over Aardman & Disney (plus the Globe-nominated Suzume), and I've heard from many it's the best of the five even if it has no chance of winning, so I'm eager to see it!
25. We'll be finishing up 2000 Oscar Viewing Project in the next week, and then we've got two more on-deck already (I've been on top of my screenings). I haven't seen nine of these movies (Golda, Flamin' Hot, The Zone of Interest, The Teachers Lounge, Robot Dreams, Io Capitano, Perfect Days, American Symphony, & El Conde), and while a chunk of these I will get to in the coming days (follow me on Letterboxd as I've got reviews of most of this morning's nominees there, and will check in on at least five of these in the next two weeks), two (The Teachers Lounge and Robot Dreams) don't have US release dates yet, so we probably won't get to the OVP for 2023 until this summer. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll have more takes on this year's race.
3 comments:
I very much enjoy reading your Twitter comments today and this blog post about the nominations. There are always so many so-called film experts on social media who throw around words like "travesty" and "egregious" about the nods they disagree with (and I think many of them have no idea who votes in the different categories or how the voting works), and they can be exhausting.
Yeah. I have no idea what some of the posters on Twitter yesterday's problems were. If my favorite movie of the year got 8 nominations at the Oscars, I would have been ECSTATIC. Calling it a travesty because you didn't get the precise nominations you wanted even on a day where your movie was insanely celebrated feels like you need to touch grass a bit.
I saw one person who was apoplectic about Barbie's lack of nominations for Best Director, and she was completely bewildered how the Academy could nominate Gerwig for Best Screenplay but not for her overall shepherding of the film. When I offered that different branch members vote only in their categories, so the screenwriters had nothing to do with the director vote, she got even angrier and blocked me.
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