2024 Oscar Viewing Project

For the first time ever, I finished watching all of the Oscar Viewing Project nominees before the Oscars, a huge moment for me overall.  I didn't do my official year-end awards my brother, however, until this past weekend, so I am publishing both this AND the My Ballot weeks after I finished these (and am actually writing this before the Oscars so for the first time ever I am doing this without knowing whom Oscar actually picked).  As is tradition (we will not do our 20+ articles anymore, but I will be logging every completed OVP in one giant article here when I finish, hopefully on a monthly cadence for either an OVP or My Ballot going forward), here is the Top 10 of the domestic box office:

1. Inside Out 2

2. Deadpool & Wolverine

3. Wicked

4. Moana 2

5. Despicable Me 4

6. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

7. Dune: Part Two

8. Twisters

9. Sonic the Hedgehog 3

10. Mufasa: The Lion King

Keeping with recent tradition, I saw virtually all of these, missing only Sonic 3 (is this good...I generally like Jim Carrey, so should I get caught up on these?).  In terms of box office I also missed Bad Boys: Ride or Die, It Ends With Us, and Venom: The Last Dance, but saw virtually every major awards contender (save for Lee with Kate Winslet...again, is it good?), including, of course, the Oscar nominees.  Let's look back on 2024, remembering a time when a Democrat was in the White House, when the President-Elect briefly faced justice for his crimes, and when we were all flipping for Simone Biles & the sexy nerd aesthetic of Stephen Nedoroscik.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note from John: When I did this series during the time when I wrote individual articles, and had this blog be a daily part of my life, I made a point of highlighting each nominee in my many write-ups.  While I will be writing these every time I complete a year (hopefully monthly going forward), I can't make that time commitment, either in terms of number of articles or in terms of giving each nominee their due with a mention.  I promise, though, that I have given each nominee their due under the confines of the specific category while making my rankings (and of course I've seen every single nominated picture), including giving higher rankings to movies I didn't like if the craft was better than ones I did like (Oscar should consider that).  Hopefully you enjoy the trimmed-down, but still devoted to the original concept version of the OVP we'll have going forward!

Picture

1. Dune: Part Two

2. Nickel Boys

3. The Brutalist

4. I'm Still Here

5. Conclave

6. Anora

7. A Complete Unknown

8. Wicked

9. The Substance

10. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: I'll start out by saying something that I suspect gets repeated in this article-I did not think that 2024 was a particularly impressive year for the movies.  In fact, I thought it was the dullest year for movies since 2020, a combination of slavish over-praise of the Oscar fare (which was largely middling more than grand), and many of the blockbusters being underwhelming.  That said, I do really admire the first 3 films on this list.  Dune is better than the original, even if it's not quite as non-descript, Nickel Boys is an experiment that largely works, and The Brutalist is truly perfect until the intermission card comes up.  The rest...well the order speaks for itself, and because Oscar can only focus on ten movies in a given year anymore...we'll get to them all more in detail below.

Director

1. Brady Corbet (The Brutalist)

2. Sean Baker (Anora)

3. Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)

4. James Mangold (A Complete Unknown)

5. Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: Without Denis Villeneuve, this contest becomes considerably easier.  Corbet botches the ending to The Brutalist, but that's more an issue with the writers and one key supporting actor than the direction, which is really the cornerstone of the movie.  He deserves the win, with Baker second over Fargeat because I think that his story feels easier to get off the rails (and also I liked Anora better than The Substance even though I'll own that Anora is more a writer's movie and The Substance is more a director's picture).  I still can't believe that James Mangold, after years of attempting the same route (middle-of-the-road AMPAS fare like Walk the Line, Girl Interrupted, & Ford v. Ferrari that has no directorial signature) managed to grab a nomination.

Actor

1. Adrien Brody (The Brutalist)

2. Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown)

3. Ralph Fiennes (Conclave)

4. Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)

5. Colman Domingo (Sing Sing)

The Lowdown: This is as good of a time as any to remind you of two things: 1) The OVP is made in a vacuum, so I do not consider whether someone has an Oscar or not when handing out trophies and 2) I have a My Ballot where I pick my own nominees, and in that I also decide in a vacuum who should win.  This isn't about career awards, so under those circumstances I have no problem handing Adrien Brody a second statue for his luminous work in The Brutalist even if in real-life I might have thrown a bone to the fine work of Chalamet and Fiennes, who are both still hunting for their first Oscar.  I don't think that Sebastian Stan's film choice would impact his ranking (A Different Man would also get him 4th, for the record), though I will admit I'm excited by this direction of his career, as I love a handsome man finding his inner character actor.

Actress

1. Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here)

2. Mikey Madison (Anora)

3. Demi Moore (The Substance)

4. Cynthia Erivo (Wicked)

5. Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: With or without the scandal, it's an easy call to put Gascon's performance in fifth.  Emilia Perez is a dreadful, cinematic abortion of a movie (virtually nothing redeemable in it...the worst nominee since Bohemian Rhapsody), and she is not up to snuff as the lead.  For the actual win, I'm going with Torres, whose quiet determination in I'm Still Here has the added bonus of a script that always knows where she's headed, which you cannot say for Madison's (solid) Anora.  Demi Moore's role in The Substance has a lot of fans, and while I think she's better than the movie (which badly overshoots its ending), she can't carry it through & makes Elizabeth too unknowable.

Supporting Actor

1. Yura Borisov (Anora)

2. Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)

3. Guy Pearce (The Brutalist)

4. Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice)

5. Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown)

The Lowdown: This is a quick reminder that I will always dock a point for any actor who is obviously the lead but is committing category fraud to improve their Oscar chances.  If I was judging based on total performances, I might give it to Culkin's really strong work as a broken man filled with overflowing charisma, but under these rules, there's no way he takes out Borisov's sensitive, brooding security guard in Anora, a scene-stealing performance that makes the movie.  Guy Pearce is the only actor who seems capable of holding together The Brutalist in its back half, but I have him in third both because his competition is good (expect a few repeat names when we get to the My Ballots tomorrow), as well as because I don't think he lands the final moments of the picture quite well enough.  I didn't get what Strong or Norton were doing, and feel like this was a nomination for being showy more than being good.

Supporting Actress

1. Ariana Grande (Wicked)

2. Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown)

3. Isabella Rossellini (Conclave)

4. Felicity Jones (The Brutalist)

5. Zoe Saldana (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: Once again, Saldana loses a point because she's the lead (without that I think she is ahead of Jones given she at least understands the film's tone).  You could make an argument that Grande is also the lead, but because there's an argument I keep her in first, and honestly even without that I might keep her there due to a weak field.  Barbaro's Joan Baez looks the part, but I wanted a bit more of the ambition of someone who is more famous than Dylan having him usurp her throne, and the lack of resolve there shows how difficult a Dylan biopic was always going to be.  Grande's work is in her wheelhouse, and sometimes borders into parody of Kristin Chenoweth (who is the better actor), but she's so good it's hard to fault feeling indebted to the original.

Adapted Screenplay

1. Nickel Boys

2. Conclave

3. A Complete Unknown

4. Sing Sing

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: I have not read Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning source material (though a copy of it is sitting behind me...the eternal nagging of the books on my shelf that I've never read continues to haunt my dreams), but what comes across on the film is spectacular.  A meditative, thoughtful look at how hard it is to beat the system, and how life can find a way...and a plot can find a way even as you mine Terrence Malick for inspiration.  Conclave would make a worthy winner as well, giving us a really scrumptious 1990's-style thriller that is virtually impossible to find in 2024.

Original Screenplay

1. A Real Pain

2. Anora

3. The Brutalist

4. The Substance

5. September 5

The Lowdown: Jesse Eisenberg's look at how we keep certain people in our lives and in our hearts years after they stop feeling like they fit into whom we became is really wonderful.  I know the focus is on grief, and the mourning that happens when we lose someone we can't replace, but that juxtaposed against the question mark of the friendship that's core to the film is really why this is something special.  Anora and The Brutalist both have wonderful sections, but they don't know how to inform key characters (specifically their female leads) and The Brutalist doesn't know how to make its ending work (which is not the case for Anora-that ending lands the film), so I can't seriously put them against A Real Pain in this field (Eisenberg wins handily).

Animated Feature Film

1. The Wild Robot

2. Flow

3. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

4. Memoir of a Snail

5. Inside Out 2

The Lowdown: It's become depressing how predictable this category is, with even the off-beat or independent films heavily telegraphed the entire season so there's no surprises on nomination morning.  One of many reasons why I wish this was only a three-wide like I'll do at tomorrow's My Ballot for 2024.  But taking that out of the equation, this is a solid list, particularly the top two which are completely different looks at how nature cannot endure the touch of humanity.  I went with The Wild Robot because I felt its story more, but either would make a worthy winner.  I will note, that in the first 19 years of this category, Disney/Pixar only got the #5 slot once (2002's Lilo and Stitch)...in the past five years it's gotten it 80% of the time.  This is not an appealing trend for the Mouse House.

International Feature Film

1. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)

2. Flow (Latvia)

3. I'm Still Here (Brazil)

4. The Girl with the Needle (Denmark)

5. Emilia Perez (France)

The Lowdown: As I said above, I wrote this before the Oscar ceremony, so I don't know any winners, and this is the category I'm most curious to see where it landed (it might not be the most shocking win, but it's the one I am trying to guess if the Emilia Perez buzz has died enough to allow for a different Best Picture nominee instead).  Really, though, this shouldn't be a contest.  While I admire I'm Still Here's look at how sins shouldn't necessarily be forgiven if they're heinous enough (and sure as hell shouldn't be forgotten), and the gorgeous computer game aesthetic of Flow, The Seed of the Sacred Fig was one of the best movies of 2024, full stop.  An engrossing look at fascism and the way that it strips away any shred of humanity you have...assuming you had much to begin with (because fascism also numbs you to such horror).

Sound

1. Dune: Part Two

2. The Wild Robot

3. A Complete Unknown

4. Wicked

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: I still miss when the Sound categories were split in two, but honestly...I get why looking at this.  I will own that I am not giving these statues to the same movie, but it's hard to argue with Dune being the dominant choice here, its gorgeous elevation of the sounds of the deserts of Arrakis combined with new special effects and great crowd work.  Behind it are The Wild Robot (I love the nature sounds, combined with strong music & vocal work) and the concert recreations of A Complete Unknown.  Solid lineup overall, honestly, and I want to say that as most of it I don't repeat tomorrow-lots of good choices this year.

Score

1. The Brutalist

2. The Wild Robot

3. Conclave

4. Emilia Perez

5. Wicked

The Lowdown: This is the first of only two times that an Emilia Perez nomination isn't in last place (the next category is the other one), and there's a reason for that-the musical score of Wicked is lovely, but it's not original...I can't pinpoint anything in the score that isn't borrowing from Stephen Schwartz's fabulous Broadway composition, and so this nomination feels like a cheap way to up Schwartz's (and the film's) Oscar count, even if the actual score is better than Emilia Perez.  That said, the other three scores are all wonderful, and will show up tomorrow with my My Ballot, best of them being the atypical, confrontational work of The Brutalist.

Original Song

1. "Like a Bird" (Sing Sing)

2. "Never Too Late" (Elton John: Never Too Late)

3. "El Mal" (Emilia Perez)

4. "The Journey" (The Six Triple Eight)

5. "Mi Camino" (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: I do not think the music in Emilia Perez, even the lauded numbers like "Mi Camino" is any good.  The singing is not strong, the music feels too conversational, and the lyricism is dreadful (the best of the bunch, "La Vaginoplastia" is at least catchy and visually interesting).  That said, "El Mal's" problems are more so the way it's staged (bad lighting & dance direction) than it being a bad song.  Honestly, none of these are that good, both because 2024 wasn't a great year for film tunes, and because Oscar needed to get creative to come up with a decent lineup in a year where there weren't many good choices.  I picked "Like a Bird" because it's fitting to the film and doesn't feel as disposable as Elton John's "Never Too Late," a song that has his great vocals but feels like a cheap ending after hearing so many actual classics in the documentary.

Cinematography

1. The Brutalist

2. Dune: Part Two

3. Maria

4. Nosferatu

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: We'll get into the Best Picture nominee that I can't believe didn't make this lineup tomorrow when we discuss the My Ballot, but for today let's all be thankful for the two deserved nominees that DID make it.  Between The Brutalist and Dune: Part Two, I'm favoring The Brutalist more so because it's truly inventive and it pays off...getting experimental with a movie can always be a risk, so when that risk pays off, you need to use it to break the tie, but both are sensational.  That Emilia Perez is nominated here, given that they literally couldn't even get the lighting cues right during the centerpiece musical number, is insanity to me-other than Best Actress, maybe the worst nomination from the film?

Costume Design

1. Wicked

2. Conclave

3. A Complete Unknown

4. Gladiator II

5. Nosferatu

The Lowdown: Best Cinematography is my favorite of the My Ballot lineups I pulled together, while Costume is unfortunately my least favorite.  That isn't meant as a slight to the winner here, Wicked, which I have made room for in tomorrow's My Ballot, but it is a sign that the costume work here wasn't as great as it could've been (I would've loved us to maybe stray a bit more from the pink-and-green motif, which is why one of my favorite costumes last year was Michelle Yeoh's celestial lilac-colored gown...but this is still great & Wicked's worthiest tech nomination).  Conclave's repeated costumes and twists on the cardinal outfit are a worthy runner-up, and lovingly-detailed.

Film Editing

1. The Brutalist

2. Conclave

3. Anora

4. Wicked

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: The invisible art, film editing for me came down to the quick plot-pacing of Conclave, and then the avant garde approach of The Brutalist.  Of the two, I was most smitten with the sheer scale & confidence of The Brutalist, a movie that I liked better, and while I will quibble with the ending, I don't think you can blame that even a little bit on editing, as even in the worst scenes I was struck by how it kept pulling the viewers into the movie, cavernous in its approach.  The nomination for Wicked, given that it's only half a movie, feels odd & maybe the most confounding (and coattails-driven) citation in 2024.

Makeup & Hairstyling

1. The Substance

2. Wicked

3. A Different Man

4. Nosferatu

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: Horror so rarely gets into this category (which is odd because An American Werewolf in London was the first film to win the statue), and given how quintessential makeup is to the success of the genre, it's kind of exciting to see its return (the last horror film to be cited was 2010's The Wolf Man).  But it's more exciting to be able to give it the crown because it's genuinely good.  Whatever issues I had with The Substance, the makeup wasn't one of them, giving us the ruthless destruction of poor Demi Moore's Elizabeth Sparkle, which is more impressive than the "borrowing from past experience" work in Wicked or the drawing a real-life comparison in A Different Man, which take the runners-up positions.

Production Design

1. The Brutalist

2. Dune: Part Two

3. Conclave

4. Nosferatu

5. Wicked

The Lowdown: In my opinion the best lineup that Oscar pulled together in 2024, none of these are stinkers, and while I won't copy this list verbatim to my My Ballot tomorrow, every one of these feels like an appropriate Oscar nominee.  I am not immune to the Oscar crutch of honoring a movie because it's about a specific production aspect, and indeed, the gorgeous work in The Brutalist (inexplicably on a $10 million budget) is hard to deny.  Dune: Part Two does a great job of expanding this world, and I was in awe of the (also weirdly inexpensive) palatial estates of Conclave, but I have to hand this one to the team from The Brutalist.

Visual Effects

1. Dune: Part Two

2. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

3. Better Man

4. Alien: Romulus

5. Wicked

The Lowdown: I grade these on a 5-star system, and I generally dock a star whenever a lead performance is in supporting or an end credits song with no presence otherwise in the movie is up, so as to even the playing field without sacrificing the nominee's chances entirely.  I think I will start to do that for movies that use dead actors without their permission (I don't care if the estate said yes...I still think it's morally repugnant).  Much of Alien: Romulus is gorgeous, and it would be higher-ranked (possibly in My Ballot territory) if they hadn't used Ian Holm the way they did (both uncanny valley and using a dead man in this way is gross).  Certainly above Better Man, which tried to cover its VFX budget with dark cinematography.  The Top 2 are indisputable-two of the most spectacular franchises around living up to their reputations once again.

Wild Oats (2016)

Film: Wild Oats (2016)
Stars: Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Lange, Billy Connolly, Howard Hesseman, Demi Moore
Director: Andy Tennant
Oscar History: No nominations (not even sure if it's eligible with the concurrent Lifetime airing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I recently caught Wild Oats on Lifetime (I believe it's also been playing in theaters, but I couldn't find it nearby and, well, I already paid for the cable).  The film struck me in a way because I kept thinking-"if the leads had British accents, this would be a huge arthouse hit."  It's true that for some reason American audiences respond to their older actors when they have names like Dench, Mirren, and Dame Maggie, but aging American actresses are something you only find on television.  This is, alas, a huge headache as MacLaine and Lange prove here, they can still elevate rather mundane material with the lightest of touches.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film itself is really standard fare as far as these things go.  You have Eva (MacLaine), a recently-widowed woman who is trying to figure out what she should do with her life after her husband's death, particularly financially, while Maddie (Lange), her best friend, has recently found out her husband is leaving her for his secretary.  Eva one day receives a check for $5 million for a life insurance policy worth only $50,000, and at Maddie's insistence, she cashes it and runs away with her pal to the Canary Islands, where both of them find love, Eva with a forgetful aging playboy (Connolly) and Maddie with a sexy younger man (Jay Hayden).

All-in-all it's a pretty opaque script-if there's any scenes you didn't see coming, you don't go to a lot of movies.  Even the midway twist, where Connolly's playboy turns out to be a conman, is pretty easy to spot as there had to be some sort of antagonist outside of the kindly, bumbling insurance man trying to get back the money (played by Howard Hesseman).  It sort of points out the obvious with the British films of this nature-they're almost entirely dependent on a love of the cast of the film, as the movie itself isn't breaking up any great quandaries about old age (this isn't Amour or The Whisperers); it's simply showing the comedic aspects of being old, but not ready to be pronounced dead.

Luckily for me, I quite like this cast, and was struck by how much fun this was to watch, even with the simplest of plots.  MacLaine, as we highlighted recently, is one of my favorite actresses, and she doesn't disappoint here-she has terrific timing with Lange, and in her limited role as her daughter, Demi Moore (don't you wish they made more movies where actresses got to play off of other actresses?).  I love the way that she still can land every single joke-you'll find yourself laughing more than you might have initially suspected, particularly because of MacLaine.  Comedy isn't really Lange's forte (she's truly a great fit for more exaggerated drama), and she hardly needs a comeback in the way that MacLaine does with newer audiences, thanks to her time on American Horror Story, but she's still fun in this-I loved the way she seduces Jay Hayden, and plays the character with her heart on her string.  I gotta say it: it was a fun movie, even if it was no one's definition of a great movie.  Something warm to watch casually on a Saturday afternoon at home.

Those were my thoughts on Wild Oats-how about yours?  Do you agree that MacLaine and Lange elevated the script, or are you sitting there thinking I oversold it because I love these two actresses?  Anyone else wonder where Demi Moore goes next in her career?  Share your thoughts below!

Best Picture & Best Actress: Oscar Trivia Time!

Considering that we went through the list of women this morning who had received crucial roles in Academy Award Best Picture nominees, I thought it might be fun to make it a day of actresses and Best Picture, and take a look at the extremely strong correlation between Best Picture and Best Actress.  As I've mentioned before, whenever a Best Picture features a woman in a crucial lead role, they nearly always get nominated.  I have my own theories as to why this occurs (though sexism rears its ugly head a bit, in my opinion, and certainly the dearth of good roles for women is also a factor), but nonetheless it's a very common occurrence, even in the expanded field.  In fact, this year marks the first time ever since we went from 5 to 5+ nominees in Best Picture where an actress, Charlize Theron, is actually the lead of a Best Picture nominee but didn't receive a corresponding Oscar nomination (the other two female leads in Best Picture nominees this year, Saoirse Ronan and Brie Larson, are both nominated).  Since we now have Theron on the list, I figured it would be fun to count down the Top 10 most-recent actresses to star in a Best Picture nominee but not get a corresponding Oscar nomination.  Let's take a look, shall we?

(Note: I am giving the film a pass if it managed a nomination for Best Actress but had two leading ladies.  However, if I didn't make that exception, Emma Stone in The Help and Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right would be seen below.  Also, I'm making a few judgment calls regarding lead and supporting for films like Jerry Maguire and The Cider House Rules-the comments are there to correct or disagree).

1. Charlize Theron (2015)

Film: Mad Max: Fury Road

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 10 nominations, though none for acting

Her Oscar History: Theron has been nominated twice, for Monster and North Country (does anyone remember that movie?), and won of course for Monster.

Precursors Won by Theron: Relatively minor-Theron received a BFCA nomination for Best Actress, but largely disappeared from the conversation despite Mad Max remaining a steady presence.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Action films almost never can land an Oscar acting nomination, even with a female lead and when they are hailed amongst the best ever (see also Number 6 on this list).  Even still, I was partially wondering if Theron might make it to the Dolby if only because it truly had been seven years since a lead actress had last missed for a Best Picture nominee and I was starting to wonder if it was still possible (I came very close to predicting her).

2. Cate Blanchett (2008)

Film: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 13 nominations, including two for acting

Her Oscar History: Blanchett is an Oscar favorite-she had a trophy and five nominations at the point of this snub, and has since won another Oscar for Blue Jasmine and is up again this year for Carol.

Precursors Won by Blanchett: Blanchett did score a BFCA nomination, but was absent for most of the rest of the season which focused on Brad Pitt and Taraji P. Henson.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Blanchett's work in the film was solid and filled with a lot of Oscar bait (including prosthetics), but she had just been nominated twice-in-one-year for I'm Not There and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the latter of which was an eyebrow-raising citation.  I'm guessing the Academy needed a break.

3. Keira Knightley (2007)

Film: Atonement

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 7 nominations, including one for acting

Her Oscar History: Knightley had received her first Oscar nomination two years earlier for Pride and Prejudice.  She has since received one nomination for The Imitation Game.

Precursors Won by Knightley: The Globes, BAFTA's, and Satellite Awards all nominated Knightley.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: First off, it's important to remember that 2007 was not one of Oscar's finest years for this category-Cate Blanchett's work in The Golden Age still being a bizarre inclusion and Laura Linney's excellent work in The Savages being a highly pleasant but unexpected one.  I think that youth (she'd just been nominated) and overall apathy toward this film (which was a far bigger hit with the Globes and couldn't get Joe Wright a Best Director nomination with AMPAS) meant that Knightley was probably in seventh (with Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart the biggest surprise miss with Oscar).

4. Toni Collette (2006)

Film: Little Miss Sunshine

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 4 nominations, including two for acting

Her Oscar History: Collette has one Oscar nomination, for The Sixth Sense, which at the time was a bit of a surprise (most thought it would be Cameron Diaz for Being John Malkovich), but now we assume it made complete sense.

Precursors Won by Collette: Collette was nominated for Best Lead Actress at the Golden Globes, and then to add to the confusion she was cited for Best Supporting Actress at the BAFTA Awards for the same performance.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Category confusion is always a rough go-with Collette landing in both categories, she's splitting what was already likely a weak base of support in what was a very strong list of female performers (Collette, though regularly a talented actor, would have been ousting a considerably better performance had she made it in the Best Actress field).  Plus, with only four nominations and nothing in Best Director, this was not a film with a wide range of support (it's the sort of film we'd assume wouldn't have made the Top 5 in the post-2008 era, which proves such postulations may not always be accurate).

5. Scarlett Johansson (2003)

Film: Lost in Translation

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 4 nominations, including one for acting

Her Oscar History: Johansson has been favored by the HFPA and the BAFTA Awards, but Oscar has yet to call despite plenty of opportunities.

Precursors Won by Johansson: Johansson won the BAFTA for her performance and picked up a nomination at the Globes.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Unlike Collette, I think that Johansson had a real shot at an Oscar nomination this year, but the Best Actress field was ALL over the map (for you AMPAS youngsters, think 2012 and add a bit more category confusion crazy).  Johansson also had a muddled campaign with two major strikes against her: one, that she had another award-worthy performance that year (her Golden Globe-nominated work in Girl with a Pearl Earring) and someone decided at the last minute to campaign her as supporting to not compete with the other performance, despite the Globes and BAFTA (and common sense) dictating this was a lead performance.  Strike either of those two issues, and you probably would have seen a nomination in one of the categories.  Instead, it's twelve years later and ScarJo is still waiting for that invitation to the club.

6. Michelle Yeoh (2000)

Film: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 10 nominations, though astoundingly none for acting

Her Oscar History: Michelle Yeoh has never been nominated for an Oscar.

Precursors Won by Yeoh: Yeoh received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Like 2006, this was a very tough Best Actress lineup to break, and if it was going to go, it was probably going to be Renee Zellweger in Nurse Betty who was going to do it (she won a Golden Globe nomination over an Oscar nominee, a pretty rare occurrence).  However, Yeoh's problem may have been both that foreign language films have a notoriously rough go with the Oscars (as opposed to the BAFTA Awards, where actors are much more readily embraced) and action/fantasy films rarely can make it in leading categories (in this way Sandra Bullock is in an odd exception to the rule for Gravity recently).

7. Andie MacDowell (1994)

Film: Four Weddings and a Funeral

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 2 nominations, none for acting

Her Oscar History: Ms. MacDowell had a brief moment of major fame in the early 1990's, but couldn't parlay any of her three Golden Globe nominations into an Oscar citation.

Precursors Won by MacDowell: MacDowell won a Golden Globe nomination, but lost to Jamie Lee Curtis.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Trying to figure out what was happening in the 1994 Best Actress race is one of the great mysteries of life.  Honestly-you have the Academy skipping Meryl Streep for a performance both the Globes and SAG Awards nominated her for (only time ever that's happened), you have Jamie Lee Curtis winning the Globe over the star of a Best Picture nominee, and you have Jennifer Jason Leigh enjoying what would be one of several Academy snubs in the mid-1990's (her curse finally being lifted this past year).  Plus, there was that whole scandal about Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction being disqualified because the movie aired on HBO before it was in theaters.  Even though we know Jessica Lange won, it's hard to figure out who on earth ranked 2nd-5th (because I'm a sadist, I'm guessing Sarandon, Foster, Richardson, and Ryder).  As I mention in the linked review, I didn't care for MacDowell at all in this film (the worst major performance in the movie), but that hasn't stopped Oscar before, and lest we forget she was a fairly big name in movies at the time.  Who knows, I guess.  Forget it Jake, it's 1994?

8 (tie). Annette Bening (1991)

Film: Bugsy

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 10 nominations, including three for acting

Her Oscar History: Bening has received four nominations, one of which came the year before Bugsy (which you would have thought would have built her some goodwill).  I've long believed that Bening has the terrible fate of probably being in second place all four times that she was nominated.

Precursors Won by Bening: Bening was nominated for the Golden Globe

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Of all the ten women on this list, this is probably the hardest to explain.  From what I understand, the Silence of the Lambs sweep was not expected, and Bugsy was actually a frontrunner for the Best Picture trophy.  Considering it was 1964 when a Best Picture winner had their leading lady skipped last, Bening's snub seems that much stranger.  Also, Oscar loves afterglow nominations and she had just lost the year before for The Grifters, and was married to a very popular member of the Academy.  However, whether out of genuine love for the performance (which has been called "tepid") or out of personal popularity (most likely) Bette Midler translated a Golden Globe win into a fifth place Oscar nod, keeping Bening out of the field.  If we want to postulate further, considering that Davis/Sarandon were splitting their votes and Laura Dern was in a little seen film, one could also make the argument that Bening would have ended up getting yet another second place for Bugsy, so perhaps this was for the best?

8 (tie). Barbra Streisand (1991)

Film: The Prince of Tides

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 7 nominations, including two for acting

Her Oscar History: Streisand has an interesting history with Oscar, but she does have five nominations in various fields (including two for acting: The Way We Were and her winning role in Funny Girl).

Precursors Won by Streisand: Though she was cited at multiple awards shows (including the Oscars) for either producing or directing, from what I can find she wasn't nominated for any for her acting.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: As we've discussed on this blog before, Streisand has a pretty sketchy history with Oscar for someone who has two trophies.  Most people don't really seem to talk about her lack of a nomination for acting here; rather the focus is on how she missed in the Best Director field despite a citation from the DGA Awards.  This was a period, though, of pretty high profile snubs in the Best Director field, with Bruce Beresford and Rob Reiner also missing in widely-discussed instances.  I think that if we looked at the sixth or even seventh places in 1991 we'd surely find Bening's name but not Streisand's.

10. Demi Moore (1990)

Film: Ghost

Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 5 nominations, including one for acting

Her Oscar History: Demi Moore has never been nominated for an Oscar.

Precursors Won by Moore: I'm as surprised as you to find this out, but Moore did get a Golden Globe nomination for Ghost.

Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: I'm trying really hard not to editorialize with these different nominations, but does anyone actually think that Demi Moore deserved an Oscar nomination for Ghost?  The Academy chose one woman from this film to nominate, and I think we can all agree they chose the correct actress.  Moore also doesn't have a traditionally lead role in this film-that's definitely Swayze, and not only was she competing with Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston, Kathy Bates, and Joanne Woodward (one of the extremely rare years where all five nominees either had or were going to have Academy Awards) amongst women who actually got nominated, but outside the nominations were Michelle Pfeiffer for The Russia House, Andie MacDowell for Green Card, and Mia Farrow in Alice.  Moore didn't stand a prayer.

Those are the Top 10 most recent actresses to miss when their film made the top prize lineup.  Which do you wager was the closest to making it (my money's on Bening)?  Which do you think was furthest away (my money's on Collette)?  And which deserved it most (I've seen eight of these, and Johansson is certainly my favorite)?  Share in the comments!

Best Picture & Best Actress: Oscar Trivia Time

I recently went through some very fun stats regarding Amy Adams and her "upset" nomination over Emma Thompson in the Best Picture race (check it out!), and thought I might expand on it.  More than almost any other category, Best Picture and Best Actress have a strangely strong correlation.  It is extremely rare that if a Best Picture-nominated film has a lead actress that she doesn't instinctively get a Best Actress nomination.  While we can all quibble over what counts as "lead actress" (category fraud discussions are always fun), this year by most definitions three of the nine Best Picture nominees had a lead actress: Gravity, Philomena, and American Hustle...and all three earned Best Actress citations.  In fact, looking through the past ten years of movies, only three actresses missed when they had lead performances, whereas 24 men missed for Best Picture nominees.  Part of this, as I pointed out in my Debra Winger article, is that men tend to disproportionately get the lead in motion pictures of all ilks-there's simply not room for all of the men to be nominated, particularly in a five-wide field while Best Picture remains at nine or ten.  For proof just look at this year, where the Best Actor lineup is 100% from Best Picture nominees...and there's still no room for Tom Hanks, Steve Coogan, or Joaquin Phoenix.

While I was making the trivia sheet for Adams, though, I decided I would see how far back I would have to go to get a Top 10 list going of the Best Picture nominees that couldn't land their leading lady with Oscar (for Best Actor you only have to go back to 2010 to hit double digits).  Here's that top ten, along with a few factoids about each of the women.  The most recent is first.

(Note: I am giving the film a pass if it managed a nomination for Best Actress but had two leading ladies.  However, if I didn't make that exception, Emma Stone in The Help and Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right would be on this list.  Also, I'm making a few judgment calls regarding lead and supporting for films like Jerry Maguire, The Accidental Tourist, and The Cider House Rules-the comments are there to correct or disagree).

1. Cate Blanchett (2008)
Film: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 13 nominations, including two for acting
Her Oscar History: Blanchett is an Oscar favorite-she had a trophy and five nominations at this point, and is surely about to win her second award for Blue Jasmine.
Precursors Won by Blanchett: Blanchett did score a BFCA nomination, but was absent for most of the rest of the season which focused on Brad Pitt and Taraji P. Henson.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Blanchett's work in the film was solid and filled with a lot of Oscar bait (including prosthetics), but she had just been nominated twice-in-one-year for I'm Not There and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the latter of which was an eyebrow-raising citation.  I'm guessing the Academy needed a break.

2. Keira Knightley (2007)
Film: Atonement
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 7 nominations, including one for acting
Her Oscar History: Knightley had received her first (and so far only) Oscar nomination two years earlier for Pride and Prejudice.
Precursors Won by Knightley: The Globes, BAFTA's, and Satellite Awards all nominated Knightley.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: First off, it's important to remember that 2007 was not one of Oscar's finest years for this category-Cate Blanchett's work in The Golden Age still being a bizarre inclusion and Laura Linney's excellent work in The Savages being a highly pleasant but unexpected one.  I think that youth (she'd just won) and overall apathy toward this film (which was a far bigger hit with the Globes and couldn't get Joe Wright a Best Director nomination with AMPAS) meant that Knightley was probably in seventh (with Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart the biggest surprise miss with Oscar).

3. Toni Collette (2006)
Film: Little Miss Sunshine
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 4 nominations, including two for acting
Her Oscar History: Collette has one Oscar nomination, for The Sixth Sense, which at the time was a bit of a surprise (most thought it would be Cameron Diaz for Being John Malkovich), but now we assume it made complete sense.
Precursors Won by Collette: Collette was nominated for Best Lead Actress at the Golden Globes, and then to add to the confusion she was cited for Best Supporting Actress at the BAFTA Awards for the same performance.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Category confusion is always a rough go-with Collette landing in both categories, she's splitting what was already likely a weak base of support in what was a very strong list of female performers (Collette, though regularly a talented actor, would have been ousting a considerably better performance had she made it in the Best Actress field).  Plus, with only four nominations and nothing in Best Director, this was not a film with a wide range of support (it's the sort of film we'd assume wouldn't have made the Top 5 in the post-2008 era.

4. Scarlett Johansson (2003)
Film: Lost in Translation
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 4 nominations, including one for acting
Her Oscar History: Johansson has been favored by the HFPA and the BAFTA Awards, but Oscar has yet to call despite plenty of opportunities.
Precursors Won by Johansson: Johansson won the BAFTA for her performance and picked up a nomination at the Globes.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Unlike Collette, I think that Johansson had a real shot at an Oscar nomination this year, but the Best Actress field was ALL over the map (for you AMPAS youngsters, think 2012 and add a bit more category confusion crazy).  Johansson also had a muddled campaign with two major strikes against her: one, that she had another award-worthy performance that year (her Golden Globe-nominated work in Girl with a Pearl Earring) and someone decided at the last minute to campaign her as supporting to not compete with the other performance, despite the Globes and BAFTA (and common sense) dictating this was a lead performance.  Strike either of those two issues, and you probably would have seen a nomination in one of the categories.  Instead, it's ten years later and ScarJo is still waiting for that invitation to the club.

5. Michelle Yeoh (2000)
Film: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 10 nominations, though astoundingly none for acting
Her Oscar History: Ms. Yeoh has never been nominated for an Oscar.
Precursors Won by Yeoh: Yeoh received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Like 2006, this was a very tough Best Actress lineup to break, and if it was going to go, it was probably going to be Renee Zellweger in Nurse Betty who was going to do it (she won a Golden Globe nomination over an Oscar nominee, a pretty rare occurrence).  However, Yeoh's problem may have been both that foreign language films have a notoriously rough go with the Oscars (as opposed to the BAFTA Awards, where actors are much more readily embraced) and action/fantasy films rarely can make it in leading categories (in this way Sandra Bullock is in an odd exception to the rule).

6. Andie MacDowell (1994)
Film: Four Weddings and a Funeral
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 2 nominations, none for acting
Her Oscar History: Ms. MacDowell had a brief moment of major fame in the early 1990's, but couldn't parlay any of her three Golden Globe nominations into an Oscar citation.
Precursors Won by MacDowell: MacDowell won a Golden Globe nomination, but lost to Jamie Lee Curtis.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Trying to figure out what was happening in the 1994 Best Actress race is one of the great mysteries of life.  Honestly-you have the Academy skipping Meryl Streep for a performance both the Globes and SAG Awards nominated her for (only time ever that's happened), you have Jamie Lee Curtis winning the Globe over the star of a Best Picture nominee, and you have Jennifer Jason Leigh enjoying what would be one of several Academy snubs in the mid-1990's.  Plus, there was that whole scandal about Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction being disqualified because the movie aired on HBO before it was in theaters.  Even though we know Jessica Lange won, it's hard to figure out who on earth ranked 2nd-5th (because I'm a sadist, I'm guessing Sarandon, Foster, Richardson, and Ryder).  As I mention in the linked review, I didn't care for MacDowell at all in this film (the worst major performance in the movie), but that hasn't stopped Oscar before, and lest we forget she was a fairly big name in movies at the time.  Who knows, I guess.  Forget it Jake, it's 1994?

7 (tie). Annette Bening (1991)
Film: Bugsy
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 10 nominations, including three for acting
Her Oscar History: Bening has received four nominations, one of which came the year before Bugsy (which you would have thought would have built her some goodwill).  I've long believed that Bening has the terrible fate of probably being in second place all four times that she was nominated.
Precursors Won by Bening: Bening was nominated for the Golden Globe
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: Of all the ten women on this list, this is probably the hardest to explain.  From what I understand, the Silence of the Lambs sweep was not expected, and Bugsy was actually a frontrunner for the Best Picture trophy.  Considering it was 1964 when a Best Picture winner had their leading lady skipped last, Bening's snub seems that much stranger.  Also, Oscar loves afterglow nominations and she had just lost the year before for The Grifters, and was married to a very popular member of the Academy.  However, whether out of genuine love for the performance (which has been called "tepid") or out of personal popularity (most likely) Bette Midler translated a Golden Globe win into a fifth place Oscar nod, keeping Bening out of the field.  If we want to postulate further, considering that Davis/Sarandon were splitting their votes and Laura Dern was in a little seen film, one could also make the argument that Bening would have ended up getting yet another second place for Bugsy, so perhaps this was for the best?

7 (tie). Barbra Streisand (1991)
Film: The Prince of Tides
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 7 nominations, including two for acting
Her Oscar History: Streisand has an interesting history with Oscar, but she does have five nominations in various fields (including two for acting: The Way We Were and her winning role in Funny Girl).
Precursors Won by Streisand: Though she was cited at multiple awards shows (including the Oscars) for either producing or directing, from what I can find she wasn't nominated for any for her acting.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: As we've discussed on this blog before, Streisand has a pretty sketchy history with Oscar for someone who has two trophies.  Most people don't really seem to talk about her lack of a nomination for acting here; rather the focus is on how she missed in the Best Director field despite a citation from the DGA Awards.  This was a period, though, of pretty high profile snubs in the Best Director field, with Bruce Beresford and Rob Reiner also missing in widely-discussed instances.  I think that if we looked at the sixth or even seventh places in 1991 we'd surely find Bening's name but not Streisand's.

9. Demi Moore (1990)
Film: Ghost
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 5 nominations, including one for acting
Her Oscar History: Ms. Moore has never been nominated for an Oscar.
Precursors Won by Moore: I'm as surprised as you to find this out, but Moore did get a Golden Globe nomination for Ghost.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: I'm trying really hard not to editorialize with these different nominations, but does anyone really think that Demi Moore deserved an Oscar nomination for Ghost?  The Academy chose one woman from this film to nominate, and I think we can all agree they chose the correct actress for the slot.  Moore also doesn't have a traditionally lead role in this film-that's definitely Swayze, and not only was she competing with Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston, Kathy Bates, and Joanne Woodward (one of the extremely rare years where all five nominees either had or were going to have Academy Awards) amongst women who actually got nominated, but outside the nominations were Michelle Pfeiffer for The Russia House, Andie MacDowell for Green Card, and Mia Farrow in Alice.  Moore didn't stand a prayer.

10. Sarah Miles (1987)
Film: Hope and Glory
Number of Nominations the Film Picked Up: 5 nominations, none for acting
Her Oscar History: Seventeen years before Miles picked up steam for this performance she was nominated for Best Actress in Ryan's Daughter, her only Oscar citation.
Precursors Won by Miles: Miles got a nomination for Best Actress at BAFTA, where the film received a staggering thirteen nominations.
Best Guess as to Why She Was Skipped: I'm going to be honest here-I haven't seen The Accidental Tourist in fifteen years, so I don't remember if Kathleen Turner should be taking this spot or if she is in fact a second supporting actress (if so, being wildly upstaged in the memories of everyone including myself by Geena Davis cost her that nomination).  Otherwise, Miles missed both because this was a relatively small film (I believe it's the lowest-grossing Best Picture nominee of the past thirty years) and because this was a very competitive Best Actress year.  One of the Oscar nominees hadn't had their names called at the Golden Globes (Meryl Streep in Ironweed) making her the logical fifth place, but you also had Rachel Chagall in Gaby: A True Story, Diane Keaton in Baby Boom, Barbra Streisand in Nuts, and the late career comebacks from Bette Davis and Lillian Gish in The Whales of August.  All of those names add up to Miles being lucky to make the Top 10 with Oscar, much less get a second nomination.

Those are the Top 10 most recent actresses to miss when their film made the top prize lineup.  Which do you wager was the closest to making it (my money's on Bening)?  Which do you think was furthest away (my money's on Miles or Collette)?  And which deserved it most (I've seen seven of these, and Johansson is certainly my favorite)?  Share in the comments!