While I update the charts I asked the team to share their single favorite Oscar nomination of the day. And I hope you'll pick a single nomination to praise in the comments to. What most delighted you?
And now the favorite things hoopla begins...
Mad Max: Fury Road - Best Picture
Back in May, critics and cinephiles, myself included, fell in love with Mad Max: Fury Road. It wasn’t just lust or infatuation. It was the kind of love that breeds doubt that others could see in the movie what we saw. Perhaps for that reason, a chorus of moans immediately went up about how not only is the Academy so often forgetful of Spring films, but that Mad Max was probably too fun, too action-y, too daring, hell, too feminist, for the academy to acknowledge it come Oscar season. Then, over the course of the summer, it didn’t even become the blockbuster many expected it would. Domestically speaking, it barely recouped its $150 million budget. (That may sound like a lot, but in the summer of “gigantosauri,” as Mark Harris called it, it was runtish.) How wonderful then today, to see a movie as exciting as it is smart get its due. - Kyle Stevens
Lenny Abrahamson, Room - Best Director
Every moment is so carefully considered. His touch is so gentle that he earns every tear he's coaxed out of us by patiently setting up character and context. He makes Room feel so big and the real world so oppressively small. You can feel that the film was constructed by someone with a deep well of compassion and a profound understanding of what presentation the story demands to impact us. I had hoped that he could make it in, but so rarely does the director's branch award solid quiet observation. - Chris Feil
Ex Machina -Visual Effects
::Oscar Isaac dancing gif::
I keep looking at the category's history for any type of precedent but I can't find one. Death Becomes Her perhaps comes closest in that it was smart and story-driven but still featured impressive effects. Either way, this is a great way to honor Alex Garland's beautiful and sleek sci fi fable. - Manuel Betancourt
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years - Best Actress
Charlotte Rampling's career spans over 50 years, multiple languages, and memorable performances, but she has never received a single Oscar nomination - until today. That it comes for not only one of the best performances of the year, but perhaps a career-best in a filmography not lacking in quality, is even more satisfying. After the flurry of awards season has passed, it's the work that still stands. And Rampling's quietly intense, devastating turn in 45 Years will be remembered long after.
Plus, something about being able to say "Academy Award Nominee, Charlotte Rampling" just seems so right. - Abstew
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies - Best Supporting Actor
As we left Bridge of Spies, I said, ‘That’s the kind of great performance that always gets overlooked.’ It’s not showy, it’s deeply internal, and it’s by a relative unknown. In recent years, Oscar loves to give its Supporting Actor nominations to former or current leading men, and indeed, the other four nominees are exactly that. Rylance, by contrast, is a true character actor. There’s no shouting, no big dramatic moment, no tears, just silences full of complexity. It’s not just an extraordinary performance, it’s extraordinary that it’s getting all this recognition. - Deborah Lipp
Jóhan Jóhansson, Sicario - Best Original Score
The internet’s prayer circle for Charlotte Rampling worked, praise Ozon, but given how confident many (Nathaniel included) seemed to be in that nomination, it was less a delight than a relief. So instead I’m going to flag up a nomination that really made me tweet four exclamation marks: the nod for Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannson’s breathtaking Sicario score. While the composer was welcomed into the Oscar club for his Theory of Everything soundtrack just last year, I had much less confidence in this dissonant, unnerving piece of work gaining him the same recognition. No need to worry, because the music branch did us proud this year, jettisoning Nat’s prediction of the overwrought Danish Girl score for this superb one. It’s so essential to the crisp, ghostly rhythms of Sicario, a coiled snake beneath every scene, a perfect accompaniment to the cold menace and brusque confusion above ground. - David Upton
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight - Best Supporting Actor
The single biggest whoop heard in my house this morning was for Phyllis Nagy’s nomination for adapting Carol. However to prove that I've actually seen more than one movie this year, I’m going with Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight. This has been a long love affair, since I first noticed him in You Can Count on Me (2000). That performance remains my favorite of his, and he should’ve won the Oscar for it. Alas he wasn’t even nominated. His two other nominated performances in The Kids Are All Right (2010) and Foxcatcher (2014) were my favorites in their categories and definitely get my vote as best of their years. I’m not as enamored with his Mike Rezendes - my favorite performance in Spotlight is Liev Schreiber's. But so happy that Ruffalo earned his third Oscar nomination this year. Surely that makes him a strong competitor for the win. He’s always a winner in my book. -Murtada Elfadl
And we'll close out with a longtime contributor who cheated a little bit and picked an entire Academy branch to praise...
The Academy's Animation Branch
Despite the obvious disappointments, there are actually many nominations that I am super happy for. Phyllis Nagy and Emma Donoghue getting screenplay nominations when it seems like only one could make it. Brooklyn sneaking into the best picture category on a wave of teary-eyed heartstrings that Academy members obviously didn’t quite get from Carol. I’m also obviously super happy for all the Mad Max: Fury Road people, but especially husband-and-wife team George Miller (director) and Margaret Sixel (editing).
However, if I had to pick a favorite category, it would be Best Animated Feature. That branch have seemingly thrown off the shackles once and for all of Hollywood conformity with nominations like Surf’s Up and Treasure Planet and now march proudly to the beat of their own drum. Ditching The Good Dinosaur and Peanuts for Brazilian oddity Boy and the World and the Japanese When Marnie Was There as well as an American box office flop, the superbly delightful British silent stop-motion Shaun the Sheep Movie? That's inspired. Plus World of Tomorrow in the shorts race? Pure bliss. - Glenn Dunks