Live Announcement: Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards
Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 7:36AM 
Related Articles:
• 12 things we learned from the noms
• Adams vs Weisz, Round Two
• Best Picture Silliness
• Deep Cut Oscar Trivia
• Mourning the Snubs
• How to Stage the Original Song Performances
• Nomination Index (individual charts still being updated)
I used to call this day my Christmas but I worry about coal in the stocking. Did we receive Oscar nomination gifts this year or lumps of coal? A little of both of course. Tracee Ellis Ross and Kumail Nanjiani were the chipper announcers this morning, making frequent jokes about how little sleep they'd gotten before the announcements.
The full list of nominations and how well we did on our predictions follow...
Best Picture
“Black Panther”
“A Star Is Born”
“Roma”
“The Favourite”
“Vice”
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
“Green Book”
“BlacKkKlansman”
Predictions: 100% correct but not happy about it. Still don't understand what Vice did to earn this nomination. It doesn't fit the usual suspects.
Glenn Close, “The Wife”
Lady Gaga, “A Star Is Born”
Yalitza Aparicio, “Roma”
Olivia Colman, “The Favourite”
Melissa McCarthy, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Predictions: Missed Aparacio. Thought it would be Blunt who will stay have to wait for that first nomination after a long and impressive career.
Christian Bale, “Vice”
Bradley Cooper, “A Star Is Born”
Viggo Mortensen, “Green Book”
Willem Dafoe, “At Eternity’s Gate”
Rami Malek, “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Predictions: 4/5 missed Dafoe thinking it would be Ethan Hawke, by far the morning's worst snub. He practically swept 30+ critics awards and still nothing. It's the biggest critical to Oscar snub since Sally Hawkins in Happy Go Lucky or Peter Sargaard in Shattered Glass.
Amy Adams, “Vice”
Marina de Tavira, “Roma”
Regina King, “If Beale Street Could Talk”
Emma Stone, “The Favourite”
Rachel Weisz, “The Favourite”
Predictions: 4/5 Marina de Tavira surprised in that volatile 5th slot. At least she's a real supporting actress... and if someone were going to surprise we didn't want it to be another lead squeezing themselves in here.
Mahershala Ali, “The Green Book”
Adam Driver, “BlacKkKlansman”
Sam Elliott, “A Star Is Born”
Richard E. Grant, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Sam Rockwell, “Vice”
Predictions: 5/5 -- I called both Sams with a Chalamet snub. So this category is only 20% lead performancse so that's kind of a relief.
Spike Lee, “BlacKkKlansman”
Pawel Pawlikowski, “Cold War”
Yorgos Lanthimos, “The Favourite”
Alfonso Cuarón, “Roma”
Adam McKay, “Vice”
Predictions: 3/5 Missed both Pawlikowksi and McKay, thinking those spots would go to Cooper & Farrelly. I think it's an upgrade though I would have preferred Pawlikowski and Cooper from those four.
“First Reformed”
“Green Book”
“Roma”
“The Favourite”
“Vice”
Predictions: 4/5 -- because Eighth Grade was entirely shut out at the Oscars. Sad face.
Best Animated Film
“Incredibles 2”
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
“Mirai”
“Ralph Breaks the Internet”
“Isle Of Dogs”
Predictions: 5/5 Relieved that foreign films can still make it despite the changed rules to allow non-animators to vote on this.
Best Cinematography
“Cold War”
“The Favourite”
“Never Look Away”
“A Star Is Born”
Predictions: 3/5 ouch. THREE FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS HERE. wow.
Best Visual Effects
“Avengers: Infinity War”
“Christopher Robin”
“First Man”
“Ready Player One”
“Solo: A Star Wars Story”
Predictions: 3/5 missed First Man (I thought they'd say no to practical effects as they sometimes do) and Christopher Robin. I'm happy that Black Panther scored multiple nominations but I'm pleased it missed here. It's a rare instance of a super popular film missing an obvious category that it could compete in because it's not actually one of the best options.
Best Foreign Language Film
“Capernaum”
“Cold War”
“Never Look Away”
“Roma”
“Shoplifters”
Predictions: 5/5 I'm not happy I was correct (Burning really should've been here) but this sure is a good list, right?
Best Documentary Feature
“Free Solo”
“Minding The Gap”
“Of Fathers and Sons”
“RBG”
“Hale County This Morning, This Evening”
Predictions: 3/5 Always a volatile category. But how was RBG the one biodoc to make it over Mr Rogers?
Best Documentary Short Subject
“Black Sheep”
“End Game”
“Lifeboat”
“A Night at the Garden”
“Period. End of Sentence.”
Predictions: 3/5
Best Costume Design
“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”
“Black Panther”
“The Favourite”
“Mary Poppins Returns”
“Mary Queen of Scots”
Predictions: 4/5 I missed only Buster Scruggs. For years Oscar ignored Mary Zophres but it looks like they're finally paying attention to her so good on her.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
“Border”
“Mary Queen of Scots”
“Vice”
Predictions: 2/3 I missed Vice which is dumb. I was going for dumb in my predictions this year, what can I say. I was so scared of Bohemian Rhapsody's big teeth that I was trying to acclimate myself to the possibility
Best Film Editing
“BlacKkKlansman”
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
“Green Book”
“The Favourite”
“Vice”
Predictions: 3/5 What an ungodly mess this category is! But I'm really happy for BlacKkKlansman which should obviously run away with the win but won't.
Best Sound Mixing
“Black Panther”
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
“First Man”
“Roma”
“A Star Is Born”
Predictions: 4/5 I only missed Black Panther thinking A Quiet Place would score here.
Best Sound Editing
“A Quiet Place”
“Black Panther”
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
“First Man”
“Roma”
Predictions: 3/5 Now here I DID get Black Panther AND A Quiet Place right but I missed Bohemian and Roma thinking this slightly more effects oriented category would have room for Mission: Impossible - Fallout. Note to self: NEVER bank on a nomination for the Mission: Impossible series, no matter how big and popular that series gets. They've yet to receive even a single nomination.
Best Animated Short Film
“Animal Behaviour”
“Bao”
“Late Afternoon”
“One Small Step”
“Weekends”
Prediction: 4/5 I missed only Animal Behavior which was a dumb miss since it's from the National Film Board in Canada and they always do well in this category
Best Live Action Short Film
“Detainment”
“Fauve”
“Marguerite”
“Mother”
“Skin”
Predictions 4/5 I missed only Mother, the film I could find the least info on (there is like *nothing* at IMDB about this beyond a couple of actors credits and the director and there are 14 more films named Mother that came out in the past two years.
Best Original Score
“Black Panther”
“BlacKkKlansman”
“If Beale Street Could Talk”
“Isle of Dogs”
“Mary Poppins Returns”
Predictions: 3/5 and I'm pretty shocked about it. I think BlacKkKlansman is a really good score but I expected to see Globe and Critics Choice winner First Man here in its place. And I thought A Quiet Place would score here over the waning Mary Poppins Returns but A Quiet Place really underperformed this morning.
Reader Comments (90)
Congratulations to Sam Rockwell, for becoming the first actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for a Saturday Night Live cameo.
Now that Dafoe is in, which surprised me, he does have a strong overdue narrative. I give him a puncher's chance to pull an upset. I'd be shocked now if Roma loses BP.
God I hope his snub in Director will make the voters gravitate towards Cooper in Actor but sadly I feel this won't be the case...😢😢😢
@ Aaron - Yes and I loved it and Dafoe deserves to win between those five
Best Actor might be a bloodbath now.
Kumal and Tracee need to be drafted for hosts. Low key, charming, almost flawless (I counted one slight trip-up in a name being read. Otherwise, flawless.)
Michael R.-- I was thinking the same thing. I think Best Actor is probably between Rami Malek and Christian Bale at the moment, but Bradley's Best Director snub could work in his advantage.
Honestly, the only way Best Actor even has a frontrunner going into Oscar night is if SAG and BAFTA both go to the same actor, and I don't think that'll happen. I'm gonna guess Bale wins SAG and Malek wins BAFTA, so we go into Oscar night with the two of them pretty much neck and neck with the possibility of a Bradley Cooper "upset."
v happy for Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira! Marina de Tavira especially made me remember "oh yea, that WAS a great performance." Good job Academy!
Marina de Tavira and Ballad of Buster Scruggs were early fake outs. OMG Oscars are doin somethin different! But no. Hollywood is due a reckoning for all these noms for Vice, BR and Green Book. (I would also add SiB to that list, but I know I'm not in good company in this comments thread, so I will passive aggressively add this parenthetical instead.) Basically straight white people should no longer be allowed to watch movies.
Pour one out for Toni Collette. The more I think, the more astonished I am by her performance, and the more pissed I am that there wasn't room for her this year.
Also had to do some deep googling to figure out what Buster Scruggs was adapted from.
BTW, Kumail and Tracee are both charming and adorbs and yes, they could be fine Oscar hosts. Ok, I could have done with less of their jokes about how early it was, but otherwise they were good (reminding one and all of how bad Tiffany Haddish was last year, mangling names left and right). Another positive development: dropping that boring montage nonsense. We just want to hear the nominations and not all of those bells and whistles. Good job, keep it up!
Sad for Ethan Hawke. And Bo Burnham, who deserved an original screenplay nod for Eighth Grade. But at least First Reformed got in there. I wish Leave No Trace had appeared in adapted screenplay and director, too.
And, while I didn't love the movie, the exclusion of If Beale Street Could Talk from Cinematography is inexplicable.
Also, I'm confused: from what source was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs adapted?
Bale won a Globe and 2 critics choice awards. He's the frontrunner currently.
A very little little disappointed for some snubs, but honestly this time Oscars made me happy. Two European, a Mexican and an Afro-American in directing. Three foreign films in Cinematography. The best Willem Dafoe ever for a film too much poetic for their usual taste. Terrence Blanchard. The always loved Coens. BUM! Love this nominees
@Par: Love you for mentioning this, bc I love Dolly too!
Three cheers for the ladies of The Favourite and Roma.
1) As long as Malek and Bale don't win Best Actor I'm fine with anything.
2) the Best Actress category is wonderful!
- Glenn Close (never won)
- Yalitza Aparicio (never nominated)
- Olivia Colman (never nominated)
- Lady Gaga (never nominated in acting)
- Melissa McCarthy (never won)
= great job, more of that every single year please!
3) Their love for Vice makes me puke. Rockwell has a cameo, not a supporting role. His character is reduced to "oh, please won't you be my VP?" <- that's Oscar-worthy? yuk!
4) Blunt will get that nomination and win for the right role, I'm sure!
I'd like to believe that King has to win SA but I don't know. Vice has an awful lot of support behind it, Adams is deeply loved and has been nominated so many times without a win, and Beale Street doesn't have quite as much support behind it as it deserves.
They just threw a bunch of darts at the wall on some of these nominations.
First Reformed is as original as Blue Jasmine. Remake of Winter Light and Streetcar respectively.
Marina AND Yalitza?! Goddamn what does Emily Blunt have to do to get a freaking nom?
Cooper is gonna win now after everyone bemoaned his snub in director.
Can Kumail and Tracee host? They entertained the shit out of the usual nom announcement.
CLOSE AND ADAMS MUST WIN!!!
I really do hope it's down to Roma and The Favourite, 2 very worthy films. I wish A Star is Born was more of a factor but I'm afraid it's going home empty-handed save for Song.
Pleasant surprises:
- McCarthy and Grant's nominations. I was afraid one or both would be casualties.
- de Tavira. A fine performance and truly supporting.
- The Score and Cinematography categories are very good (haven't seen Never Look Away but as long as it's not Bohemian fucking Rhapsody I'm fine).
- Dafoe. I liked At Eternity's Gate very much. He'd be in my top 5.
- Those 4 Directors. I like to imagine they are the only 4 nominees.
Then we have Vice and Bohemian Rhapsody. I just don't understand it. Two mediocre at best movies (I'd say Vice is downright terrible) lacking in technical proficiency beyond wigs and prosthetic teeth. I'd challenge any person who voted for Vice in any category to watch The Big Short and justify how the former holds up to the latter in any way - writing, acting, editing, direction... anything. And TBS is just a good movie, not a Best Picture-worthy movie. I've decided to chalk the love up to Queen's music and the renewed revelation that Dick Cheney is a monster, and start trying not to care.
Early Predictions:
Picture - Roma
Director - Roma
Actor - Vice
Actress - The Wife
Sup Actor - Green Book
Sup Actress - Roma in a surprise (now that Marina has the nomination I think she could win)
I know nothing about Never Look Away, but the surprise nominations at least tell me that Oscar voters watch their screeners and don't just follow the horse race. Still, I wish they had surprised us by nominating Ethan Hawke and Toni Collette.
They Ben Affleck'd Bradley Cooper! That's some bullshit right there! Get Best Actor then!
No "Three Identical Strangers" OR "WYBMN?" in Doc? Insane!
Director is bananas! #NeverFarrelly.
Am I the only one that thinks that the Marina de Tavira nomination, while an exciting turn of events, is kinda ridiculous? The film seems so uninterested in any character other than Cleo.
I just realized that "Eighth Grade" was snubbed for original screenplay! I wish it had gotten in instead of Green Book or Vice!
Evan--Although I wouldn't have nominated de Tavira, I think she was a very strong presence in the film. I would have preferred Elizabeth Debicki or Sakura Ando for a surprise nominee.
G; That's a stupid comment. I like making white people jokes, but that's a stupid comment.
While today might be the day for that Roma rewatch, I still think De Tavira is poor in the movie. Like Watts in 21 Grams, a lot of random screaming. Don't think she's good at all.
I think I called Cold War (to myself), and called Cooper. But I'm not sure I called McKay. For the record, it's far from a bad movie (not sure if it's good), but Mckay's direction is good, tho often there's WAY too much going on. Definitely not top 10, but it's solid work. The screenplay is the disaster that drags the film down.
I think Cooper does very well with the direction. Tho he's not in the mix for me, I feel considering that his screenplay lets him down a lot more than Mckay's does.
Strange editing nods, and Won't You Be My Neighbor is a shock.
Glad to see that the Academy Awards have really diversified beyond Populist Cinema and Hollywood! Glad that 3 out of 5 Cinematography nods were for non-English films , glad for Aparicio and Marina De Tavira, glad for Cuaron, Colman, Weisz, Stone, Lanthimos, Pawlikowski, glad Cooper missed Directing and the overrated populist “A Star Is Born” tallies behind “Roma” and “The Favourite”... glad for Indie Films!
Well I braced myself for a Burning snub and it happened, South Korea just can't get a break at the Oscars.
So happy for Yalitza and the Roma love. Congrats to Paul Schrader as well, Ethan Hawke missing is a joke.
So is Minding the Gap now the favorite to win Best Documentary? I wouldn't be surprised if they gave it to RBG still.
Ethan Hawke's miss is depressing. I'd like to think they'll have to make it up to him eventually, but who knows?
I still don't think Roma is going to win Best Picture. It has a target on its back now, and I expect there to be plenty of "it's not THAT good" backlash to start rolling in. But I do think these nods are good news for BlacKkKlansman, which received Editing and Directing nominations, and seems like many people's #2 or #3 choice (it would be my #1 choice) - an advantage in a preferential system.
And congratulations to Best Actress nominee Melissa McCarthy. She had her share of doubters all season here at TFE, but I was never one of them! I am looking forward to seeing her win an Oscar one day!
To me - the Best Picture of the year from BlackkKlansman. Period. The end was just extraordinary. Would love to see it win picture & director. Roma can win best foreign film....and Gaga can win best song. Time for Glenn Close. I know it goes against what everyone here thinks - but I would love to see Malek win Actor. Thanks for your great coverage. Who should present Best Picture Award?....is it possible to have 4 people? Blunt / Miranda & Van Dyke / Andrews? Or how about Dustin Hoffman & Katherine Ross? She will be attending this year!
I am with those who had trouble with "First Man" missing on Cinematography and Editing, but I would have included Directing and Picture. It makes the Sound (2x), VFX, and Set Design nominations feel like consolation prizes. Anyone agree with me that this movie, the early front runner for Best Picture and a bunch of other categories a year ago, goes home empty-handed next month?
Does anyone else miss the days when the presenters announced the nominations at a podium and the nominees flashed on screenshots above their heads?
Michael R; Yes.
Carl; I think First Man's struggles at the box office are why it's been forgotten. Gosling didn't miss a nod due to a subdued and internalized performance; he missed traction of any kind. That much is due to the film not taking off. The quiet of his performance could have hurt him had he appeared to be in the running, but there's no reason to think he was a serious contender. And that much is due to the lack of success for the film.
I assume it was an expensive film to make.
Wonderful --- The Favourite love, Roma ladies, Cold War love
Ridiculous --- Vice's nominations for picture, director, screenplay (??), and Rockwell's brief SNL skit. That has to be a joke, no?
I'm very surprised Rockwell got in. He's terrific but it's part of a strong ensemble (tho I didn't love Steve Carell).
Not an awards-caliber performance. Still, a bit befuddled people see it as an SNL skit. More nuanced than that.
I figured I wouldn't be happy and it was about what I expected, maybe slightly better. My taste is just drifting from Oscar territory over time I guess, which is true of critics, too, who are much more friendly to genre cinema now than Oscar appears to be (aside from Black Panther). Hereditary, Border, Annihilation, Sorry to Bother You, and Mandy (I know, it was never *ever* going to get awards traction) are striking, virtuosic, and thoughtful films which time will treat kindly, but the Oscars are just too stuffy and reserved to give them their due.
The worst misses were Toni Collette and Ethan Hawke, who gave my two favorite performances this year by far. I was also pulling for an Elsie Fisher surprise, but best actress is on the whole quite good.
My generous take is that I'm just glad to see The Favourite and Roma scoop up a bunch of noms. My ungenerous take is that Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Vice are like having three Crashes in one year. I pray none of them will actually win anything. Yes, I am a crank who actively roots against shit and I was elated when 3B didn't win last year! We deserve better culture, not milquetoast predictable awards fare with unsophisticated social critique.
ASiB is whatever. I didn't like it, but at least it wasn't actively offensive, other than in the mild tokenism of the supporting characters.
I don't see Adapted Screenplay on this list. Is that an omission or is there a long take coming re. Buster Scruggs?
Oh also, while I'm lamenting stuff that was never going to happen, pour one out for You Were Never Really Here. In a year where people had any sense, Joaquin Phoenix and Jonny Greenwood would've been nominated, maybe even Lynne Ramsey (a la Pavel Pawlikowski).
Reading this site I thought I was being gaslighted because I'd locked in that Best Actor lineup for months. Sweet vindication!
If there were only five best picture nominees it probably would have been:
The Favourite
Roma
BlacKkKlansman
Vice
Green Book
Damn...Kumail rocked that suit!
Love ya, Tracee, but what the hell were u wearing today gurl??? Nope.
Gooped over Bradley missing Director and Marina coming from NOWHERE with that supporting actress nomination! Valentina Cortese realness on nominations morning!!!
Having just seen Bohemian Rhapsody, I struggle to see why anyone finds the Paul part homophobic.
Paul doesn't lead Freddie down the wrong path by being gay; he does so by being a bad actor. Quite literally one of the worst performances...man, I don't know, in a long time. Mike Myers right there with him, plus who the hell glued that stuff to his face?
Movie is a train wreck from moments after Freddie saunters down the stairs, only for he and his dad to get into a quasi-argument for no reason of any kind.
There is something homophobic in it that I was thinking of mentioning, but the car ride has led me to forget. And that's fine, as the movie is not any good and that's enough. I do think it's ridiculous that from the very beginning every guy in the movie looks at him when he passes by, and it's so in my face that I can't even remove my own knowledge of Freddie Mercury from my brain. It's just blaring at me.