by Nathaniel R
Mank led the nominations this year. A period drama often does.
Though we keep a lot of lists surrounding Oscar trivia and nomination and win stats, some things are much harder to research then others and we wish we had magical charts which could delineate literally everything, like accountants working with pivot tables or something (we dont actually know what those are but they sound fancy). One of the most curious stats this year was seeing the second highest nomination tally be an enormous tie with six movies all earning six nominations. We don't think there's ever been another Oscar year like it though we aren't certain. Here are some examples of the breakdowns...
In our two decades of covering the Oscars and the years before it geeking out as an Oscar fan we can't recall this ever happening before, not just that many movies tied for second place in "most nominations" but the second most nominations being such a low number. Usually, we get one or two movies with double digit nominations (or close to it) and then the rest trailing by various degrees but not all clumped together like that!
We think this is an all time record (seven films sharing the two highest nomination tallies for that season).
Let's glance at some other years...
2019 was an unusual year in that there were a lot of films with double digit tallies so we had four films dominating...
2018 was slightly more typical but still four films...
For fun i picked a few random years to look at from the distant past.
2005
8 nominations
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (3 wins)
6 nominations
CRASH (3 wins)
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (3 wins)
1999
8 noms
AMERICAN BEAUTY (5 wins)
7 noms
CIDER HOUSE RULES (2 noms)
THE INSIDER
1986... had a broad spread of support like this year but five films not seven...
8 nominations
PLATOON (4 wins)
A ROOM WITH A VIEW (3 wins)
7 nominations
ALIENS (2 wins)
HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (3 wins)
THE MISSION (1 win)
1975
9 nominations
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (5 wins)
7 nominations
BARRY LYNDON (4 wins)
1964
13 nominations
MARY POPPINS (5 wins)
12 nominations
BECKET (1 win)
MY FAIR LADY (8 wins)
1951
12 nominations
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (4 wins)
9 noms
A PLACE IN THE SUN (6 wins)
That's only a random sampling but you can see it generally falls along the same lines of 3 movies dominating the nominations. Not 7.
How do you think this happened this year? A lack of passion or just an honest reflection of a lot of movies with the general same amount of passion?