by Nathaniel R
"All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" won Venice, but nothing is ever locked for the Documentary nominations as they pass over many frontrunners.
Happy weekend, Oscar fantastics. Figured it was time to finally put up the Documentary Feature chart now that we know several of the potential biggies. How do we suddenly know them given that documentaries arrive each and every week with little indication of whether they'll be Emmy or Oscar fodder? The answer is three key buzz-boosting factors...
The DOC NYC shortlist (which has the kind of Oscar-predictive track record that suggests their board or committee or what have you have very similar taste to Academy voters), the Critics Choice Association nominees (which aren't quite as predictive -- and they probably hate that! -- because they always err in favor of mainstream audiences; whatever's high profile is what they embrace!). Finally there's the International Documentary Association's longlist which is more highbrow and international to complete a well rounded picture of "the field". Between the three honors, you can at least get a taste for white might happen when the Academy narrows down their always 100+ options to 15.
As for Best Animated Feature, that race is both much clearer and potentially surprisingly. The potentially surprising part falls under the "is this all there is?" umbrella. Early buzz suggests that Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio is heading for a sweep given that it's already started an actual Best Picture campaign (FYC ad above). But the fact that the animated Oscar feels like a certainty rather than presumptive "hype" is largely due to the lack of other possible winners. None of the other titles have any apparent "winner" heat... even the ones with devout fans. And what to make of the fact that the only distributors that feel like they have strong nomination possibilities are Disney (Strange World, Turning Red, and maybe even Lightyear given Oscar's insatiable appetite for Toy Story) and Netflix (stop motion films like Wendell & Wild and Pinocchio, Cartoon Saloon's traditionally animated My Father's Dragon, plus the popular CG adventure Sea Beast). Surely those two companies alone cannot take up 100% of the nomination slots!
Or can they? Or are we underestimating A24's Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (which we assume will be disqualified), GKids visually thrilling but low profile Inu-Oh, or the Dreamworks hit The Bad Guys. Until we get the long list of eligible titles from the Academy we won't know which international features bothered to submit and four-wall a theater in Los Angeles. Regarding the latter possibility, there's definitely room for a yet-to-be-discovered-in-America quality surprise. We're particularly curious to see if any of the European Film Awards nominees in this category bothered to submit to AMPAS.
Thoughts?