by Nathaniel R
Nominations have been announced for the 97th Academy Awards and our worst fears are realized: we’ll now be forced to watch a movie about T**** just as he’s in the process of dismantling democracy. The Apprentice scored two acting nominations. Though Sebastian Stan hadn’t been winning awards for this movie but the other one (A Different Man, in which he is brilliant), never doubt the power of a famous actor playing a famous person. Unless that person is Angelina Jolie I guess? She famously missed the category in 2008 for a biopic despite doing well in the precursors and now she’s missed again for Maria.
Our other worst nightmare for this season is also true: Problematic messy Emilia Perez has obliterated the record set by infinitely better movies Roma and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to become the most nominated non-English language film of all time at the Oscars. In fact, with 13 nominations it’s one of the most nominated movies of any kind. We are living in wild times...
I promise I’ll get to the good news in a second but two more gripes, both music branch related since they are my sworn enemies year after year: Diane Warren’s strangehold on Best Original Song for movies that otherwise have no Oscar dreams whatsoever and despite not having a hit song in aeons, continues. Nothing short of Diane Warren taking a vacation can cure the music branch. They’ve also given a Best Original Score nomination to Wicked despite the fact that there’s no way that it should have even been eligible since rules are in place to prohibit scores that are heavy on non original content to compete. Wicked is 80% songs, none of which are original. And yet Dune Part Two was denied eligibility based on not enough original music in its score. Make it make sense.
As is usual for the Oscars, the pool of films that were “considered” seems small and “spread the wealth” is not a governing motto. Emilia Perez nabbed every single nomination it basically could have save a double-dip in Supporting Actress. But three films scored double digit nominations with The Brutalist and Wicked each receiving 10 nominations.
It’s not all bad news. A lot of fine performances and films were recognized even if we could AND WILL go into more detail about what upset us and delighted us in each category.
But the best news is surely that Oscar voters continue to get more adventurous (except for in the adventure of watching more movies in general). The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s gonzo body horror satire, defied the odds to become the rare horror movie to score big at the Oscars with __ nominations. I’ve thought about this success a lot since I doubted that it would come to pass (and have ooze on my face as a result). This film is not something the Academy would have gone for even 5 or 6 years ago. It’s success is not just due to the expansion of the voting body – which has definitely cooled genre aversions and boosted international achievements. I’d argue that was only the half of the foundational reason that this particular movie succeeded despite seeming like a long shot when it first arrived in Cannes. The other half responsible for its awards success: the satirical target of Hollywood, ageism, and the nightmarish beauty standards of the entertainment industry. Surely everyone in Hollywood could relate to the theme of the film, no matter how extreme the expression was.
Lots more to come over the next week as we dive into stats and individual categories. For now check out all the OFFICIAL NOMINEES at the Prediction Index Page and laugh at how terribly I did this year with lots of 3/5 categories and only two perfect scores (Visual Effects, Animated Feature).