by Nathaniel R
If you predicted AVATAR FIRE AND ASH in costumes. Please take the week off in celebration and invest immediately in gambling because you are psychic.
Dear readers, as I recreate the Oscar charts to reflect nominations and add "Reader Choice" polling, consider these 10 off-the-cuff takeaways about this morning's Oscar nominations -- you can see the full list (as well as my prediction score) here. In the meantime I hope you enjoy these takeaways and answer three questions that come to mind...
10 TAKEAWAYS + 4 COMMENT PARTY QUESTIONS
Oscar Voters Can Still Surprise Us!
I really didn't expect to type this. "Surprises" generally being an overstatement when it comes to Oscar results. Even if something happens that isn't widely expected it's usually at least been talked up as a "spoiler" possibility for months. In comes the Costume Design branch to keep us on our toes. Who on Gods Green Earth or Pandora's Blue Oceans saw a Best Costume Design nomination coming for the CGI loincloths and tribal accessories of Avatar Fire and Ash !?
Not I! And we don't even have immense popularity of the film to blame since it wasn't as well reviewed as its predecessors and couldn't even manage Sound or Production Design nominations.
F1: THE DAD MOVIE Stop Underestimating Dad Movies
While people began to predict F1: The Movie at the last minute (after its PGA showing) for most of the year it was regarded as "will probably show up in a couple of craft categories only". It's showing this morning withfour nominations (Picture, Sound, Editing, Visual Effects) reminds us that Dad Movies are often underestimated in punditry but still show up on Nomination Morning. A lesser (and much lower quality) example this year is Nuremberg surprising on some shortlists a month ago though it didn't actually score any nominations.
Leonardo DiCaprio's Amazing Eye for "Future Best Picture"
We've all experienced actors we love choosing badly when it comes to film projects. But nobody who loves Leo really knows what this pain feels like. While the world's biggest prestige movie star could definitely stand to take more risks -- when was the last time he used his massive power to boost an unlikely but worthy project or work with a first time director... or even a mid-career director who wasn't already a major auteur? -- he does have a knack for getting behind films that are going to turn out real well. Should One Battle After Another follow in the footsteps of Titanic (1997) and The Departed (2006) and win Best Picture... he will tie other living legends like Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson (and several late legends like Clark Gable, Diane Keaton, and John Cazale) in the category of "Actor Who Has Appeared in the Most Best Picture Winners". He's only 51 so we're willing to bet that he eventually breaks the long-standing record. If you widen that record to "Actor Who Has Appeared in the Most Best Picture Nominees" his track record is even stronger. It helps of course that Oscar moved to an expanded Best Picture field during his A-List years but he has now starred in an incredible 12 Best Picture Nominees, tying that other Scorsese favourite Robert DeNiro in the process. Only one actor has them beat: the character actor Ward Bond. It would take a lot for other actors to catch DeNiro and DiCaprio -- only two living actors currently feel anything like a threat: Cate Blanchett who has been in 10 BP nominees and Timothee Chalamet who has been famous for less than a decade, has been racking them up with incredible speed and is already at 8 with Marty Supreme.
The Limits of Monopoly / All Hail the New Monopoly!
For much of the year it felt like NEON had little competition in the Best International Feature Film race. In fact, even toward the end it was tempting to predict that they'd entirely own the category (a feat that's never been accomplished) with 100% of the nominations. It wasn't just that their acquistion and development teams have extraordinary taste on the regular. It was also good luck. Many a great film has been snubbed during the shortlisting phase of this category but all five of their buzziest subtitled films (Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, It Was Just An Accident, No Other Choice, and Sirat) made the 15 film wide cut. It also helped that the other distributors who tend to have. a strong track record in this category (A24, Netflix, SPC, Janus Films) just didn't appear to be trying as hard or pushing as many titles this season. In the end their best submission (No Other Choice) was the one left on the outside lookign in. I'm tremendously sad about that but it probably isn't healthy for one distributor to own an entire Oscar game.
I have NO OTHER CHOICE but to pardon Park Chan Wook and South Korea should they drop a large plant on the heads of Oscar voters
What Does the Academy Have Against South Korea?
Given the Globalization of Oscar (more on that in a minute) it remains strange and (frankly) fucking annoying that Oscar voters keep passing on South Korean films. Parasite is still the only film from South Korea they've ever nominated which is immensely stupid given the generally high quality of the country's submissions and also the fact that Korean cinema is hardly lacking in enthusiasts in the real world. Why can't it penetrate Oscar ballots?
Coattails Will Always Be a Thing
The following is not a judgment! The coattail effect -- i.e. when a very popular thing (usually a Best Picture lock but sometimes an actor) pulls a craft element or performance into contention that otherwise probably wouldn't have been "considered" --doesn't give AF about quality; Sometimes this happens for very worthy achievements and sometimes it helps mediocre efforts. So you decide for yourself the worthiness of the following nominations but they all feel like they surely benefitted from borrowed glory via the immense popularity of their film OR their lead thespian: Blue Moon in Original Screenplay (though sadly coattails didn't help Oscar worthy Andrew Scott in Supporting), Michael B Jordan in Sinners (only the second vampire performance ever nominated and the only previous had more "Oscar" hooks and was decidedly less of a horror movie, Delroy Lindo in Sinners, One Battle After Another's Production Design... what else do you think benefitted?
Wicked For Good's Total Collapse
While I saw it coming -- I'd been predicting Erivo and Grande to miss all year even when people said I was foolish -- I admit that I was surprised to see it go all the way from "assumed contender all over the place" to completely snubbed in just a couple of months time. Missing in Best Song for example feels very pointedly bitchy like "begone... you have no power here" The industry has been moving toward transitioning Movies into Big TV Episodes for a long time with their franchise obsession and we've been worried about the Oscars becoming the Emmys with people nominated multiple times for the very same achievement but we've avoided that terror... for now! Next time maybe don't split your big movie into two movies just to charge people twice!
Delroy Lindo finally gets payback for that snub for DA 5 BLOODS
Category Fraud Already Won the War... But A Few Victories for the Losers (All Supporting Players)
While the precursors and the media have long cemented / cheered on the full colonization of the supporting categories, leaving character actors without the home that was built for them, we must cheer small victories! The Academy rejected Paul Mescal's shameless bid for Supporting (love love love his acting but that was gross) despite playing Shakespeare in a movie about the Shakespeare marriage and replaced him with Delroy Lindo (long seen as a spoiler possibility for this honor though the precursors just weren't biting). Not that there aren't leads in that category. Meanwhile over in Supporting Actress, with Ariane Grande getting ousted at the last moment despite full media support (I predicted no nods for Grande & Erivo all year and people thought I was crazy) we have a full 100% of the supporting actress category going to actual supporting actresses!!! IT'S A CHRISTMAS* MIRACLE. We're glad for these small victories because the way the culture has decided Best Supporting should be retitled Best Lead Spillover is very 21st century 1% worship but obscene. Honestly people (and awards voters!) Category Fraud is like naming your CEO "Employee of the Month". They already have their own Awards opportunities, not to mention other perks that are (mostly) denied supporting actors (Big Fame, Enormous Salaries, Constant Media Fawning, Etc...)
* Oscar nomination morning is our Christmas, don'cha know
Globalization Continues
While we didn't break the barrier of "Most Non-English Language Best Picture Nominees" that many pundits were predicting (It Was Just An Accident stalled out in Picture/Director), subtitled features still did very well. All but one of the Best International Feature Film nominees received at least one nomination outside of that category, too.
All Records Will Eventually Be Broken
When films as seismically successful as Titanic (1997) or as instantly popular as La La Land (2016) couldn't break the 14 nomination record first set by All About Eve (1950) 75 years ago, we figured it just wouldn't happen. We were wrong! Sinners obliterated the record setting a new record of 16. So now "second place" is two nominations less. Of course it helped that the Oscars added a category for the first time in ages (Best Casting). This is all along way of saying that Katharine Hepburn with her seemingly insurmountable four lead acting wins (she's held that record for over 40 years) and Meryl Streep with her most acting nominations ever (she's held the record since 2002's Adaptation and then kept breaking it) had better watch their backs.
4 NEW QUESTIONS
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT that cinephile pundits got carried away
What happened to It Was Just An Accident?
Was that widely expected Director nomination for Panahi and even a somewhat regularly predicted Best Picture berth just a cinephile fever dream? It didn't do poorly with 2 nominations but it didn't break through in the way it was widely expected to either. Was it Sirat's sudden surge? Neon having more films than they could adequately campaign for... or were voters just not really that into it?
Can Sinners beat One Battle to Best Picture?
It would be wrong to say that any of Sinner's 16 nominations are a shock but ALL of them combined? There is not a single category in which Sinners was eligible that it was not nominated. I am struggling to think of that being true of any other film in history. The same is not true of One Battle (which missed a few it was eligible for). Sinners even scored for its Makeup (despite Oscar voters regularly shunning horror films) and Visual Effects even though it's inarguably more of a Supporting Visual FX movie and this category tends towards "Most" Visual FX). The race for Best Picture might be more intense than precursors suggest.
Coattails didn't help super-worthy Andrew Scott but Ethan Hawke could still win for BLUE MOON
Best Actor: Chalamet or Hawke?
With Blue Moon's mildly surprising entrance into Best Original Screenplay might Hawke have just enough of a boost to win career honors. Oscar voters do LOVE movies about showbiz and biopics. Plus he's been working forever and has great taste and deserves more nominations than he's received. Meanwhile though Chalamet's career is red hot and he's admittedly spectacular in Marty Supreme. I didn't think he'd ever top his Call Me By Your Name performance and I was wrong.
Best Casting - How would you grade their inaugural year?
We haven't had a new Oscar category in decades. What do you make of this first year's results? The finalist list suggested a weird mix of savvy discerning AND totally ignorant of what casting directors even do -- I'm suddenly feeling nice so I'm not going to point out those films by name but how can you take it seriously when they shortlisted one particular film with no casting work (a sequel without new characters) and a film where the performance quality was all over the place with arguably only a single piece of inspiration in casting and otherwise xeroxed from "currently ubiquitous SAG member" alongside films which obviously benefitted enormously from the casting directors savvy eye and a difficult make-or-break assignment. I don't know quite what to make of this or how to grade them. So I want to say "B" -- the nominee list is solid in the end but the longlists suggested the final quintet could fall anywhere from totally amazing to absolute disaster so I don't want to give them too much credit.
YOUR TURN. HOW DID YOUR CHRISTMAS/OSCAR NOMINATION MORNING GO?