Best Director - "How'd They Get Nominated?"

The Best Director Oscar chart is fully revamped with a poll, lots of stats, trivia, and information. If we fused all five directors into one Mecha-Director we'd have a 59 year-old 5'9" Sagittarian living in California who has New Zealand, Irish, and Japanese roots. This fictional Mecha-Director has made 15 movies and been nominated in this category 3 times.

The chart also contains our annual thought experiment: "How'd they get nominated?"...

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12 takeaways from this morning's Oscar nominations

In no particular order - see the full list of nominations here.

1. BEST ACTRESS IS, TWO YEARS RUNNING NOW, A CHAOTIC NAIL-BITER
Last season provided us a rare nail-biter as different women kept winning lead actress at the televised shows: Andra Day, Viola Davis, Frances McDormand, Carey Mulligan. This year the nominations themselves have been routinely surprising. In fact the only woman to hit *every* key precursor was Lady Gaga but when the nominations were announced this morning she was the most shocking snub. Meanwhile, Penelope Cruz who'd only won the Volpi Cup and Kristen Stewart, who had struggled in the precursors despite year long "she's going to win!" hoopla both showed up. So we currently have NO idea who is going to win. You can make a case for any of the nominees. And, once again, none of them are in Best Picture nominated films.

2. QUALIFYING RELEASES ARE ALIVE AND WELL (SIGH)
Norway's incredible film The Worst Person in the World scored a surprise nomination in Best Original Screenplay (well deserved) despite only playing for a week unadvertised in theaters to qualify...

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Final Oscar Predictions in all categories!

by Nathaniel R

I'll spend the rest of the weekend completing the annual Film Bitch Awards (the Oscar parallel categories that is) for my own list-making pleasure and for those of you who enjoy them. But first a final round of our favourite kind of punditry - who will be Oscar nominated?. If you're a longtime reader you'll know we find this question infinitely more fascinating than who will win and we've long bemoaned how the internet has turned "who will win?" into a year-long sport when that's not all that fun to talk about in comparison to the complexity and party-combo possibilities of a top 5 in each category. Plus, it's downright rude to be handing out statues all year before all the competitors have been seen! Can you imagine the World Series announcing the final two teams at the beginning of the season, or RuPaul's Drag Race sending 11 queens home on the first episode without watching them lipsynch or seeing even one of their runway lewks? No! It's f***ing rude to ask who will win before January, you know? How can there be a "best" before all the contenders have screened? [/Rant].

Let's hit the final "Who Will Be Nominated?" predictions... 

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Oscar Volley: Picture - Does it really come down to just two spots?

TFE’s Oscar volleys wrap up with Lynn Lee, Eurocheese, and Christopher James making predictions for the Big One (Best Picture). Nathaniel’s final Oscar chart predictions will be up tonight to usher in the weekend.

Lynn Lee: Oscar nomination voting closed Tuesday night but before it did do we agree we were approaching a consensus core group? Taking the precursors into account (minus BAFTA which hasn't yet announced as I type this), eight of the ten spots are close to locked up (in alpha order): Belfast, CODA, Don't Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, The Power of the Dog and West Side Story. That leaves two nomination spots for maybe a half dozen viable contenders. PGA went with Being the Ricardos and tick, tick...BOOM!, but as Nathaniel’s noted, the Oscar list is rarely an exact copy of the PGA. Could it happen this year? Entirely possible but I suspect at least one of those two is going to drop out and if I had to take a bet, it’s sadly more likely to be BOOM!...

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Oscar Volley: Best International Film is a pundit's nightmare

With less than a week until nominations, Cláudio Alves and Elisa Giudici discuss Best International Feature…

Italy's THE HAND OF GOD

Cláudio Alves: Before we delve into the finalists for Oscar's Best International Feature Film competition, I must comment on the fact that we each come from a record-holding country in this category's history, albeit opposite ends of the success spectrum. As far as victories, Italy (your home) is the all-time champion, having won this prize 14 times. On the other hand, Portugal (mine) is still waiting for its first nomination, being the unnominated country with the most submissions. In fact, we've never even gotten as far as the shortlist stage (cries inconsolably)!

Anyway, since we're on the topic of our countries, I'm interested in knowing whether you think it's safe to predict Paolo Sorrentino's return to the Academy's favour with The Hand of God. I can't say I'm entirely convinced about the picture's merits...

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