Directing an Actor to a Nomination - The Stats

by Ben Miller 

Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) is the third actor Spike Lee has a directed to a nomination after Danny Aiello (Do the Right Thing) and Denzel Washington (Malcolm X)

With the upcoming Academy Awards celebrating their 91st year, the Oscars have plenty of history to obsess over.  One of the less-discussed pieces of history is which directors have the most pull with the Academy's acting branch. Today's topic: directors who have guided multiple actors and actresses to nominations and/or wins. 

With this season's nominations, directors Bradley Cooper (3), Yorgos Lanthimos (3), Peter Farrelly (2), and Marielle Heller (2) all join a group of directors who've guided multiple actors to Oscar nominations. In this season's crop of films Vice's Adam McKay (4), Roma's Alfonso Cuaron (3), If Beale Street's Barry Jenkins (3), BlacKkKlansman's Spike Lee (3), Bohemian Rhapsody's Bryan Singer (2) and At Eternity's Gate's Julian Schnabel (2) all add to their previous tallies since each had previously directed either one or two actors to a nomination.

In the 91 year history of the Academy Awards, 1757 performances were directed to an Oscar nomination.  I tracked every single one of them to come up with these numbers. More notes after the jump...

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Listening to the Best Score Nominees

18 days til Oscar so today is a perfect day to look at and listen to the composers nominated for Best Original Score. They have 18 nominations between them and on their Oscar chart, you can vote on who you think should win. Let's check out the nominees!

Terence Blanchard  for BlacKkKlansman  (56 years old | 33 features | 1st nomination!)
This New Orleans native is world-famous jazz musician and trumpet player. He's been working with Spike Lee in on capacity or another since Spike's second film School Daze (1988). His first full score for Spike was Jungle Fever (1991) and Blanchard has scored all but a couple of Lee's joints since...

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"Awards season is trying to kill me," a paranoid confession.

by Nathaniel R

You guys. WHAT is happening? Not to sound paranoid but award season is trying to kill me. Day after day things worsen. Am I inside a Black Mirror episode through the use of some technology I wasn't even aware of? Or have I fallen through a rabbit hole to an alternate dimension where all obsessions curdle in on themselves to become one's worst fears? Are you also experiencing this nightmare with me? Please tell me it's not all in my own head.

The film year started out so well...

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It's their 21st movie!

by Nathaniel R

(yes we'll get to the DGA awards in a minute. until then...)

Both Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) and Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) are nominated this year for their 21st feature film roles. So let's play a game.

With 21 days until the Oscars, we selected 21 screencaps  of 21 very randomly selected favourite actors of TFE from their 21st films. Guess what the movie is in the comments (please only 1 movie guess per comment to give multiple readers a chance to guess.). They won't all be as easy as #1 after the jump...

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22 days til Oscar - Walt Disney and his nearest rivals (?)

by Nathaniel R

Everyone presumably knows that Walt Disney (1901-1966), one of the 20th century's most influential titans, holds the records of most competitive Oscar wins. He amassed a total of 22 Oscars in his career which broke down like so:

• 12 animated shorts
• 6 live action shorts *
• 2 documentary shorts
• 2 documentary features

A few notes on these achievements and Disney's nearest rivals in these categories (and whether or not the ranks might change) after the jump...

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