Toni Erdmann and The Longest Foreign Nominees

By Dancin Dan

If you've heard one thing about Germany's Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee Toni Erdmann, other than how great it is (and you can add me to the chorus of voices showering it with praise), it's probably been that Maren Ade's shaggy-dog comedy is LONG. So, trivia hound that I am, I was naturally curious to see just how long it was in the grand scheme of Oscar.

Toni Erdmann has either the 16th or 17th longest running time of all the films nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. That confusion comes from the weirdness of different versions of films and which ones the Academy actually saw when voting...

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26 Days Until Oscar. Sing-along with Sammy Cahn

On this 26th day before Oscar, why not sing along to classic tunes co-written by Sam Cahn who received an incredible 26 Oscar nominations. He was so popular in his time that he even posed for pictures like this! Hee.

Yes, dear reader, there are people with more Oscar nominations than Meryl Streep.  Not many of them, mind you, and the bulk of them seem to be from the sound or music branches...

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29 Days until Oscar

29 is the number of the day. It's also the most common age for Best Actress winners. That's quite something if you consider that the youngest best actor winner of all time was 29 and just a month shy of his 30th (Adrien Brody, The Pianist). The gender bias that preferences young actresses and older men gets even worse when you realize that HALF of all Best Actress winners won by the age of 33. Less than 10% of Best Actor winners were 33 and under. The eight women who won at 29 are...

Emma Stone is the youngest Best Actress nominee this year at 28 and expected to win by most pundits. Stone is the same age now as the following winners were: Norma Shearer in The Divorcee, Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve, Luise Rainer in The Good Earth and Charlize Theron in Monster.

Curiously there is no "most common age" for Best Actors (spread out fairly evenly from mid 30s to mid 40s) or Best Supporting Actress (all over the place). The most common age for Supporting Actor winners is 46 (seven winners).

30 Days Until Oscar

30 is...

...the running time of Wallace & Gromit's Oscar winning shorts A Close Shave (1995) and The Wrong Trousers (1993)

...the number of features directed by Steven Spielberg from Sugarland Express (1974) to The BFG (2016)

...the age of Bette Davis and Hilary Swank when they won their second Best Actress Oscars for Jezebel (1938) and Million Dollar Baby (2004) respectively

...the year of Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front

... and the age at which you get all dressed up to be "terminated" in Logan's Run (1976). For the good of society!

Numbers. Oscars. Numbers. Oscars...

If you love Oscars too much (*raises hands*) your head can get a little swimmy on Oscar nomination day, trying to parse it all. Particularly the numbers and the new statistics. This could take some time. But here are some non-subjective hierarchies and numbers and stats from the day.

We'll start with the easy one.

Most Nominations

1. La La Land (14)
2. [tie] Moonlight and Arrival (8)
3. [tie] Hacksaw Ridge and Lion and Manchester by the Sea (6)
4. Fences (4)
5. Hidden Figures and Jackie (3)
   
   NOTE: Jackie marks the second year in a row wherein a "chilly" gorgeous movie about a complicated woman wins the distinction of "most nominated movie that isn't nominated for Best Picture" -- coincidence? Nope.

5 of past 6 years film w/ most noms that wasn't up for Best Pic was a chilly beauty about complex woman. Coincidence? I think not. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/fRFZXaflsb

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) January 24, 2017

Category with Most First Timers!
(excluding categories with too way many names to look up like producing, visual fx, sound,song, and makeup) 

1. Adapted Screenplay (5/5 nominees are newbies to Oscar)
2. [tie] Original Score and Cinematography (4/5 nominees are newbies to Oscar)
3. Best Director (4/5 nominees are first timers in this particular category though some have been nominated in other categories)
4. Best Supporting Actor (3/5 nominees are newbies to Oscar)
5. Original Screenplay (3/5 nominees are first time nominees for writing) 

Other Curious Statistics after the jump...

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