New Trivia via the 95th Oscar Nominations!

By Nathaniel R 

JUDD HIRSCH, record-breaker!

It used to be that Oscar experts were few and far between but now you throw a rock and you hit one! Are you wielding elaborate spreadsheets to track things at home? If so we salute you in solidarity and ask for your help in fleshing this out. We will add to this list as new trivia occurs to us or is told to us by you (or others) but for now here’s some “firsts” and rarities and other interesting factoids from the nominations for the 95th Oscars...

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Who could surprise *without* SAG/Globe precursors on Tuesday?

The following article is reprinted from The Many Rantings of John with his permission. We have attempted to lure him to joining The Film Experience but we had to share this wonderful stat-fascinating piece! You should also follow him on Letterboxd. (Consider this piece a companion of sorts to Chris's piece on statistically who might still be vulnerable despite love from the precursors)

Sipping Oscar tea

by John T.

Every year since 2006 at least one nominee for the Oscars was not highlighted by either the HFPA (the Golden Globes) or SAG-AFTRA, and becomes the "shock" of the morning.  At this point in the season, predicting the Oscars is something of a slog because so much is "decided" so trying to guess who will be this nominee becomes quite fun.  

Here are the people from the past ten years who fit this bill:

2021: Penelope Cruz, Jesse Plemons, JK Simmons, Judi Dench, & Jessie Buckley
2020: Paul Raci & LaKeith Stanfield
2019: Florence Pugh
2018: Marina de Tavira & Yalitza Aparicio
2017: Lesley Manville
2016: Michael Shannon
2015: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Hardy, & Mark Ruffalo
2014: Bradley Cooper, Marion Cotillard, & Laura Dern
2013: Jonah Hill
2012: Quvenzhane Wallis, Emmanuelle Riva, & Jacki Weaver

Usually the types of nominees that get in under this designation fall into one of two categories...

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Yeoh with the good timing

by Nathaniel R

Michelle Yeoh in "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon"

How's this for campaign timing? While Oscar nominations are announced January 24th (next Tuesday - final predictions right here tomorrow)  Voting on the actual winners doesn't take place until the first week of March (Oscar night is March 12th). In that crucial month inbetween the nominations and the ceremony, look what's coming back to theaters -- CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON (2000) in a 4K restoration! That's right. Michelle Yeoh's other Oscar-worthy Lead Actress performance will be back in theaters on February 17th. Cate Blanchett (TAR) will be hard to beat in Best Actress this time around but this can't exactly hurt the cause to make history in voting for Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once); awards races never happen in vacuums and feelings about whole careers and historical precedent also often enter the room. No Asian actress has ever been nominated for Best Actress and thus no Asian actress has won*... 

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ICYMI - Eligibility for the 95th Oscars (and two noticeable absences)

We usually share the official "reminder" list for Academy voters but it's been so busy we forgot. Apologies. If you'd like to look it up it's here. 301 films are eligible for Best Picture this year. This list is a handy guide each year to clear up any doubts that remain about what actually got released in theaters, and in which calendar year (given that many films don't "qualify" until the year after their festival bows, this year that's the case for Benediction, The Cursed, and Pleasure, among others, which all first premiered in 2021). All of this becomes harder and harder to track each year with theatrical releases barely advertised and in theaters for increasingly short durations.

The biggest area of curiousity for us, is seeing which of the annual submissions for Best International Feature Film are eligible outside of that race and which were released but didn't submit for general eligibility...

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International Feature Race - Part 1. The Numbers, Genres, and Trivia

by Nathaniel R

Can "Decision to Leave" become the second nominee from South Korea?

We can no longer wait around twiddling our thumbs for the Academy's official press releases. AMPAS used to be so prompt with the Best International Feature Film category. In the past few years they've dropped the ball. The deadline for submission was six weeks ago and though Academy members have already been screening the films for a month there's still no press release from AMPAS about the "official list". If they continue this unfortunate new habit that means that nearly a hundred films each year will fail to get two months of media attention that they fully deserve before most of them are eliminated. The Academy will narrow down this year's 92 accepted submissions to just 15 on December 21st (barely a month away). And from those 15 they'll announce the 5 nominees on January 24th. You can see the current predictions here and the full charts detailing all 92 contenders. We assume that Malta's entry, Carmen, was not accepted due to too much English language since it's the only submission from our research that's not on their screening list. 

Anyway, if you smoosh all 92 films together into one imaginary film you'd get something like the following:

A family drama, with a political angle (and probably involving immigration of some kind), which comes from a early to mid-career director who is still rising. The film will be trilingual with dialogue in Arabic, French, and Spanish. It will be 107 minutes long. 

We'll adjust the following stats and trivia IF Oscar's official press release begs to differ by a film or two (which sometimes happens) whenever it arrives. Or maybe they just won't release it this year? So Let's talk stats, trivia, genres, and themes...

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