12 Things We Learned From the Oscar Nominations

Happy Christmas Oscar Nomination Day! Herewith quick observations on the 91st Academy Award nominations.

10 THINGS WE LEARNED (OR RELEARNED) FROM THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS

Cuarón with the first of his many wins this year1. All the times that Alfonso Cuarón made his (plentiful) Best Director acceptance speeches about Marina & Yalitza as the "heart" of his film, really paid off. Voters were paying attention, even if only subconsciously and both actresses were nominated in volatile fifth spots in their categories.

2. It's tough to snag a "lone" Oscar nomination for your movie if you're a non-legendary actor. Timothée Chalamet and Glenn Close and Willem Dafoe were all working at that this year and the one that dropped out was Chalamet for Beautiful Boy. He'll be legendary one day but he just became really famous last year and the film had no other boosts to keep him in the conversation...

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Live Announcement: Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards

Related Articles: 
• 12 things we learned from the noms
• Adams vs Weisz, Round Two
• Best Picture Silliness
• Deep Cut Oscar Trivia
• Mourning the Snubs
• How to Stage the Original Song Performances
• Nomination Index (individual charts still being updated)

 I used to call this day my Christmas but I worry about coal in the stocking. Did we receive Oscar nomination gifts this year or lumps of coal? A little of both of course. Tracee Ellis Ross and Kumail Nanjiani were the chipper announcers this morning, making frequent jokes about how little sleep they'd gotten before the announcements.

The full list of nominations and how well we did on our predictions follow...

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Podcast Special: Lots and Lots of Reader Questions Answered

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl answer your questions this week

On this special edition of the podcast we ONLY answer reader questions. As many as we could get to in an hour. We had soooo much fun doing this one so we hope you enjoy, and thank you for the diversion.

Index (60 minutes)
00:01 Who will win SAG's Supporting Actress + fixing category fraud?
06:50 Original screenplay nominations + buying DVDs
12:00 Characters wardrobe, female directors, and films that define 2018
22:30 "Shallow" + "If you saw this... than why?" + replacing Oscar lists
31:35 Nominee presentations + Oscar Hosting 
35:45 Ben is Back and Roma questions
41:40 Nomination balloting procedures + Fav scenes of the year
52:00 Mandatory Best Actress diversion
57:00 Changing opinions on previous top 10 lists?

Further Reading / References
• Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) interview
• Smackdown of 1943
• Oscar Charts
• Kyle Buchanan on the hostless Oscars article

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Special Episode: Reader Questions!

Shorts Predictions -- All Oscar Categories Complete!

by Nathaniel R

some of the shorts contenders we're most curious about after investigating the titles

For better or worse all of the Oscar predictions are completed including the last three hold outs: Live Action Short, Animated Short, and Documentary Short. Though we have yet to see the shorts (that'll have to wait until nominations) predictions were made via an unholy combo of hunches, IMDb ratings, plot descriptions, tea leaves, blind faith, coin tossing, and a teensy bit but not much of seeing what other people around the web are saying but never following that exactly because nobody ever scores 5/5 in all shorts categories. Including me, of course, but there's always a first time. Maybe? 

 Final Predictions All Categories
INDEX | PICTURE   | DIRECTOR |
ACTRESS | ACTOR | SUPP ACTRESS |
SUPP ACTOR | SCREENPLAY  |
FOREIGN FILM | ANIMATION, DOCS, SHORTS |
VISUALS | SOUND

Final Predictions: Best Actor & Best Actress

Other than the shorts, which we'll get to this weekend, we're all finished with our final Oscar predictions. Though we're at the top two most discussed categories, I regret to inform that this will surely be anti-climactic since I'm sticking with previous predictions in both cases. But here's why...

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