Oscar nominations — my own two bits, and a complete list
Oscar nominations — my own two bits, and a complete list
Among other thing, the awards are more international than ever this year, and a record number of Best Picture nominees were directed by women.
I’ve been a bit busy these past few days, so I haven’t had a chance to comment on the Oscar nominations until now—but hey, better late than never, right?
Traditionally, the movie that wins Best Picture is the movie that also got nominations for directing, screenwriting, film editing, and at least one of its actors. By that standard, there are three serious contenders this year: Oppenheimer, which led the pack with 13 nominations; Poor Things, which ran a close second with 11 nominations; and Anatomy of a Fall, a foreign film that got all 5 of the key nominations.
A recurring pattern this year is the international flavour of the awards, which may help to explain some of the more surprising “snubs” of the year.
E.g., many people had assumed that two films rooted in American pop culture—American Symphony, about Oscar-winning composer Jon Batiste, and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie—were locks for documentary feature nods. Instead, for the first time ever, all five of the nominees in that category are foreign this year (though American Symphony did get a nod for best original song).
Similarly, many people were surprised, even upset, that Greta Gerwig didn’t get a nod for directing Barbie. Some people were also surprised that Alexander Payne, who has been nominated three times in the past, failed to get a nod for The Holdovers, which many people think is Payne’s best film since Sideways. But the Academy did nominate the directors of two foreign-language films, i.e. Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet and The Zone of Interest’s Jonathan Glazer.
Notably, both Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest got five nominations apiece, including Best Picture, which makes this the first time ever that two foreign-language films got that many nominations in the same year, and the first time ever that two international foreign-language films got nominated for Best Picture.
The “international” feel of the Best Picture race was further enhanced by a third film, Past Lives, which tells the story of two childhood friends from South Korea who reconnect as adults, after one of them has moved to the United States. A lot of the dialogue is in Korean, and the film was nominated for its screenplay, too.
Beyond that, foreign films were also recognized in categories like cinematography (El Conde), makeup & hairstyling (Society of the Snow), visual effects (Godzilla Minus One), and animated feature (The Boy and the Heron, Robot Dreams), and it’s noteworthy that one of the most-nominated films, Poor Things, was directed by a notorious Greek provocateur, Yorgos Lanthimos, who got a nod for directing that film.
Some other random facts that caught my eye:
The film with the most nominations and no Best Picture nod is Napoleon, with three nominations. The Best Picture nominee with the fewest total nominations is Past Lives, with only two nominations.
Interestingly, of the two foreign-language films that were nominated for Best Picture, only one—The Zone of Interest—is also nominated for international feature film. That’s because France, the country that could have been represented by Anatomy of a Fall, opted to be represented by The Taste of Things instead… but that film didn’t get nominated at all, and now there are rumours that there may be repercussions for the French committee that makes these selections.
A record three Best Picture nominees—Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, and Past Lives—were directed by women, though only one of those women, Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet, was nominated for directing.
All three of the women who directed Best Picture nominees were nominated for their writing: Barbie’s Greta Gerwig (with Noah Baumbach) for adapted screenplay (a categorization that was, itself, controversial), and Anatomy of Fall’s Triet (with Arthur Harari) and Past Lives’ Celine Song for original screenplay.
Between Barbie and her previous films Lady Bird and Little Women, Gerwig is now the first woman to have directed three Best Picture nominees. Lady Bird is still the only film of hers to have earned a directing nomination, though.
As noted above, a lot of people are upset that Gerwig didn’t get nominated for directing Barbie. But, in addition to the Academy’s seeming preference for international films this year, it is also quite common for mega-blockbusters to get nominated for picture but not for director (e.g., last year’s Top Gun: Maverick), and it is not unusual for comedies to be snubbed in the directing category, too (some would put this year’s American Fiction and The Holdovers in that camp).
A lot of people are also upset that Barbie star Margot Robbie was “snubbed” in the lead actress category while Ryan Gosling got a supporting-actor nod. Some see this as a win for the “patriarchy”. But if that’s the case, what are we to make of the fact that Robbie was “snubbed” while co-star America Ferrara—who delivered the film’s most famous speech—got a supporting-actress nomination?
The 2nd-highest-grossing film of the year, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, was shut out completely: no nod for animated feature, no nod for the song ‘Peaches’.
Four of the five films that grossed over $300 million in 2023 got at least one Oscar nomination (the exception being Super Mario). Of the other 19 films that grossed over $100 million, only three—Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, and Elemental—got any nods.
Martin Scorsese’s nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon is his 10th nod for directing, which makes him the most-nominated director alive. Only William Wyler, who was nominated 12 times, had more. Interestingly, Wyler passed away in 1981—the same year Scorsese got his first nomination, for Raging Bull.
Scorsese is also, at 81, now the oldest nominated director ever, beating the record set by John Huston when he was nominated for Prizzi’s Honor at the age of 79.
Robert De Niro’s nomination for supporting actor in Killers of the Flower Moon has broken Katherine Hepburn’s record for the longest gap between first and most recent acting nominations: he got his first nomination, for The Godfather Part II, 49 years ago (more than half as long as the Oscars have existed!).
John Williams, who already held the record for the most Oscar nominations of anyone alive, got his 54th today for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. He is also, at 91, the oldest person ever to be nominated for an Oscar (a record he has held since last year, when he was nominated for his score for The Fabelmans).
Dial of Destiny is the first Indiana Jones film to get an Oscar nomination since the 1980s. Raiders of the Lost Ark was nominated for eight and won four, plus it received a special achievement award for its sound effects editing. Temple of Doom was nominated for two and won one, for visual effects. And Last Crusade was nominated for three and won one, for sound effects editing. Williams, for his part, was nominated for his score on all three occasions, but did not win.
Bradley Cooper got an acting nomination for Maestro, which he also directed, and between this and A Star Is Born five years ago, he has apparently become only the fourth person to direct himself to an acting nomination more than once, following Laurence Olivier, Warren Beatty, and Clint Eastwood.
Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (which dropped the Part One from its title when it started streaming on Paramount+ yesterday) is the first of the seven Mission: Impossible movies to get any Oscar nominations.
Godzilla Minus One, which got a nod for its visual effects, is now the first Godzilla movie to get an Oscar nomination.
For the second year in a row, none of the animated feature nominees were nominated outside of that category. In the past, there has often been at least one nominee that also got a nod for its script, or music, or effects, etc.
The 1985 version of The Color Purple got 11 nominations, and won none of them. The 2023 version got just one, for supporting actress Danielle Brooks.
In something of a departure from recent years, very few of the fifteen short-film nominees seem to be available online right now. Short of the Week has a handy list of the nominees in question, including links to the films that should be online, but several of the films have already been yanked, presumably so as not to undermine the theatrical performance of this year’s Oscar Shorts program. At the moment, it seems that three of the documentary shorts are on various news-oriented YouTube channels, and three of the dramatic films are online—two on Netflix and one on The New Yorker’s YouTube channel—and that’s it.
This years marks a recovery of sorts for the streaming services. Last year, the only streaming film that got more than one nomination was All Quiet on the Western Front (another surprise international hit!). This year, Apple got 13 nominations—ten for Killers of the Flower Moon and three for Napoleon—while Netflix got 18, or more than any other studio, thanks to multiple nods for Maestro (a Best Picture nominee), Nyad, and Society of the Snow, plus single nods for American Symphony, El Conde, May December, Nimona, Rustin, and the two dramatic shorts.
More ambiguously, Amazon MGM got five nominations for American Fiction, which was technically produced by Amazon’s Orion Pictures division—but is that a theatrical movie made by a studio that has a streaming service, à la Disney or Paramount? Or is it a streaming movie that got a theatrical release first to boost its profile later, à la Apple? And then there’s Flamin’ Hot, a film produced by Searchlight (the Disney-owned studio behind Poor Things) that basically went straight to Hulu and Disney+; it got a nod for original song.
And now, without any further ado, the nominated feature films, listed from those with the most nominations to those with the fewest:
13 nominations
Oppenheimer — Picture, director (Christopher Nolan), actor (Cillian Murphy), supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.), supporting actress (Emily Blunt), adapted screenplay, production design, costume design, makeup, cinematography, film editing, original score, sound
11 nominations
Poor Things — Picture, director (Yorgos Lanthimos), actress (Emma Stone), supporting actor (Mark Ruffalo), adapted screenplay, production design, costume design, makeup, cinematography, film editing, original score
10 nominations
Killers of the Flower Moon — Picture, director (Martin Scorsese), actress (Lily Gladstone), supporting actor (Robert De Niro), production design, costume design, cinematography, film editing, original score, original song (‘Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)’)
8 nominations in 7 categories
Barbie — Picture, supporting actor (Ryan Gosling), supporting actress (America Ferrara), adapted screenplay, production design, costume design, original song (‘I’m Just Ken’, ‘What Was I Made For’)
7 nominations
Maestro — Picture, actor (Bradley Cooper), actress (Carey Mulligan), original screenplay, makeup, cinematography, sound
5 nominations
American Fiction — Picture, actor (Jeffrey Wright), supporting actor (Sterling K. Brown), adapted screenplay, original score
Anatomy of a Fall — Picture, director (Justine Triet), actress (Sandra Hüller), original screenplay, film editing
The Holdovers — Picture, actor (Paul Giamatti), supporting actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), original screenplay, film editing
The Zone of Interest — Picture, international feature film, director (Jonathan Glazer), adapted screenplay, sound
3 nominations
Napoleon — Production design, costume design, visual effects
2 nominations
The Creator — Visual effects, sound
Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One — Visual effects, sound
Nyad — Actress (Annette Bening), supporting actress (Jodie Foster)
Past Lives — Picture, original screenplay
Society of the Snow — International feature film, makeup
1 nomination
American Symphony — Original song (‘It Never Went Away’)
Bobi Wine: The People’s President — Documentary
The Boy and the Heron — Animated feature
The Color Purple — Supporting actress (Danielle Brooks)
El Conde — Cinematography
Elemental — Animated feature
The Eternal Memory — Documentary
Flamin’ Hot — Original song (‘The Fire Inside’)
Four Daughters — Documentary
Godzilla Minus One — Visual effects
Golda — Makeup
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — Visual effects
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — Original score
Io Capitano — International feature film
May December — Original screenplay
Nimona — Animated feature
Perfect Days — International feature film
Robot Dreams — Animated feature
Rustin — Actor (Colman Domingo)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — Animated feature
The Teachers’ Lounge — International feature film
To Kill a Tiger — Documentary
20 Days in Mariupol — Documentary
The winners will be announced at the Oscar ceremony on Sunday, March 10.