08 Feb Post-Oscar Nominations Analysis
BEST PICTURE
A stat that I want to mention is that no Best Picture winner in at least the last 10 years has won the award without being at least nominated for a Picture award, Best Director, and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes.
The only two films that received those nominations were The Power of the Dog and Belfast.
Another notable stat is that in the preferential era, only one Best Picture-winning film (Birdman which was made to look like it was filmed in one shot) was not nominated in Best Editing as well. Of The Power of the Dog and Belfast, only the former film has been nominated for Best Editing. What this tells me is that I am even more confident about having The Power of the Dog as my Best Picture winner.
Nominations snubs and surprises:
Drive My Car!!! It’s fantastic that we live in a world where a 3-hour Japanese film can get nominated for Best Picture (in addition to Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay). Many were predicting it but it’s still great to see.
Tick, tick, BOOM! misses and Nightmare Alley makes it in. Though tick, tick, BOOM! had CCA and PGA, it apparently did not have the level of support that Nightmare Alley had. I think this inclusion shows how powerful of a campaigning machine Searchlight is. They almost always get at least one of their films in, even when they don’t seem like they have very much support. I don’t think any other distributor could’ve pushed Nightmare Alley into Best Picture.
BEST DIRECTOR
Denis Villeneuve’s snub here was pretty shocking and I’m still surprised as I thought someone like Branagh was more likely to miss for Hamaguchi. Well, Campion still has this win secured and I can easily see her sweeping all the major directing precursors on the way to the Oscars.
BEST ACTOR
What’s interesting to me is that Being the Ricardos received three acting nominations (Javier Bardem, Nicole Kidman, and J.K. Simmons) yet didn’t hit Original Screenplay and ended up not making Picture. I had a feeling that Sorkin wasn’t going to get a Screenplay nod since the writers branch historically aligns more with critics than other branches, but the fact that the film got the acting nods it did shows to me how much the Academy is infatuated with biopic performances and specifically, portrayals of Hollywood figures.
Anyways other than Bardem, the other four men (Cumberbatch, Smith, Garfield, and Washington) have been locked in for a while and all of them got in. My winner prediction at this point is Cumberbatch.
BEST ACTRESS
Lady Gaga missing and Penelope Cruz getting in were definitely big surprises. Gaga was the only actress to get nods from all of the major precursors and they still didn’t nominate her, showing to me that they really were not too keen on House of Gucci, which didn’t even get a Costume Design nomination (it only received a nod in Makeup & Hairstyling).
In other news, Kristen Stewart. who missed at both SAG and at BAFTA (which went 0 for 5 with the Oscar Best Actress field this year), got in at the Oscars and was the sole nomination for Spencer. Now that she has been nominated, she definitely has a chance to win though I still think Kidman has the best chance though Stewart or Colman are close behind.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Plemons’ inclusion here is indicative of the broad support The Power of the Dog has. For a chamber drama like The Power of the Dog to be the nomination leader (12) is really an achievement and it makes me even more confident about predicting it for the win. And it’s great to see Plemons finally receive an Oscar nomination after being in six Best Picture nominees in the last seven years. As I mentioned previously JK Simmons was a surprise inclusion here, and slightly less surprisingly, Bradley Cooper missed.
Cooper was in Licorice Pizza for less than ten minutes but was seen in the predictions of many. The fact that both Alana Haim and Cooper missed as well as Andy Jurgensen in Editing shows that Licorice Pizza is most definitely not a top-3 Best Picture contender and might even miss an Original Screenplay win (which would be maddening as Paul Thomas Anderson needs an Oscar ASAP).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
This was the first-announced award of the presentation and when I saw it, I knew we were in for a very interesting slate of nominees. Jessie Buckley and Judi Dench got in while Caitriona Balfe and Ruth Negga missed. Balfe’s omission is especially surprising as she, like Lady Gaga in Best Actress, hit all the major precursors and was included by many to be the best part of Belfast. To me, her exclusion is even more surprising than Gaga’s since her film is a top-tier Best Picture contender. Dench was instead this category’s representation for Branagh’s film and has now received eight nominations in twenty-four years.
Jessie Buckley’s inclusion was a welcome surprise and I think it really exemplifies the main theme of this year’s nominees as a whole. The Oscars are not going to lean in to calls to become more populist. With Buckley’s nod here, the three above-the-line nominations for Drive My Car, and the nomination for Penelope Cruz, among other inspired picks (including The Worst Person in the World’s inclusion over Being the Ricardos in Original Screenplay), the Academy seems to be defiantly ignoring requests to become more aligned with the tastes of the general population (such as the movement to try to get Spider-Man: No Way Home a Best Picture nomination). While this is probably good news for lovers of international and more daring cinema, the Oscars do run the risk of alienating people, though it seems that the Academy could not care less, and that mindset could show up in who they choose as their winners in March.