There was a running gag on Saturday Night Live in the old days when Bill Murray would make his annual Oscar predictions, and when it came to Supporting Actor & Supporting Actress, his response would be, “Who cares?”
Meanwhile, I am wondering, what films that were expected to do well got completely shut out of nominations? Two that I can think of are All of Us Strangers and Ferrari.
One thing that most people don’t realize; when there are more than five nominees for Best Picture (which, BTW, is the only category that has “Best” still in its official name), the nominees are limited to films where at least 5% of the people submitting nominating ballots had it ranked as their #1 film of the year.
Technically, those aren’t the way the awards are announced, or listed in the rules - it’s not “Best Motion Picture of the Year,” which is what is says on that press release, but “Best Picture,” and similarly, none of the other awards for films have “Best” in their award titles.
Gerwig and Robbie not being nominated for a film which positioned itself against the patriarchy, while Gosling… playing a character who reveled in patriarchial assumptions… did get nominated is the ’s of AA messaging.
Here are the award rules on the Academy site (pdf). It appears that you are both partially correct. The only time “Best” appears as an award title is when it is for an entire work. Acting awards are just “performance by” and all of the other awards are “achievement in”, except for screenwriting, which have no qualifiers, just the category. The official release on the Academy site follows these rules.
That’ll teach me to read all the new posts in a thread before replying to a specific post…
I’ve been reading the rules. It is interesting that the expansion to 6 “metropolitan areas” (except for the Bay Area, which is a pretty amorphous area, they designate counties, not the metropolitan statistical area) for qualifying theatrical runs didn’t choose the 6 most populous areas:
Los Angeles County (#1 single county)
New York City (Not a single county, but would be #2 if counted that way)
Bay Area - SF, Marin, San Mateo, Alameda, and Contra Costa Counties (Adding up the counties listed, it would be tied for about #4 in the single county list)
Chicago - Cook County (#2 in county population, but #3 when NYC is counted)
Miami - Dade County (#9 with NYC and Bay Area slotted in)
Atlanta - Fulton County (#44, about 42nd in single counties)
But I’ll bet when you look at the geographic distribution of Academy members (which I couldn’t find anywhere), you’d find these areas contain a significant majority, though I’d bet that of these, LA and NYC are about 80% (which explains the ubiquitous “for your consideration” billboards along every freeway and arterial surface street in LA).
Spider-Man was a stunning accomplishment in animation with the blending of dozens of different styles. The only complaint I had was I didn’t know it was going to end on a cliffhanger.
Robbie is such a goddamn good actress, even in roles like Barbie and Harley Quinn. This omission pisses me off.
And Gosling’s nomination is baffling, honestly. I mean, he’s an excellent actor but in Barbie? He’s funny but it’s mostly scenery chewing, not anything remotely on par with Robbie’s performance in the same film.
When Evil Lurks was the best movie I saw from 2023 and it is a shame it didn’t get any notice, though being an intense horror movie probably is one reason why. And it is in Spanish.
Suzume was also not nominated for Best Animated Movie and it was really great as well.
Since I didn’t see the most of the movies in the best actress I reserving judgement. Maybe there were five better performances? I don’t know, maybe the ones nominated were better but Robbie was fantastic. Her performance was very nuanced. Gosling wasn’t nuanced but he was the comic center of the movie. Without the comedy the movie wouldn’t be nearly as effective or enjoyable. I think both deserved nominations.
Neither will or would have won. I’m all in on Lily Gladstone and I think RDJ will win and deserves to win.
As I mentioned in another thread, I was delighted to see Sandra Hüller nominated for Best Actress for her role in Anatomy of a Fall, which itself is in the running for Best Picture. Guess who I’ll be rooting for in the Best Actress category!
Stone is currently the favorite, but not by much - no oddsmaker thinks it will be anyone OTHER than Stone or Gladstone.
I am rooting for Bradley Cooper to win Best Actor just because the guy’s been up for nine oscars before and has lost 'em all. He’s up in three categories this year but Maestro has no shot at Best Picture and is an extreme longshot in Screenplay.
I didn’t notice that! In Anatomy of a Fall, Hüller is supposed to be originally of German descent, who moved to the UK originally and then to France with her French husband. I didn’t know she really was originally German IRL. Zone of Interest is predominantly German dialog, with some Polish and Yiddish. So apparently Sandra Hüller is fluently tri-lingual (at least), plus one hell of an actress!
I just checked and, as I expected, it was her role in Anatomy that got her the Oscar nomination.
Now I’m rooting for Sandra Hüller even more!
(I do like Emma Stone, but this is a question of artistic merit!)
’s 
of AA messaging.
