2024 Oscar (96th Academy Awards) Nominations

Cafe Society
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Well I think I’ve now finalized my predictions after watching every single nomination in every category. (53 individual titles!) I wish we still had the Oscar pool here, that was fun while it was around, but this is what I’ll be picking at the annual Oscars party I attend each year:

Best Picture: Oppenheimer

Directing: Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

Actor in a Leading Role: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)

Actress in a Leading Role: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)

Actor in a Supporting Role: Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer)

Actress in a Supporting Role: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)

Cinematography: Oppenheimer

Film Editing: Oppenheimer

Costume Design: Poor Things

Production Design: Poor Things

Makeup and Hairstyling: Maestro

Music (Original Score): Oppenheimer

Music (Original Song): “What Was I Made For?” (from Barbie)

Sound: Oppenheimer

Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): American Fiction

Writing (Original Screenplay): Anatomy of a Fall

Animated Feature Film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Documentary Feature Film: 20 Days in Mariupol

International Feature Film: The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom)

Short Film (Live Action): The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Short Film (Animated): War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko

Short Film (Documentary): The Last Repair Shop

It’s always the Shorts that kill me in the pools, but IMO even though it may be the odds favorite, The ABCs of Book Burning is just a glorified slideshow and I’ve got to go with my gut for The Last Repair Shop.

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This is pretty late, but I took a shot at throwing together a Google Form for this. I need one person to test it - ideally I’d PM you a link and you’d fill it out, assuming that works.

I’ve set it to not collect email addresses.

My questions are:

  • can the respondent see the Google Sheet I added to collect the information? (if not, I’m not 100% sure how to share the results)
  • can the respondent see my email address or name?
  • and of course, does the form work?
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Well that was tepid - I’m going to send to some friends instead. Maybe next year!

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I have to say, while Messi was great, Sandra Hüller’s actual dog, Dilla, did a fine job in Zone of Interest. Understated, sure, but she didn’t want to show up her owner I’m sure. :slightly_smiling_face:

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We saw Poor Things last night. I loved it for the first hour…then I started checking my watch. It definitely over-stayed its welcome. But it was certainly original and different, I’ll give it that.

I don’t understand why Yorgos is so enamored with his funny lenses, especially that stupid pinhole shot. It adds no aesthetic value and only shouts 'LOOK AT ME! AREN’T I CLEVER?"

At the end, I thought they would transplant Godwin’s brain into The General’s body, but apparently they used a sheep instead. So I was surprised.

I’ve now seen 8 of the 10 Best Picture nominees – missing Past Lives, which my wife saw on a plane and doesn’t recommend, and Zone of Interest – so that will be all. I still have American Fiction as my favorite, and slot Poor Things in at #6, ahead of Maestro and Anatomy of a Fall.

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An entertaining alternative view with respect to what happened in Anatomy of a Fall:

https://youtu.be/qCvY8zKnNQc?si=hZvy83bAD30OFluf

This movie has moved up in my opinion, by the way.

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Is there a reason for blurring the address to a YouTube video?

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I wasn’t sure how much information the image for the video would show. It’s a spoiler! Of sorts.

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We saw Zone of Interest last night. Fascinating/horrifying/surreal. It’s like an episode of Leave it to Beaver, if there were random gunshots and screams and the constant roar of incinerators on the soundtrack…which everyone ignores. And Ward goes to a boring business meeting, but the agenda topic is the extermination of Hungary’s Jews.

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Very interesting

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Convenient list of all the nominees with tonight’s winners highlighted:

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Did you win? By my count you got 19/23 correct. Your four incorrects:
Actress in a Leading Role: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) - Emma Stone (Poor Things)
Animated Feature Film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - The Boy and The Heron
Makeup and Hairstyling: Maestro - Poor Things
Sound: Oppenheimer - The Zone of Interest

Which is all damn impressive!

Interesting that Maestro and Killer of the Flower Moon were both shut out. I also found it interesting that Emma Stone really didn’t appear to think she had a chance - she was flabbergasted (and Annette Benning was…not gracious in defeat based on the shot they showed of her).

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Huh that seems impossible. I was told the woke Hollywood establishment was going to give awards to those unartistic movies because of “politics”.

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I did! The next one after me got 17/23. My prize was a bottle of champagne. :grin:

I was so thrilled that Zone of Interest won Best Sound! (Even though I did not pick it.) That movie only works because of its sound design, it’s as important, if not more, than any of the actors so very happy to see it recognized in that category.

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I think I can agree, although I’ve only seen trailers and clips of Zone - even in those you can hear the background noise that makes the scenes so surreal. Can’t wait for it to be widely available on streaming. It’s not available locally in theater.

I thought Oppenheimer’s sound was actually really heavy-handed and detracted from the film.

I can see 2 of your 4 incorrect picks easily. I really thought Gladstone would win. And my son actually commented on The Boy and the Heron that he was super excited to see Studio Ghibli win as he is a huge fan of their stuff even though he hasn’t seen the actual film. Between the implied “lifetime achievement award” (yes, I know they already have 1 Oscar, but that was 21 years ago) and the fact that the Academy tends to look down on sequels, it’s not surprising (in hindsight) that it won.

ETA: Enjoy the champagne!

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I got 17/23; one of the misses was Lily Gladstone.

I just realized that Past Lives got one nomination – Best Picture. It somehow managed to avoid being in the top 5 in any component category but was still one of the 10 best. Bizarre.

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Past Lives was also nominated for Original Screenplay.

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I’ve been thinking about why Al Pacino announced the winner the way he did. Perhaps after Jimmy Kimmel’s joke about the Best Actress envelope, he was thinking that perhaps he was handed the wrong envelope, as in the previous year Emma Stone won, when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given the wrong envelope in 2018.

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Given how many nominations Scorsese has had, and ditto for DeNiro, and how many times they’ve worked together – I was surprised that this is only the 2nd time they were both nominated for the same film. The other was Raging Bull.

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Cilian owned Oppenheimer so that’s a good win. The film was too much of a procedural and the protagonist behind much of that red-scare stuff, played by Robert Downey Jr wins which is cool.

Just after watching Maestro. The first third was pretty good.I like Carey Mulligan yet this movie was too much about her and we never really get to know her (or Bernstein). I had thought one Hollywood-cough and she’d be gone by the next reel.

I’m a fan of long-takes which this film had many of. Whether that’s Cooper or his DP [Matthew Libatique] they were good though I was looking for one where the continuity of the chain smoking conductor was a thing yet he always had either a prop non-smoking cigarette or a long unlit one (eta: for the long takes). The long one between he and Mulligan and especially the Mahler ending in the church were long-takes you rarely see.

Barbie wasn’t going to win best film and I guess it’'s just up to Margot Robbie to make other films but not even nominated?