It seems likely to me that they’ll give Roma Best Foreign Picture and give Best Picture to another film.
In the past, that would have been the case because there was usually a natural consensus around another title. But which of these other 7 will score enough support?
Remember, Best Picture is based on a preferential ballot (NOT a weighted one) so you need to find a film that will have a sufficient number of 1, 2, and 3 rankings. GREEN BOOK (and to a lesser degree BOHEMIAN) can be seen as too controversial, THE FAVOURITE (which must be considered a serious contender because of its 10 nods) will be seen by many as too weird, BLACK PANTHER will be seen by many as too popular. A STAR IS BORN can’t be ruled out, but I think few will even consider it the best of the four versions ever made, let alone the best of this year.
There are few genuine detractors of Cuaron’s film–its association with Netflix being the most arguable for those scared of what that trend means to the industry. But even those who may not love it give props to what an achievement it is. That may be enough to accrue ballots in one elimination pass after another until it has a majority (not just a plurality) to win.
The fact that Michael B. Jordan didn’t get a nomination in Supporting Actor is a crime. Some things about the Oscars never seem to change.
Toni Collette was robbed completely.
I can’t say there are any major nominations I really disagree with. I’ve seen all the nominated films and 2 of them are in my top 10, and 6 in my top 20. Of course there are other films I would have put ahead of some of them, but they’re all worthy of a nomination. (Roma is my #1 movie of the year so I’m happy it seems to be the current front runner.) Though I am very shocked by Roma’s Supporting Actress nomination! That really seemed to come out of left field. I don’t even know which role that was. The mother? The friend? Other than the lead (who was phenomenal and justly deserves her nomination) the other female characters didn’t really stand out.
I do wish there had been some love shown to Eighth Grade. I guess it just came out too early in the year.
I am a bit surprised with some of the documentary nominations (No Three Identical Strangers? Won’t You Be My Neighbor? They Shall Not Grow Old??)
I wonder of 3 of the Best Cinematography noms being for foreign films is a first.
The problem is that “they” for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film are not a 1:1 match. Only Academy members that attend special screenings of all the nominees are allowed to vote for Best Foreign Language Film. That’s why we see more than occasional “surprises” when the well known foreign film loses to the obscure one.
Here are the Best Foreign Language Film nominees:
Capernaum (Lebanon) – Directed by Nadine Labaki
**Cold War **(Poland) – Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
**Never Look Away **(Germany) – Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Roma (Mexico) – Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Shoplifters (Japan) – Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
I have only seen three (Cold War, Roma, Shoplifters) but would not be surprised or outraged if any on these won (all are superb), even though my number one would be Roma.
Of the two I haven’t seen, my understanding is that Capernaum is a real tear-jerker about an orphan boy and Never Look Away is about that favorite of the Academy, the Holocaust, so I wouldn’t count either of these out (and, since I haven’t seen either of these, don’t take my tone as a slur on the artistry of either) when you are looking at a voting pool that has seen them all.
Yes, the wife/matriarch of the family.
The last of these 3 was probably not eligible (the deadline for consideration was late fall last year). And there always seems to be a “slam dunk” doc that just doesn’t make the cut. Last year, it was JANE, which I thought was extraordinary. Poor Mr. Rogers may have fallen victim to that this year.
It’s not, and the funny thing is the last time it happened, Caleb Deschanel (NEVER LOOK AWAY) was also in the mix! In 2004, he was the DP for THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST and was up against A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (though THE AVIATOR is the one that eventually won).
My understanding is that this is less true now since many of those in-person screenings have been eradicated and qualifying for those categories (docs and shorts, too) is done online.
NEVER LOOK AWAY has also been nominated for Cinematography (the DP was Caleb Deschanel, who did The Black Stallion, The Right Stuff, The Natural, etc.) so it will naturally get a lot more eyes on it than a regular foreign film nominee would.
I’ve been at work all day and now I’m waiting for a movie to start, so I just have a couple of thoughts.
CONGRATULATIONS to all the nominees! I’ve seen almost all the nominees in all the categories except the Shorts, which I’ll see over the next few weeks. I’m especially happy about Buster Scruggs’ nominations. I didn’t expect any at all.
Yay Black Panther!
I read that neither Regal nor AMC will be showing Roma when they do their annual Best Picture showcases. It’s Netflix’s fault.
Link:
The official eligibility list does include Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
It was on the original shortlist of 15 that came out in December - along with Three Identical Strangers, which was also mentioned above.
It was IMO an amazing year for documentaries. RBG, Hale County… and Minding the Gap are the three of the nominees that I saw; all are excellent (although Minding the Gap is the best of them).
I heard good things about Of Fathers and Sons.
What was also extraordinary about the documentaries last year is how much money some of them made. Three Identical Strangers made $12 million, RBG made $14 million and Won’t You Be My Neighbor? made $22 million.
Could this signal a revival of the “Hoop Dreams problem” - that some members of the Academy’s Documentary branch intentionally give documentaries (Hoop Dreams is probably the best known example) with “mainstream popularity” low scores to try and keep them from being nominated, out of fear that if too many of them win, movie studios will start thinking, “Maybe there’s money in documentaries.” and push independent documentarians out of the picture?
They probably feel that it was bad enough when somebody suggested getting rid of the documentary short category, since most of them are made for, or first appear on, TV anyway.
The shortlist was intended to prevent that, since the issue with HOOP DREAMS, from what I recall, wasn’t that branch members were giving it low scores but that they weren’t watching it at all. Like the Foreign Language Film category, in addition to the regular branch voting, a special panel adjudicates the results to make sure any egregious oversight doesn’t occur when winnowing the contenders down to the shortlist that was then released.
The problem with really popular docs is that most people have seen those but not the others (many of which get highly limited release, if any at all). So their frame of reference is really narrow. That said, I thought JANE and NEIGHBOR were both quite wonderful, but tastes do differ and while I haven’t seen all the current nominees, the ones I have seen are still really excellent so in cases like that, the margins are probably razor thin in the final results. I’m guessing RBG is the one to beat now, not only because of name recognition, the current political climate, and its additional nod in the Best Song category, but also because it’s really a phenomenal story powerfully told. My vote would also go to Minding the Gap but if RBG won, that would be just fine with me.
You can add nominee Free Solo to that list, with $13M and counting. The company I work for runs an arthouse and we’ve been playing Free Solo* for 3 months now, to amazing success. We also screened Neighbor and RBG and both had impressive legs as well during their runs.
Well, the SAGs were last night and while they rarely match the Oscars in the four main acting categories 100%, they usually are good predictors for 3/4.
Nobody was really surprised by the wins for Glenn Close and Mahershala Ali, and they are the favorites going in. This is Close’s 7th nomination and no living performer has been nominated that many times for acting without winning. Ali just won the Supporting Actor Oscar two years ago, so winning again so quickly is unusual if not completely without precedent. But if there were an obvious front-runner to emerge to provide some competition, they would have appeared by now. It doesn’t hurt that he is really a co-lead, and he’s got the most screen time in the category, so that helps cement his standing (not to mention that he’s the best thing in a really problematic movie).
Speaking of problematic movies, Rami Malek won for playing Freddie Mercury, inching out a win over the favorite Christian Bale. This is in fact the first time he’s beaten Bale head-to-head in one of the major awards (they both won Golden Globes in separate categories) so this essentially looks like a 2-horse race. Bale already has one Oscar (supporting for The Fighter) and while they’re both playing real-life people, Bale’s physical transformation is far more remarkable and sometimes that’s enough to win (in the last decade alone, Gary Oldman, Matthew McConaughey, Meryl Streep, & Marion Cotillard all won for playing real people in films that also won Best Makeup, which Vice is likely to do). But Malek is in the movie that’s more successful and, generally speaking, better liked and that counts for something.
Regina King has been on a roll with Supporting Actress but she wasn’t nominated last night so this was an opportunity to see if one of her competition posed a serious threat as an alternative choice. Instead, Emily Blunt (who is not nominated for the Oscar) won for A Quiet Place, so it appears that King remains the one to beat.
Best Ensemble went to Black Panther and while it’s a mistake to too strongly correlate this category to “Best Picture” (they overlap around 50% of the time), it does show that a lot of actors, and not just below-the-line craftspeople, really like the film, which could bode well for the film across multiple categories since the acting branch is the largest one in AMPAS.
The DGA is this coming weekend and everyone and their brother is expecting Alfonso Cuaron to continue his Roma sweep, which means the PGA, DGA, and SAG honorees will all be different–itself a pretty unusual thing that makes Best Picture hard to nail down.
I would be very surprised to see the Best Picture Oscar go to Black Panther.
with so many awards shows now is there anybody who is not nominated? 
I totally agree. But it is up for 6 other awards, most of which have no definite front-runner, so seeing its wide popularity among actors (even without a single acting nomination) does suggest it has a fighting chance several places. Its biggest competition is The Favourite and Roma in those areas, since they also have sizable support and a lot of tech/craft nods themselves.