The nomination list for the 96th Academy Awards was released yesterday. As usual, some people were happy and some were disappointed, but many new records were also set.
Nomination results show a global trend
1-year-old Martin Scorsese was nominated for the Best Director Award for "Killers of the Flower Moon" this time, becoming the oldest Best Director nominee in Oscar history. The record was originally held by John Huston, the director of "Pryzzi's Honor". He was 79 years old when he was nominated in 1986. At the same time, this is also the 10th time Scorsese has been nominated for the Director Award, surpassing Spielberg's 9 times, and second only to William Weller's 12 director nominations, ranking second in history.
Martin Scorsese
Currently, Scorsese has received a total of 17 Oscar nominations in terms of directing, screenwriting and producing. The great director Spielberg, although he did not make a new film in 2023, was still nominated for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture as the producer of "Music Master". This is the 25th Oscar nomination he has received in his life, including 13 as a producer, continuing to lead the producer category.
Compared to Scorsese, the one who is even more mature and robust is the 91-year-old John Williams. This year, he received his 49th nomination for Best Score for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (counting other projects, he received a total of 54 nominations), setting a record for the oldest candidate in Oscar history. Williams' first Oscar nomination came in 1968, when he was 35 years old.
John Williams
Let’s take a look at the nomination results again. The four most popular works before, " Oppenheimer ", "Poor Thing", "Killers of the Flower Moon" and " Barbie ", won 13 awards respectively. With 11, 10 and 8 nominations, they continue to lead all films, so overall, this nomination list is in line with their trends this awards season.
The most obvious new trend is the tendency of globalization. This is the first time in Oscar history that three films with non-English dialogue have been nominated for best picture, namely "Zone of Interest" in German, "The Fall" in French and English, and "The Past" in English and Korean. Life". In the Best Documentary Feature category, "American Symphony" and "Still Me: Michael J. Fox" produced by local American filmmakers were overwhelmingly popular and were replaced by overseas works from Chile, Ukraine, Uganda, Tunisia and India. After being squeezed out, a new situation emerged where for the first time in Oscar history, all documentary feature nominees came from overseas. It is worth mentioning that those who are qualified to determine the nominees for the Documentary Award are all members of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In recent years, they have also cooperated with the overall reform trend of the Academy and attracted many overseas members.
Director Greta Gerwig (left) and starring Margot Robbie during the dialogue session at the premiere of "Barbie"
Compared with the documentary section, the biggest upset is probably the director of "Barbie" Neither Retta Gerwig nor star Margot Robbie made the cut. Ryan Gosling, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the film, and America Ferrera, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, both publicly expressed their confusion about the result on social media, and even hinted that this It is really unfair that the two collaborators were not nominated.
Some media people also joked that for Margot Robbie, last year it was " Babylon " and this year it was "Barbie", both of which missed out on Oscar nominations despite being promising. It seems that the actress needs Stay away from movies that start with the b-word. As for Leonardo DiCaprio of "Killers of the Flower Moon", he was not nominated for the Best Actor. Now it seems that it is not a big surprise. He had previously been nominated for the important Screen Actors Guild Award and the British Academy Award. Missed.
Of course, the 8 nominations of "Barbie" are not a complete failure, and Greta Gerwig has become the first person in history to have the top three works ("Lady Bird", "Little Women", " "Barbie") were all nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. This is an achievement that senior masters such as Martin Scorsese and Spielberg have not been able to win. For female directors in Hollywood, it is actually considered a success. No small amount of encouragement.
The shortlisted works show an obvious "leaning forward" trend
In fact, in terms of the pursuit of progress and diversity, this year's Oscar nomination list should satisfy most people. For another example, Lily Gladstone became the first Native American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Actress in "Killers of the Flower Moon." Before her, only Aboriginal singer Buffy Sainte-Marie won the Academy Award for Best Song for the theme song of the movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" in 1983. Robbie Robertson, the musician who scored "Killers of the Flower Moon" and is also a Native American, was also nominated for best score this time, setting another new record in Oscar history. Unfortunately, he passed away in August 2023 when he was over eighty years old.
"American Novel" Oscar Nomination Poster
Jeffrey Wright of "American Novel" and Colman Domingo of "Rustin" were both nominated for Best Actor, although not for the Oscars A first in history, but also relatively rare. Moreover, Sterling K. Brown of "American Novel" was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor. This is the first time in Oscar history that a black actor and supporting actor in the same movie were nominated for Oscars at the same time.
In addition, in terms of supporting actress, two black women, Danielle Brooks of "purple" and Damien Joy Randolph of "Stay in School", were nominated. America Ferrera, who was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for "Barbie," is the ninth Latina in history to receive this nomination.
Overall, seven of the 20 actors nominated this year are so-called minorities (six African Americans and one Native American). Relatively speaking, there are relatively few Asians this year. Only Celine Song of "The Past" was nominated for best original screenplay, which can be regarded as a new history for Asian women.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that this year's Oscar nomination list reflects obvious signs of "leaning forward". Take a look at these films that received important nominations: "The Past" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023 and subsequently received great reviews at the Berlin Film Festival in February; "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Falling Down" "The Trial" and "Zone of Interest" will both be seen at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023; "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" will be released at the same time in July 2023; "Poor Things" and "Maestro" premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September; "Stay in School" and "American Novel" had their world premieres at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States and the Toronto Film Festival in Canada in September respectively. Several works released near the end of the year, such as "Napoleon", "The Color Purple", "Wonka", "Origin", etc., failed to gain much attention this time. In addition to the quality issues of the work itself, I am afraid it was also affected by the strike by the Screenwriters Guild and the Screen Actors Guild of America, which resulted in insufficient publicity and affected their popularity. The nominations for
have been released, and more than 10,000 members of the academy will conduct the final round of voting from February 22 to February 27. The 96th Academy Awards will be held on the evening of March 10, local time in the United States.
