So, that just happened. John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced the big Oscar nominations (Picture, Director, Actors, Writers, etc.) minutes after Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee announced the below the line (Costume Design, Sound Editing) nominations. It brings us crucially closer to the end of the craziest awards season in recent memory, and as per usual the Oscars brought plenty of pleasant surprises and real head-scratchers.
Without further adieu, the nominees for Best Picture are:
Not Creed
Not Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Not Straight Outta Compton.
Not Sicario.
Not Inside Out.
Not Ex Machina.
And not Carol!
Instead, they are:
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
That matches my predicted list exactly except for one variation. I had Straight Outta Compton in there over Room, since the former had been embraced by the Producers Guild of America while the latter had not. Interestingly, a Harvard-trained mathematician recently calculated that Carol and Sicario were both statistically more likely to be nominated for Best Picture than either Brooklyn or Bridge of Spies. Way to go, Harvard boy.
Like I’m one to talk. I got at least one nominee wrong in all of the acting, directing and writing categories.
Here are 12 takeaways from the nominations:
If only there had been someone worth nominating…Oh, wait. There was.
1. In the year of Creed, Beasts of No Nation, Straight Outta Compton and The Hateful Eight (Samuel L. Jackson), zero black actors were nominated. So, it’s #OscarsSoWhite Round Two, which you know the host, Chris Rock, will joke about repeatedly.
2. There were only 8 Best Pictures instead of 10, but IndieWire already took a deep dive into the math behind the nomination process and determined this year’s wide-open race actually made it more likely that we’d have less than the full 10 potential nominees.
3. Even though Star Wars wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, we did at least get two blockbusters in there, The Martian and Mad Max. In fact, other than Room, Brooklyn and Spotlight all of the nominees have done very well for themselves at the box office to this point. Among the three lower-grossing titles, Room and its sub-$6m domestic gross is the only one which practically no one has seen yet. That makes it this year’s Whiplash.
No victory tour for Ridley Scott
4. The Academy differed from the Directors Guild in one crucial way: Instead of nominating Ridley Scott for The Martian, they picked Lenny Abrahamson for Room, who was not on anyone’s radar before now. If Scott was going to be snubbed it was going to be for Steven Spielberg (Bridge of Spies) or Todd Haynes (Carol). Instead, all three of them ended up on the outside looking in.
5. Johnny Depp (Black Mass), Jacob Tremblay (Room) and Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) were among the SAG nominees snubbed by the Academy.
6. Stallone WAS nominated for Creed, the announcement of which received the loudest applause throughout the entire nomination ceremony. It was, sadly, Creed‘s only nomination.
Never count out Jennifer Lawrence
7. Jennifer Lawrence did score a nomination for Joy despite everyone seemingly agreeing that despite the merits of her performance she was ultimately miscast in the role. When she does David O. Russell movies she automatically gets an Oscar nomination. That’s a rule now, right?
Arguably the best performance in The Revenant
8. As I predicted, Tom Hardy was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Revenant, but contrary to my prediction Jacob Tremblay was not for Room. Instead, Mark Ruffalo snuck in there for Spotlight.
9. Every year the studios attempt to game the system, campaigning for their potential acting nominees to end up in the categories they have the best chance of winning. However, the Academy does not actually have to agree with whatever the studio is selling, and will sometimes put actors submitted as supporting performances into the lead category and vice versa.
There was a mixed track record with that this year. It worked out for Rooney Mara, nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Carol even though she’s really a co-lead. However, it was both good and bad for Alicia Vikander, whose co-lead performance in The Danish Girl ended up nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category, which is presumably why she was snubbed for Ex Machina in the same category.
At least she was nominated at all. Helen Mirren was snubbed for both Trumbo (kinda surprisng) and Woman in Gold (less surprising), and, as previously mentioned, Jacob Tremblay (Room) was ignored in either the lead or supporting actor categories.
Isn’t it ultimately better for mankind that Tarantino’s ego was not fed by yet another nomination?
10. This was a year in which new screenplays from Aaron Sorkin (Steve Jobs) and Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight) were NOT nominated
Take your paradigm-shifting business strategy elsewhere, Beasts of No Nation
11. Beasts of No Nation was completely shut out, likely proving that the Academy was going to ignore that movie on principle, what with it being a Netflix title and a threat to the film industry’s core business model and everything.
12. The Revenant led the nominations with a total of 12, followed by Mad Max: Fury Road with 10, and The Martian with seven.
Here are the nominees (minus the short film categories):
Best Picture
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
Snubs: Carol, Straight Outta Compton, Sicario
Best Director
Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max
Alejandro Inarritu, The Revenant
Lenny Abrahamson, Room
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Snubs: Ridley Scott
Best Actor
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Snubs: Jacob Tremblay (Room), Johnny Depp (Black Mass), Will Smith (Concussion)
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Snubs: Helen Mirren (Woman in Gold)
Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, The Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Snubs: Michael Shannon (99 Homes), Benicio Del Toro (Sicario), Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation)
Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander. The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Snubs: Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Helen Mirren (Trumbo)
Best Screenplay (Adapted)
The Big Short
Brooklyn
Carol
The Martian
Room
Snubs: Aaron Sorkin (Steve Jobs)
Best Screenplay (Original)
Bridge of Spies
Ex Machina
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton
Snubs: Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight), Amy Schumer (Trainwreck)
Best Cinematography
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Sicario
Snubs: Bridge of Spies
Best Film Editing
The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Snubs: Bridge of Spies
Best Makeup and hairstyling
Mad Max: Fury Road
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared
The Revenant
Snubs: Mr. Holmes, Legend
Best Costume Design
Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max
The Revenant
Snubs: Brooklyn
Best Production Design
Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Snubs: Star Wars, The Hateful Eight, Ex Machina
Best Sound Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Snubs: Bridge of Spies, The Hateful Eight
Best Sound Mixing
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Snubs: The Hateful Eight
Best Visual Effects
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Snubs: Jurassic World, Age of Ultron
Best Score
Bridge of Spies
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Snubs: Spotlight
Best Original song
“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey
“Manta Ray” from Racing Extinction
“Simple Song #3” from Youth
“Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground
“Writing’s On The Wall” from Spectre
Snub: Furious 7
Best Foreign Film
“Embrace of the Serpent” Colombia
“Mustang” France
“Son of Saul” Hungary
“Theeb” Jordan
“A War” Denmark
Snubs: The Brand New Testament, Viva
Best Documentary
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
Snubs: The Hunting Ground, Listen To Me Marlon, Going Clear
Best Animated Feature Film
Anomalisa
Boy and the World
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There
Snubs: The Good Dinosaur, The Peanuts Movie
