Welcome back to another glorious year for movies!

 

I love the smell of Oscar announcements in the morning! (Yes, I was up at 5:15 a.m. waking from a dream that I was having that I had missed the announcements and couldn't find the list online anywhere...)

This year, we have 53 films with nominations - savvy readers will notice that it's a bit lower than in prior years, but that's what happens when 3 movies each capture double digit nominations, as happened with Oppenheimer (in the lead with 13), Poor Things (with 11), and Killers of the Flower Moon (with 8). With 265 total nominations (5 nominees in 23 categories), the Best Picture list of 10 captured 71, that's just over 25% of the nominations.

I've done pretty well in the lead up to the Oscars, with just a small handful left to see before the big night in March.  Thanks for indulging my moment of bragging, but in fact, it's the lowest number I've needed to see ever.  That's a tribute to my amazing husband who is literally the Oscar films logistics Director, constantly researching what's playing where and making sure I find every nominee.  Enough about us, back to the nominees!

Snubs and Surprises

I thought Bradley Cooper was a shoo in for a Director nomination for Maestro, what everyone is referring to as his Magnum Opus. Though nominated for Best Actor, Original Screenplay, and Best Picture (as a producer), I have to assume that he is still disappointed.  Cooper has a total of 12 career nominations which is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

John Williams earned his 54th Oscars nomination. Walt Disney is the single person who has had more nominations with 59, and Williams has said that he has reached the end of his career so won't be adding any more noms. Still, I think we could argue he is unrivaled in his accomplishments, ironically beating by far Leonard Bernstein who only had one for On the Waterfront.

As usual, the costume, production design, and makeup and hairstyling branch voters baffle me. Nothing for the Hunger Games prequel Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, nothing for Wonka. Only the latter had some buzz for the Oscars, but please go back and look at these projects and explain to me how they were completely overlooked in these categories.

We had a chance of up to 4 women being nominated in the Directing category and shockingly, the one who made her way in is Justine Trier for Anatomy of a Fall. No Greta Gerwig for Barbie, no Emerald Fennell for Saltburn (ACTUALLY NOTHING FOR SALTBURN - sorry Barry Keoghan and Rosamund Pike), no Celine Song for Past Lives.  Still, one of my favorites, Yorgos Lanthimos scored yet another nomination for directing (6 career nominations, 2 for directing) and I loved his film which will surely win for costume and possibly others.

American Symphony, the brilliant documentary on Netflix about Jon Batiste navigating fame and his wife's cancer was nominated for song but not for Best Documentary.  This is shocking because I thought it would win the category altogether, and I highly recommend you watch it.

And the biggest snub of all, Ava Duvernay's magnificent film Origin received no Oscar buzz, not for directing, not for screenplay (which I understand to be the greatest feat of taking a dense book and turning it into an incredible story), and not for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor who frankly gave the performance of a lifetime. Duvernay self-financed the film and had no big studio to put in money to conduct an Oscars campaign (sorry guys, it's true... no campaign, very unlikely to get nominations). Nonetheless, a wonderful and important film.

There are certainly more snubs and surprises, but this is where I'll leave you for today.  Tomorrow we begin the real work, friends, reviewing each and every one of the 53 films nominated, and most importantly, telling you which ones to see and which ones to skip.

Happy Oscars Day!

SELMA - 2 nominations

Best Picture - Christian Colson, Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner
Best Song - "Glory"  Music and Lyric by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn

Selma is the story of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King's vision to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to protest the laws keeping African Americans from voting.  Inherent in that struggle is the demand for equal rights across the board - working for the demise of segregation altogether.  The key challenge was not only to have institutionalized racism overturned, but also to ensure that the laws that had already passed protecting African American citizens were actively enforced.  It may have been legal for African Americans to vote, but that doesn't mean that the person working in city government was actually allowing people to register.

It's a very powerful, very moving film, with phenomenal performances, especially by David Oyelowo who embodied the spirit of MLK.  The best part of the film is that although we do follow Martin Luther King and his actions to make change, it equally lauds the people of Selma who endured humiliations, beatings, and other forms of degradation.  The victories do not rest solely on the charismatic leader, they sit in the hands of the people who made these tremendous sacrifices every day, in every possible way.  The choice to make MLK a very real person and show all sides of him (including that he was cheating on his wife), was a brave one. Ava DuVernay, as the Director of the film, did an outstanding job of personalizing the struggle and showing the realities of that time - not everyone believed that the chosen way was the correct way.  In some ways, MLK was seen in the film as a carpet bagger, picking the best towns to drop in on and do his work, which was not appreciated by everyone already working in that town.  I must admit that of all of the categories in which Selma was overlooked, Ava DuVernay not being nominated for Best Director is the most upsetting to me.  She did a brilliant job with this film.

The bottom line of what makes this film so well done is how real the portrayals are.  Now, this is a film so it would be foolish to assume that everything portrayed is accurate to the actual history of struggle.  There are those who are furious that President Johnson is portrayed as working against MLK, but we have to remember that this is a film in need of conflict.  I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.  There are those who are unhappy that other communities who were active and supportive of the efforts were not highlighted - I do not agree with those voices.  This film is one lens of the story, and what I sincerely hope is that people are inspired by the film to learn the true history of the struggle.  That would be a real victory.

Finally, I have to mention the song that is nominated for an Oscar, "Glory."  I believe this song to be absolutely the most powerful of the category.  John Legend and Common knocked it out of the park, and I'm sharing a video here that includes the lyrics so you can really be moved by its power.