Oscars Announce Shortlists for Nine Categories
We’re starting to get a little bit of an outline of how this year’s Oscars is going to look. First, the Golden Globes nominations allow us to start our annual ritual of trying to read the tea leaves on what they might say about the Academy’s pending big night. Often, due to the Globes having a much smaller base of voters (the Hollywood Foreign Press) and the relatively little overlap between the HFP and the Academy means that the Globes nominations are hardly predictive. Yet, there are years where the Globes really do seem to foretell the Oscars. Take 2017, when both La La Land and Moonlight cleaned up at the Globes—and Moonlight won the Best Drama, and then both went on to dominate the Academy Awards, with Moonlight taking home Best Picture. (If you’re an Oscars fan, you remember that night.)
Alas, another decent predictor on how the Oscars might look is when the actual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the shortlists, which is what happened yesterday for nine categories. The shortlist announcements are for makeup and hairstyling (10 films), original score (15), original song (15), documentary feature (15), documentary short subject (10), international feature (15), animated short film (10), live-action short film (10), and visual effects (10). The voting period for the shortlists finished on February 5, which moves us to the official voting phase which lasts from March 5 to 9. Then the final Oscar nominations will be announced on March 15, with the show to follow on April 25.
A few interesting matchups have been revealed. Over in Visual Effects, you’ve got the mind-blowing, time-bending chutzpah of Christopher Nolan and his VFX team’s work in Tenet versus the black-and-white marvel that was Mank. (Not to mention the bravura action-sequences in Mulan and the patient, cosmic-and-tundra beauty of The Midnight Sky.) In makeup and hairstyling, one intriguing matchup is between the period-perfect detail in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom versus the gonzo, gleefully gauche looks in Birds of Prey.
Here’s a glimpse at some of the categories, with a link to the full list below:
Documentary Feature
All In: The Fight for Democracy
Boys State
Collective
Crip Camp
Dick Johnson Is Dead
Gunda
MLK/FBI
The Mole Agent
My Octopus Teacher
Notturno
The Painter and the Thief
76 Days
Time
The Truffle Hunters
Welcome to Chechnya
Makeup and Hairstyling
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Emma
The Glorias
Hillbilly Elegy
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
The Little Things
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Mank
One Night in Miami
Pinocchio
Music (Original Score)
Ammonite
Blizzard of Souls
Da 5 Bloods
The Invisible Man
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se)
The Little Things
Mank
The Midnight Sky
Minari
Mulan
News of the World
Soul
Tenet
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Visual Effects
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Bloodshot
Love and Monsters
Mank
The Midnight Sky
Mulan
The One and Only Ivan
Soul
Tenet
Welcome to Chechnya
For the full shortlist, visit the Oscars official site here.
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) JACK CUTMORE-SCOTT, JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON and ROBERT PATTINSON in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic “TENET,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon
