In the academy’s long history, best picture/director winners have overlapped nearly 75% of the time, including three of the last four years. The change, implemented 15 years ago to bring more (and hopefully some more popular) movies into the mix after “The Dark Knight” didn’t make the cut, has created inevitable “snubs,” since nominations for best picture and director have traditionally gone hand in hand. One issue for the Academy has been the expansion to as many as 10 nominees for best movie, while holding the best director category to five contenders – a prescription that virtually ensures plenty of grousing. Gerwig did receive a nod in the screenplay category (as did Celine Song, the director of “Past Lives”), but the lone directing recognition for a woman went to “Anatomy of a Fall’s” Justine Triet. PicturesĪs evidence of how scarce such hits have been in the best-picture race, “Oppenheimer” alone roughly matched the combined box-office total of the last five winners, two of which, “CODA” and “Nomadland,” were primarily distributed via streaming during the pandemic.ĭespite that, “Barbie” star Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig were among those left off the list of nominees, with Robbie’s absence, as the literal face of Barbie, perhaps the most surprising. Ryan Gosling, Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig on the set of "Barbie." Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros. (“Barbie” was distributed by Warner Bros., which like CNN is part of Warner Bros. Opening the same weekend in July, director Christopher Nolan’s epic about the development of the atomic bomb and Greta Gerwig’s feminist take on Mattel’s popular doll grossed $2.4 billion worldwide (with “Barbie” accounting for roughly 60% of that) between them. Given the emphasis on trying to jump-start Oscar viewing after the ratings slumped to historic lows during the pandemic, providing the audience with a greater rooting interest in the nominees seems prudent and practical, though that hasn’t always been the case in recent years.īecause of that, much of the focus will surely be on “Barbie” – whose tally included major omissions – and “Oppenheimer,” the perceived frontrunner after winning at the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes. “Barbie” trailed the outlandish “Poor Things” (with 11) and director Martin Scorsese’s historical epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” (10). Of the 10 best-picture nominees, for the first time more than one in a single year went to a movie shot primarily in a language other than English: “Anatomy of a Fall” (French), “Past Lives” (Korean) and “The Zone of Interest” (German).įourteen non-English-language films have been nominated for best picture over the course of Oscar history, with South Korea’s “Parasite” (2020) the only winner.Īfter often shortchanging movies that resonated with the public on a mass scale, the field also recognized genuine box-office hits in “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie,” which amassed a leading 13 and eight bids, respectively. On the plus side, the nominations for the 96th Academy Awards unveiled Tuesday underscored that “Hollywood” and even its top prize increasingly represent a global industry. After combining to save the summer box office, the two-headed monster known as “Barbenheimer” will see if it can do the same for TV ratings, providing an explosive pop-culture tandem in a year in which the Oscar nominations appeared to get a lot right, along with a few of the seemingly unavoidable glaring oversights.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |