Hollywood Week: Academy Award Nomination Surprises, Sundance Winners
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- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Saturday, 27 January 2024 11:46
- Written by Janet Walker
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced the 96th Oscars nominations kicking off a firestorm of controversary over the surprises, shocks, and apparent snubs in the selection honoring the year's best in film entertainment.
Academy Award Nominations Announced
The aftermath of the Academy Awards nominations spawned a week, at least, of questions, mentions and commentary over the surprise absence of Greta Gerwig, the director of 2023's biggest hit, Barbie, and the film's star, Margot Robbie.
96th Oscars® Nominations Announced
While many have noted the academy voter's fickle nature when it comes to selecting nominees, the general selection process seems, at least when it comes to selecting Best Actress nominees, that getting "ugly" or showing a substantial traumatic arc in the film's character moves the needle.
For Ms. Robbie, whose performance was spectacular and note-worthy, the idea of her character traveling from beautiful to beautiful, even with a character's self-awakening, doesn't represent the arc of substance that many voters feel is necessary to secure the nomination.
The joke, of course, from the Golden Globes was "white people roles" and the two presenters, comedian and American Fiction star and Barbie alum, Issa Ray, and Barbie alum Simu Liu listed the heavy traumatic options, sums it up nicely.
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Armchair entertainment pundits, including myself, are playing Monday morning quarterback as they dissect the nominations, not simply the absence of the global phenomena's director, Greta Gerwig, and it is important to note that five of the ten Best Picture nominated directors are feeling the same sting of rejection.
Critical acclaim and commercial success don't guarantee a nomination, just as critical acclaim doesn't always translate to commercial success, and commercial success doesn't always translate to critical acclaim. Often with one comes the absence of the other.
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Even as Barbie had both and a global legion of followers and fans who affirmed, by the insane box office numbers, someone finally got it right, the performance of that notice may be limited to the Best Adapted Screenplay which she and her partner Noah Baumbach may win.
Another surprise came in the leading man category which Leonardo DiCaprio, for his performance in the Martin Scorsese directed Killers of the Flower Moon, who didn't make the cut in the Leading Actor role, which can't be attributed to the same standard as Leading Actress nominations are determined, but more because of they glut of roles available to men. The overabundance of male performance roles creates the vacuum when it comes to narrowing the performances to only five, out of a multitude of excellent character driven performances.
Another surprise in the Best Picture category, the amount of "foreign films" including Past Lives, Anatomy of a Fall, and Zone of Interest that secured Best Picture nominations. While the 50% rule seems to be the guide, at least half of the film needs to be in English, and after reviewing the rules some confusion still lingered, it seems like stacking the deck, and completely understandable in the competitive world of entertainment.
So here we are, Academy Award season has officially kicked off and with it everything that goes along with the celebration of the year's biggest nominees, the parties, celebrations, and of course the glam, glitz and glitter of the Oscars!
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Sundance Winners
The jury and audience-awarded prizes include Grand Jury Prizes awarded to In The Summers (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Porcelain War (U.S. Documentary Competition), Sujo (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), and A New Kind of Wilderness (World Cinema Documentary Competition). The NEXT Innovator Award presented by Adobe was awarded to Little Death.
Daughters received the Festival Favorite Award, which audiences select across all new feature films presented at the festival. Audience Awards for films in competition were presented by Acura to Dìdi (弟弟) (U.S. Dramatic Competition) and Daughters (U.S. Documentary Competition) and presented by United Airlines to Girls Will Be Girls (World Cinema Dramatic Competition) and Ibelin (World Cinema Documentary Competition). Kneecap won the audience award for NEXT presented by Adobe.*
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*Sundance winner information is provided by a previous press release.