Oscar Nominations are out: now what?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences revealed this year’s Oscar nominees at a special ceremony held in Los Angeles last January 23rd. As a whole, the pack of shortlisted films was rather predictable, safe a few surprises and some regrettable snubs.
“The Shape of Water”, Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy period, led the field with 13 nods - including, among others, nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress (Sally Hawkins). “Dunkirk” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri” followed with 8 and 7 mentions each, respectively. The Best Picture line-up also included “Call Me by Your Name” (4 nominations in total), “Darkest Hour” (6), “Lady Bird” (4), “Get Out” (4), “Phantom Thread” (6) and “The Post” (2).
Until the awards are handed out next March 4th, experts and pundits will start releasing their lists of predictions and wishes for who will - and should - nab a golden statue. Hollywood studios will be pushing hard in their campaigns to gather support among Oscar voters. In between, other major awards ceremonies will be held, including the BAFTAS, British equivalent of the Academy Awards.
The awards race has become more than a spectacle. It is a tough, sometimes exhausting competition between gigantic and more artsy, auteur-centric studios, all looking to write their movies’ names down in Oscars history. After 90 years of annual ceremonies there are certain lessons to be learnt, and some stats to watch out for too, prior to Hollywood’s big night.
There are, what film critics call, awards precursors. The producers’, actors' and writers' guild associations (PGA, SAG, WGA), to name only a few, tend to be great indicators of which films do well, come Oscar night. An ensemble nomination from SAG, for instance, has been a pre-requisite for a Best Picture victory ever since “Braveheart” won the grand prize in 1995. Since then, no Oscar best picture winner has become so without receiving a nomination from the actor’s guild.
Similarly, a nomination from the producers’ guild multiplies the chances of a movie receiving the Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, and a mention from the Writers’ Guild of America tends to guarantee a screenplay nomination. This trend can be explained by looking into the membership distribution of these guilds: Most members of the PGA, SAG or WGA also form part of the Academy, hence the similarity in the voting patterns they follow.
At this moment, three movies seem to have emerged as this year’s front-runners: “The Shape of Water” picked up the PGA earlier this month; “Three Billboards” won SAG’s ensemble prize; and “Get Out” has been doing fairly well with critics’ associations all across the country.
Nevertheless, the tectonic shift currently taking place in Hollywood’s power structure could shake up the race and break many of the aforementioned statistics. The outbreak of sexual harassment scandals, which has boosted the gradual, sad decline of Hollywood’s most powerful man Harvey Weinstein, has also accelerated the launch of the “Time’s Up” initiative: A feminist momentum and sense of urgency, which could make voters turn their attention to female-led pictures, including “Lady Bird” or “The Post”.
With March 4th just around the corner, make sure to catch this year’s nominees in theatres; and expect my personal predictions of who will win, who could steal the show, and who deserves to take the golden statue in the coming weeks!
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