The race for the Oscars took place in the dark context of vegetation fires that devastated Los Angeles and destroyed thousands of houses.
Oscar prizes. Photo shutterstock
The prize season had its part of scandal. While the use of artificial intelligence by The Brutalist and the lack of an intimacy coordinator by Anora were storms in a cup of tea on Twitter, there was a real controversy when some historical tweet Emilia Pérez, according to bbc.com.
Before the awarding of the Oscars on Sunday (March 2), here are 17 of the weirdness, trends, models and records in this year’s nominated lot.
1. This is the first time that two musicals are nominated for the best movie in more than five decades.
Wicked and Emilia Pérez are the first musical couple to apply for the big prize at Funny Girl and Oliver! in 1969.
The resurgence of the musical is partially due to the fact that, at present, it is twice as easy to get a nomination for the best movie, after the main category has been extended to 10 places.
The last musical to win the best film was Chicago in 2003.
2. Adrien Brody already holds a record at the Oscar and could break another.
The American star is currently the youngest winner for the best actor – he was 29 when he won the prize for his 2002 pianist interpretation.
But Brody has not been nominated until this year, when he was nominated for The Brutalist. If he wins again, he will become the first person to win in the main actor category with his first two nominations.
Only seven other actors currently have a 100% victory rate in Oscar out of two or more nominations – Vivien Leigh, Hilary Swank, Kevin Spacey, Luise Rainer, Christoph Waltz, Helen Hayes and Mahershala Ali.
3. But Timothée Chalaamet is a major threat.
The dune and Wonka star is Brody’s hardest competitor in the best actor, due to his acclaimed portrait of Bob Dylan in Complete Unknown.
If he won, Chalaamet not only stops Brody’s victory series, but he would also take his youngest winner record. It’s not a big deal – Chalaamet would be just 10 months younger than Brody was.
4. Emilia Pérez from Netflix could follow a dubious model for streaming movies.
It may have the most nominations, but the Spanish musical could have the same fate as other recent streaming films that were strongly nominated, but failed to follow many victories.
The Irishman (Netflix) has won zero oscars, out of 10 nominations
Mank (Netflix) won two, out of 10
The Power of the Dog (Netflix) won one of 12
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple) won zero out of 10
Emilia Pérez is strong in a few categories, but she is just as unlikely to jerk.
A single streaming movie has ever won the best movie – Apple’s Coda – which had only three nominations in total.
5. Two succession stars share a disadvantage.
Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong are both nominated for best supporting actor, for their Real Pain and the Apprentice.
But the two are the only ones nominated for this category that do not come from films nominated for the best movie.
The absence of the Real Pain film in the best movie category should not prevent Culkin from winning. The last person to win the category without being nominated for the best movie was Christopher Plummer in 2012, for Beginners.
All this year’s actors are nominated for the first time in Oscar, except for Edward Norton, who has three previous nominations.
6. The substance is the first body horror nominated for the best movie and only the seventh horror in total.
The other six were The Exorcist, Get Out, The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, The Sixth Sense and Black Swan.
The substance is a strong competitor in the category of the best makeup and hairstyle, a category in which the winner often overlaps with winners in interpretation. This could play in favor of Demi Moore in a tight race for the best actress.
7. Isabella Rossellini is nominated for an interpretation of eight minutes in conclaves, but this is not the shortest in the history of Oscaru.
Beatrice Straight won the same category, the best supporting actress for her role in Network, which lasted 5min 02sec.
Dame Judi Dench is only marginal in front, winning for the role in Shakespeare in Love, which lasted 5min 52sec.
Leaving aside the winners, it is believed that the shortest nomination is the interpretation of Hermione Baddeley from the 1959 Room at the movie, which lasted 2 minutes and 19 seconds.
On the duration, The Brutalist (3hrs 35mins, including a break) would be the fourth long winning film of all time, after the wings of the wind, Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur.
8. The single star, Colman Domingo, is nominated for best actor, just one year after his last nomination in the same category for Rustin.
A great achievement, no doubt. But he has a lot until he reached Bette Davis and Greer Garson, who managed to get five consecutive nominations in the Oscar in the 1930s.
Right behind them are Al Pacino, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Thelma Ritter and Jennifer Jones, who each obtained four consecutive nominations.
Bradley Cooper, Renée Zellweger, Russell Crowe, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, William Hurt, Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy did three in a row.
9. All five nominations for the best actress come from films that are nominated for the best movie.
It may not seem too much, but this is the first time this has happened in 1977.
The historical lack of overlap between the two categories has often been attributed to the fact that the Academy is less willing to award the big prize to women focused on women.
But this trend has changed in recent years, films with main female roles such as Nomadland, Coda and Everything Everywhere All at Once by getting the best movie.
10. Before the nomination of Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice, only seven other actors had been nominated for the Oscar for the interpretation of an American president.
Frank Langella was recognized for Richard Nixon’s portrait, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Raymond Massey were nominated for Abraham Lincoln’s interpretation.
Sam Rockwell was nominated for the interpretation of George W Bush, Alexander Knox for Woodrow Wilson, and James Whitmore for Harry Truman.
Perhaps the most notable, Sir Anthony Hopkins has been nominated twice for portraying two different presidents in separate films – once in the role of Nixon and another in the role of John Quincy Adams.
Stan is slightly different in that he portrays Trump in his years of youth as a real estate tycoon, rather than during his term of president, but we still consider it worthy to be introduced in this exclusive club.
11. Robbie Williams’ Better Man’s Biographical Movie is nominated for the best visual effects, but he also has a connection with two other films in the race.
The song of the British singer Swing Supreme appears in an essential scene in Emilia Pérez, while her former Take That colleagues appear at the beginning of Anora, while a Remix of the Greatest Day runs in a nightclub.
Its prominence in the film determined the remaining members of the Take That band to play the song at the Bafta Film Awards this year.
12. Ralph Fiennes could be good for conclave.
The last two times when the British star has been nominated for the best actor, for Schindler’s List and The English Patient, his film won the best movie award.
If Conclave wins, Fiennes will set a record for appearing in most awarded films, becoming the only four films actor (the other being The Hurt Locker).
However, the absence of Edward Berger in the best director category significantly weakens the conclave chances. Only six movies have ever won the prize for best movie without a proper nomination for the directing.
In addition, three of these have been in the last 12 years (Argo, Coda and Green Book), which suggests that this is less an obstacle than it was.
Why wasn’t Berger nominated? A possible factor is the fact that, unlike the five directors who were nominated, he did not write or co-write the scenario of his film. Conclave was adapted after Robert Harris’s novel by British screenwriter Peter Straughan.
13. Diane Warren really wants to win.
The composer won this year the 16th nomination for the best original song, for The Journey, from The Six Triple Eight.
But Warren never won. Given that the campaign of Emilia Pérez was affected and could divide the votes with two songs in this category, could this be, finally, her year?
She definitely hopes yes. Earlier this month, when a film account on X asked the followers: “Which Oscar winner would make you the happiest?” Warren replied brightly: “Me!”
14. Wicked must climb a high slope to win the prize for best movie, because he missed both the directing and the script.
The film has obtained several technical nominations, as well as acting nominations for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, but none of them are in the first place in their category.
The last film to win the prize for best movie without a proper victory in the Director, Scenario or Interpretation category was Rebecca in 1942.
15. Two nominated treads in the footsteps of their mothers.
Fernanda Torres, the star of I’M Still Here, is nominated for the best actress – after her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, became the first Brazilian nominated in the same category in 1999 for Central Station.
Meanwhile, the mother of conclave star Isabella Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman, has been nominated for the best actress six times in her career, winning twice, and won the award for best supporting actress.
16. Anora’s director could become the first person to win four Oscars for the same movie.
Because Sean Baker was involved in so many aspects of film production, he could personally win the best movie, assembly, director and script.
No one has done this before.
Walt Disney won four Oscars on the same night in 1953, but for four different movies.
And Bong Joon-Ho de la Parasite was incredibly close in 2020, but as the prize for best international film is granted, from a technical point of view, to the country that presented, and not to the director, he only took home for three for his own trophy office.
If Anora wins the big prize, it will be the second consecutive year in which the director of the best movie wins with her wife. Baker and his wife Samantha Quan would follow Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas.
Anora would also be the first 18 -rating movie to win the best movie from The Far in 2007.
17. It’s official: The Flow Cat is called Flow.
The delightful film about a cat surviving a flood is a “dark horse” in the category of animation films, after defeating the Golden Globes Jonglernauts of Box Office Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot at the prize.
“While working at Flow, the cat had no name,” said the film director, Gints Zilbalis, earlier this month. “I just told him the cat.
“I have heard from more people that they believe that her name is Flow. People even called Flow Cats now! So I think we can call the Flow cat. ”
