Hollywood’s biggest night prepares.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the Oscar nominations for the 96th time. Hosted by ABC’s late-night regular and has an unexplainable hatred for Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel. It will be Kimmel’s fourth time hosting the awards show on March 10, 2024, and a lot of film buffs will be tuning in.
Let’s have a look back at 2023 before we dive into the big nominations.
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The Year of Barbenheimer and Bombs
2023 is a great year for diverse new films and a never-before-seen event for people to go back to movie theaters called Barbenheimer. An event that made people dress up in black and pink to go to cinemas and watch Barbie and Oppenheimer simultaneously. Some say it’s a replica of what the fans of Animal Crossing and Doom did during the lockdowns, but that’s beside the point.
It’s also the year of bombs; yes, Oppenheimer premiered, but that’s not the bombs in question. It seems Hollywood has a tendency to overspend and underpromote their tentpole franchises. It got so bad that they coined the term “flopbuster” for it. Some of the films are coming from Disney, which is celebrating its 100th year as a company. Coincidentally, it’s their first time since 2014, excluding pandemic years, that they haven’t premiered a billion-dollar-grossing film. Some say they deserved it after voicing support for the Hollywood Strikes. Meanwhile, their CEO, Bob Iger, raked in hundreds of millions while their employees got dimes and were replaced by Chat GPT-made actors.
After looking back at what was, let’s look at what is by going through the top four most Oscar-nominated films of this year.
Oscar Nominations for the Bomb “Oppenheimer”
Oppenheimer is the leading film of this year with 13 Oscar Nominations:
- Best Picture – Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, and Christopher Nolan
- Best Director – Christopher Nolan
- Best Actor – Cillian Murphy
- Best Supporting Actor – Robert Downey Jr.
- Best Supporting Actress – Emily Blunt
- Best Adapted Screenplay – Christopher Nolan
- Best Cinematography – Hoyte van Hoytema
- Best Film Editing – Jennifer L.
- Best Costume Design – Ellen Mirojnick
- Best Production Design – Ruth De Jong and Claire Kaufman
- Best Makeup and Hairstyling – Luisa Abel
- Best Sound – Willie D. Burton, Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo, and Kevin O’Connell
- Best Original Score – Ludwig Göransson
It is The Darling of this year’s Award Season, it has a high chance of tying with West Side Story for 2nd most Oscar wins for a film
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Oscar Nominations for Miss Baxter “Poor Things”
Poor Things is second with the most Oscar Nominations this year with 11;
- Best Picture – Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone
- Best Director – Yorgos Lanthimos
- Best Actress – Emma Stone
- Best Supporting Actor – Mark Ruffalo
- Best Adapted Screenplay – Tony McNamara
- Best Original Score – Jerskin Fendrix
- Best Production Design: Production Design: James Price and Shona Heath; Set Decoration: Zsuzsa Mihalek
- Best Cinematography – Robbie Ryan
- Best Makeup and Hairstyling – Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston
- Best Costume Design – Holly Waddington
- Best Film Editing – Yorgos Mavropsaridis
By the same people that made “The Favorite” in 2018, a film that won Olivia Colman her Oscar. This time they teamed up with Oscar winner and now five-time nominee Emma Stone to make a film about steampunk sexual awakening and self-love. Love
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Oscar Nominations for the Burkharts “Killers of the Flower Moon”
At third is Killers of the Flower Moon with 10 Oscar Nominations:
- Best Picture – Martin Scorsese, Dan Friedkan, Bradley Thomas and Daniel Lupi
- Best Director – Martin Scorsese
- Best Actress – Lily Gladstone
- Best Supporting Actor – Robert De Niro
- Best Cinematography – Rodrigo Prieto
- Best Editing Thelma – Schoonmaker
- Best Production Design – Jack Fisk and Adam Willis
- Best Costume Design – Jacqueline West
- Best Original Score – Robbie Robertson
- Best Original Song – “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” (Music and lyrics by Scott George)
Oscars Darling and living legend Martin Scorsese returns with another tale of corruption. The EGOT winner has been creating a filmography so varied across the decades that even the colors of the LGBTQIA+ might be jealous.
Oscar Nominations for “Barbie”
Rounding out our Top Four is Barbie with 8 Oscar Nominations:
- Best Picture: David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, and Robbie Brenner
- Best Supporting Actor: Ryan Gosling
- Best Supporting Actress – America Ferrera
- Best Adapted Screenplay – Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
- Best Costume Design – Jacqueline Durran
- Best Production Design – Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer
- Best Original Song – “I’m Just Ken” (written by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt)
- “What Was I Made For?” (written by Billie Eilish & Finneas O’Connell)
Described as devisive for critics, alpha males and alpha male critics but universally loved by the masses. Barbie takes the cake for the most unusual and possibly topical film of 2023. Some say it could be described as a film that conveys the reason why women are smarter than men.
Oscar Surprises
The Oscar Nominations were presented by actors Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on January 23, 2024. As the nominations rolled in, a surprise announcement caught a lot of eyes, and that’s of Ugly Betty fame, America Ferrera, for Best Supporting Actress. Her speech in Barbie describing what a woman has to be in society became an Oscar moment for a lot of the Academy members, which might explain her nomination.
Barbie becomes the first film in eight years to receive two nominations for the Best Original Song category. With what can be called a Billie Eilish classic and the tearjerker, heart of the film theme song “What Was I Made For?“. And a baffling nomination for the joke song “I’m Just Ken” from the makers of “Shallow,” sung by born-to-be Ken, Ryan Gosling. The “I’m Just Ken” nomination encapsulates evidence that the Academy members didn’t get the message of the film and they never will.
Oscars First and Records
A first for the Mission Impossible and Godzilla Franchises are Oscar nominations with Best Visual Effects for Godzilla Minus One and Best Sound and Best Visual Effects for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One.
A first for the Academy Awards is the nomination of Lily Gladstone for Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon. Lily becomes the first indigenous actress of American descent to be nominated for an Oscar. From the same film, Martin Scorsese becomes the oldest nominee for the Best Director category, receiving a milestone 10th nomination at age 81.
Steven Spielberg extends his record for most Best Picture nominations with his 13th for Maestro. John Williams extends his record for most Oscar nominations for any living person with his 54th one for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in the Best Original Score category.
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Oscars Notable Snubs
The biggest disappointments from the nominations list are the absent nominations for Margot Robbie for Best Actress and Greta Gerwig for Best Director. It’s been seven years since Greta Gerwig was nominated for the Best Director category, and it’s been six since Margot Robbie has been nominated for Best Actress.
Knowing that Barbie basically saved the cinema in 2023 for being part of the cultural phenomenon “Barbenheimer,” people have anticipated that Margot and Greta would be a lock-in for those categories. It seems that the themes of Barbie, again, have been lost in the brains of the Academy members.
The Academy received so much backlash because of it that Margot’s co-stars, America and Ryan, spoke out about their disappointments with Greta and Margot’s absence in said categories. Such is the phobia of the Academy for popular films with a message. Like Whoopi said, movies are subjective; people shouldn’t expect the Academy to be with the times.
Final Thoughts
2023 is the year where the Hollywood Strikes occurred, a day after arguably the best films of the decade premiered and the culmination of a once-in-a-lifetime cultural phenomenon in motion pictures. 2023 is an amazing year for films, and being recognized by your peers for doing a good job is just a plus. And as Hollywood’s Biggest Night draws closer, people will be tuned in to see if the Academy members will vote correctly.
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