Official 2023 Oscar Nominations And Discussions Thread (1 Viewer)

[Matt Hough]

This running gag has made me laugh for years. At the Emmys a few years ago, Kimmel, hosting the ceremony, lost for his talk show, and Damon was the next presenter after his category loss. He ribbed him for three or four minutes about losing to John Oliver.

 

[Sam Favate]

I'm glad to see Angela Bassett nominated, considering that she gives the best performance in a movie full of great performances. Also, how is it that this is the first she's been nominated in 30 &%$#@^! years! (She was last nominated for What's Love Got To Do With It.) The quality of actors that have gone without an Oscar is staggering sometimes.

 

[Chris Will]

When I first saw the list of nominees I thought it was a pretty diverse list, but what do I know. What else can the Academy do to satisfy people? They have encourage and gotten more diverse over the last number of years but, people still claim they are “upholding whiteness”. It’s starting to feel like people are just screaming for a headline instead of actually trying to encourage change.

 

[MartinP.]

The quality of actors that have gone without an Oscar is staggering sometimes.

Some of that is just a matter of timing...when movies get released. For example, the film Million Dollar Baby was scheduled to be released in March of 2005. After a few really successful test screenings in late 2004, Eastwood was urged to move the release date up for award consideration, so it had a limited run in December, 2004, and then a wide release January 25, 2005. Not only did it win Best Picture, Hilary Swank won a second Oscar. Might Annette Bening have won for Being Julia otherwise? Who knows. If they'd waited until March, 2005, would it have won the year Crash did? Crash was premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2004. Why did they wait to release it until May, 2005? Ugh, the vagaries of fate.

Some years you want to give two or three nominees in a category the Oscar and other years none of them. There's also an amazing amount of actors who've won more than one Oscar, too. If Cate Blanchett wins this year, she'll have three. Frances McDormand has three acting, one producing. And these actors all have multiples: Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Walter Brennan, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Denzel Washington, Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Penn, Olivia de Havilland, Gene Hackman, Glenda Jackson, Jodie Foster, Renée Zellweger, Anthony Quinn, Shelley Winters, Sally Field, Melvyn Douglas, Peter Ustinov, Jason Robards, Dianne Wiest, Luise Rainer, Vivien Leigh, Hilary Swank, Helen Hayes, Kevin Spacey, Christoph Waltz and Mahershala Ali. And off hand there's those like Emma Thompson who has one for acting and one for screenplay.

In Meryl Streep's acceptance speech for The Iron Lady she said something about it all being "a crapshoot."

 

[jayembee]

Some of that is just a matter of timing...when movies get released. For example, the film Million Dollar Baby was scheduled to be released in March of 2005. After a few really successful test screenings in late 2004, Eastwood was urged to move the release date up for award consideration, so it had a limited run in December, 2004, and then a wide release January 25, 2005. Not only did it win Best Picture, Hilary Swank won a second Oscar. Might Annette Bening have won for Being Julia otherwise? Who knows. If they'd waited until March, 2005, would it have won the year Crash did? Crash was premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2004. Why did they wait to release it until May, 2005? Ugh, the vagaries of fate.

My standard response over the years to all of the "Why didn't <X> win an Oscar?" has been "A lot of it depends on what the competition was." Just because someone is a great actor (or whatever) doesn't mean they didn't just have the bad luck to be up against someone who was better. And even if the "someone who was better" isn't better overall, that particular performance might've been better than that of the generally-better actor.

 

[SD_Brian]

Then you have the actors who finally won an award, but they won it for "the wrong movie," or as a film studies professor I had once called them, the "give it to them before they die" awards. Paul Newman for The Color of Money, Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, Kate Winslett for The Reader, Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant. Not that those weren't all swell performances, but those actors each were nominated for (arguably) better performances in earlier movies, so when they finally won the award for (arguably) mediocre movies, it felt more like their body of work was being awarded, rather than that particular performance.

Martin Scorsese's Best Director win for The Departed (after losing for Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and others) also felt like a "give it to them before they die" award.

 

[Jeffrey D]

Top Gun: Maverick is an impressive film- much better than the first one. I don’t think it has a shot at best picture, but I think it deserved the nomination.

 

[Joe Wong]

An interesting development…

Academy ‘Conducting Review’ After Andrea Riseborough’s Surprise Oscar Nomination

There are questions surrounding Andrea Riseborough's surprise best actress nomination for "To Leslie." Will there be clarity?

variety.com

 

[Joe Wong]

I'm glad to see Angela Bassett nominated, considering that she gives the best performance in a movie full of great performances. Also, how is it that this is the first she's been nominated in 30 &%$#@^! years! (She was last nominated for What's Love Got To Do With It.) The quality of actors that have gone without an Oscar is staggering sometimes.

For me, the list of best actors not to have won an Oscar include Bassett, Edward Norton, Stanley Tucci, Amy Adams, Robert Downey Jr, Toni Collette, John Malkovich and Glenn Close. And prior to her win last year, Jessica Chastain. (A case could even be made for Samuel L Jackson.)

 

[Jake Lipson]

(A case could even be made for Samuel L Jackson.)

Yes, but he'd rather be Nick Fury, which is great for us as the audience.

Samuel L. Jackson: ‘I’d Rather Be Nick Fury’ Than Win Oscars or Chase Oscar-Baiting Roles

Samuel L. Jackson will never chase the Oscar-baiting roles.

variety.com

 

[Sam Favate]

Samuel L. Jackson deserved an Oscar for Jungle Fever (1991). I don’t think I’ve ever seen as harrowing a performance.

 

[SD_Brian]

Samuel L. Jackson deserved an Oscar for Jungle Fever (1991). I don’t think I’ve ever seen as harrowing a performance.

He probably should have won for Pulp Fiction , but veteran actor Martin Landau, despite being wonderful in Ed Wood, may have also benefitted from the "give it to him before he dies" Oscar sentiment described earlier.

 

[Jake Lipson]

An interesting development…

Deadline has another take on the situation. https://deadline.com/2023/01/oscars...-is-it-all-much-ado-about-nothing-1235243077/

I'm less concerned about them doing anything unethical and just more curious as to what happened here. Neither The Numbers nor Box Office Mojo even have North American gross data for this movie, and the data they do have for international markets isn't the same. This seems like a movie that might have played at my local arthouse and something I would pay attention to, but I can say confidently that it did not play there. It doesn't sound like they did anything unethical (that we know of right now) but as someone who is interested in small films like this, I'd like to know more about when and how it was released because that information seems to be difficult to find.

 

[JoeStemme]

Neither The Numbers nor Box Office Mojo even have North American gross data for this movie, and the data they do have for international markets isn't the same. This seems like a movie that might have played at my local arthouse and something I would pay attention to, but I can say confidently that it did not play there. It doesn't sound like they did anything unethical (that we know of right now) but as someone who is interested in small films like this, I'd like to know more about when and how it was released because that information seems to be difficult to find.

As I noted earlier in this thread, TO LESLIE absoluted DID get a theatrical release in October. It played the required week at the Laemmle in Santa Monica.

P.S. A critic friend of mine who has a vote in 2 or 3 different Awards groups just messaged me saying that he HAD seen TO LESLIE back in October -- but, had completely forgotten that he had even seen it! He said he thought it was just such a familiar tale that it had slipped his mind until all the Oscar brouhaha

 

[Polbroth]

An interesting development…

Academy ‘Conducting Review’ After Andrea Riseborough’s Surprise Oscar Nomination

There are questions surrounding Andrea Riseborough's surprise best actress nomination for "To Leslie." Will there be clarity?

variety.com

Oy.

I had a friend on a nominating committee (or whatever they're called), and he tells this hilarious story about his group deciding at the outset to put the people they thought were best forward regardless of their fame/resume.

Fast forward to the night of the awards, and the incredibly obscure individual they thought was the most deserving wins the award for their stellar work.

Apparently attendees and insiders were VERY unhappy, and one of the more famous people (physically) attacked my friend.

As another friend of his put it afterward:

"Hollywood is like living inside a Godfather movie."

 

[Colin Jacobson]

He probably should have won for Pulp Fiction , but veteran actor Martin Landau, despite being wonderful in Ed Wood, may have also benefitted from the "give it to him before he dies" Oscar sentiment described earlier.

And then Landau was rude enough to not die for 23 more years! Jerk.

 

[JoeStemme]

And then Landau was rude enough to not die for 23 more years! Jerk.

And, they gave Ennio Morricone an Honorary Oscar because they didn't want him to die without ever winning one. And, then he won a competive one. He should have given his honorary one back! Jerk!

 

[Keith Cobby]

That Hitchcock didn't win has always made this a meaningless charade to me.

 

[Jeffrey D]

That Hitchcock didn't win has always made this a meaningless charade to me.

Nominated 5 times for director- Rebecca, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rear Window and Psycho. At least Rebecca won best picture.

 

[Jeffrey D]

He probably should have won for Pulp Fiction , but veteran actor Martin Landau, despite being wonderful in Ed Wood, may have also benefitted from the "give it to him before he dies" Oscar sentiment described earlier.

I’m one of the biggest Pulp Fiction fans around, and while I think Jackson was awesome, Landau was toe to toe with him for Ed Wood- great performance.