The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
The nominations for the 94th Academy Awards were finally released, and as usual, there were a few joys and a few sorrows.
Judging from the number of nominations alone, "The Power of Dogs" received 12 nominations, which can be described as the biggest winner. Followed by "Dune", although it received ten nominations, director Dennis Villeneuve failed to get the nomination for the Best Director Award, which is somewhat an unpopular. Later, Kenneth Branagh's "Belfast" and the "West End Story" with a small reputation also received seven nominations.
This year, two Asian films have been nominated for Best International Film – the Japanese film "Driving My Car" and the Bhutanese film "A Yak in the Classroom", and "Driving My Car" has also been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and other awards. Last year's highest-grossing and well-received "Spider-Man: Homeless Heroes" received only one nomination for best visual effects, which once again overshadowed the Oscars, which has been in the dark ratings for many years.
Stills from "The Power of Dogs"
A new record is born
Kenneth Branagh is also the writer, director and producer of Belfast. In the past, he was nominated for Best Director and Best Actor in 1989 for Henry V, Best Live-Action Short Film in 1992 for Farewell Performance, Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Hamlet four years later, and Best Supporting Actor nomination for Me and Monroe in 2011, and he had been nominated for an Oscar at five awards before this year. Coupled with the two nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture, Branagh surpassed his predecessor Walt Disney, who had been nominated for Oscar nominations for at least six different awards, and his peers George Clooney and Alfonso Cuarón, which is also an alternative Oscar record.
Kenneth Branagh (left) on the set of Belfast
Also setting the record were penelope Cruz and Harvey Baden, Kristen Dunst and Jace Premons, two silver couples. All four of them have been nominated for the actor award this year, and when it is time to join hands in the Oscars, there may be a chance that the family will successfully bring back two small golden people, which will surely be passed on as a good story in film history.
Stills from "The Gucci Family"
As for this year's disappointment, the first to bear the brunt of it should be Lady Gaga, the star of "Gucci Family". Previously, she had received four nominations for the British Academy Film Awards, the American Film Critics Association Awards, the Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards for this role, and it was reasonable to say that the Oscar nomination should be a sure thing, but the result was lost.
In contrast, Kristen Stewart, who failed to win the Screen Actors Guild Award and the British Academy Film Awards, ushered in a major reversal of fate. Stewart was nominated for an Oscar for the first time this year for Spencer, and it has also made a large number of Twilight Woman fans around the world cheer on social media.
In addition, "Belfast" Katrina Balf lost the best supporting actress, "Licorice Pizza" Bradley Cooper lost the best supporting actor, but also many people feel somewhat surprised.
The new rules are enabled, but Spider-Man still has no nomination for Best Picture
Compared with the failure of a certain person, the most fatal blow to the ratings of the entire Oscars is probably the cold reception suffered by "Spider-Man: Homeless".
Last year's highest-grossing "Spider-Man: Homeless" failed to get an Oscar nomination for best picture like "Black Panther" and "Joker" and other comic book hits. In fact, the film received only one nomination for Best Visual Effects. Comparing the 11 nominations received by "Joker" and the 7 nominations received by "Black Panther", it can be described as shabby. Logically, the media reputation of this superhero movie is quite good, and many serious film critics have scored high marks for it.
Stills from Spider-Man: Heroes Don't Return
On the other hand, after the film was released last year, it repeatedly broke box office records, which can be said to have single-handedly saved the American cinema industry that was tormented by the epidemic, and also injected a shot in the arm into the revival of the Hollywood film industry. After all, no matter how many insiders support films such as "Belfast" and "West End Story" are supported by insiders, when the film is made, it still needs to be seen by the audience in order to be regarded as a positive result. If it weren't for "Spider-Man: Homeless" to re-gather the popularity of the audience, the overall recovery of the AMERICAN film industry in the post-epidemic era would certainly not have been so smooth. As a result, the Oscar judges did not seem to have any "gratitude" for the film, which somewhat made the fans of "Spider-Man: Homeless" feel a little chilly.
Stills from Dune
Looking at the ten films nominated for Best Picture this year, only "Dune" with a global box office of nearly $400 million is a blockbuster. In addition, "Don't Look Up", which was launched on the streaming platform Netflix, has also triggered a lot of viewing boom. The remaining eight are basically literary films that mainstream young audiences in the United States avoid, and the famous pop singer Lady Gaga has not been nominated, I am afraid that there will be complaints about the high and low Oscars at that time.
In fact, more than a decade ago, it was the failure of the comic book superhero film "Batman: The Dark Knight" to receive the Oscar nomination for Best Picture, which caused widespread protest that the Oscar organizers introduced reform measures in 2009: the number of best picture candidates increased from five to ten, in order to relax the standard and allow blockbuster blockbusters with good quality but lack of so-called artistry or profundity to compete. In the following years, the quorum for best picture candidates was revised to no longer mandate ten, based solely on the number of votes, so in the past few years, eight or nine works have generally been nominated for best picture.
By this year, the Oscar policy has been changed again, restoring the mandatory requirements for ten candidates for best picture, and the producers of "Spider-Man: Heroes of No Return" have obviously sniffed opportunities from it, and have done a lot of publicity offensives some time ago, hoping to find a place in the ten places, but in the end they failed to do so.
Continue to diversify your route
Overall, the results of this year's Oscar nominations further show Hollywood's diverse demands.
Although the total number of female filmmakers nominated has decreased from the past two years, the number of nominated directors is both female and Asian, and the nominated actors are both African-American and Latino, and there are deaf and mute people - Troy Cortsoor of "Hearing Girl" became the second hearing-impaired person in Oscar history to be nominated; Marie Matteline, who starred with him in the film, became the first hearing-impaired person nominated at the Academy Awards in 1986 for "Out of Favor with God's Child". In the end, he also successfully won the best actress of the little golden man.
In addition, the director of "Jade Face" Gilmo del Toro, the creator of the theme song of "Full House" Lin Manuel Miranda, the composer Germaine Franco and the producer Yvett Merino, plus Carlos López Estrada, one of the directors of "Dragon Quest", these Hispanic filmmakers who have long been active in Hollywood, all received nominations this time.
Stills from "Driving My Car"
The Japanese film "Driving My Car" received four nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Film, although it is slightly less than the Korean film "Parasite" winning six nominations three years ago, but considering the difference in the genre of the film and the strength of North American distributors, it is also a great achievement. This is the fourteenth non-English film and the first Japanese film in history to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Ryusuke Hamaguchi became the third Japanese to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director after emissaries Hiroshi Kawahara and Akira Kurosawa.
The Oscar nomination for "Driving My Car" also triggered a warm response from the Japanese media and the public. Many Japanese netizens have said on social media that they will definitely stay in front of the TV or computer, waiting for the Oscar results to be announced, cheering for "Driving My Car" and director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. When the film was released in Japan in August last year, it only grossed 30 million yen (about 1.653 million yuan) at the national box office, ranking 151st on the 2021 Japanese film box office list.
Poster of "A Yak in the Classroom"
In addition to "Drive My Car," this year's Asian film was nominated for Best International Film, "A Yak in the Classroom," which represented Bhutan. Previously, Bhutan had only submitted "World Cup on the Mountain" in 1999 to compete for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but it had not been nominated that year. "A Yak in the Classroom" is actually a work of 2019, the last Oscar had signed up for the competition, but it was disqualified by the Oscars because of problems in the submission process. This year's Oscars, the Bhutan Film Bureau re-sorted out the registration process, successfully completed the prescribed procedures, and finally let this small production that claims to use only one camera to complete all the shooting also appeared on the big stage of the Oscars.
The 94th Academy Awards will take place on March 27, local time. In addition to the attribution of the awards, the biggest suspense after the nomination list was announced was the choice of host. Previously, Tom Holland, the star of "Spider-Man: Homeless", has expressed his willingness to take on this heavy responsibility. If it comes to fruition, it will undoubtedly be a major attraction of the awards ceremony, and it will also save the decadent ratings in recent years.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Zhe
Proofreader: Yijia Xu