By Jackson Miller, Video Intern & Writer
On March 15, the 98th annual Academy Awards will be hosted at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, capping off an excellent year for movies and, as always, serving as the Super Bowl for cinephiles. Several first-time nominees, a couple of broken records, and a wide variety of films fill up the nominations, so here is everything you need to know heading into the ceremony.
Sinners breaks the record for most nominations
While it does help that it got nominated for the brand-new “Best Casting” category, Sinners would have still beaten the previous record without it. The Ryan Coogler-directed vampire period piece racked up an insane 16 nominations, beating the previous record of 14, which was held by a handful of movies, including Titanic and La La Land. Sinners essentially got nominated for everything it was eligible for and marks a first-ever nomination for its lead –or leads if you’ve seen the movie – Michael B Jordan.
Another industry first win for Sinners is its cinematographer Autumn Durland Arkapaw, who is the first ever woman of color to be nominated for “Best Cinematography.”
Warner Bros. and Netflix are the studios to beat
Not only did Warner Bros. (WB) have a dominant year at the box office with movies like Minecraft, Superman, and F1, but they’ve been crushing it at awards shows this year. Leading the way is their Leonardo DiCaprio-led film, One Battle After Another, which got 13 nominations, including “Best Picture.” Despite not being a huge win for WB financially (even though it is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s highest-grossing movie to date), it was a huge hit with critics, audience members, and members of the industry, as it is the current frontrunner for “Best Picture” and “Best Director.” Other big WB winners include F1, which is nominated for 4 categories, including “Best Picture,” and Weapons, which got 1 nomination for Amy Madigan’s supporting role, as well as some more awards love outside of the upcoming Oscars ceremony.
On the other side of the coin, Netflix had a stellar awards season with a total of six Netflix productions getting at least one nomination. Their big contender is Frankenstein, which got nine nominations and is the frontrunner for a lot of technical awards, such as “Best Hair and Make Up,” “Best Production Design,” and “Best Costumes.” Train Dreams is their second biggest contender with four nominations, including “Best Picture,” which Frankenstein was also nominated for. As for the other contenders, K-Pop Demon Hunters is the one to beat for both “Best Animated Picture” and “Best Original Song,” and The Perfect Neighbor will likely be the winner for “Best Documentary Feature” as it truly took the world by storm when it came out in October.
Personal bias and how I feel about the lineup
I’m honestly very satisfied with the lineup of nominated films – at the time of writing, I’ve seen seven out of the 10 “Best Picture” nominees, which is a record for me. Both Marty Supreme and Sinners ended up being my favorite movies of the year, so I was of course pleased when they got nominated for 10 and 16 categories, respectively. One thing that bugs me just a little bit is that a good majority of the rest of the categories are filled up almost entirely with “Best Picture” nominees, which makes sense but I would have changed a couple of things
For example, “Best Director” was filled up with directors from 5 different “Best Picture” nominees, whereas I would have thrown in either Park Chan-wook for No Other Choice or Zach Cregger for Weapons. And that’s another thing that bums me out about the nominations: these two movies I just mentioned didn’t get enough love, especially No Other Choice, which was snubbed entirely with no nominations at all. I can understand why though, as this has been the most competitive year for the Oscars we’ve seen in a long time, and I will stand by that.
In fact, the Academy Awards are so competitive this year that I would not be surprised if “Best Picture” is a three- or four-way battle between any of these top picks, nor would I be surprised if there ends up being a lot of upsets during the ceremony. This has been the year where I’ve been paying most attention to what comes out and who all is in contention and I’m glad I have because this has been potentially the best year for movies this decade so far. The Oscars will be live on March 15 at 7 p.m. EST, available on Hulu and ABC, so tune in and see who wins the battle!
