Mar 15

Mar 15 93rd Annual Academy Award Nominations

Today, the 93rd annual Academy Award nominations were announced. The ceremony is a little bit different this year, as it’s honoring films released between 1 January 2020 and 28 February 2021. The rules also included eligibility for films only released to streaming services in response to the global pandemic.

The big news comes in the Best Director category. For the first time ever, two women are nominated for Best Director in the same year: Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) and Emerald Fennel (Promising Young Woman). Both are nominated for Best Picture (they both produced) and Best Director. Fennel is nominated in Original Screenplay and Zhao is nominated in Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing. Chloe Zhao is the favorite to win Best Director, as her work in Nomadland has largely swept the precursor awards, occasionally losing out to Emerald Fennel in critics awards across the US.

The big miss for me is “Speed Cubers” not making it in Documentary Short. This phenomenal short film from director Sue Kim follows the friendship between two internationally ranked Rubik’s Cube solving competitors. I’ve said from the first time I watched this that it is A) a truly wonderful and compelling documentary short that everyone should see and B) a documentary short that’s probably too happy and positive to make it in at the Oscars. They go for more serious films in documentary short. This takes nothing away from the final nominees, but hopefully the existing acclaim and recognition for Speed Cubers can lead to a discussion about the kind of documentary short that tends to be nominated over and over again. At least Documentary Feature will go for some fun stuff on occasion.

Other nice surprises today include:

Paul Raci being nominated for Actor in a Supporting Role for Sound of Metal;
Pinocchio making it in for Costumes and Makeup & Hairstyling;
Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-jung being nominated for Actor in a Leading Role and Actress in a Supporting Role for Minari, respectively, and Lee Isaac Chung being nominated for Director;
LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya being nominated for Actor in a Supporting Role for Judas and the Black Messiah;
Vanessa Kirby being nominated for Actress in a Leading Role for Pieces of a Woman;
Andra Day being nominated for Actress in a Leading Role for The United States vs. Billie Holiday;
Maria Bakalova being nominated in Actress in a Supporting Role for largely improvisational work in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and Sascha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman, Lee Kern, and Nina Pedrad being nominated for Adapted Screenplay;
Onward being nominated for Animated Feature Film. The lack of people predicting this made me question my own very cry-heavy rewatches of this brilliant Pixar fantasy film.