Curious notes on the 344 films eligible in most Oscar categories
Saturday, December 21, 2019 at 11:26PM Feature categories like International, Documentary, and Animated and all three shorts categories have their own eligibility rules with Oscar. Visual Effects, Makeup, Song, and Score have bake-offs to narrow things down. But the bulk of Oscar's 24 categories don't have any winnowing process to speak of. The Academy has recently released their annual reminder list of eligible titles which always has a few odd reveals. You can read the full list of 344 features here but here are a four things that stood out to us.
Netflix gave most of their originals one week qualifiers from Velvet Buzzsaw early in the year til Atlantics now
1. Netflix gave almost all their non Best Picture contenders one-week qualifying releases this year, including Velvet Buzzsaw, Always Be My Maybe and Earthquake Bird and the mesmerizing Atlantics ...
2. There are always several narrative features on the lists we've never heard of despite following movies and the showbiz industry all year long and often seeing movies that barely make even $5.00 in movies -- in other words we aren't remotely afraid of seeing obscure titles. But each year we learn you can't keep track of everything. This year those titles we'd never heard of are: "As the Earth Turns" (yes, it's in quotes), Bardo Blues, Children of the Sea, Cuck, Daughter of Mine, Eve n'God This Female Is Not Yet Rated™, The Last, My Stretch of Texas Ground, Pretty Broken, Quezon's Game, and The Standoff at Sparrow Creek. What are these films? Have you heard of them?
Where'd you go Bernadette? You're not even on the list!
3. Sometimes movies we know were released in US theaters don't show up on the list. Why didn't they submit paperwork? Some pictures that apparently weren't concerned with their Oscar eligiblity this year: Gaspar Noe's drug-addled Climax which will surely hit a few top ten lists, The Souvenir which was critically beloved, Where'd You Go Bernadette? which won Cate Blanchett a Globe nomination, future cult favourite Under the Silver Lake, Claire Denis' acclaimed scifi drama High Life, queer foreign indies like Diamantino and End of the Century and award winning foreign titles like The Chambermaid and Long Day's Journey Into Night.
But there's never any rhyme or reason to which titles do or don't bother qualifying with paperwork though, because, like, Sauvage/Wild that explicit French gay prostitution movie WAS submitted for Oscar eligibility so you know... the list is always a curious thing.
4. Titles that were widely considered to belong to the previous year sometimes show up in the current year Oscar eligible list due to varying release patterns from country to country and also sometimes due to qualifying releases cancelled and what not. This year for example Zhang Yimou's brilliant Shadow did actually submit paperwork and is eligible even though it was maybe going to be China's official submission last year (they went with a different film).
Zhang Yimou's exquisite SHADOW is eligible in all categories (but foreign)
The flip side of that coin, though, often stings. Technically speaking films which don't get nominated for Oscar's foreign film race in their submission year are eligible for nominations in all other categories the following year if they aren't released in the US until that following year (See the City of God situation in 2002/2003). But a lot of times the films don't submit once they're actually released figuring they missed their shot. That's true of the genius Icelandic film Woman at War which wasn't released until 2019 but was submitted by Iceland in 2018 and not nominated. Unless of course it did get a very very quiet so quiet we didn't notice one week qualifying release in 2018 And if it did we're very annoyed because we would have included it in our Film Bitch Awards that year. That's just one of the many reasons we hate "qualifying" releases which are a 'letter of the law' game while ignoring the spirit of the law. We've been against them since long before streaming was an issue for The Academy and it wouldn't have been nearly as tricky an issue to navigate if they hadn't allowed qualifying "psyche!... it's not really playing in movie theaters" releases in the first place... which were surely never what the Academy originally intended when planning to honor the movies released in a given year!
The fate that befell Woman at War in 2018/2019 we fear will befall And Then We Danced in 2019/2020 -- i.e. totally brilliant movie gets some attention in its film festival year but Oscar skips it in foreign film. Then the following year when it actually is released adventurous moviegoers realize its brilliant but by then awards bodies have moved on and often the distributor doesn't even bother doing the paperwork to get it eligible for general categories (sigh)
5. Because we like to make fun of the Academy's bizarre generosity to Animated Features (which get wayyyy more nominees than other categories, in relation to how few exist, and also aren't narrowed down before the final nominations like the other specialty "feature" categories) our annual reminder of how crazy the rules are for them.
This year we have 32 eligible animated features so about 16% of them will end up nominated! If 16% of the Best International Feature candidates could be nominated in their category we'd have 14 nominees in that category (and maybe then Oscar could see beyond European filmmaking!) If 16% of all eligible titles were nominated for the top prize at the Oscars we'd have 55 nominees for Best Picture this year. LOLOLOLOL. Animated Features have it so easy!
Reader Comments (26)
Daughter of Mine was at Berlin and Tribeca in 2018, from director Laura Bispuri of Sworn Virgin with Alba Rohrwacher. Strand released it this year. I couldn't be more confident you'd love it, Nathaniel.
Atlantics is in the eligible list.
A bit weird that the official Academy list breaks down the Actors and Actresses of each film, no? What is the utility of that?
I've seen The Last and was very surprised to see it on the eligible list. It is not good (http://www.movieswithabe.com/2019/03/movie-with-abe-last.html).
Children of the Sea is 海獣の子供 by Ayumu Watanabe, a visually extremely stunning animated film from Japan with a convoluted but compelling plot that's a sort of environmentalist allegory. I recommend seeing it on the big screen if possible! Very technically jaw-dropping.
Atlantics is right where it should be on the list....
Weird. I don't remember THE FAREWELL being a two-hander between its only two cast members............
Seriously what's up with the submitted performers on this list?? THAT'S the real story to dig into.
BRB's description of CHILDREN OF THE SEA is perfect, and I completely concur with it. Seek this one out! In a just world, it would be in with a chance at getting nominated. (Under the old system of restricting first-stage votes to the Animation branch, that world - you know, the one that gave us nominees like MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE and THE RED TURTLE - might well have been a reality.)
Nick and JJ: Five years ago the Academy introduced a new rule for the acting categories: companies can indicate up to 10 actors and up to 10 actresses from each film that they want to put forward for consideration. Therefore, as I understand it, only the actors' and actresses' names that appear on the reminder list are eligible for Oscars. This means that Anna Paquin can't get nominated for The Irishman and Merritt Wever and Martha Kelly can't get nominated for Marriage Story, to take three examples from this year's list.
The Hollywod Reporter covered the rule change here:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/academy-tweaks-a-number-rules-715459
Atlantics def got a qualifying release in New York and is eligible in all categories. In fact it's still playing daily at the Metrograph and you can go today and see it.
Sorry to see that two of my 2019 favorites failed to qualify: "The Hummingbird Project", with a terrific performance from Alexander Skarsgard and Xavier Dolan's latest, the very affecting "Matthias & Maxime". Am I right in assuming that - along with paperwork - films must pay some sort of entry fee to be on the list?
Gay twitter failed Noé's Climax. Not enough dance gifs.
I wonder if Portrait of a Lady on Fire should have just delayed their U.S. release a month or two and tried to pull a City of God. As it is now it's blanked for Foreign Language film and is also a bit too late-breaking to get into other categories.
Carlos & Um -- apologies. Funny thing is i double checked this like 4 times and somehow missed it every time. lol. Corrected.
MJS -- or just you know release and not do this psyche where they pull it after one week and let the chips fall where they may.
Edward L.: Thanks for the informative answer! For some reason I wasn't thinking that this was also how films submitted their actors for eligibility; I thought it was a way for readers of the list to identify the movie (like "I don't remember this title but ooh, I see Actor X and Actress Y, so now I remember what it is!"). I thought it was so strange!
I think WOMAN AT WAR just didn't bother with the paperwork. AND THEN WE DANCED would be next year, based on US release date.
I can understand the Marriage Story team limiting the list to just the cast members getting buzz/awards already, but weird that Anna Paquin wasn’t submitted for Irishman. She’s not competing against anyone internally, and it’s within the realm of extreme possibility that she could swept along if AMPAS goes bonkers for it.
The Animated Film criteria are “Were you animated,” and “Were you bad?” It’s like getting approved for a loan at a used car dealership.
That HTTYD GIF is the greatest I've ever seen! *lol*
Jason -- which is exactly what i meant when i listed Woman at War as 2018/2019 and And Then We Danced as 2019/2020. So i hope And Then We Danced does paperwork next year.
Thanks for keeping the torch burning for And Then We Danced. I love that film and its central performance, and I hope reviewers give it some attention when it is finally released.
Cuck stars the one and only Sally Kirkland. Respect!
I haven't seen any of these movies
There was a Guardian article about Cuck, which opened the same weekend as Joker and has some thematic similarities.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/04/cuck-review-rob-lambert-joker
Didn't open here in the UK, so I didn't see it, but, as Nick Davis points out, stars Sally Kirkland and therefore should be required watching.
And whilst it was only an extreme longshot, I was disappointed to see the Netflix movie Burning Cane, with a deeply committed Indie Spirit nominated performance from Wendell Pierce isn't eligible as it's well worth seeing.
What about Woody Allen`s A Rainy DAy In NY?