The Oscar Shortlists for the 97th Academy Awards

by Nathaniel R

EMILIA PÉREZ © Shanna Besson

Today the Academy released the shortlists for the 10 categories that use this system, wherein a large number of eligible movies or narrowed down to a more manageable size for the voters in those categories. You can be sure we will be updating the Oscar charts as a result (and you'll find we already have for the other categories!) The lists are usually revealing, fun, disappointing, surprising, and energizing in roughly equal measure. This year though they skipped the "surprising" factor altogether, unless you count the variety in Best Original Score. Emilia Perez led the pack with six citations, but that wasn't surprising since the Spanish language trans cartel drama musical was eligible in most of the categories whereas most of its best picture competitors were not.  

Okay let's look at what they selected in each of those categories...

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
* if there's an asterisk by the country they've never been nominated. 

• Brazil - I'm Still Here
• Canada - Universal Language
• Czech Republic - Waves
• Denmark - The Girl With the Needle
• France - Emilia Perez
• Germany - The Seed of the Sacred Fig
• Iceland - Touch
• Ireland - Kneecap
• Italy - Vermiglio
• Latvia* - Flow
• Norway - Armand
• Palestine - From Ground Zero
• Senegal* - Dahomey
• Thailand*  - How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
• United Kingdom - Santosh

I did pretty well from my predicted finalists back in October (10/15) and had I updated the chart in time before this finalist list I would have scored 12/15 since it was becoming obvious that the UK and Latvian titles were getting popular. It's a pretty diverse mix of world cinema this time out: South America, Europe, Africa, The Middle East, and Asia are all represented!. Meanwhile it's another big year for Nordic cinema with Denmark, Norway, and Iceland all making the finals... but another disappointing year (Oscar-wise I mean) for Asian cinema with only Thailand still standing.

I'm very pleased that Armand, Flow, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, and Vermiglio made the list as they're all wonderful films but I thought each was vulnerable (for very different reasons from one another).

Snubs? For the first year in quite some time there are no glaring high profile misses. But Mexico can't be happy about the Sujo miss. They had been on quite a streak for the past six races with 1 winner and 4 consecutive finalists. 

Queer Titles Aside from some sapphic suggestiveness in UK's Santosh, France has to solely represent for the L and the T with Emilia Perez. There are sadly no G or B titles in the finals this year. I fear I will now never get a chance to see the Romanian or Croatian submissions since Oscar favor can do wonders for international distribution. 

* Never Nominated With their 31st submission Thailand has FINALLY made the finals. Meanwhile it took Latvia 16 tries to make the finals. Senegal, the only other finalist country that has never been nominated, has been popular with voters lately; this is their third finalist from 6 submissions. Flow (Latvia) and Dahomey (Senegal) are also eligible for another key category: Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary Feature, respectively. 

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

• The Apprentice
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• A Different Man
• Dune Part Two
• Emilia Perez
• Maria
• Nosferatu
• The Substance
• Waltzing with Brando
• Wicked

Three real misses of note: Saturday Night (with all those 70s looks and hairstyles),  A Complete Unknown (same thing, only the 1960s) and Joker Folie A Deux (since its predecessor was nominated for this category).

Speaking of predecessors that Oscar loved: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!'s origin film won this very Oscar many full moons ago. 

MUSIC ORIGINAL SCORE

• Alien Romulus
• Babygirl
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• Blink Twice
• Blitz
• The Brutalist
• Challengers
• Conclave
• Emilia Perez
• The Fire Inside
• Gladiator II
• Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1
• Inside Out 2
• Nosferatu
• The Room Next Door
• Sing Sing
• The Six Triple Eight
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot
• Young Woman and the Sea

Twenty (!) Scores are moving on to the final ballot including Alberto Iglesias for another collaboration with Almodóvar. Yay. Interesting mix with some unexpected players though it's so strange to see Wicked and Emilia Perez here given that the key music in both films is the song score (which is not the part of the music that would be considered Original Score were they to be nominated).

Snubs: Alexandre Desplat, who was becoming an annual presence has somehow fallen out of favor with the highly repetitive music branch (he did The Piano Lesson and Unstoppable this year). 

Dune Part Two was famously ruled ineligible since there wasn't enough "new" material -- a problem that franchises sometimes have in this category. 

MUSIC ORIGINAL SONG

• Better Man - "Forbidden Road"
• Blitz - "Winter Coat"
• Challengers - "Compress/Repress"
• Elton John: Never Too Late - "Never Too Late"
• Emilia Perez - "El Mal"
• Emilia Perez -"Mi Camino"
• Kneecap - "Sick in the Head"
• Moana 2 - "Beyond"
• Mufasa The Lion King - "Tell Me It's You"
• Piece by Piece - "Piece by Piece"
• Sing Sing - "Like a Bird"
• The Six Triple Eight - "The Journey"
• Twisters - "Out of Oklahoma"
• Wild Robot - "Kiss the Sky"
• Will & Harper - "Harper and Will Go West"

Pop stars and famous composers galore here but we will never escape an annual Diane Warren nomination until the Academy's music branch learns to feel shame). I am furious that Miley Cyrus's "Beautiful That Way" from The Last Showgirl (such a good song) is already snubbed. There are only 14 spots in the finals and 4 spots in the nominations, because they ALWAYS reserve one for Diane.

At least "Winter Coat" which gets a sweet scene in Blitz is in the mix. It's also a bit of a bummer that they aren't even really considering the 'boy band' believeable songs from The Idea of You. 

SOUND

• Alien Romulus
• Blitz
• A Complete Unknown
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Perez
• Gladiator II
• Joker: Folie A Deux
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot

Can't say we aren't a little surprised to see Joker 2 resurrected!

Missing? I thought Saturday Night (with its cacophony of behind the scenes antics and a couple of music moments) and The Brutalist and Conclave (given their Best Picture heat) might turn up here, but nope. 

VISUAL EFFECTS

• Alien Romulus
• Better Man
• Civil War
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• Dune Part Two
• Gladiator II
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Mufasa: The Lion King
• Twisters
• Wicked

An unsurprising list all told. 

Missing? From their longlist (they'd already narrowed it down to 20... though only 19 were ever named) they definitely didn't vote for the following (you can't vote against something): Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Fall Guy, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Ghostbuster: Frozen Empire, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Here, A Quiet Place Day One, Spaceman, and The Substance. 

ANIMATED SHORT FILM

• Au Revoir Mon Monde
• A Bear Named Wojtek
• Beautiful Men
• Bottle George
• A Crab in the Pool
• In the Shadow of the Cypress
• Magic Candies
• Maybe Elephants
• Me
• Origami
• Percebes
• The 21
• Wander to Wonder
• The Wild-Tempered Clavier
• Yuck!

Can't wait to dive into these!  The only one I've already seen is A Bear Named Wojtek. Isn't it curious that Best Animated Feature doesn't do the shortlist system but goes straight to voting? Perhaps it's because there's a more manageable amount of eligible titles (31 this year)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

• The Bibi Files
• Black Box Diaries
• Dahomey - also made the finals in Best International Feature
• Daughters
• Eno
• Frida
• Hollywoodgate
• No Other Land
• Porcelain War
• Queendom
• The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
• Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
• Sugarcane
• Union
• Will & Harper

The documentary branch has an impossible task before the shortlist announcement given how many features are always eliglble.

Snubs? There are surely some high profile or great films from the eligible 167 that were shunned today with this finalist grouping but they only one that is immediately noticeable in its absence is Super/Man (CCA winner for Documentary Feature of the Year and a PGA nominee too!).

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

• Chasing Roo
• Death by Numbers
• Eternal Father
• I Am Ready, Warden
• Incident
• Instruments of a Beating Heart
• Keeper
• Makayla's Voice: A Letter to the World
• Once Upon a Time in Ukraine
• The Only Girl in the Orchestra
• Planetwalkers
• The Quilters
• Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr
• A Swim Lesson
• Until He's Back

What wonders await us? More on this category once we've screened some of them.

LIVE ACTION SHORT

• Anuja
• Clodagh
• The Compatriot
• Crust
• Dovecote
• Edge of Space
• The Ice Cream Man
• I'm Not a Robot
• The Last Ranger
• A Lien
• The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent
• The Masterpiece
• An Orange from Jaffa
• Paris 70
• Room Taken

Live Action Short is such an underrated Oscar category, though they don't always choose well. I've just seen one of these thus far, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent. It's so riveting that I would be shocked to see it left out of the eventual nominee list and it's easy to picture it winning. 

WHICH OMISSIONS UPSET YOU TODAY? WHAT ARE YOU HAPPIEST ABOUT?  

Comments

[Jason Cooper]

Where the hell is Civil War in the Sound shortlist? I haven't heard sound design of that caliber in years. It seemed a foregone conclusion that it would win; now it absolutely won't even be nominated?

[Wae Mest]

Bitch, I don't even like THE SUBSTANCE but did any movie this year have richer sound design? Like, do sound people even understand their craft? Smfh.

[Wae Mest]

I think collapsing the two sound categories into one was disastrous. Now all that gets nominated is very loud movies or musicals or a film that literally foregrounds the idea of sound (SOUND OF METAL, THE ZONE OF INTEREST). Can you imagine MONEYBALL being nominated in this system?

[Frank Zappa]

Queer - Sound Design, Original Score, Makeup & Hairstyling

[Tom M]

As someone who votes in a music precursor (SCL Awards) and listened to tons of movie songs, I too am really shocked by the absence of "Beautiful That Way" from the short list. It's a lovely, well-crafted song that gets used well in the film. Dumb.

[Frank Zappa]

About Room Taken (Live Action Short shortlist):

Room Taken is a film about loneliness, grief and the immigrant experience. It follows Isaac, who has newly arrived in Ireland and looking for a place to stay, when he secretly moves into the home of Victoria, an elderly blind woman, leading them to form a unique bond.

Speaking about the film, executive producer Colin Farrell said: Room Taken is such a gentle cry to the power of human connection. It treats loneliness and grief and the struggle of the immigrant with such a gentle hand, bringing its character and narrative threads together beautifully. The film wears its compassion – along with its heart – on its sleeve with tender performances and a story that stayed with me long after viewing. For these reasons I was thrilled to be asked to be a part of helping Room Taken find as wide an audience as possible.”

Room Taken trailer