Online Reporter
LOS ANGELES.— Ahead of the Academy Awards on Sunday, here are some of the quirks, trends, patterns, and record breakers from this year’s batch of nominees.
1. Two Succession stars share a disadvantage.
Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong are both nominated for best supporting actor, for their performances in A Real Pain and The Apprentice respectively.
But the pair are the only two nominees in the category who don’t come from best picture-nominated films.
A Real Pain’s absence in best picture shouldn’t stop frontrunner Culkin from winning. The last person to win the category without a best picture nomination was Christopher Plummer in 2012, for Beginners.
Every actor in the category this year is Oscar-nominated for the first time, except Edward Norton, who has three previous nods.
2. The Substance is the first body horror to be nominated for best picture, and only the seventh horror overall.
The other six were The Exorcist, Get Out, The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, The Sixth Sense and Black Swan.
The Substance is a strong contender in best make-up and hairstyling, a category where the winner often overlaps with the acting winners. That could work in Demi Moore’s favour in a tight best actress race.
3. Isabella Rossellini is nominated for an eight-minute performance in Conclave, but that isn’t the shortest in Oscars history.
Beatrice Straight won the same category, best supporting actress, for her role in Network, which lasted 5min 02sec. Dame Judi Dench is only marginally ahead, winning for a performance in Shakespeare in Love which lasted 5min 52sec.
Winners aside, the shortest nominee is thought to be Hermione Baddeley’s performance in 1959’s Room at the Top, lasting 2min 19sec.
On the subject of durations, The Brutalist (3hrs 35mins including an intermission) would be the fourth-longest best picture winner of all time, after Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur.
4. Sing Sing star Colman Domingo is nominated for best actor, just a year after his last nomination in the same category for Rustin.
Quite an achievement, no doubt. But he has some way to go to catch up with Bette Davis and Greer Garson, who both managed five consecutive Oscar nominations in the 1930s and 40s.
Just behind them are Al Pacino, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Thelma Ritter and Jennifer Jones, who each scored four back-to-back nods.
Bradley Cooper, Renée Zellweger, Russell Crowe, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, William Hurt, Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy all managed three in a row.
5. All five best actress nominees come from films which are also nominated for best picture.
That might not sound like much, but it’s the first time it’s happened since 1977.
The historic lack of overlap between the two categories has often been attributed to the Academy being less likely to give female-focused films the top prize.
But that trend has shifted in recent years, with films featuring female leads such as Nomadland, Coda and Everything Everywhere All At Once scoring best picture.
6. Before Sebastian Stan’s nomination for The Apprentice, only seven other actors had been Oscar-nominated for playing a US president.
Frank Langella was recognised for his portrayal of Richard Nixon, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Raymond Massey were both nominated for playing Abraham Lincoln.
Sam Rockwell was nominated for playing George W Bush, Alexander Knox for Woodrow Wilson, and James Whitmore for Harry Truman.
Perhaps most notably, Sir Anthony Hopkins has been nominated twice for portraying two different presidents in separate films — once as Nixon and another as John Quincy Adams.
Stan is slightly different in that he portrays Trump in his younger years as a real estate tycoon, rather than during his tenure as president, but we’re still chalking that up as worthy of induction into this exclusive club.
7. Robbie Williams’ biopic Better Man is nominated for best visual effects, but he also has a connection to two other films in the race.
The British singer’s track Swing Supreme features in a pivotal scene of Emilia Pérez, while his former Take That bandmates feature at the beginning of Anora as a remix of Greatest Day plays in a nightclub.
Its prominence in the film led to the remaining members of Take That performing the song at this year’s Bafta Film Awards. — BBC
