The Academy Awards show has become a morbid curiosity. The ratings have been consistently falling, but many film fans still seem to take them seriously. People complain about dropping the host of a show they weren't planning on watching anyway. The impact of the award is as small as it's ever been, but the show itself is a hotter topic than ever. In short: it's become the show that everybody loves to hate. Regardless of the bile it's earned from the American public (and most of it is earned), the Oscars are still an important event to observe from an artistic and cultural standpoint. The nominations are voted on by professional filmmakers. Therefore, they decide, with or without the consent of the average American, the overall cultural identity of the country and the artistic standard of the film industry. Because this is the case, we should be attentive to how the awards manipulate the cultural and artistic standards of the nation. With this in mind, we should take the time to analyze the recently released list of full nominations for this year's Academy Awards.
In the category of Best Picture, "Black Panther" makes an appearance, robbing "Infinity War" of the nomination it should've had. "A Star Is Born" continues Hollywood's bias towards films about show business that started with the heavily nominated "La La Land."
Any one of these have a good chance of winning, but the one that should win is "Roma," Alfonso Cuarón's moving passion project. The Mexican drama walked away with ten nominations in total, including Best Actress and Best Cinematography. In an ideal world, it would win every category it was nominated for, but you can never tell with the Academy.
Moving on to Best Animated Feature, Sony's surprise hit "Into the Spider-Verse" scored a nomination, giving the super hero genre some much needed attention from the normally adverse academy. "Isle of Dogs" was unsurprisingly nominated for its gorgeous stop-motion. "The Incredibles 2" and "Ralph Breaks the Internet" were included to the outcry of national indifference. Finally, the anime film "Mirai" made American audiences aware of its existence filling out the fifth nomination spot.
Best Feature Documentary isn't even worth commenting on because the best documentary of the year, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," wasn't even nominated.
The absence of "Eighth Grade" and "Hereditary" from any of the nominations is a bit of a sticking point. "Eighth Grade" was undoubtedly one of the most moving pictures of the year. Its uncomfortable, but ultimately heart-warming story has connected with audiences nationwide regardless of demographic. "Hereditary" was the most disturbing horror film of the year, utilizing brilliant technical filmmaking to send shivers down the spine of anybody brave enough to enter the theater. So it's baffling that neither film received so much as a Sound Mixing nomination at this year's awards.
For the most part, this year's nominations weren't too disappointing. "Roma" was lauded with deserved praise and a Spider-Man movie was nominated for Best Animated Feature. However, the academy's bad habit of ignoring quality in favor of mediocrity continues. Normally, this is neither surprising nor all that infuriating, but this year it's both. There were so many obviously better choices than the nominations we ultimately got. Better choices, mind you, that were more popular with mainstream audiences than any of the nominations chosen. If the Academy had been smart with their choices and nominated crowd pleasers like "Eighth Grade" or "Infinity War" or "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," this might've drawn in more viewers. They had a solution staring them in the face and they ignored it. What else is new?
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