Joey Magidson
Folks, the Oscar nominations have been sitting in our minds for a little over a week now. Often, I like to wait a bit before I do some of these kinds of pieces. On the one hand, it can make some of the immediate emotions feel less fresh. On the other hand, however, it allows for perhaps a bit more rational thinking. So, I’ve split the difference, doing some pieces last week and presenting one more today. To that end, I wanted to once again play around with an exercise to see who and what just missed on an Academy Award nomination. Imagine if, in most categories, we had six nominees instead of five? What would nomination morning have looked like? To some degree, this is an expansion of the annual “alternate” Oscar nominations piece (found here most recently) that I do, as well as a follow-up to last year’s experiment here. Hopefully, it’s fun, and as always, it’s a clear invitation to submit your own picks.
Some categories are always pretty cut and dry. Others, however, are far from obvious. Plus, below the line is harder to figure out, as we all know, but most of them have one or two fairly clear probabilities. Mostly, it’s just a fun little exercise, especially as you see how much better something you like might have done, if only one or two more things would have broken their way.
Obviously, I’m going to want you all to chime in, but first…my picks are up. Here now are the sixth (or in one case, eleventh) place Oscar finishers, in my humble opinion:
BEST PICTURE: Origin
BEST DIRECTOR: Greta Gerwig – Barbie
BEST ACTOR: Leonardo DiCaprio – Killers of the Flower Moon
BEST ACTRESS: Margot Robbie – Barbie
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Willem Dafoe – Poor Things
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Julianne Moore – May December
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Saltburn
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Killers of the Flower Moon
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Saltburn
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Holdovers
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Maestro
BEST FILM EDITING: Barbie
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING: Napoleon
BEST SOUND: Ferrari
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Poor Things
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: Barbie (Dance the Night Away)
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE: The Taste of Things
Who and what did you think were next in line for Oscar nominations? Let us know!
When drawing up these hypothetical almost-theres, are you speculating on which ones got the votes or which ones would have made the cut with just one more nomination spot added?
Because while you’re almost certainly correct that Dua Lipa‘s song for Barbie probably received the votes to be a sixth (maybe even third) place finisher, it should be noted that Best Original Song caps the number of nominees that can come from a single film at two. So even if all three of Barbie‘s submitted songs received the most, second-most, and third-most votes each (and, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we later found out they did), “Dance the Night” would not have been allowed to be a nominee alongside “What Was I Made For?” and “I’m Just Ken.” By the rules of AMPAS, one of them had to be left out.
Yes, in that scenario, had the category expanded by one, Dua Lipa wouldn’t get in. I was just going by what I think got the sixth most votes, and I do think that’s the case.
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