Mank leads Oscars nominations in record year for women

Los Angeles – Mank, David Fincher’s black-and-white ode to Citizen Kane, comfortably led this year’s Oscars nominations Monday with 10 nods including for best picture and best director, as female filmmakers and streamers smashed Academy records.

The Netflix reimagining of Hollywood’s Golden Age was far ahead of the competition following the announcement, which saw six films receive six nominations apiece, including US road movie Nomadland and anti-Vietnam War courtroom drama The Trial of the Chicago 7.

In a year that saw a record 70 women nominated, there were directing nods for Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) and Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) – the first year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has ever selected multiple women in the category.

The nominations narrow the field to the final hopefuls for April 25, the latest-ever date for Hollywood’s award season-capping spectacle which has been transformed and delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Zhao is the first woman of colour ever nominated as director, while Aaron Sorkin (Chicago 7) had to settle for a screenplay nomination after missing out to the likes of Fincher and Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round).

The Academy awarded a historically diverse field, including six nods to civil rights drama Judas and the Black Messiah featuring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, and a first Asian-American best actor nod for Steven Yuen in Korean-American immigrant drama Minari.

The other films tied in second with six nominations were Amazon’s Sound Of Metal, about a rock drummer who loses his hearing, and harrowing dementia chronicle The Father, which saw former Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins bag a sixth career acting nod.

No streaming film has ever won the Academy’s most prestigious prize – best picture.

But with most US movie theatres closed all year due to Covid, several big-screen studio blockbusters skipped their 2020 releases entirely, leaving an eclectic field of hopefuls that favoured the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Netflix dominated the nominations Monday, earning 35 stabs at glory, smashing its own record of 24 set last year.

It earned multiple nods with 1920s blues drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which saw Chadwick Boseman land a rare posthumous best actor nomination following his death from cancer last August.

Boseman missed out on a second, supporting acting nod for Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, also from Netflix.

Amazon Prime broke its own record with 12 nods, including three nominations for another civil rights-themed movie, One Night In Miami, and two for comedy Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

Appropriately, with Hollywood’s private screening rooms and glitzy film campaign events shuttered, even Oscar voters watched nearly all the 366 contenders via the Academy’s own online streaming platform.

“We are almost used to streaming now,” said one member of the Academy, which has traditionally championed the big-screen experience. “It’s quite incredible what can happen within a year.” 

New streamers Disney+ and Apple earned their first-ever Oscar nominations.

But for top prize, streamers will still need to get past presumed best picture frontrunner Nomadland, which has dominated early festival and award season prizes including the Golden Globes.

The intimate US road movie comes from Searchlight – the arthouse distributor now owned by Disney which has steered the likes of The Shape of Water and Birdman to recent Oscars glory.

Its director Zhao is the first woman to receive four nominations in a single year – also earning nods for editing, screenplay and as a producer – and Frances McDormand contends for best actress.

Contagion director Steven Soderbergh will produce this year’s pandemic-struck Oscars, which relaxed eligibility criteria to admit more streaming titles and movies released in early 2021.

While locations are now confirmed, precise details of the ceremony will depend on local Covid restrictions in Los Angeles, where movie theatres are among indoor businesses set to reopen at limited capacity this week after a brutal winter Covid-19 spike.

Unlike last year, clear frontrunners are yet to emerge in the acting categories, with Variety film awards editor Clayton Davis noting that there are many “areas of fluidity”.

Borat co-star Maria Bakalova, who was nominated Monday, has become “a darling of this year’s quarantine campaign trail”, he wrote.

Viola Davis (Ma Rainey) was also picked alongside McDormand, Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman and Andra Day for The United States vs Billie Holiday.

Along with Boseman and Hopkins, the lead actor category was rounded out by Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), Gary Oldman (Mank) and Steven Yeun (Minari). 

Five takeaways from the Oscars nominations 

There were still plenty of surprises and records among the Academy’s picks, from diversity landmarks to the venue itself.

Here are four takeaways from the Academy Award nominations announcement:

Who’s the lead? 

It is a debate that has plagued movie sets since the Oscars began – which A-lister is billed as the lead actor, and which must swallow their pride and settle for “supporting”?

Bizarrely, for Judas and the Black Messiah, it would seem neither actor is the star.

Both Golden Globe-winning Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield were nominated as best supporting actor for their portrayals of Black civil rights activist Fred Hampton and FBI informant William O’Neall.

Unlike other ceremonies, the Oscars place actors in the category for which they receive the most votes.

“Only Oscar voters could watch a film about two black men and decide both must be supporting characters,” tweeted the Telegraph’s film critic Robbie Collin.

#OscarsSoDiverse?

Despite years of #OscarsSoWhite criticism, Monday’s nominations saw multiple diversity landmarks set.

Steven Yuen became the first Asian-American nominated as best actor for Minari, and will compete against Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), the first Pakistani-origin star nominated.

Viola Davis became the most nominated Black actress ever, landing her fourth nod for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

She will compete against Andra Day in The United States vs Billie Holiday – the first time two Black women have featured in the category.

In total, a record nine actors of colour were nominated across the four acting categories.

But there were snubs for Ma Rainey and One Night in Miami – two acclaimed films featuring all-Black casts and directors – in the coveted Oscar for best picture nominations.

Live from Platform 8...

Before the nominations even got under way, Academy president David Rubin dropped the news that Oscars night will be split between Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre – and a train station.

Details are still thin on the ground, but the enormous Union Station in downtown Los Angeles will allow for plenty of social distancing among stars, seeming to indicate a more “in-person” approach to the prizegiving compared with the mainly virtual Golden Globes and Emmys.

The announcement came just nine hours after the well-received Grammys, which saw many of the music industry’s top names attend and perform at the socially distanced gala in Los Angeles.

Promising Young Woman

Oscars recognition came startlingly fast for 35-year-old British director Emerald Fennell.

She became the first woman ever nominated for directing her debut film, with Promising Young Woman.

The #MeToo thriller about a revenge-seeker feigning drunkenness at bars to prey on misogynist men ended up with five nominations, also including best picture.

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU....” wrote Fennell following the announcement, adding: “Never going to stop crying.” - AFP