OSCARS 2024 – Nominations Commentary

Post Update: 2/8/24
The Academy Announces NEW CASTING CATEGORY for 2026!

There will soon be one more category to fill out on your Oscar ballots.

On Thursday, the motion picture academy’s board of governors announced the creation of a new competitive Oscar for Achievement in Casting. The award will be given out annually beginning in 2026 with the 98th Academy Awards for films released in 2025.

Though casting has been an integral part of the filmmaking process since the advent of the studio system, the academy only established a branch for casting directors in 2013. With nearly 160 current members, the branch is one of the smallest in the organization, which has a total membership of more than 10,800. READ MORE  LA Times

While I still think my below wish (see original post below) on the Best Director Category fix is more important, I’m not mad at this new Casting Award.  Those folks deserve a turn at an acceptance speech too.  But here’s the questions: will this turn into a Best Ensemble Award like the SAG Awards? OR will it go for the casting of someone who absolutely made the movie what is was, like Austin Butler for Elvis? OR will it be for casting relatively unknowns who become breakouts, like Tiffany Haddish for Girls Trip? OR for visionary casting against type like this year’s Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things?  And what about the fact that the director has a big hand in casting choices and often the writer who writes a role with a specific person in mind and then that actor accepts allowing the movie to be green-lit. Depending on the movie, the casting director’s main involvement may just be in filling small roles below the main characters and supporting  cast. 
I feel like the guidelines of this category are gonna be murky for a while …
I’ve been listening to the “You Must Remember This” podcast on Polly Platt (“The Last Picture Show”, “Paper Moon”, “What’s Up Doc”, “A Star is Born”) She was mainly a Production Designer on these films, but had tremendous influence in casting the stars of these films, so there’s another angle…

ORIGINAL POST 1/23/24

Tinsel & Tine’s Quick thoughts on this year’s Oscar Nominations in reel form (play video below) …

Real Talk, when will the Academy fix this whole – the movie is nominated, in several categories, most notably Best Picture, but the Director is NOT nominated 🤪 This is one of the stupidest things that we just accept! 

A movie’s success or failure doesn’t completely rest on the work of the director, there can be other factors, sure, but for the most part, 90% is based on the director’s vision, work ethic, the creative/technical team they put together and how they collaborate with that team, and of course, how they work with their actors.  They make a trillion decision a day in preproduction, during the shoot and post-production in the making of a movie.  So if it’s good and makes money and has critical acclaim, why wouldn’t the director receive the credit !?! 

Best Picture and Best Director should just be the same award. Don’t separate it out.  Yes, the Producers are important as well, and yeah they get an Oscar too when the film wins, but it’s really the director’s moment.

I think if the Academy still wants to award the Director’s in a separate category from Best Picture, it should be Best Writer/Director.  I’ve noted in the last 2-3 years, more and more films are both written and directed by the same person, case in point Barbie.  This could be a category where the criteria is based more on being an Auteur.  It doesn’t solve the fact that even if this were the case, they’d still be shutting out women or believing only one woman can be allowed in the category per year or every other year. I should clarify, women not of a darker hue.  That’s a whole other issue…

Since the Oscars’ inception in 1929, only three women have ever taken home the award for best director: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2009, Chloé Zhao for Nomadland in 2020, and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog in 2021. And while this year’s nominations include a female director — Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall — she’s one of only eight to ever be nominated… READ MORE

In my apartment I can’t get reception for ABC Network Ch 6 in Philly, so the last couple of years I’d go to my Mom’s to watch #Oscars. She passed away last Feb (already feeling stress of anniversary) before Oscars 2023, but her Condo was still there. But this year,#Osars2024 I’m looking forward to making a long weekend of it and going to a nice hotel. Trying to decide where… 🤔
The 96th Academy Awards will broadcast March 10, 2024.