(i know he didn’t get nominated for The Grand Budapest but like isn’t that an insane snub)

1st act was certainly confusing, but the 2nd and 3rd act were amazing. The overall storytelling and structure is one of the greatest I've ever seen.

Interesting comparison - it gave me Godfather Part 2 vibes with the time perspectives.

PLEASE GO SEE THIS IN THEATERS!!! Watching this on Netflix will be a very different (and quite frankly, underwhelming medium) for this film. This is also a movie where theres so much emotion in the audience's reaction which is my favorite part of the cinema experience

Some that came to mind:

Michael Douglas as Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013);

James Franco as James Dean in James Dean (2001);

Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian in You Don’t Know Jack (2010);

Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in Game Change (2012);

Kurt Russell as Elvis Presley in Elvis (1979 - fun fact: this film was directed by John Carpenter!).

Are there others that could’ve gotten in?

This is England
The Irishman
Boiling Point
Gangs of New York
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Banshees Of Inisherin is a well written movie and great comedy. I’m so disappointed that it didn’t win any Oscars which it should’ve. I think it deserves original screenplay tbh. It’s one of my favorite movies. Martin McDonagh should’ve won his first screenplay Oscar award for that category. But let’s hope he wins after Wild Horse 9 is released. Do you agree that it should’ve won Best Original Screenplay?

Não sei se ela está elegível ao Oscar esse ano por "Criaturas Extraordinariamente Brilhantes" pelo filme estar apenas na Netflix, mas a performance dela, na minha opinião, é boa o suficiente para já garantir uma indicação caso ela seja elegível. O filme apesar de eu ter gostado bastante, eu entendo que possa não agradar a todos por ser um pouco lento, mas sua atuação foi muito boa mesmo, isso acho que é inegável. Não digo que a Sally Field deva ganhar, mas estar entre as cinco melhores para mim é um sim.

RDJ gave a masterclass and powerhouse performance in Oppenheimer. He stole the movie including the third act of the movie. Glad he won his first Oscar for his performance even though I pick Charles Melton to win if he got nominated. I love RDJ’s performance. And Oppenheimer is one of my favorites. So what did you think of his performance in the movie?

This is another pretty solid lineup I don't see get discussed all too often. Well just like the Supporting Actor lineup from the following year, I've decided it's time to remedy that.

Was Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted a satisfying and deserving winner?

Would you prefer to live in the timeline of "Academy Award Winner Toni Collette" seeing as The Sixth Sense remains her one and only nomination to date?

Should Catherine Keener have gotten a moment for the better of her two nominations? (Her Capote nod was kind of a lame coattail nod, let's be real.)

Should Samantha Morton have gotten her moment on her first try? (On a more random note, for some reason, there aren't a lot of good quality large images of Samantha in this movie online. This one was difficult to find.)

Or should Boys Don't Cry have pulled a The Piano and won Supporting Actress on top of Lead Actress?

Who's name do you think should've been called by James Coburn when he opened the envelope?

At the very first Academy Awards, the category of Unique and Artistic Picture was given the same prestige value as the category of Best Picture and was considered equal to it. One of the nominees for that category was Chang: A Story of the Wilderness, directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper of King Kong fame.

1990- Kathy Bates (Misery)

1991- Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern)

1992- Tilda Swinton (Orlando)

1993- Juliette Binoche (Three Colors: Blue)

1994- Linda Fiorentino (The Last Seduction)

1995- Nicole Kidman (To Die For)

1996- Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves)

1997- Pam Grier (Jackie Brown)

1998- Christina Ricci (Buffalo 66)

1999- Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry)

My picks:

Cinematography: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Film Editing: JFK (1991)

Production Design: Titanic (1997)

Costume Design: The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Makeup and Hairstyling: Planet of the Apes (1968)

Visual Effects: Eras vs. eras? Hm, I'll go with Star Wars (1977)

Sound: Zone of Interest (2023)

Original Score: The Sting (1973)

Original Song: As Time Goes By, Casablanca (1942)

It’s been a pretty rad decade for winners, and I think Kieran Culkin is NOT someone I expected to see winning such a prestigious award, even if he was entirely placed in the wrong category. The entire cast of the 2023 actors as well is shocking, especially since most of them fell out of Hollywood for a while only to all come back at once. Also Michael B Jordan.

New here and as someone who enjoys thinking of “What if” scenarios, I thought this would be a fun topic to cover. I have a lot of thoughts about this:

•2025- One Battle After Another, Sinners, Hamnet, Sentimental Value, Frankenstein
This is easy imo. Marty Supreme didn’t win a single guild or industry award despite all those nominations and I’m not even certain Chalamet was second for Best Actor

•2024- Anora, Conclave, The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez, A Complete Unknown
Being objective here. Obviously if this was after nominations it would be Substance instead of Emilia Pérez

•2023- Oppenheimer, Poor Things, The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon
Hardest one to pin down. I really wanted to have American Fiction or The Zone of Interest, but The Holdovers was second place for Actor and (probably) Original Screenplay, Anatomy got every nomination it could and Killers is just a gut feeling

•2022- Everything Everywhere All at Once, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, TÁR
Is there any doubt? Maaaybe you could make the case for Top Gun: Maverick, but not over something like TÁR

•2021- The Power of the Dog, Belfast, West Side Story, King Richard, Dune
Bizarre not having the Best Picture winner in the 5 (and I even like the movie!), but would CODA have made it with 5? There is a world where Troy Kotsur gets nominated without the movie though

•2020- Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, The Father,
The Trial of the Chicago 7, Minari
Was very tempted to do Mank over Minari, but the screenplay snub for Mank is pretty brutal. And yes, I know Trial didn’t win anything, but it definitely could have won Screenplay and Editing in other years.

•2019- Parasite, 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,
Joker, Marriage Story
Marriage Story on a coin toss over The Irishman because the leads gave winning performances in another year (and tbh it might have had more passion).

•2018- Green Book, Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody (yeah I know), The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman
Another tough one, but A Star is Born only won Song and missed Director, and Black Panther only won techs. And there’s no way The Favourite wasn’t top 5. For length, I’ll just list the last two without commentary…

•2017- The Shape of Water, Three Billboards, Get Out, Dunkirk, Lady Bird

•2016- Moonlight, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Hidden Figures, Arrival

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Is it even possible? Apologies if this has been posted before, but I wanted to ask if you can recall films that maybe had a decent/respectable theatrical run, but really hit their stride when awards season came around? I know it’s common for films to lose momentum, but are there examples of films gaining momentum?

Andrew Garfield
Kirsten Dunst
Ryan Gosling
Michelle Williams
Riz Ahmed
Kerry Condon
Oscar Isaac
Rachel McAdams
Jake Gyllenhaal
Tessa Thompson

There have been a lot of posts in this sub debating which performances and films are most likely to get nominations this year, but most of them involve the same dozen or so films that are actually realistically in the running for nominations.

So, I thought it would be fun to instead ask what performances and films people think are worthy of nominations, but which have absolutely no shot in hell at actually getting nominations. And I'm not talking films like Digger or Backrooms, or performances like Merritt Weaver in Primetime. I'm talking about films and performances that have absolutely no shot in hell of ever being nominated, like blockbuster films, kids' movies, and movies that are simply too small to ever attract that kind of attention.

In other words, what performances and films would you like to see nominated, but which you know are completely wishful thinking and it will absolutely never happen?

Mine would be a best actress nom for Saoirse Ronan for Bad Apples, and a visual effects nom and best score nom for The Magic Faraway Tree. I know of them will actually happen, but it's fun to think about anyway.

Edit: I don't think people understand what I mean by "wishful thinking." I don't mean "long shot, but they have some buzz." I mean "no shot at all and there's no buzz and never will be."

I used a site called Venn maker: https://vennmaker.io/4-circle-venn-diagram

No Best Director only (3 movies):

1. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
2. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
3. Shakespeare in Love (1998)

No acting only (14 movies):

1. Gigi (1958)
2. The Apartment (1960)
3. Tom Jones (1963)
4. The Sting (1973)
5. Out of Africa (1985)
6. The Last Emperor (1987)
7. Dances with Wolves (1990)
8. Schindler's List (1993)
9. The Lord of the Rings 3 (2003)
10. The Departed (2006)
11. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
12. Hurt Locker (2009)
13. Birdman (2014)
14. Parasite (2019)

No screenplay only (9 movies):

1. How Green Was My Valley (1941)
2. Ben-Hur (1959)
3. West Side Story (1961)
4. My Fair Lady (1964)
5. Deer Hunter (1978)
6. Unforgiven (1992)
7. The English Patient (1996)
8. The Artist (2011)
9. Oppenheimer (2023)

No below the line only (13 movies):

1. It Happened One Night (1934)
2. The Lost Weekend (1945)
3. Marty (1955)
4. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
5. Annie Hall (1977)
6. Kramer vs Kramer (1979)
7. Ordinary People (1980)
8. Terms of Endearment (1983)
9. Rain Man (1988)
10. Silence of the Lambs (1991)
11. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
12. No Country for Old Men (2007)
13. The King's Speech (2010)

No Best Director and no acting only (6 movies):

1. Cimarron (1930/1931)
2. An American in Paris (1951)
3. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
4. Chariots of Fire (1981)
5. Crash (2005)
6. Argo (2012)

No Best Director and no screenplay only (4 movies):

1. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
2. Hamlet (1948)
3. Gladiator 1 (2000)
4. Chicago (2002)

No Best Director and no below the line only (6 movies):

1. Emile Zola (1937)
2. The Godfather 1 (1972)
3. 12 Years a Slave (2013)
4. Moonlight (2016)
5. Green Book (2018)
6. CODA (2021)

No acting and no screenplay only (9 movies):

1. Cavalcade (1932/1933)
2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
3. The Sound of Music (1965)
4. Oliver (1968)
5. Rocky 1 (1976)
6. Platoon (1986)
7. Braveheart (1995)
8. Titanic (1997)
9. The Shape of Water (2017)

No acting and no below the line only (2 movies):

1. Casablanca (1943)
2. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

No screenplay and no below the line only (3 movies):

1. Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
2. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
3. Nomadland (2020)

No Best Director, no acting and no screenplay only (2 movies):

1. Wings (1927/1928)
2. Rebecca (1940)

No Best Director, no acting and no below the line only (2 movies):

1. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
2. Spotlight (2015)

No Best Director, no screenplay and no below the line only (1 movie):

1. All the King's Men (1949)

No acting, no screenplay and no below the line only (2 movies):

1. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929/1930)
2. You Can't Take It with You (1938)

No Best Director, no acting, no screenplay and no below the line (3 movies):

1. The Broadway Melody (1928/1929)
2. Grand Hotel (1931/1932)
3. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

No group (19 movies):

1. Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Mrs Miniver (1942)
3. Going My Way (1944)
4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
5. All About Eve (1950)
6. From Here to Eternity (1953)
7. On the Waterfront (1954)
8. The Bridge on River Kwai (1957)
9. A Man for All Seasons (1966)
10. Patton (1970)
11. French Connection (1971)
12. The Godfather 2 (1974)
13. Gandhi (1982)
14. Amadeus (1984)
15. Forrest Gump (1994)
16. American Beauty (1999)
17. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
18. Anora (2024)
19. One Battle After Another (2025)

... was a secret film announced on the day it premiered. That's actually crazy when you think about it. People in that Telluride screening went from not knowing the movie even existed to coming out having watched that year's* BP winner. Has the BP winner ever been a shadow drop before?

*In this scenario where it snags a win, which is not the most likely tbf but we're entertaining the thought

We’ve finished 2019, so we’re now moving on to 2020.

For anyone joining the game for the first time, we’re doing all four acting categories for one year together, with the results decided over two rounds.

You can see all of the previous lineups here: Alternate Oscars - Reddit Game

ROUND ONE — NOMINATIONS

For each category, rank your five favourite performances from the year from 1–5.

Your rankings will be worth:

1st — 5 points
2nd — 4 points
3rd — 3 points
4th — 2 points
5th — 1 point

The five performances with the most points in each category will become the official nominees.

You do not have to name five if you don’t want to. If you only want to vote for three performances, for example, they’ll receive 5, 4 and 3 points respectively.

Please make sure your choices are ranked — order matters in this round.

You can vote in as many or as few of the four categories as you like.

ROUND TWO — WINNERS

Once the nominations have been determined, I’ll make a second thread containing the five nominees in each category.

In that round, simply choose ONE nominee per category to win.

There will be no preferential voting or points in Round Two. Each vote counts equally, and whoever receives the most votes wins.

So essentially:

Round One = Who should be nominated?
Round Two = Who should win?

ELIGIBILITY

Performances will be eligible according to the year in which their film was eligible at the real-life Academy Awards.

So, rather than going strictly by festival premiere or first release date, a performance belongs to whichever Oscar year the film itself competed in with the Academy.

If you’re unsure whether a film was eligible for a particular year, this Academy reminder-list archive is a good place to check eligibility.

A few other rules:

• Maximum of five ranked choices per category.
• Anything listed after your fifth choice won’t be counted.
• Honourable mentions won’t count as votes.
• Please include both the actor and film so there’s no ambiguity.
• In cases where there may be disagreement or confusion over whether a performance is lead or supporting, your vote will count only in the category in which you place that performance. Points will not be transferred or combined between categories.
• A performer cannot receive two nominations in the same acting category for different films. If that happens, their higher-scoring performance will be kept and the next eligible performance will move into the top five.
• If there’s a tie for the final nomination spot, I’ll break it by comparing #1 votes first, then #2 votes, #3 votes, etc.

For example:

Actor

1. Person A — Film A
2. Person B — Film B
3. Person C — Film C
4. Person D — Film D
5. Person E — Film E

That ballot would give them 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points respectively.

The idea is that Round One rewards performances with broad support across people’s ballots, while Round Two gives everyone a straight choice between the five nominees.

Previous Lineup — 2019

Actor

Antonio Banderas — Pain and Glory
Leonardo DiCaprio — Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Adam Driver — Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix — Joker
Adam Sandler — Uncut Gems (winner)

Actress

Scarlett Johansson — Marriage Story
Lupita Nyong'o — Us (winner)
Florence Pugh — Midsommar
Saoirse Ronan — Little Women
Alfre Woodard — Clemency

Supporting Actor

Willem Dafoe — The Lighthouse (winner)
Al Pacino — The Irishman
Joe Pesci — The Irishman
Brad Pitt — Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Song Kang-ho — Parasite

Supporting Actress

Cho Yeo-jeong — Parasite
Laura Dern — Marriage Story
Park So-dam — Parasite (winner)
Florence Pugh — Little Women
Zhao Shuzhen — The Farewell