Aw, come on now. Francis McDormand was definitely the lead, and Rockwell was a supporting actor. I just watched the movie four days ago. I don’t think this is controversial.
Multiple nominations from one film for the supporting acting categories have happened a lot. Here’s just for the males:
1939: Harry Carey and Claude Reins nominated for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Thomas Mitchell won for Stagecoach.
1951: Leo Glenn and Peter Ustinov nominated for Quo Vadis. Karl Malden won for A Streetcar Named Deisre
1953: Brand deWilde and Jack Palance nominted for Shane. Frank Sinatra won for From Here to Eternity.
1954: Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Rod Steiger nominated for On the Waterfront. Edmund O’Brien won for The Barefoot Contessa.
1957: Arthur Kennedy and Russ Tamblyn nominated for Peyton Place. Red Buttons won for Sayonara.
1959: Arthur O’Connell and George C. Scott nominated for Anatomy of a Murder. Hugh Griffith won for Ben-Hur.
1961: George C. Scott and Jackie Gleason nominated for The Hustler. George Chakiris won for West Side Story
1967: Gene Hackman and Michael J. Pollard nominated for Bonnie and Clyde. George Kennedy won for Cool Hand Luke.
1971: Jeff Bridges nominated for The Last Picture Show. Ben Johnson won for the same movie.
1972: James Caan, Robert Duvall and Al Pacino nominated for The Godfather. Joel Grey won for Cabaret.
1974: Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg nominated for The Godfather Part II. Robert De Niro won for the same movie.
1976: Burt Young and Burgess Meredith nominated for Rocky. Jason Robards won for All the President’s Men.
1977: Maximilian Schell nominated for Julia. Jason Robards won for the same film.
1980: Judd Hirsch nominated for Ordinary People. Timothy Hutton won for the same film.
1983: John LIthgow nominated for Terms of Endearment. Jack Nicholson won for the same film.
1986: William Dafoe and Tom Berenger nominated for Platoon. Michael Caine won for Hannah and Her Sisters.
1991: Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel nominated for Bugsy. Jack Palance won for City Slickers.
Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph were fantastic last night btw. I hope someone gets them to host the Golden Globes next year.
Frankly I thought it was a weak year for best picture nominations, or maybe a better way to put that is that no film stood out above another to me. I still have a couple I need to see of the Best Picture nominees, but of those I’ve seen I found them all flawed in one way or another.
Definitely glad to see McDormand and Rockwell win. His performance in particular was wonderful–he literally plays Woodie Harrelson almost as well as Harrelson does at the end of 3B.
Also really glad to see Oldman finally rewarded. He is one of the finest actors in Hollywood. Much like Malkovich, he disappears into his role in an amazing way.
I’ve had this notion for a while that the Academy should always nominate movies from 20 years earlier. So this year’s nominees would have shown in 1997. That way, the films have time to mature and the audience to see how they really hold up. I suspect you wouldn’t see Titanic winning. And it would definitely eliminate films like Crash.
My only surprise moment of the night was learning that this was Allison Janney’s first Oscar nomination. What the heck, Academy?
I’m quite surprised at the hate for the Sound of Water from the group here. I enjoyed it immensely. I’m also happy Peele won for best screenplay with Get Out. Way to knock it out of the part for your first at bat. Here’s hoping we get to see more now.
I had skipped a couple that were nominated, so at least I’ll walk away with something to see beyond the ones i did catcht his year.
Those of you who caught Three Billboards and think it should have won, what did you love about it?
I’m also happy Peele won - to me that was the most important victory of the night
I’m trying to think of what feature film theatrical release movie role she would’ve been nominated for?
She was in American Beauty, which won a ton of Oscars, but her role wasn’t that big.
She was terrific in Drop Dead Gorgeous.
Thanks for the list. It’s crazy to me that even with all the nominations The Godfather movies received, I can still think of other performances in the film that should’ve been recognized, most notably John Cazale as Fredo. To me, he’s the face of 70s cinema, and I remember being very upset when I checked online to see what other films he had done outside of the Godather movies, Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation, and The Deer Hunter, and discovered that he passed away shortly before Cimino’s film released in 1978.
On the topic of supporting nominations, after watching the excellent Netflix adaptation of Mark Harris’ Five Came Back, I learned that Harold Russell is the only actor two be awarded two Oscars for a single role for his work in William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives.
Here’s the list for multiple nominations for best actor in a leading role:
| 1936 | Mutiny on The Bounty | Clark Gable, Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone | Victor McLaglen won for The Informer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1945 | Going My Way | Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald | Bing Crosby won |
| 1954 | From Here to Eternity | Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster | William Holden won for Stalag 17 |
| 1957 | Giant | James Dean and Rock Hudson | Yul Brynner won for The King and I |
| 1959 | The Defiant Ones | Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier | David Niven won for Separate Tables |
| 1962 | Judgment at Nuremberg | Maximilian Schell and Spencer Tracy | Maximillian Schell won |
| 1965 | Becket | Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole | Rex Harrison won for My Fair Lady |
| 1970 | Midnight Cowboy | Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight | John Wayne won for True Grit |
| 1973 | Sleuth | Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier | Marlon Brando won for The Godfather |
| 1977 | Network | Peter Finch and William Holden | Peter Finch won |
| 1984 | The Dresser | Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney | Robert Duvall won for Tender Mercies |
| 1985 | Amadeus | F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce | F. Murray Abraham won |
I’m going to come right out and say it, Mutiny on The Bounty, it’s not okay to have three lead performances!
I didn’t hate Woman Fucks Fish. I just didn’t see it as that wonderful a movie. Certainly beautifully shot, and the acting was fine, but I thought the script was really derivative and predictable. IMO del Toro won the award for Pan’s Labyrinth, just a few years too late.
I also didn’t love 3 Billboards. In fact I thought it was quite flawed–Peter Dinklage’s role was a complete cliche, the whole firebombing thing was I thought really manipulative–it was just drama inserted to drive a third act that didn’t have any impetus otherwise.
But I did think both McDormand and Rockwell gave stellar performances.
Oscar ratings hit an all-time low.
The telecast, nearly four hours long, stumbled 19 percent from the previous year to 26.5 million viewers. That’s easily the least-watched Oscars in history, trailing 2008 by more than 5 million. Overnight returns had the lengthy ABC telecast averaging a 18.9 rating among households between 8 and 11 p.m. ET. Compared to the same stat for 2017, the night the wrong best picture winner was named, that was down a more modest 16 percent.
It really is too long. I also think it starts off with one interesting award and then it takes over two hours to get to the big awards that most people will care about. They could intermix the top-tier and the more technical awards throughout the presentation. Keep the presenter’s jokes but drop all of these skits they tend to do. Get rid of all montages beyond the people who died.
I might be remembering incorrectly, but I thought the awards I cared about (Make-up, Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, Best Adapted and original Screenplay) used to be early on in the broadcast, and then I could safely turn it off since I didn’t care about the actor’s awards, and Best Director and Movie I could always look up the next day.
But I noticed this year that the Visual Effects Oscar and the Sound Oscars were given out pretty late in the evening, close to 9:40pm my time, 10:40pm on the East coast. And since I’d already been watching for 4 hours by that point, I decided I might as well stay for the 3 or 4 awards left.
To be fair this does not include online viewers just the regular TV/Cable viewers. I find the oscars utterly awful but it wouldn’t surprise me if online viewership has increased year over year. Lots of folks are cutting the cord these days.
But yeah, the Oscars sucks really. I struggle enough with watching fellow game developers go up their own ass, let alone folks from another industry all together give each other awards and pat each other on the head.
I only ever watch it for the gowns on the red carpet with my wife & daughter. That bit is cool.
Apropos of absolutely nothing other than Ms. Eva Marie Saint looking stunning at 93 presenting an Oscar last night and thus putting this earworm firmly in my brain, I’m spreading the glorious infection to all of you.
Also, Rita Moreno wearing her original dress from back when she won the Oscar for West Side Story was awesome.
God I freaking love that movie.
-xtien
“We didn’t make it, Doc.”