Five things we learned from the 2019 Oscars nominations

The announce­ment of the 91^st slate of Oscar nom­i­nees brought a long, mul­ti-month stretch of awards prog­nos­ti­ca­tion and tea-leaf-read­ing to a close. So begins the next month of awards prog­nos­ti­ca­tion and tea-leaf-reading!

As the con­ver­sa­tion shifts from spec­u­la­tion about nom­i­na­tions to spec­u­la­tion about win­ners, show­biz obses­sives will trawl the through the list of Acad­e­my picks to iden­ti­fy trends, clues, any­thing that might hint at the out­comes of next month’s ceremony.

We at LWLies are not exempt from this par­tic­u­lar com­pul­sion, and have accord­ing­ly pored over the line­up of nom­i­nees to see what’s to be learned — about the year in movies, about AMPAS, about the indus­try — from this odd Hol­ly­wood barom­e­ter. What fol­lows are five major take­aways from this year’s ear­li­est outcomes:

Every awards cycle offers some new Oscar first, but one doesn’t have to dig all that deep to find this year’s. Net­flix has poured some tru­ly stag­ger­ing sums of mon­ey into their cam­paigns in an effort to prove once and for all that there’s noth­ing the stream­ing-plat­form-turned-movie-stu­dio can’t do. They’ve elbowed their way into major film fes­ti­vals, staked a claim on the Academy’s small­er races, and now they’ve got their eye on the top prize.

They backed the Roma horse all the way, push­ing Alfon­so Cuarón​’s panoram­ic rec­ol­lec­tion of his Mex­i­can child­hood to the tip­pi­ty-top of the Best Pic­ture pile. The odds-on favourite (unlike The Favourite, which is start­ing to look like a long shot) also scored key nods for Cuarón him­self as direc­tor and screen­writer, along with star Yal­itza Apari­cio and her sup­port­ing play­er Mari­na de Tavi­ra, with a hand­ful of tech­ni­cal nods as well.

Roma leads the pack with 10 nom­i­na­tions, but that’s not all Net­flix has to crow about. The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs picked up a few cita­tions across the Adapt­ed Screen­play, Cos­tum­ing, and Orig­i­nal Song cat­e­gories. ​“When A Cow­boy Trades His Spurs For Wings” will almost cer­tain­ly be crushed with­out mer­cy by the Gaga-howl­ing of ​“Shal­low,” but in this case, it real­ly is an hon­our just to be nominated.

Also obsessed with prov­ing their artis­tic legit­i­ma­cy is Mar­vel Stu­dios, who did just that by land­ing a Best Pic­ture slot for pop­ulist block­buster Black Pan­ther. While those hold­ing out for a pos­si­ble Michael B Jor­dan appear­ance in the Sup­port­ing Actor race end­ed the morn­ing in dis­ap­point­ment, a whop­ping sev­en nom­i­na­tions in the below-the-line cat­e­gories put Wakan­da on the map.

Super­hero movies have tra­di­tion­al­ly been ban­ished to the realm of spe­cial effects and audio mix­ing, but ever since The Dark Knight​‘s snub in ear­ly 2009, com­ic-book fans have demand­ed to know when the Acad­e­my would recog­nise the genre in a fuller capac­i­ty. All it took to get Black Pan­ther past that bar­ri­er was a near­ly bil­lion-dol­lar gross, world­wide ado­ra­tion from a legion fan­base, all-but-unan­i­mous crit­i­cal praise, and an endorse­ment from the for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

Though there’s no race eas­i­er to pre­dict than Best Orig­i­nal Song, in gen­er­al, the lat­est iter­a­tion of A Star Is Born didn’t fare quite as well as Oscar sooth­say­ers had led us to believe. The ici­est cold shoul­der of the morn­ing was shot Bradley Coop­er​’s way, who land­ed a spot in the Lead Actor race but got squeezed out of Director.

His cast mem­bers Lady Gaga and Sam Elliott both earned nom­i­na­tions for their per­for­mances, in addi­tion to nods for Cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Adapt­ed Screen­play, but the omis­sion from the direct­ing cat­e­go­ry sug­gests that the film’s future may be cloudy.

Win­ning Best Pic­ture always comes down to a nar­ra­tive, and the likes of Roma (high­brow excel­lence with an extra­tex­tu­al polit­i­cal urgency) or Green Book (a return to the good ol’ days of Crash win­ning an Oscar) have sold them­selves more effectively.

In an effort to rec­ti­fy the homo­gene­ity in the ranks of their mem­bers, the Acad­e­my has launched a recent push to expand the vot­ing body. Adding scores of pro­fes­sion­als that don’t fit the straight-white-male mould was wide­ly pre­sumed to trig­ger a change in the sorts of movies that gets Oscar love. But did it?

Yes and no! Most­ly no. But par­tial­ly yes! The strong show­ing from Green Book — you don’t have to be old and white to like it, though that sure seems like the core fan­base — sug­gests that the it’ll be a while before this par­tic­u­lar demo­graph­ic loosens its grip on the cul­ture, and the lack of acknowl­edge­ment for If Beale Street Could Talk and its direc­tor Bar­ry Jenk­ins doesn’t inspire confidence.

All that being true, the dial seems to have moved at least a few ticks in the direc­tion of diver­si­ty. This year saw a wind­fall for Spike Lee, whose BlacK­kKlans­man marks his first ever nom­i­na­tion for Best Direc­tor, mak­ing him only the sixth black film­mak­er in the Academy’s 91-year his­to­ry to be put up for the award. It’s embar­rass­ing that it’s tak­en the Acad­e­my this long to get hip to Spike’s work, and yet not quite as embar­rass­ing as not hav­ing done so. Small victories!

The most excit­ing race this year is hap­pen­ing over in the land of non­fic­tion, where an adven­tur­ous selec­tion com­mit­tee has assem­bled a chal­leng­ing and unex­pect­ed line­up. While the shame­less hagiog­ra­phy of Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg still snuck in there, edg­ing out Fred Rogers bio-doc Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor as the token main­stream choice, the oth­ers cov­er a lot of ground in terms of style and subject.

That left ample space for the death-defy­ing aston­ish­ment of Free Solo, the slice-of-life expres­sion­ism of Hale Coun­ty This Morn­ing, This Evening, and the skate-rat bil­dungsro­man Mind­ing the Gap. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est (in part because prac­ti­cal­ly nobody’s both­ered to see it) is Of Fathers and Sons, an inti­mate look at jihadism in the home. It’s pre­cise­ly the sort of movie the Acad­e­my exists to sup­port: a work of bril­liance in need of a bump in publicity.

Check out the full list of nom­i­nees at oscar​.go​.com/​n​o​m​inees