Category: Shortlists

As in Springtime, the first flower to bloom for the annual Oscars race is the list of submissions for the Academy’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This year, 85 countries have submitted films, many of them quite acclaimed. Below is the list and press release. 85 COUNTRIES IN COMPETITION FOR 2016 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OSCAR®…

The Visual Effects branch has complete its narrowing of contenders for this year’s Best Visual Effects Oscar. All five of the films I am currently predicting to get Oscar nominations are still on the list. Of the films that didn’t make the cut, only Everest and Terminator Genisys seem oddly absent. I also don’t know…

The massive number of entries have now been winnowed down to 9. Of note, there are 7 titles ont his list from Europe, one from the Middle East and one from South America. Diversity hasn’t always been the Academy’s strong suit. The films I thought were most likely to make the final draft included Brazil’s…

The Academy has narrowed down the eligible scores for this year’s Best Original Score Oscar to 112. In my quick look through the list, I didn’t see any immediately major omissions, though I’ll probably uncover some later. (EDIT: It looks like The Revenant is the one major omission from this list.) 112 ORIGINAL SCORES IN…

The Academy has narrowed the potential Best Makeup & Hairstyling nominees down to seven finalists. Only three of these will make it through and I suspect that Mad Max, The Revenant and Mr. Holmes may end up the nominees, though Black Mass and 100-Year-Old Man could also be contenders. 7 FEATURES ADVANCE IN RACE FOR…

Although the Academy says these are the films in competition for Best Picture, that’s really just a fancy way of saying that outside of the documentary, short film, and foreign film categories, every other film that’s released this year and is on this list is eligible in every other category unless they haven’t been shortlisted.…

One of the last shortlists we’ll see, the Academy announced its 74 Original Songs eligible for consideration. The only omission I see immediately is that the cantina song from the new Star Wars movie isn’t on the list. Other than that, I don’t see anything, but I’m sure there’s some controversy brewing…either here or with…

We are down to 20 films eligible for the Best Visual Effects category. The only major contenders that were absent from the list that I might have expected to make the shortlist are Pan and San Andreas. There are a lot of films with supporting visual effects on this list including Bridge of Spies, The…

Now that the documentaries have been seen by the Academy’s documentary branch members, they’ve narrowed the final list down to 15 films, from which this year’s five Oscar nominees will be selected. Below is the official press release from the Academy. I can’t really say that there are any major surprises. All of these have…

As expected, the live-action shorts are followed up by the animated shorts. It’s nice to see two more productions from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) making an appearance. You might not recognize the name, but long before individuals received Oscars for their achievements in the short film categories, studios collected the prizes. The…

The latest shortlist arrives today for the films eligible for the five slots for the Best Live-Action Short Film nomination. Below are the official entries: 10 LIVE ACTION SHORTS ADVANCE IN 2015 OSCAR® RACE

The Academy has revealed a list of 16 films that will compete for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature this year. Based on the number of eligible films, there will be five nominations in this category. However, 16 is the bare minimum number, so if one of these films doesn’t release as required by…

The Academy has, today, announced the 10 documentary short films competing for the final five slots at the Academy Awards. This list was apparently winnowed down from 74 eligible submissions. 10 DOC SHORTS ON OSCAR’S 2015 SHORTLIST

Here is the press release listing the 124 documentaries that are eligible for consideration at this year’s Academy Awards. One hundred twenty-four features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 88th Academy Awards®.