Oscars 2023: Nominations and Analysis
The Oscars are a whipping boy. Despite their ostensible function of celebrating the year’s best movies, their real value lies in what they get wrong—the so-called “snubs,” the head-scratching inclusions, the rhetorical shrieks of “How did they choose him there but not her there??” We like following them because we like kvetching about them.
To that end, the nominations for the 96th Academy Awards did their job in both senses of the phrase. Sure, there were the usual infuriating exclusions (nothing for Asteroid City?!) and puzzling replacements (that sound you just heard was every boomer trying to figure out their Netflix login in order to watch Nyad), plus one genuine shocker (we’ll get to that). But otherwise—and as is usually the case—most of the nominations were, well, pretty good. Sure, no category perfectly aligned with my personal dream ballots (all of which shall be revealed at a later date!), but it’s unrealistic to demand perfection from the Oscars. Besides, if they got everything right, they would have no reason to exist. Read More