Taika Waititi And The Joker Both Majorly Cleaned Up At The Oscar Nominations

Each year, the Oscars are at once delightfully exciting and deeply depressing. 2020 was no different.

Yep, late last night, John Cho and Issa Rae sat in front of the cameras and traded awkward banter until it was time to share the artists and films nominated for little gold men.

And ho boy, were things wild.

For a start, Joker scored the most nominations of any film, picking up 11 nods, including for Best Picture, Director, Actor and Original Score. Of those, it’s unlikely that it will win anything but Actor and Score — but the fact that an R-rated film about the Clown Prince of Crime was the most heralded film of the year is astonishing.

Equally surprising is the nominations picked up by Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit. Nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture were to be expected, but a nod for Scarlett Johansson as Supporting Actress was not.

Also pleasantly unexpected was the sheer range of nominations for Parasite, Bong Joon-Ho’s South Korean, anti-capitalist thriller. Bong was nominated for Best Director, an award that he’ll almost certainly win, but the film was also singled out for more surprising gongs, like Best Editing and Best Production Design.

In fact, the Best Editing Oscar is often used as a bellweather for what will win Best Picture — it’s extremely rare for a film to win Picture without being nominated for Editing. Some people (including me!) are reading that as a sign that Parasite has a chance to be the first foreign language film to ever pick up the Best Picture Oscar.

Bong Joon Ho on #Parasite's #Oscars noms: "I didn’t create this film for all these nominations, but somehow this all happened. I was particularly happy to see the craft nominations for editing and production design" https://t.co/dDPiB3KxAg pic.twitter.com/3l7AUVplfQ

— Variety (@Variety) January 13, 2020

On the more disappointing side of things, Uncut Gems was nominated for not a single Oscar. That film should have at least been honoured for Adam Sandler’s unbelievable central performance, let alone the writing and direction. But it was always an outsider chance — the Academy like their films respectable and classy, and Uncut Gems is neither of those things.

Also considered an oversight was the lack of plaudits for Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, particularly in the Directing category. (Though Florence Pugh being nominated for her first of many Oscars for the film feels pretty good.) That means we have another pack of all-male nominees hustling for the top award.

Oh, and don’t even get us started on the Jennifer Lopez snub. Lopez was considered a lock for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the messy, controversial Hustlers, but the surprise inclusion of Kathy Bates for Richard Jewell locked her out.

Both bananas and boring? Sounds like the Oscars!