2023 Oscar nominations shake up Hollywood

Photo of the Oscar statuette. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Luke Osciak | Arts & Entertainment Editor

The nominees for the 95th Academy Awards were announced Jan. 24. 

The three films with the most awards are “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, which leads the pack with 11 nominations, with it being followed by “All Quiet on the Western Front” with nine nominations and “The Banshees of Inisherin” rounding out the top three with eight nominations.

This year’s nominees have provided an unexpectedly exciting year for the Oscars. Not only are those three movies in the running for Best Picture, but also the two highest grossing movies of the year, “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of the Water” are also in the running.

The other movies that are also in the running for best picture are the musical biopic “Elvis”; Speilburg’s autobiographical film “The Fablemans”; “TÁR”, a film about a abusive orchestral conductor; “Women Talking”, an examination of the consequences of living in a repressed religious community; and “Triangle of Sadness”, a cutting satire on the billionaire class.

The category for best actor is a huge competition this year. There are a total of 16 first-time acting nominees for the Oscars. All of the nominees in this year’s Best Actor in a Leading Role category are all first-time nominees. The list contains a mixture of industry veterans like Brendan Fariser for his role in “The Whale”, Colin Farrell for “The Banshees of Inisherin” and Bill Nightly, who starred in “Living”. However, the old guard is not safe from either Austin Butler (Elvis) or Paul Mescal (Aftersun) from getting the Oscar.

Other first time nominees include Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu for their performances in “Everything Everywhere All At Once”. Angela Bassett was nominated for her performance in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”. Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon all got nominated for their supporting roles in “The Banshees of Inisherin”. “The Whale” star Hong Chau received a nomination for her performance. “Atlanta” star Brian Tyree Henry received his first nomination for his work on “Causeway”. Another musical biopic star, Ana de Armas, got nominated for her role in “Blonde”. Finally, Andrea Riseborough was nominated for her work on “To Leslie”.

It will be interesting to see what happens at the Oscars this year. Many of the films that are highly nominated are smaller releases that did not make a lot of money at the box office. Meanwhile, releases like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” both solidified themselves as some of the highest grossing movies of all time.

After “The Slap” between Will Smith and Chris Rock at last year’s Oscars, it will be difficult for the award show to have as much virality. Last year’s Oscars had 16.6 million viewers, which was a 58% increase from the year before. In many ways, this was helped by all of the drama that happened that night.

When predicting what the ratings will be this year, there is a chance that they will be lower. However, 2022 has been an incredible year for movies. Many of these films and actors have huge fan bases that are anticipating the awards this year.

Hosting the Oscars this year is late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel. This will mark his third time as emcee for the Oscars, with his two previous times being in 2017 and 2018. The awards will be held at the Dolby Theater at Ovation on March 12. Those at home can watch the awards live on ABC.

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