Actors Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid announced the 96th Oscars® nominations live from the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater via a global live stream on Oscar.com, Oscars.org, and the Academy’s digital platforms, as well as an international satellite feed and broadcast media.
Every year there are snubs, and this year is no exception. The film “Barbie” earned $1.4 billion in box office, but the director, Greta Gerwig, was not recognized with a nomination.
There was no surprise that “The Color Purple” was a shutout. The only nominations that it received are for Danielle Brooks. Fantasia was not nominated. Many fans of the original film (made in 1985, and directed by Steven Spielberg) didn’t feel a new one was needed.
To many insiders, Colman Domingo’s nomination for “Rustin” was understood. His performance is sublime and one of the best of his career, which is saying something because he’s a stunning thespian. In “Rustin,” he plays gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who helped organize the March on Washington, the landmark 1963 demonstration where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
In a happy surprise, actor Sterling K. Brown was nominated for Supporting Actor for his role in “American Fiction” along with Jeffrey Wright.
America Ferrera earned a nod for her powerful monologue in “Barbie,” in which she said, “I’m just so tired of watching myself, and every single other woman, tie herself into knots so that people will like us,” which was shared around the world via social media.
Two documentaries stand head and shoulders above their competition: “The Last Repair Shop” and “To Kill a Tiger.”
The Los Angeles Times-produced short “The Last Repair Shop” earned a nomination, and I think this film will win out. Co-directed by composer Kris Bowers and 2022 Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot, the L.A. Times Studios and Searchlight Pictures co-production focuses on a quartet of master craftspeople who repair damaged musical instruments, bringing them back to life for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Proudfoot won an Oscar for “The Queen of Basketball,” a short doc that focused on Olympian Lusia “Lucy” Harris, the first woman to be drafted by the NBA. He was nominated in 2020 with Bowers for their short doc, “A Concerto Is a Conversation.”
In the Best Documentary Feature category is “To Kill a Tiger,” Nisha Pahuja’s Notice Pictures/National Film Board of Canada (NFB) co-production.
“I am beyond thrilled that ‘To Kill a Tiger’ has been nominated for an Academy Award,” Pahuja said. “This is an extraordinary honor for the creative team behind this eight-year journey, and it’s a testament to the tireless group of women working outside the normal ecosystem to ensure this story is seen and does what it needs to in the world. We’re here, at this moment, because a farmer in India, his wife, and their 13-year-old daughter had the courage to demand her human rights. We are grateful to the National Film Board of Canada, our executive producers, and everyone on the team for their support. It is our hope and intent that this film will encourage other survivors to seek justice, and that men stand with us in our fight for gender equality.”
For a complete list of nominees, visit the official Oscars website at www.oscar.com.
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