Here comes the 2023 Oscars BuzzMeter: Behold the buzz! Here’s what you need to know about Oscar’s best picture, best director, best actor, best supporting actor, best actress, best screenplay…and the list goes on.
This week, we’re looking at the four categories the Academy does not award: best short (with an Oscar nomination?), best documentary short Subject Nr. 2, best documentary feature Subject Nr. 4, and best foreign-language film. (So, they finally get to honor an actual film.) And with the Oscars, the buzz is often just as important as the reality. And it can be tough to gauge just what a movie is about when those in the film world have very little interest in talking about it publicly.
For that reason, we’re going to have a separate post to cover what’s in a movie. And for the rest of the week, we’re going to have periodic updates on the Oscars buzz, which will include a look at a new movie, a new documentary, a new short, some other news.
Also: we’re looking for nominations for this year’s Oscar race. Tell us your choices, please!
(We’ll have updates throughout the week).
What’s in a Movie? What’s in a Film?
First up, the long-awaited Oscar for “best…best.” The subject of a movie is the stuff of Oscars, but in the Academy’s case, the subject is often the least interesting part of a film.
Take, for instance, “The Shape of Water,” the year-and-a-half-in-the-making adaptation from Guillermo del Toro. “The Shape of Water” was nominated for six Oscars, but the competition from “Black Panther,” “A Star Is Born,” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” has left this category thin—just one nomination in the top five. This year, there are three films with the word “shape” in their titles: the first two are a horror flick and a comedy; the last is a documentary. None of them are particularly deep or innovative—the Shape of Water is just a nice movie for the Oscars, but it’s