7x trivia about the 2020/2021 Award Season
The latest Award Season was special in many ways. But if we put all the COVID changes and regulations aside, there were some interesting occurrences in the latest Award Season. Here are seven of them.
Sundance favorites dominate
Four of this year’s Best Picture nominees were screened at the Sundance Film Festival. This is the largest number since the Best Picture category was expanded in 2010. The previous record were two nominees with Sundance screenings. This brings Sundance up to 15 Best Picture nominees that screened at the festival, which is equal to Cannes Film Festival. Venice is still a bit ahead with 17, while Telluride has 26 and Toronto (of course) is in front with 47. Note that this is not premiere screenings but just screenings in general. Many Best Picture nominees have screenings at more than one of these festivals.
Since the expansion of the Best Picture category and the introduction of the preferential ballot, no film has won Best Picture without a screening at one of these festivals.
Jodie Foster breaks 44 year old streak
Jodie Foster’s surprise win at the Golden Globes for The Mauritanian would go on to mark the first time since 1977 that the Best Supporting Actress winner at the Golden Globes would not be nominated for an Oscar. Foster only became the fifth woman to achieve this. The others are Katharine Ross, Karen Black, Hermione Gingold and Katy Jurado. Of the five Hermione Gingold is the only one never to receive an Oscar nomination. Jodie Foster is the only one to actually have won an Oscar. Of the Oscarless four Katharine Ross is the only one still alive, so it is up to her to snatch that title from Jodie Foster.
Click here to read more Golden Globes stats and trivia
Costume Designer’s Guild were on point…at last
Even though the Costume Designer’s Guild Awards (CDG) has three categories, it is only the third time ever (meaning since 1999 when CDG started) that all the Oscar nominees also had CDG nominations. This has only happened in 2007 and 2013. On average 3,3 of each year’s five Oscar nominees in the category have CDG nominations as well. That being said, only five films have won Oscars without a CDG nomination.
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First Annie and Oscar mismatch in 16 years
Over the Moon became the first Animated Feature nominee since Shark Tale in 2005 not to be nominated in a Best Picture category at the Annie Awards. It was however nominated for Best Directing at the Annie Awards, which Shark Tale did not manage to do.
Visual Effects winner with no love from Visual Effects Society
For the second year in a row the Oscar winner for Best Visual Effects did not win a single award at the Visual Effects Society Awards (VES). Tenet actually only had a single nomination. This mirrored the previous year where 1917 won the Oscar and also only had one VES nomination, which it did not win. Only two other films in history have won the Oscar without a single VES win. The first one to do so was The Golden Compass in 2008 beating VES top scorer Transformers. The other was Ex Machina’s shock win in 2016 beating VES top scorer Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, along with a strong lineup of Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian and The Revenant. Ex Machina is to date the only Visual Effects winner without a single VES nomination.
Soul scores precursor hattrick
Soul became the eighth Oscar winner for Best Original Score to also win Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics Choice. This is only counting since 2000 when Oscar combined the score categories into one. Only Memoirs of a Geisha has won all three precursors without winning the Oscar. It lost to Brokeback Mountain.
The SAG and Oscar split
Neither Anthony Hopkins (The Father) nor Frances McDormand (Nomadland) won the Screen Actors Guild Award (SAG) in their respective lead categories. So when they both won Oscars it marked only the second time that none of the lead acting Oscars matched with SAG. The last time it happened was in 2003 when Adrian Brody (The Pianist) and Nicole Kidman (The Hours) won the Oscars. 2021 however made an extra twist as Best Picture winner Nomadland were not nominated for the SAG Ensemble award. This makes Nomadland the fourth film in history to win an Oscar without that nomination. Three out of those four winners have won in the past four years, so it seems that this split is becoming more normal.
Click here to read more SAG Awards stats and trivia
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