‘Sinners’ sets Oscar nominations record

AP:

Ryan Coogler’s blues-steeped vampire epic, Sinners, led all films with 16 nominations to the 98th Academy Awards on Thursday, setting a record for the most in Oscar history.

Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences voters showered Sinners with more nominations than they had ever bestowed before, breaking the 14-nomination mark set by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land. Along with Best Picture, Coogler was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and double-duty star, Michael B. Jordan, was rewarded with his first Oscar nomination, for Best Actor.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s father-daughter revolutionary saga One Battle After Another, the favourite coming into nominations, trailed in second with 13 nominations. Four of its actors – Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn – were nominated.

In those two top nominees, the film academy put its full force behind a pair of visceral and bracingly original American epics that each connected with a fraught national moment. Coogler’s Jim Crow-era film – the rare horror movie to win the academy’s favour – conjures a mythical allegory of black life. In One Battle After Another, a dormant spirit of rebellion is revived in an out-of-control police state.

Both are also Warner Bros titles. In the midst of a contentious sale to Netflix, the 102-year-old studio had its best Oscar nominations morning ever. As the fate of Warner Bros, which Netflix is buying for $72 billion, hangs in the balance amid a challenge from Paramount Skydance, Hollywood is bracing for potentially the largest realignment in the film industry’s history.

The 10 films nominated for Best Picture are Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners and Train Dreams.

The first category read by presenters Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman was supporting actress. The nominees are Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter LilIeaas for Sentimental Value, Amy Madigan for Weapons, Wunmi Mosaku for Sinners, and Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another.

This year, the Oscars are introducing a new category for casting. That new honour helped One Battle After Another and Sinners pad their already impressive stats. Along with those two films, the nominees are Hamnet, Marty Supreme and The Secret Agent.

The 98th Academy Awards will take place on March 15 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.