2020 Oscar Nominations: Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and More of the Biggest Snubs and Surprises
Somewhere, Jennifer Lopez and Nai Nai are sh*t-talking the Academy.
The 2020 Oscar nominations arrived on Monday morning, and while there was plenty to celebrate -- the BongHive is eating good with Parasite's historic six nominations -- there were more omissions this year than ever that had us scratching our heads or screaming into the void. Below, ET's resident Oscars pundit breaks down this year's biggest snubs and surprises, from the unforgivable lack of nominations showered upon Hustlers and The Farewell to Little Women's not-so-little haul (aside from, y'know, a nomination for its female director).
SNUB: Jennifer Lopez got hustled out of Best Supporting Actress. Academy members better watch their wallets, because we're out for revenge. Despite earning nominations at all the precursor awards shows, Lopez and her performance in Hustlers (which should've won the Oscar, in our humble opinion) were passed over in Actress in a Supporting Role, making room for -- surprise! -- Richard Jewell's Kathy Bates to squeeze in.
SURPRISE: Ford v Ferrari revs into the Best Picture race. We've known who eight of the nominees would be, we were just waiting to see who the ninth and tenth slots would go to -- should the Academy opt for 10 Best Picture nominees. Would it be The Farewell? Knives Out? Uncut Gems? In the end, they chose nine, and the ninth is Ford v Ferrari, which missed on an acting nomination for Christian Bale but did pick up three technical nods for Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.
SNUB: Frozen II iced out of Best Animated Feature. Despite the original Frozen winning the Oscar in 2014, despite the sequel becoming the highest-grossing animated film ever, despite Olaf still being the best, Frozen 2 was shut out from Best Animated Feature. (Netflix's Klaus made it in instead.) Elsa and Anna didn't walk away completely empty-handed, earning an Original Song nod for "Into the Unknown." This is probably good news for Toy Story 4, who now needn't worry about splitting Disney/Pixar votes.
SNUB: Beyoncé is still not an Oscar nominee. Our long national nightmare continues: The Academy's music branch has once again snubbed the queen in Original Song -- this time for "Spirit" from The Lion King, after having previously left her off the 2007 nomination for Dreamgirls' "Listen" -- opting instead for Diane Warren ("I'm Standing With You" from Breakthrough) and Randy Newman ("I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away," from Toy Story 4). Even worse: This means we won't get a Beyoncé performance at the Oscars.
SNUB: Rocketman's Taron Egerton can't get any Best Actor love. No one worked the awards circuit harder than Egerton, but he'll have to content himself with his Golden Globe win since the Oscars have officially passed over his performance as Elton John -- which is especially egregious after the Academy gave Rami Malek the Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody last year. (Rocketman earned a single nomination, for Best Original Song.) Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler also missed out as The Two Popes' Jonathan Pryce locked down the fifth slot.
SURPRISE: Little Women proves to be a pretty big deal.Finally, Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic starts to get the recognition it deserves. With six nominations in total, this is now the most Oscar-nominated adaptation of Little Women yet. (The 1994 version previously had it, with three, though 1933's was the only one to be nominated for Best Picture, until now.) And while we're especially thrilled for Florence Pugh -- who got into Supporting Actress -- that's merely a silver lining when we simply can't fathom why Gerwig was blocked from Best Director.
SNUB: The Oscars can't even muster up a "hello" for The Farewell. One of the year's best films was completely shut out, with no nominations for Awkwafina in Best Actress (despite winning the Globe), Zhao Shuzhen in Supporting Actress nor Lulu Wang in Original Screenplay. We knew getting into Best Picture and Best Director were longer shots, but the Academy has some explaining to do as to why The Farewell received not a single nomination.
SURPRISE: Honeyland makes history -- and shakes up two major races. The Macedonian beekeeper doc pulled off the rarest of Oscar feats: Duel nominations in both Best Documentary Feature and the newly-renamed International Feature. The latter nomination was the less-expected of the two and came at the cost of the marvelous Senegalese film, Atlantics. The documentary race, meanwhile, is without a frontrunner now that the Academy has pushed out Apollo 11 in favor of Netflix's The Edge of Democracy.
NOT-SO-SURPRISING SURPRISE: The Oscars are All Male and mostly #SoWhite. As expected, the Academy yet again nominated all male directors, all but one of whom are white. Only one Best Picture nominee, meanwhile, hails from a female filmmaker. (Little Women's Greta Gerwig was left out of Best Director to nominate… Joker's Todd Phillips?!) And in the acting fields, all but one of the nominees are white. (Cynthia Erivo managed a Best Actress nomination for Harriet.) Which means Lupita Nyong'o, Parasite's Song Kang-ho and Jamie Foxx are among the many worthy actors of color who didn't make the cut. How disappointing. And how boring.
This year's winners will be announced when the 92nd Annual Academy Awards airs live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 9 at 8:00 p.m. ET / 5:00 p.m. PT.
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