Canadians rating Oscar nominations | The Star

A powerful 12 months for popcorn movies can also be a superb one for Canada in nominations for the ninety fifth Academy Awards announced Tuesday.

Two Canadian filmmakers are represented within the 10 Best Picture nominees for movies big and small: Ontario-born James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which has 4 nominations overall; and Torontonian Sarah Polley’s art house drama “Women Talking” has two, the opposite for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Multiverse spectacle “All the pieces In every single place All at Once” leads the Oscar race with 11 nominations, amongst them Best Picture, Best Director (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu) and Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan).

Just behind it with nine nominations apiece, including Best Picture, are the German war epic “All Quiet on the Western Front” and dark Irish comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Then comes superstar biopic “Elvis” with eight, Spielberg family memory piece “The Fabelmans” with seven, flyboy rouser “Top Gun: Maverick” with six and the celebrity-skewering drama “TÁR,” also with six. Rounding out the Best Picture field is Cannes 2022 Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness,” a category satire that has three nominations.

There have been many surprise nominations in a 12 months when no clear front-runner had emerged from the Golden Globes, the Critics Selection Awards and other precursor contests.

The largest shock of all could be the Best Picture nomination for Polley’s “Women Talking,” which many Oscar pundits had written off as a serious contender as a consequence of its poor box office results. The drama of Mennonite women gathering in a barn to debate what to do about sexual assault of their distant community is predicated on a 2018 novel of the identical name by Manitoba writer Miriam Toews.

“I’m very pleased today and so grateful to the incredible collective of forged and crew who made ‘Women Talking,’” Polley tweeted after the nominations were read out in Hollywood early Tuesday. She is nominated personally for Best Adapted Screenplay, the second time she’s competed within the category. Her first was for “Away From Her” in 2006.

Polley was MIA within the Best Director category, regardless that she’d been considered a sure thing early on in awards season. The nominees this 12 months are all male: Kwan and Scheinert for “All the pieces In every single place All at Once,” Martin McDonagh for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Steven Spielberg for “The Fabelmans” and Ruben Östlund for “Triangle of Sadness.”

Just eight women have been nominated for Best Director in Oscars history, with three winners, all the wins happening within the twenty first century: Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker” (2009), Chloé Zhao for “Nomadland” (2020) and Jane Campion for “The Power of the Dog” (2021).

Other Canadian Oscar nominees include Toronto’s Domee Shi, whose Toronto-set Pixar film “Turning Red,” a few teen girl who morphs into an enormous red panda, will compete for Best Animated Feature honours. Within the Best Animated Short Film category, meanwhile, Calgary animators Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are in with “The Flying Sailor,” the strange-but-true story of the mariner who survived the Halifax harbour explosion throughout the First World War.

One other Torontonian celebrating an Oscar nomination is Daniel Roher for “Navalny,” competing within the Best Documentary Feature category for the story of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In the identical category is “Fire of Love,” a Canada-U.S. co-production by Sara Dosa about two French volcano hunters.

There’ll little doubt be other Canadian Oscar contenders to emerge from the numerous names and movies announced Tuesday, but there’s no less than one honorary Canuck we already find out about: Best Actor nominee Brendan Fraser of “The Whale.” He was born within the U.S. to Canadian parents, but he went to high school in Toronto and has many fond memories of town.

It’s quite the sight to see James Cameron and Sarah Polley competing for Best Picture gold in the identical 12 months, one for a movie that has earned greater than $2 billion on the international box office and the opposite with a considerably more modest showing.

Comedian Chelsea Handler joked in regards to the disparity on the recent Critics’ Selection Awards, comparing how much it cost to make and sell “Avatar: The Way of Water” with how Polley selected to film her movie: “James Cameron was given $350 million and Sarah Polley needed to film ‘Women Talking’ in a barn.”

Among the many other surprises Tuesday were a Best Actor nomination for Paul Mescal in “Aftersun” and a Best Actress nod for Andrea Riseborough in “To Leslie,” two critically praised indie movies about troubled protagonists that many pundits deemed too small to make the Oscars list.

“Black Panther: Wakanda Ceaselessly” star Angela Bassett made history together with her Best Supporting Actress nomination. She’s the primary person to get an Oscar nomination for acting in a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, which also makes her the primary woman and first person of color to achieve this. She received her first Oscar nomination 29 years ago for enjoying Tina Turner within the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

The various snubs included Tom Cruise, who did not get a Best Actor nod for “Top Gun: Maverick” while the film’s helmer, Joseph Kosinski, struck out for Best Director. Viola Davis, meanwhile, was neglected for Best Actress consideration for her star turn in “The Woman King.”

The ninety fifth Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, can be handed out March 12. Ballots are forged by nearly 10,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 80 countries.