Given the rules changes to extend the eligibility period, I kind of feel like I'm awakening after a year in a coma when I look at the list of films that have been honored. Half of them haven't come out yet, and in some cases I have only just heard of them for the first time in the past few days.
I guess that's not completely abnormal. Since these nominations usually come out at the start of December, there are usually some big holiday releases in that list that I'm only just becoming aware of. I remember the year Selma received a number of nominations, the Golden Globes were the first time I'd ever heard of the movie.
But not half the nominees. That's a bridge too far.
I had certainly heard of some of the following titles, but not all. I'll list them in order of their number of nominations, the most first:
The Father - 3 nominations - best picture (drama), best actor (drama), best supporting actress. I've known about this Anthony Hopkins vehicle for a while now and knew it would be the poster boy for films that are taking advantage of the extended eligibility deadline. So this is not a huge surprise, though nominations for any category other than the obvious one for Hopkins may be a bit of a surprise. U.S. release date: February 26th.
The Mauritanian - 2 nominations - best actor (drama), best supporting actress. I only just heard about this yesterday during Filmspotting's 2021 preview podcast. Note that says "2021 preview," not "2020 review." U.S. release date: February 12th.
Music - 2 nominations - best picture (musical or comedy), best actress (musical or comedy). This gives me quite a different perspective on what I had been thinking of as a consummate 2021 "January release" (I saw it in January here in Australia anyway), which had actually been billed to me as a turd and likely to offend people, even though I liked it. I guess being a turd, had it been one, does not alone disqualify it from getting nominated for a Golden Globe. U.S. release date: February 12th.
The United States vs. Billie Holliday - 2 nominations - best actress (musical or comedy), best original song. I only knew about this because I saw the poster on the front page of IMDB once. U.S. release date: February 26th.
Pieces of a Woman - 1 nomination - best actress (drama). I had to look this up. I had never even heard of it. But I do like Vanessa Kirby. The fact that I'd never heard of it is even stranger given the U.S. release date: January 7th.
French Exit - 1 nomination - best actress (musical or comedy). Never heard of this either. Michelle Pfeiffer is in it. In fact, she got the nomination. U.S. release date: February 12th.
Judas and the Black Messiah - 1 nomination - best supporting actor. This I had known about but I thought it was coming out later in the year, a genuine 2021 release. Nope. U.S. release date: February 12th.
I Care A Lot - 1 nomination - best actress (musical or comedy). Again, I had heard of it but I thought it was coming out mid-year or something. It's nice to see that at least one movie will be released on U.S. release date: February 19th.
The Little Things - 1 nomination - best supporting actor. Now this might be the strangest one. People have been chattering about this one the past few days on social media, but almost all the chatter says it's like a 1990s serial killer movie, which is not exactly the makings for traditional awards bait. And the chatter has been largely negative. U.S. release date: January 29th.
February 12th is going to be a busy day at the (mostly closed) American multiplexes.
Oh and then there's Promising Young Woman, which was on my 2020 list but was not available to U.S. audiences until recently (January 15th). It's pretty much leading the pack with four nominations.
Interestingly, Minari -- which, like The Father, was a "February frontrunner" -- got basically shut out, earning only a nomination for best foreign language film.
Oh, and there's another goofy thing, which is that Lin-Manuel Miranda got nominated for Hamilton even though I really don't think that's a proper "movie." And even if so, he gave the performance all the way back in 2016.
(Plus, as a continuaton of my axe to grind, so to speak, about Small Axe, I noted that it was honored in TV categories, not movie categories.)
The confusion over all this is highlighted on IMDB, where most of these movies have a release year of 2021, while only a few are listed as 2020 films. You can't really call a movie that was not released anywhere in 2020 a 2020 movie, can you? But I guess you can still qualify it for a 2020 award.
You could ask me, what did I expect a list of awards nominations to look like in these weird COVID times? I guess my answer is, "I don't know, but not this."
What this list of nominees does do, however, is kind of reframe my idea of what I will allow entry into my 2021 rankings and what I will consider to be 2020 releases that I missed. I was all set to exclude the movies that made a big splash at the Golden Globes and Oscars, as the sniff test would suggest these movies are from a year that's done and dusted, and there's not a good reason for me to be talking about how much I loved them in January of 2022.
But now that so many nominally 2021 titles have actually been considered, at least by the Hollywood foreign press, I have to reconsider that stance. And movies I thought for sure would be movies I missed in 2020, like Minari and One Night in Miami, may now elbow their way into the 2021 conversation.
I guess the expansive rules are the way to go. I tried to rent Minari and One Night in Miami when I was closing down my 2020 list, but obviously, neither of them were available. One Night did become available on Amazon shortly after my list closed, and I'll probably watch it pretty soon. So they've got a solid argument to be made as 2021 films. And it sounds like I might be justified in getting over all my arcane rules and asterisks, sucking it up and counting them that way.
So what if my list is out of sync with an awards show ten months in the past? I say that now. Let's see how I feel in December.
Chaos, I tell you! I just wish two different movie years didn't have to get fucked up by COVID, but especially now that a bunch more potential spring releases have been delayed another six months, 2021 well and truly has been. Here's hoping 2022 can bring back some semblance of the normal, at long last.
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