The Favourite and Roma lead Oscar nominations

The Golden Globes have come and gone, BAFTA nominees are eagerly waiting and busily campaigning and the SAG Awards are less than a week away but the nominations that everyone’s been waiting for have finally been announced.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival

This Oscars will be dominated by female-led stories, with regal satire The Favourite and Mexican drama Roma tied on 10 nominations each, followed by the musical A Star Is Born, level with Dick Cheney biopic Vice on 8.

A slew of ethnically diverse films are close behind with Black Panther, the first superhero film to earn a Best Picture nomination, on 7, followed by Spike Lee’s BLACKkKLANSMAN on 6, with 5 nominations for the 1960s race tale Green Book and the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, including a Best Actor nod for Egyptian-American Rami Malek, for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury.

Rami Malek will be hoping to repeat his Golden Globe success

Malek won the Golden Globe in the drama category but the hot favourite in this contest is Britain’s Christian Bale, whose transformation to become arguably the most powerful Vice President in US history earned him the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy. Also in the running are Green Book’s Viggo Mortensen, Willem Dafoe for At Eternity’s Gate and Bradley Cooper, who secured nominations as actor and writer of A Star Is Born but missed out in the director contest, which will dent the film’s chances of taking home the coveted Best Picture prize.

There’s also no directing nomination for Green Book’s Peter Farrelly, days after he apologised for puerile games on the set of There’s Something About Mary, in which he exposed himself to women in the crew.

Adam Driver and John David Washington as Colorado Springs police officers in Spike Lee’s BLACKkKLANSMAN.

There are also no women in this line-up, which includes Gravity’s Alfonso Cuaron for his semi-autobiographical Roma, The Favourite’s Yorgos Lanthimos, veteran Spike Lee earning his first directing nomination for BLACKkKLANSMAN, Anchorman director Adam McKay getting serious with Vice and, perhaps benefitting from the omissions, Pawel Pawlikowski for his Polish-language tale of ill-starred lovers separated by the Iron Curtain, Cold War, which alongside Roma, the Cannes winner Shoplifters will make the Foreign Language category one of the hotly contested for years.

Olivia Colman has one of The Favourite’s 10 nominations

Another tight contest will be for Best Actress, as Peep Show’s Olivia Colman’s turn as Queen Anne in The Favourite will see her challenging the (lower case) favourite, Glenn Close for The Wife. As in the men’s competition, both of them won Golden Globes – the former for comedy and the latter in the drama category, which is generally preferred by Oscar voters. Another strong contender will be A Star Is Born’s Lady Gaga, although that film has lost a bit of steam over the course of the Awards Season, and voters might be content to honour the singer-turned-actress simply for her song Shallow. Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio is also in the running, alongside Melissa McCarthy who, like Colman, has made the journey from comedian to respected thespian in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Her co-star, veteran British star Richard E Grant has expressed his surprise and delight at his first Oscar nomination. His fellow supporting actor nominees are the Golden Globe winner, Green Book’s Mahershala Ali, Sam Elliott collecting his first Oscar nod for A Star Is Born, BLACKkKLANSMAN’s Adam Driver and Three Billboard’s Sam Rockwell, following last year’s win in the same category with recognition for his portrayal of George W Bush in Vice.

Supporting actress will be an interesting category, with both of Colman’s The Favourite co-stars Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone up against each other, with Roma’s Marina de Tavira also in the running. Playing Dick Cheney’s wife in Vice has earned Amy Adams her 6th Oscar nomination but the hot money has to be on the Golden Globe winner Regina King, for If Beale Street Could Talk.

With five ethnic minority actors recognised, only one directing nominee being a white American and three of the most nominated films being female-led stories, the Academy will be relieved that this year’s nominees shouldn’t cause it too much controversy, although they might have liked a female director on the shortlist.

Bradley Cooper and Peter Farrelly might be feeling a little hard-done- by for being overlooked in the directing contest, although they’re both nominated in other categories. Emily Blunt might also feel a little rejected, with her acclaimed performances in Mary Poppins Returns and A Quiet Place failing to impress Academy voters enough.

After weeks of waiting for the nominees, the campaigning steps up a gear for another month until the winners are announced on 24th February, at a ceremony still without a host, from the following full list of nominees:

Best picture
■ BlacKkKlansman
■ Black Panther
■ Bohemian Rhapsody
■ The Favourite
■ Green Book
■ Roma
■ A Star Is Born
■ Vice

Best actor
■ Christian Bale – Vice
■ Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born
■ Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate
■ Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody
■ Viggo Mortensen – Green Book

Best actress
■ Yalitza Aparicio – Roma
■ Glenn Close – The Wife
■ Olivia Colman – The Favourite
■ Lady Gaga – A Star Is Born
■ Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best supporting actor
■ Mahershala Ali – Green Book
■ Adam Driver – BlacKkKlansman
■ Sam Elliott – A Star Is Born
■ Richard E Grant – Can You Ever Forgive Me?
■ Sam Rockwell – Vice

Best supporting actress
■ Amy Adams – Vice
■ Marina de Tavira – Roma
■ Regina King – If Beale Street Could Talk
■ Emma Stone – The Favourite
■ Rachel Weisz – The Favourite

Best director
■ Alfonso Cuaron – Roma
■ Yorgos Lanthimos – The Favourite
■ Spike Lee – BlacKkKlansman
■ Adam McKay – Vice
■ Pawel Pawlikowski – Cold War

Best adapted screenplay
■ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
■ BlacKkKlansman
■ Can You Ever Forgive Me?
■ If Beale Street Could Talk
■ A Star Is Born

Best original screenplay
■ The Favourite
■ First Reformed
■ Green Book
■ Roma
■ Vice

Best foreign language film
■ Capernaum – Lebanon
■ Cold War – Poland
■ Never Look Away – Germany
■ Roma – Mexico
■ Shoplifters – Japan

Best original song
■ All The Stars – Black Panther
■ I’ll Fight – RGB
■ The Place Where Lost Things Go – Mary Poppins Returns
■ Shallow – A Star Is Born
■ When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Best original score
■ BlacKkKlansman – Terence Blanchard
■ Black Panther – Ludwig Goransson
■ If Beale Street Could Talk – Nicholas Britell
■ Isle of Dogs – Alexandre Desplat
■ Mary Poppins Returns – Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman

Best animated feature
■ Incredibles 2
■ Isle of Dogs
■ Mirai
■ Ralph Breaks the Internet
■ Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Best documentary feature
■ Free Solo
■ Hale County This Morning, This Evening
■ Minding the Gap
■ Of Fathers and Sons
■ RBG

Best cinematography
■ Cold War
■ The Favourite
■ Never Look Away
■ Roma
■ A Star Is Born

Best costume design
■ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – Mary Zophres
■ Black Panther – Ruth E Carter
■ The Favourite – Sandy Powell
■ Mary Poppins Returns – Sandy Powell
■ Mary Queen of Scots – Alexandra Byrne

Best make-up and hairstyling
■ Border
■ Mary Queen of Scots
■ Vice

Best production design
■ Black Panther
■ The Favourite
■ First Man
■ Mary Poppins Returns
■ Roma

Best visual effects
■ Avengers: Infinity War
■ Christopher Robin
■ First Man
■ Ready Player One
■ Solo: A Star Wars Story

Best film editing
■ BlacKkKlansman
■ Bohemian Rhapsody
■ The Favourite
■ Green Book
■ Vice

Best sound editing
■ Black Panther
■ Bohemian Rhapsody
■ First Man
■ A Quiet Place
■ Roma

Best sound mixing
■ Black Panther
■ Bohemian Rhapsody
■ First Man
■ Roma
■ A Star Is Born

Best animated short
■ Animal Behaviour
■ Bao
■ Late Afternoon
■ One Small Step
■ Weekends

Best live action short
■ Detainment
■ Fauve
■ Marguerite
■ Mother
■ Skin

Best documentary short
■ Black Sheep
■ End Game
■ Lifeboat
■ A Night at the Garden
■ Period. End of Sentence.