The DiCaprio Factor: How Many Consecutive Nods Will He Get?

What's really interesting is if he wins for Flower Moon (not to get too far ahead of ourselves - yeah too late  ) and then how long he might take off before committing to his next project........it's very rare for an actor to almost double any existing Oscar record like that..........  if he pulls it off........ 

I think he's definitely getting nominated for Flower Moon and he obviously has a strong shot this year. I do think it's possible that he'll miss for DLU but I ain't predicting it for now. So yeah, two consecutive nods for him.

You want a guess? Well, I'll take a swing and say Don't Look Up has a muted-positive reception and does not make much of an awards splash - leading us on this board to question whether McKay is an Oscar contender outside of biopics.

I think he’ll get nodded for both Don’t Look Up and Killers of the Flower Moon.

I think he'll get nodded for Flower Moon. Unsure still about DLU. The recent tea from AW is promising, but I can't tell if it's hyperbolic.

Is Phoenix that beloved, though? As much as I love him and consider him the superior actor of his generation, he's still an incredibly eclectic, offbeat, shy individual who doesn't like schmoozing or campaigning. Joker was their out to recognize him for his talent and body of work, but I could easily see him never getting another nomination after this regardless of what he puts out because they gave him his due already. C'mon C'mon would have to be massively well-received for him to get in, even with the Joker afterglow.

Dinklage is well-respected and is coming off an iconic run on television, but will that transition to film work, particularly as the cultural heat from Game of Thrones died extremely quickly. Dinklage could pull a Cranston, but I don't know if I see that much good will for him at this stage.

DiCaprio is the most beloved movie star on the planet and everything he does generates Oscar buzz by virtue of his attachment. Everything he's made in the last ten years with the exception of J. Edgar has gotten recognized by the Academy in some form or fashion, and he's attaching himself to Oscar darlings. For him to miss, there'd have to be a combination of factors: a strong year with passion-driving contenders, as well as for Don't Look Up to underwhelm across the board or get bad notices individually for himself. And even then, guy was in the conversation for J. Edgar and got too damn close to a nomination for that piece of shit. He's revered.

Collins Jr. is one of the biggest cases of trying it I've seen in a long time.

Aren't you predicting Halle Berry?

He might miss for either or both (even with Scorsese he doesn't have 100% track record of being nominated), but I wouldn't bet against him at this point.

1. Yes Phoenix is a respected industry veteran with 4 noms over the last two decades and the fact that he's shy and not a campaigner kind of adds to his charm. He's always only been about "The Work" and that what makes him so respected. Being highly charismatic or an active campaigner can be beneficial but what's proven every other year is that the inverse isn't necessarily true if the work is impressive enough. Campaigning is not a prerequisite.

And I don't think I agree that Joker was just a body of work prize or even mostly that. I think it had more to do with the fact that voters really took to that movie and that the vast majority of viewers across the board loved Phoenix in it. It's the kind of loud, showy larger than life work that's uniformly liked and typically awarded (of a character that already earned a win for Ledger) and he had smooth sailing pretty much through the whole cycle apart from the critics' awards which have been proving to mean less and less. There were lots of factors working in his favor, not just the body of work narrative.

ALSO... Joker put him back on the map in a big way. His last serious Oscar prospects were in 2013 for Her and to a [much] lesser extent 2014 with Inherent Vice. He's going to be top of mind for voters fresh off his win. I'm less confident about him than anyone else in my BA predix but I think a solid case can be made for his chances.

2. Dinklage's opportunities are always going to be hamstrung by his physical appearance. Dwarfism was implicitly woven into all his acclaimed roles and his perfs have been to an extent reckonings with that fact, and people love him for that in addition to him being incredibly charismatic and an emotionally vulnerable performer. He won't have *that* many opportunities to be nominated so there's an urgency to his narrative that doesn't apply to other contenders. And with him being one of the most popular castmembers on GoT and all the good will general viewers have for him as a performer with unique challenges, and with early Cyrano feedback singling out Dinklage for praise, I think he's getting in. All of that may change in the next couple months when the race starts to look a lot clearer (who knows if Bardem makes a splash) but for the moment I'm confident in predicting him.

3. And you guys I know DiCaprio is an awards juggernaut and predicting against him is partly coming from my own bias buuuut that streak has to end sometime. Predicting him to get nominated every single time he's in a thing is a lazy fallback the way predicting against Parasite was a lazy fallback because non-English language films don't win BP ( ). Streaks end. And I think the pieces are in place for DiCaprio's to end this year. In any case, I think his chances at a nom are going to be much stronger for a prestige Scorsese crime drama than for Don't Look Up.

I will agree that if the streak is to end, it'll be with an Adam McKay satire as opposed to a Scorsese period epic, but Don't Look Up feels almost too big to fail. The early notices are rapturous, it has so many awards darlings in it, and Netflix has (seemingly) bottomless pockets. It may not net any wins but I would be utterly gobsmacked if it underperformed with nominations, if only for the fact that so many people involved feel like lazy namecheck options (see also: Streep, Meryl).