Nomination: Best Original Song

Will Ferrell is Icelandic aspiring musician Lars and Rachel McAdams is childhood friend Sigrit. Together, they are the band of the title. In this sweet, silly and occasionally raunchy parody of the contest already famed for its campiness, Lars and Rachel aspire to reality show greatness.

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Nomination: Best Animated Short Film

This 12-minute dramatisation of a tragic incident and the emotional toll it takes on a married couple is a heart-breaking commentary on what it means to be a parent in a place where sudden, unexpected violence can visit anyone, no matter how young.

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Nominations: Best Animated Feature, Original Score, Sound

In this Pixar feature, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) is a music teacher who dreams of playing jazz professionally, but a freak accident takes him to the Great Beyond, a plane of existence where he is forced to confront what his dreams mean to him.

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Nomination: Best Animated Short Film

This Pixar short work features retro-style, “flat” graphics in a charming story about a rabbit who believes that only she can design and construct her dream home.

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Nomination: Best Animated Feature

This stop-motion work of animation from Aardman Animations, makers of the Wallace and Gromit films, features the troublemaking sheep of the title in an interstellar adventure after he and a lost extraterrestrial cross paths.

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Nominations: Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling, Achievement in Costume Design

In this adaptation of the 1815 novel of the same name by Jane Austen, Anya Taylor-Joy plays the title character, a “handsome, clever, and rich” young woman, to quote Austen. This comedy of social class offers standout performances by Taylor-Joy, Miranda Hart, Johnny Flynn and Bill Nighy.

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Nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor (Leslie Odom Jr), Original Song

The film, adapted from a play of the same name, imagines a 1964 meeting between leading figures of the American black community. They are activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), boxer Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree), American football player Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and singer Sam Cooke (Odom). Actress Regina King (the 2019 HBO series Watchmen) makes her feature directing debut in this work.

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Nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress (Maria Bakalova)

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen returns as the Kazakh journalist with a knack for revealing the extremes in American culture. In a series of set-ups involving unwitting participants, with supposed daughter Tutar (Bakalova) as an accomplice, Cohen snares notables such as former vice-president Mike Pence and attorney and politician Rudy Guiliani in awkward situations.

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Nomination: Best Animated Feature

Robyn (voiced by Honor Kneafsey) and Mebh (Eva Whittaker) are two girls in 17th century Ireland on opposite sides: Robyn is English and part of a plan to rid the forest of wolves while Mebh is Irish and is linked by blood and magic to the wolf pack. This is co-director Tomm Moore’s third work in a trilogy inspired by the folk tales of his native Ireland.

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Nomination: Best Sound

Tom Hanks stars in, and adapted the screenplay from a 1955 C.S. Forester novel for, this naval warfare movie. It is set during the period of World War II when Allied flotillas supplying Britain had to run a gauntlet of German submarines prowling the Atlantic. Hanks plays the commander of an American destroyer with the job of protecting cargo ships making the harrowing crossing.

Watch on Apple TV+ 

This article first appeared in The Straits Times