Interesting trend in this year’s #Oscars race for Best Picture: more and more comedies are getting top honors/nominations –

Barbie, American Fiction, The Holdevers, Poor Things — that’s FOUR out of 10 nominees!

While the category is still heavy on the dramas (Oppenheimer, Killers of Flower Moon, Maestro, Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives), 4 out of 10 is still a great ratio. This means a few things:

– Audiences want something lighter (the world can be a dark place)

– The quality of comedies have gone up, sometimes even better than serious dramas

– People are finding true meanings about the human conditions in comedies, which are no longer meaningless stuff just for laughs or escapism (the world can be a dark place but we don’t want to just ignore it) – Barbie, American Fiction, The Holdovers and Poor Things all tackle some real-life serious issues and topics

– The acting in comedies is just as good if not better than drama (Emma Stone, Jeffrey Wright, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Ryan Gosling, Sterling Brown, Paul Giamatti, just to name a few — all WORTHY of their Oscar nominations)

Also, more than half the nominated pictures have female-led stories and cast, or strong female leads: Barbie, Poor Things, Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall, and Maestro) and three of them were directed by females (although only one got nominated for Best Director).