Sinners, Wicked: For Good Advance in Oscars Shortlists

Ryan Coogler's bluesy vampire thriller Sinners, the big screen musical Wicked: For Good and the Netflix phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters are all a step closer to an Oscar nomination. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released shortlists for 12 categories Tuesday, including for best song, score, international and documentary film, cinematography, and this year's new prize, casting, the AP reports.

• Sinners and Wicked: For Good received the most shortlist mentions with eight each, including makeup and hair, sound, visual effects, score, casting, and cinematography. Both have two original songs advancing as well. For Wicked it's Stephen Schwartz's "The Girl in the Bubble" and "No Place Like Home." For Sinners, it's Ludwig Göransson, Miles Caton, and Alice Smith's "Last Time (I Seen the Sun)," and Göransson and Raphael Saadiq's "I Lied to You."

• The KPop Demon Hunters hit "Golden," by EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick, was another shortlisted song alongside other notable artists like: Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for "Train Dreams"; John Mayer, Ed Sheeran and Blake Slatkin for the F1 song "Drive"; Sara Bareilles, Brandi Carlile, and Andrea Gibson for "Salt Then Sour Then Sweet" from Come See Me In the Good Light; and Miley Cyrus, Simon Franglen, Mark Ronson, and Andrew Wyatt for "Dream as One" from Avatar: Fire and Ash. Diane Warren also might be on her way to a 17th nomination with "Dear Me" from Diane Warren: Relentless.
• One of the highest profile shortlist categories is the best international feature, where 15 films were named including Sentimental Value (Norway), Sirat (Spain), No Other Choice (South Korea), The Secret Agent (Brazil), It Was Just an Accident (France), The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia), Sound of Falling (Germany) and The President's Cake (Iraq).
• Notable documentaries among the 15 include My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow, The Perfect Neighbor, The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light, Cover-Up and Mstyslav Chernov's 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a co-production between the AP and PBS Frontline.

• The Oscars' new award for casting shortlisted 10 films that will vie for the five nomination slots: Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, Sirat, Weapons, and Wicked: For Good. Notably, Jay Kelly and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery did not make the list.
• For the most part, shortlists are determined by members in their respective categories, though the specifics vary from branch to branch: Some have committees, some have minimum viewing requirements.
• As most of the shortlists are in below-the-line categories celebrating crafts like sound and visual effects, there are also films that aren't necessarily the most obvious of Oscar contenders like The Alto Knights, shortlisted in hair and makeup, as well as the widely panned Tron: Ares and The Electric State, both shortlisted for visual effects. Tron: Ares also made the lists for score and song with Nine Inch Nails' "As Alive As You Need Me To Be."
• The lists will narrow to five when final nominations are announced on Jan. 22. The 98th Oscars, hosted by Conan O'Brien, will air live on ABC on March 15.