The most welcome left-field choice in this year’s class of Oscar nominees? That’d be veteran actor Delroy Lindo, who scored a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance as Delta Slim in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. Although he’s 73 and has been doing sterling work for decades in everything from Malcolm X to Get Shorty to Da 5 Bloods, this is Lindo’s first-ever nomination, and on one level, this is surprising. But as Abe Beame points out on the site today, Lindo’s nomination is both an “It’s His Time” nod as well as a make-good for years of great performances the Academy ignored. “The Academy,” Beame writes, “rarely, if ever gives an actor an Oscar for their most deserving performance, and that’s especially true if you happened to have been a Black actor in Hollywood over the course of the past century. Al Pacino finally winning for Scent Of A Woman over Denzel Washington in Malcolm X is the most infamous, but the winners that make more sense as comps here are actors like Alan Arkin, Chris Cooper, Morgan Freeman, James Coburn, and Jack Palance. Few would argue these performances were the best of their year, or the best work of these actors’ careers, but they all won, and each of them are remembered fondly. I could point to five other Lindo performances I like better than Delta Slim, more by virtue of how much more Lindo is given to do in those other films than anything else, but I will also be thrilled if he can take home his first trophy in March, even at the expense of Benicio’s second.”
In other Oscar news, Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson’s Sinners soundtrack cut “I Lied to You” will fight it out for the Best Original Song Oscar with Huntr/x’s “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters, a Diane Warren song written for a documentary about Diane Warren, the Bryce Dessner/Nick Cave song that plays over the end credits of Train Dreams, and a song from whatever Viva Verdi! is, all of which leads Corey Atad to conclude that we need to shut down the Best Original Song category until we figure out what’s going on—or maybe do away with it permanently in favor of an Oscar for Best Music Supervision, akin to the Best Casting award the Academy will give out this year for the first time. As it stands, Best Song seems to still exist solely to reward people for trying to win Best Song (and give musicians who don’t act a path to an EGOT.) Last year—because “The show is too long” seems to be the only criticism the Academy seems to worry about when it comes to awards—the Oscar telecast didn’t even feature performances of the Best Song nominees. “The move spoke volumes,” Atad points out. “Why should anyone respect an award for songs nobody wants to hear?”
We’ve been arguing forever—since last year, anyway—that a Best Soundtrack Oscar would allow the Academy to better recognize and honor the way modern movies use music. We are tapping that sign once again—probably to no avail, but in a world where Delroy Lindo might conceivably win an Oscar after going unrecognized for decades, anything is possible.
