Oscars 2024: 10 things we saw in the Academy Awards class photo

This Barbie is having lunch with her fellow Oscar nominees.

The annual Academy Awards luncheon was held Monday in Los Angeles and was attended by 179 of this year’s nominees.

Not all nominees were able to attend. Color Purple star Danielle Brooks, for example, couldn’t stop filming Minecraft in New Zealand.

But there were plenty of other stars, outfits, poses and unusual facial expressions to keep us entertained. Here are 10 highlights:

When we wrote about the class photo in 2017, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling were there as nominees for La La Land.

For anyone with a short memory, La La Land is the movie that won best picture and lost it again four minutes later thanks to an envelope mishap.

This year, Gosling and Stone have returned to the Academy Awards, but for different films: nominated for Barbie and Poor Things, respectively.

Gosling wore a lilac suit, probably intended as a subtle reference to his best picture nominee.

Actor Sterling K Brown and songwriter Diane Warren were together in the back row, an appropriate position given that they are both aware that they are unlikely to win their categories.

Last week, Brown told Graham Norton: “I know I’m not going to win, and I’m totally okay with that. I’ll tell you: (fellow nominee) Robert Downey Jr is going to win. And he’s incredibly deserving, he’s an incredible actor… “I’m happy to be in the room”.

Our hats are off to the This Is Us star for following the awards race so closely and knowing what his odds are in the supporting actor race.

But while Brown is nominated for the first time, Warren has been nominated 15 times for best original song and never won. He probably won’t this year either, with What Was I Made For? by Billie Eilish, the great favorite.

Takashi Yamazaki, a member of the Godzilla Minus One visual effects team, brought a companion to the event: Godzilla himself.

Anyone who knows anything about film history knows that the best performance in any film was that of the dog in this year’s best picture contender, Anatomy of a Fall.

Known in the film as Snoop, the dog is actually a border collie named Messi who flew from France to attend the luncheon, along with trainer Laura Martín Contini.

Messi was extremely popular with actors at the event, including Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper. who was photographed meeting the dog. “Co-op meets Snoop,” read the excellent title.

Unfortunately, Messi did not appear in the class photo, something we cannot understand, since he is the nicest of the good boys. We have submitted a formal complaint to the Academy and we will inform you how it progresses.

This year’s acting nominations are a bit thin on the Brits: the only two are Oppenheimer’s Emily Blunt and Maestro’s Carey Mulligan.

It’s worth saying that Irish stars have had another great year, with Barry Keoghan, Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott nominated for seminal awards including the Golden Globes and Baftas.

However, only Blunt’s Irish co-star, Cillian Murphy, is recognized at the Oscars.

If we were in the Oscars class photo, this is the line we would ask everyone to move and make room in, since the enthusiasm for the awards is phenomenal.

Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese, the directors of Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon respectively, were placed close together in the front row, between two hot acting contenders.

Joining them were Lily Gladstone, a strong best actress nominee for her performance in Scorsese’s film, and The Holdovers star Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who will almost certainly win best supporting actress.

It’s always a pleasure to see Billie Eilish on the red carpet: she constantly steals the show with interesting and innovative looks.

The Academy luncheon was no different, with Eilish turning heads thanks to her casual scarf, yellow jacket and tartan pants that matched her brother Finneas’ outfit.

The couple is nominated in the best original song category for What Was I Made For? – which has already earned them a Grammy and a Golden Globe.

In fact, the award might be the film’s best chance of winning an Oscar that night, and other films like Oppenheimer are likely to dominate several of the top categories.

In the absence of the dog Messi, it’s pretty clear who stole the show in this year’s class photo.

To the right of the image is a man crossing his arms, a notable pose in an image where most people simply look straight ahead and smile.

The guy in question is, in fact, cinematographer Matthew Libatique, nominated for his work on Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro.

Libatique is so proud of his signature pose that he also did it before on the red carpet, something we would do too if we had nails as amazing as his.

It’s been a pleasure to follow Barbie’s Margot Robbie this awards season, wearing outfits that would make her on-screen character proud. She continued the theme in the Oscars class photo.

Although Robbie and director Greta Gerwig missed nominations for best actress and best director respectively, both were still present at the Academy Awards luncheon.

This is because both are nominated in other categories: Robbie as producer, and therefore nominated for best film, and Gerwig in the best adapted screenplay category.

But it takes a herculean effort to make sure everyone is ready for the exact moment the photo is taken. Inevitably, there is always someone who is not.

In this year’s class photo, we noticed that at least two people were blinking at the exact moment the camera was clicked and therefore appeared to be sleeping while standing.

But the most striking mishap came from Anatomy of a Fall’s Arthur Harari, nominated for best original screenplay with his wife Justine Triet, who also directed the film.

Harari was seen laughing while the photo was taken. It’s unclear what made him laugh, but we bet Paul Giamatti had something to do with it.

The best actor front-runner, shown to Harrari’s right, is known for his sense of humor, having delivered a series of comedic and self-deprecating acceptance speeches throughout awards season.

The 2024 Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will take place in Los Angeles on March 10.