From the moment the Best Picture winner was announced at the 97th Academy Awards, fans and pundits alike began speculating about what would be nominated at the 98th Academy Awards. This morning at 5:30 a.m. PT, Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman finally announced the names of the films the industry has been stressing over for the past year. Among the biggest headlines, Sinners went on to break the record for the most nominations by a single film in Oscar history.

Yes, the Academy added a new category this year with Best Casting, and Sinners benefited from that addition — but even accounting for that, it shattered the previous record by two nominations, earning a staggering 16 nominations overall. How that doesn’t make it the frontrunner for Best Picture is beyond me. I’ll be hoping against hope that it ultimately comes to fruition, though One Battle After Another wasn’t far behind, landing an impressive 13 nominations.

Completely absent from the announcements were films like Jay Kelly and No Other Choice, which pundits had already begun dropping from their predictions after those titles underperformed at earlier precursor ceremonies. The most glaring omission, however, was Wicked: For Good. Despite widespread expectations that it would land at least a few nominations, it walked away with zero. Perhaps the Academy wasn’t enamored with the film, or maybe voters felt that since the first and second installments were shot back-to-back — and the first film was already honored — there was no need to reward it again. Regardless, it will go down as one of the more shocking snubs in recent Oscar memory.

Hamnet missed in a few key categories, including Best Supporting Actor for Paul Mescal and Best Cinematography, where many expected it to show up, but it still managed to secure eight nominations overall — the same total as Marty Supreme.

Another notable underperformer was It Was Just an Accident, last year’s Cannes Film Festival winner. Many assumed that Jafar Panahi’s activism, particularly in response to Iran’s punishment for his filmmaking, would propel him into Best Picture and Best Director. Instead, the film was limited to nominations for Original Screenplay and International Feature. That Best Picture omission was the only miss I had in that category. I initially suspected that the overwhelming support for The Secret Agent at the Golden Globes was influenced by the Globes’ sizable Brazilian voting bloc (roughly 10 percent of the body), but that theory was proven wrong when it earned a Best Picture nomination here in place of Accident.

There were three categories in which I correctly predicted all five nominees: Best Supporting Actor, Best Animated Feature, and Best Adapted Screenplay. In thirteen categories, I missed just one nominee. My weakest showing was Best Animated Short Film, where I only managed to predict a single entry correctly.

Overall, I’m excited to see how the rest of the Oscar season unfolds. I’m hoping this ends up being one of those years where the presumed frontrunner stumbles at the finish line — like the 83rd Oscars, when The Social Network had all the momentum only for The King’s Speech to win; the 86th, when Gravity dominated the season before 12 Years a Slave took Best Picture; or, more recently, when La La Land was famously overtaken by Moonlight. If history repeats itself, One Battle After Another could go on to win Best Picture for Paul Thomas Anderson (though I’d still love to see Ryan Coogler take it), while Sinners walks away with the night’s biggest prize in the end. We’ll have to wait until Sunday, March 15th, when Conan O’Brien returns to host the 98th Academy Awards.

TOTAL: