I started predicting the Oscars in 2004, so I never knew why it was that back in 2002, the Makeup category only had "Frida" and "The Time Machine" nominated... can someone explain to me what happened there?

I don't know if it's true but they're some rumors that The Hours was the third nominated film but it was disqualified for using some digital make-up corrections that under the academy rules for make-up are forbidden.

The most likely reason is the small number of qualifying films.

The Academy has rules for the craft categories - I am not sure of the exact numbers, but it is something like this:

Under 5 submissions - no nominations; Board of Governors votes on honorary award if deserved

5-7 - 2 nominees
7-12 - 3 nominees

And so on.

That is to make sure that underserving nominees don't make it in only because there aren't more contenders.

Had The Hours been eliminated before announcement of the nominees, and there were enough submissions to qualify for three, then the next highest vote getter would have gotten in. That would even have been the case if the nominations had been made, but ballots not yet printed.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

I remember hearing that Men in Black 2 and LORD OF THE RINGS 2 were on the shortlist with Time Machine and Frida, but that they ran into trouble in two places... pure make-up and original make-up. Onc this bake-off was set up, MIB2 and LOTR2 were disqualified because their make-up eFX were assisted by CGI and that they were too similar to the achievements of their predecessors which had both already picked up Oscars. I remember hearing that Nutty Professor 2 had the same wall.

Whenever frontrunners get ousted due to technicalities (and not necessarily wrongly), "interesting" nominees wind up in contention. While The TIME MACHINE was an atrocious flop releaed in January, at the least Jeremy Irons had a cool make-up job. I still don't know what the Oscar-calibre make-up was in FRIDA, but it was a well-regarded picture, so it won.