I had a feeling that this is going to be La La Land's year at the 89th Academy Awards to be held next month, and all doubt was erased on Tuesday night (Singapore time) when the musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling grabbed 14 Academy Award nominations, tying with Titanic (1997) and All About Eve (1950) for a film with the most nods.

As expected, La La Land scores in the top Best categories, including Picture, Actress (Emma Stone), Directing (Damien Chazelle) and Original Screenplay. It also scoops up nods in Original Song, as well as Costume Design, Cinematography and other technical categories.

To my dismay, Irish indie production Sing Street, its run-time bursting with hook-filled pop, has failed to land a single tune in the Original Song list. Indeed, the movie does not make a single dent on the list, proving the power of marketing muscle in Hollywood.

Why is La La Land so dominant this year? One reason is that it is not threatened in the technical categories by a blockbuster with artistic merit.

These are films such as last year's Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian and The Revenant, which had grabbed nominations in Cinematography, Sound Editing and the like, crowding out other works.

The closest thing this year to a movie with action and uplifting drama is the war biopic, Hacksaw Ridge (six nominations, including Best Picture), and the western crime thriller, Hell Or High Water (four nominations, including Best Picture).

But both were smaller-sized productions, with correspondingly smaller audiences.

Hacksaw Ridge's images of battlefield gore do not seem to have turned off the Academy's voters.

They have given the Directing nod to Mel Gibson, officially ending his exile from Tinseltown, a freeze-out that followed his alleged girlfriend abuse and racist meltdowns that made headlines.

Hacksaw is a fine film, but it bludgeons the viewer over the head with war violence.

Lion, the adoption drama starring Dev Patel from highly favoured Australian helmer Garth Davis, is a better film, but it has been knocked out by Gibson's inclusion.

I like the science-fiction drama Arrival and am happy it gets eight nods, but I am surprised to see its star Amy Adams not included on the Best Actress list.

A dark horse, in the form of one of Hollywood's most respected actresses, has taken her spot.

Meryl Streep, she of the Golden Globes speech that made President Donald Trump shoot an angry tweet - maybe her speech had something to do with her last-minute surge?

Or perhaps Streep is there because her movie, the comedy biopic Florence Foster Jenkins, which I really like, is largely left out of the list, managing only two nods (the other is for Costume Design).

Another film I had high hopes for was the bittersweet family drama Captain Fantastic, which, like Florence, came and went early last year, well outside the year-end Oscar campaigning season.

I am pleased to see that its lead actor, Viggo Mortensen, is on the Best Actor list.

His inclusion is a surprise and shuts out men such as Joel Edgerton, whose part in the civil-rights biopic Loving saw him nominated in the Golden Globes Best Actor-Drama category.

• The 89th Academy Awards will be held on Feb 26 (Feb 27, Singapore time). It will air in Singapore on HBO (StarHub TV Channel 601), starting from 8am.

• ST Film Correspondent John Lui will be reporting from the event.