The nominations for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards have been announced. Here's Best Picture:
Best Picture
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Bas**rds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air
Did anyone else see The Blind Side coming? Many critics and analysts were hoping that this change from 5 to 10 nominees would yield more independent, foreign, and prestige product in the top category, but as I predicted, the widened Best Picture field went more mainstream. So what were the big shockers?
Obviously, The Blind Side in Best Picture came as a shock to all. I still haven't seen it, but I want to (after all, my favorite football team is Ole Miss and it's about an Ole Miss football player). Really, I think The Blind Side's presence in Best Picture as opposed to say Julie & Julia just solidifies the fact that Sandra Bullock is gonna bring home the Oscar for Best Actress as opposed to Meryl Streep.
A few other surprises came in the exclusion of Clint Eastwood's well-received Invictus in the top category, even though Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon both got nods in the acting categories, Damon bumping Alfred Molina out of contention altogether in Supporting Actor for An Education. Thankfully, Nine missed out on the big nomination, but Penelope Cruz still sneaked into Supporting Actress as I predicted, and so did Maggie Gylenhaal for Crazy Heart, which I'm not sure anyone saw coming.
I am extremely saddened that (500) Days of Summer missed both Best Picture, and a deserved Best Original Screenplay nod, but Up got in where (500) Days didn't, and James Cameron also got the shaft when it came to screenplay, very interesting. So does Up have more of a play for Best Picture than we think?
While I was hoping for Star Trek for Best Picture, I knew it was a long shot purely because it's Star Trek. I mean the Academy has never wanted to cater towards fanboys, as is evidenced by the fact that no other Star Wars film was ever nominated aside from the original, no Harry Potter film has ever gotten the nom, nor did strong fanboy fare like Spider-man 2, Batman Begins, or more deservedly The Dark Knight (I still despise The Reader). Though, fanboys can rejoice cause District 9 got in, I was expecting a strong showing for that film, but I was really pulling for director Neil Blomkamp in the directing category, alas the Academy played it safe and went with Lee Daniels for Precious.
Though the big battle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker for the top two prizes, Director and Picture, just got a lot more heated. Both films rounded out the nominations with 9 nominations each, The Hurt Locker surprisingly jumping into Best Original Score as opposed to The Informant!, which still doesn't matter since Michael Giacchino will deservedly win for Up.
While Star Trek missed out on the top nomination, it filled out the tech categories better than District 9, with 4 tech nominations to District 9's 3, and I'm a little victorious in the fact that my favorite cinematography of the year, Bruno Delbonnel's beautiful lensing for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, managed to get a nod for Best Cinematography along with the surprise for Foreign Language favorite, The White Ribbon. As for Best Original Song, Nine and The Princess and the Frog dominated with Crazy Heart at their side, but Paris 36 getting it's song in there as well, bold nominating Academy, I love it, rather than going with Leona Lewis's song from Avatar.
For the most part both the Foreign Language and Animated categories panned out as expected, but I was shocked to see The Secret of the Kells get in for Animated and not Hayao Miyazaki's latest masterpiece, Ponyo. Though I'm extremely glad something like Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs didn't get nominated, and hooray for Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline, both proving a ressurgence in stop motion animation.
So at the end of the day, a fair few surprises, The Blind Side probably being the biggest, blindsiding everyone this morning. I'm really bad, aren't I? While all of the talk is on The Hurt Locker and Avatar, it is easy for something like Precious, Inglourious Bas**rds, or Up in the Air, which all three got nominated for Screenplay, Actor or Actress, Director, and Picture to possibly see one of them steal Oscar glory from the two frontrunners at the moment. Anything can happen in a month, so tune in next Tuesday as I look into my predictions for Oscar night in more detail. Till then.
I thought everything about the noms were fairly predictable except for Blind Side and District 9 being in the best picture category. Once again I think the academy is being a bit rating conscious. While "the Blind Side" truly is a heart warming film and Sandra Bullock is great in it, most reviewers including myself didn't really think it to be an oscar film. The story is a predictable Hollywood-ized true life story but acted extremely well. As for "District 9," a movie I saw the same day as "the Hurt Locker" I must say they aren't even in the same ball park. I thought the main character's acting was very inconsistent with itself and at more than one point I found his actions in the plot to be extremely annoying. While I appreciated the story's message and its originality, which was a big high point, again, it's a good film but in a year with so many incredible movies, it's not an oscar film. For me, an oscar movie has to do everything really well and it can't slack on one or two things. I'd much rather have seen Star Trek nominated instead or an obscure foreign film like the german, "Das Weisse Band" (the white ribbon).
ReplyDeleteOh, on a side note, I think Das Weisse Band is nominated in best Foreign film. My bad.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree on "District 9". It wasn't my favorite film of the year, in fact, if I had my way "Star Trek" would be above both that and "Avatar". I really loved the love for "Up", and I've still gotta find me a copy of "The Hurt Locker". According to amazon it was released two weeks ago, and every Tuesday I go to all the stores around my house and nothing, but now maybe since it's gotten so many Oscar noms it might be in stock at places like Target and Wal Mart.
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