Oscar Nominations Are In
Posted by Jason Ihle | 5 Comments
Well the Oscar nominees were announced this week and here in Spain people are interested only because Penélope Cruz made the cut as Best Supporting Actress for Vicky Christina Barcelona.
You can view the full list of nominations here.
First let me talk a bit about my failed predictions made early last week. In the top 8 categories I managed to get a measly 28 of 40 correct going 5/5 only in Best Actor. That’s probably my worst ever. Including all categories (excepting short films, documentaries and foreign) I got 60/89, also probably my worst ever.
Last year I commented that it seemed the Oscar nominations were beginning to reflect a more diverse membership – more foreigners, indie filmmakers and minorities being admitted as members should ultimately mean more diversity in the nominations. This year is a return to Oscar nominations of yore.
Overall it seems not to have been a phenomenal year of films. 2007 was and last year’s nominees reflected that. This year’s nominees leave few real surprises, but I can’t shake the feeling of boredom I have with the films the Academy has chosen. No, I don’t think they’re quite the disaster that some critics think they are. Nor can I agree with others who seem to believe that the Best Picture nominees are outside the Hollywood mainstream.
On the contrary I think the Best Picture nominees are very typical Hollywood fare. Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire may be a half-exception in that it’s vibrant in its use of non-conventional techniques. But at the core is the story of a boy who loves a girl he can’t have and he’ll do anything to get her – including being a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is also a very conventional love story. What’s more, it’s a retread of Forrest Gump. Milk is a standard Hollywood biopic, albeit a very good one. But it doesn’t get extra points in the out-of-the-mainstream department for being about a gay man. Frost/Nixon and The Reader round out the Best Picture category. Both are good films, but neither is particularly inspired or inspiring. I also have some serious moral misgivings about the latter.
For me the biggest upset in Best Picture was the absence of either The Dark Knight or WALL-E. Yes, they’re both typical Hollywood, but WALL-E was truly the best 2008 film I saw and a nomination for Dark Knight would have signaled the recognition of a really great big budget action comic book film.
In the Department of What the Hell Were They Thinking? we have no Best Actress nomination for Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky. Instead we have Angelina Jolie’s (yawn) performance in Changeling. And how Kate Winslet got on the ballot as lead actress for The Reader is confounding. In no way is she the lead of the film. She is not the main character, she does not occupy a majority of the screen time and it most certainly (in my opinion, of course) is not better than her turn in Revolutionary Road.
The only other real complaint I have in the acting categories is Amy Adams for Supporting Actress in Doubt. I actually predicted her nomination before seeing the film and then changed it after because I didn’t see anything spectacular about it. I also would have preferred Leonardo DiCaprio for Revolutionary Road in favor of Brad Pitt in the Best Actor category, but there was no chance of that happening.
Farther down the ballot in the Best Song category, Bruce Springsteen’s title song from The Wrestler inexplicably failed to make the cut (which was only 3 songs instead of the usual 5 because of a new voting system in the category).
Normally I like to round up bits of trivia and fun facts about the nominees, but I can’t seem to cull anything really interesting (save one, see note about Stephen Daldry below) this year:
Meryl Streep has gotten her 15th acting nomination extending her record farther beyond Katharine Hepburn’s 12. All of Kate’s were for lead actress while 3 of Meryl’s have been for supporting performances. She still has a ways to go before catching up to the 4 Oscars won by Miss Hepburn.
Doubt is the first film since Chicago in 2002 to rack up 4 acting nominations.
Stephen Daldry (The Reader) has gotten his third Best Director nomination (after Billy Elliot and The Hours). That’s interesting because he’s only directed 3 feature films. That’s a record (and it took quite a bit of time to determine that). Sorry, Bob Fosse, you were quite close with Cabaret, Lenny and All That Jazz. If it hadn’t been for your first film – Sweet Charity!
9 of the acting nominees are first-timers. Of those who’ve been nominated previously, Robert Downey Jr. has waited the longest for his next nomination. It’s been 16 years since his nomination for Chaplin.
Kathleen Kennedy picks up her sixth nomination for Best Picture with Benjamin Button. If she loses (highly doubtful as her film is the clear frontrunner at this point) she will be tied with Pandro S. Berman, Stanley Kramer and George Stevens as the all time losingest producers.
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January 28th, 2009 @
Another bit of trivia has just come in. The Academy has settled on the nominated producers of The Reader. They have backed off their insistence of no more than 3 producers by allowing 4 names on the ballot. Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack are two of the 4 nominated producers on that film.
Although I’m not about to go researching through nominations archives cross-referenced with IMDb dates of death, I’d bet this is the only time a single category has had 2 posthumous nominations (let alone the fact that it’s 2 posthumous nominations for the same film).
And with Heath Ledger’s nomination that makes it 3 posthumous nominations in one year. Also probably a record. But I’m not going to look into it for certain.
February 1st, 2009 @
Okay, I just saw The Wrestler tonight – so I am still under the effects of what I thought was one of the best films in the ‘08 crop. I haven’t seen all of the films nominated in the Best Picture category – but I’m kind of irked that it was left out. Slumdog was great, of course, but it felt slightly too cheesy in retrospect. I’m pulling for Tomei to get Best Supporting Actress – her performance was incredible (and if they gave an Oscar for hot 44 year olds – she should win that, too). Mickey Rourke was tops, too.
February 1st, 2009 @
I haven’t seen Frozen River, but my bet would be for Anne Hathaway. It’s interesting what is considered ‘acting.” Penlope Cruz is unforgettable in VCB, but she’s got, what?, 5-8 minutes of screen time? Or so it seemed to me. The Vicky character has a harder acting assingment, but it isn’t as flashy a role…
February 2nd, 2009 @
I didn’t think The Wrestler was a great film. It had a few too many screenplay flaws – the biggest being what I felt was a forced and exaggerated scene between The Ram and his daughter after he forgets about their dinner plans one night. I think Evan Rachel Wood was great in that scene, despite its being ham-handedly written. Mickey Rourke was really fantastic. Best Actor is a tight category this year for once. I see Rourke as being a frontrunner at the moment (my predictions will come at a later date).
Marisa Tomei is spectacular. When she won for My Cousin Vinny (and in the ensuing years since) people didn’t shut up about the possibility that it was a fix, a fraud, or that Jack Palance read the wrong name (ridiculous for a number of reasons) and the Academy was too embarrassed to correct the error. She was up against 4 heavyweight actresses (Joan Plowright, Judy Davis, Miranda Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave), but the Academy often rewards riskier or comedic performances in the supporting categories (c.f. Kevin Kline; Whoopi Goldberg; Cuba Gooding; Mira Sorvino). Since that win she’s given an Oscar-nominated performance in In the Bedroom, an Oscar-worthy performance in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and now this. Again, a tough category to predict, but I don’t see Tomei getting it this year.
I mostly agree about Slumdog Millionaire. Right now Benjamin Button is probably slated to win, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Slumdog wins. 10 years ago I was one of the few people who correctly predicted Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan. I never had any doubt I was right. I just didn’t feel like I was going out on a limb making that prediction. The reason was because of how I felt about the film and assumed others had similar reactions. Shakespeare in Love was also quite sentimental, but in what felt to me like a very natural romantic story surrounded by a very intellectual screenplay. Slumdog doesn’t feel like it has quite the same weight.
As for Best Actress, I still haven’t seen Rachel Getting Married. Hathaway’s probably got a good shot at winning. Melissa Leo probably gives the best real honest performance of the 4 I’ve seen, but I don’t see her winning.
February 2nd, 2009 @
@Josh: Anne Hathaway? I hope not. (I didn’t see the film – she’s just someone that kind of annoys me when I see her on the screen – kind of like my reaction to David Schwimmer.) And I agree with you about the Cristina role not being nearly as challenging (admittedly, I’ve never acted so what do I know) as the Vicky character. VCB really wasn’t one of my favorite Woody Allen films… and I thought the Cristina role was overplayed, or overwritten, something.
@Jay: Yeah, I’ve read about the screenplay flaws, but I was so moved by the performances that I’d forgive some of that. I disagree with the scene with Stephanie and Ram after he forgot the dinner was so well done (acting). Evan Rachel Wood really did an incredible job there. I remember the story about Tomei’s Oscar… LOL. Crazy. I saw In the Bedroom, but I still have to see Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (in my queue).