Well, the nominations are in. I was only 75% correct in my predictions, and I’ll hopefully do better than that prognosticating the winners. My biggest personal failure was not mentioning Javier Bardem in the Best Actor mix. I’ve heard great things about the performance, but fairly mixed reviews of Biutiful led me to believe that it would be hard for him to get over the usual foreign film bias.
As always, there was controversy. The biggest surprise for me was seeing The King’s Speech come home with 12 nominations. It was very competently done if not a bit bland, and nobody seemed to really dislike it… but Best Editing? Over Inception? Really? Ditto Cinematography over 127 Hours and wait, Sound Mixing? It just goes to show how far an “Oscar Movie” can go, and it has now solidly positioned itself as the chief contender to, if not the favorite over, The Social Network for Best Picture. This race is far from over, folks.
So, for the snubs. I haven’t seen Bardem’s performance yet, but I do know that while good, Bridges didn’t deserve to get in ahead of the criminally under-appreciated Ryan Gosling or Duvall’s amazing turn. Much of the negative buzz will be focused on Christopher Nolan getting locked out of Best Director, again. I saw the logic in 2008, but now I’m wondering if the Academy just doesn’t like him.
It's probably the hair
The Way Back knocked out the frontrunner in makeup, Alice in Wonderland, which is only notable in that apparently enough voters saw Weir’s latest, yet that was the only nomination it got. Likewise, The Town had to be content with Jeremy Renner’s supporting acting nomination, just like Gone Baby Gone had to be with Amy Ryan’s. Shutter Island was ignored altogether, but that’s what happens when you release your film in February.
Another big surprise, although it’s hard to call it a snub without having seen it, is the documentary frontrunner, Waiting for Superman. What positively was a snub was the best doc I saw this year, The Pat Tillman Story. Maybe the Lands (Gas and Waste) are better, but I doubt it.
The last and most obvious snub was in special effects. Somehow, Clint Eastwood’s tragically mediocre Hereafter, with its five minute CGI tsunami, somehow beat out both Tron:Legacy and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Now I know the Academy is fully of geriatrics... *ahem*thekingsspeech12nominations*ahem* ...but this is the kind of prank you’d only see at a nursing home, probably involving some combination of denture paste and Metamucil.
Gotcha again, viewing public!
This should be a good show, especially now that Academy voters throw a cane into the works with The King’s Speech. What at first looked like a landslide for The Social Network, with Inception cleaning up the tech awards, could now prove to be anything but. I can’t say that I’m happy how things turned out, but it undeniably has breathed some excitement back into the race. Check back for Oscar winner predictions as the show gets closer.
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