Oscar reaction
by Jackrabbit Slim
A few thoughts on this morning's nominations...
Obviously the biggest news is that Dreamgirls, despite leading the pack with 8 noms, got shut out of Picture, Director and Screenplay. This will reverberate throughout the Oscar-blogging world, and certainly will get some publicists fired. I would hope this teaches David Poland a lesson.
Cinematography, for the first time since 1967, when there were two awards given (for B&W and color) does not have a best picture nominee in its midst.
Judi Dench now has six nominations, all coming past the age of sixty.
Kevin O'Connell, nominated for Sound Editing for Apocalypto, now has 19 nominations. He has never won.
Thomas Newman, composer of The Good German, now has ten nominations, he has never won.
Dreamgirls is the second film to get three song nominations, the first was Lion King.
All five films in the Original Screenplay category are written by first-time nominees.
Lots of categories are wide open, including picture. I'll post my predictions and thoughts here along the way.
Obviously the biggest news is that Dreamgirls, despite leading the pack with 8 noms, got shut out of Picture, Director and Screenplay. This will reverberate throughout the Oscar-blogging world, and certainly will get some publicists fired. I would hope this teaches David Poland a lesson.
Cinematography, for the first time since 1967, when there were two awards given (for B&W and color) does not have a best picture nominee in its midst.
Judi Dench now has six nominations, all coming past the age of sixty.
Kevin O'Connell, nominated for Sound Editing for Apocalypto, now has 19 nominations. He has never won.
Thomas Newman, composer of The Good German, now has ten nominations, he has never won.
Dreamgirls is the second film to get three song nominations, the first was Lion King.
All five films in the Original Screenplay category are written by first-time nominees.
Lots of categories are wide open, including picture. I'll post my predictions and thoughts here along the way.
|Link|9:31 AM
11 Comments:
Correction: Beauty and the Beast also had 3 song nominations
I suppose I'm mostly pleased. Very happy to see Del Toro get a screenplay nom; richly deserved. Also, very happy to see Greengrass get a directing nom. And Dreamgirls getting shut ot of Picture is good news.
The only ones I have left to see (that I'm likely to get a chance to see) are Letters from Iwo Jima, Venus, Days of Glory (Indigenes), and The Lives of Others. The last three haven't been released here yet.
The only ones I missed are Deliver Us from Evil, Water, and if I really want to be thorough, Click, which got a makeup nom, and The Black Dahlia, which I suppose I should have seen.
There are a couple others that haven't been released here, and may or may not show up. Iraq in Fragments has been released in the US, but a Dallas release seems doubtful. After the Wedding hasn't gotten a US release at all, and will be released in March by IFC Films. It may or may not show. Nick reviewed it back in November.
I have yet to see Letters, Blood Diamond (I suppose I'll have to catch it now), Venus, Half Nelson (got it in my Netflix queue), Monster House (ditto), Happy Feet, Click (I'll pass), Good Shepherd, Good German, and Curse of the Golden Flower. The only foreign nominee I've seen is Pan's Labyrinth, the only doc Inconvenient Truth.
Here's a few more nuggets:
Kate Winslet is the youngest actor to get to five nominations, at 31. She broke Olivia DeHavilland's record.
The song from Inconvenient Truth is the first to come from a Documentary since "More," from Mondo Cane, in 1963.
Meryl Streep breaks her own record for acting nominations, now has 14.
Peter O'Toole joins Paul Newman and Henry Fonda at receiving an acting nomination after getting a life-time achievement award (and Newman and Fonda both won).
Man, was I wrong about After the Wedding. Strange this is, most of the Nordic Best Foreign Language as far as I can recall for the last twenty-thirty years, except for maybe some Bergman and a few Danish, have all been middling and still gotten nominated. Amazing. Someone should do research about that.
Still, I have guessing the inclusion of Days of Glory to almost make up for it.
Thomas Newman, composer of The Good German, now has ten nominations, he has never won.
That's funny, cause the score for The Good German (an otherwise lame Casablanca/Third Man-rip off) was the only thing about the film that made me sit up and take notice.
Kevin O'Connell, nominated for Sound Editing for Apocalypto, now has 19 nominations. He has never won.
Seriously, isn't the category of having gotten nominated more times than you can count, but never having won, in actuality even a bit more elite than actually having won? That's a pretty select number of people that have that to say. They can go around town saying "no, I don't have an Oscar, but everyone says I should have had one loooooong ago." I think if Scorsese won the Oscar, he'd lose that, and become a worse director for it.
Meryl Streep breaks her own record for acting nominations, now has 14.
And she'll keep on doing 'til she's eighty.
I have yet to see
Pan's Labyrinth, Days of Glory, Letters from Iwo Jima, Children of Men, Little Children, Last King of Scotland, Notes On A Scandal, Borat, Blood Diamond, Inconvenient Truth, Venus, Curse of the Golden Flower, Water, Apocalypto, and probably some more (in no specific order of must-see-itude).
Strange thing is that all Best Picture nominees look worthy.
Happy to see Little Miss Sunshine nominated. It's been getting some flogging, and I don't think it'll win, but it was a very good film and it deserves the recognition it's getting.
Ryan Gosling is nice to see there. Also well-deserved.
And when I saw Eddie Murphy's nomination; anyone see Bowfinger? His ego-star character says that the only thing a star needs to do get an Oscar is play a slave or retarded, and that he'd therefore definitely have it in the bag if he played a retarded slave. Which is pretty much true. All he did now was sing, look happy, look sad and hint at drug addiction. And take a pay cut.
I love Bowfinger.
Mindhead.
Laker Girls.
Pony tails.
Kit Ramsey.
Running across freeways....
I don't think I noticed the score for any of the nominees. The unquestioned score of the year for me was for The Fountain, so I'm sad that it didn't get nominated. Also, from that film, I'd say it was the best of the year for special effects, art direction, and cinematography.
Also, I haven't seen Happy Feet. Tried, but left during the trailers because it was clear that no one in the theater, to paraphrase Bender, was going to shut their noiseholes.
Upon reflection, it seems that the nominations are unusually strong this year, in the sense that there are only a few that don't really seem worthy. I highly question Dicaprio's nom for Blood Diamond, Eddie Murphy's nom for Dreamgirls, and the cinematography nom for The Illusionist, but that's about it.
As previously stated, I liked the score of Notes on a Scandal, and loved the photography in The Illusionist (I believe Chris rightly pointed out how it seemed to use only natural light that existed in 1900, and thus was darker than many pictures, but that added to its loveliness).
(I believe Chris rightly pointed out how it seemed to use only natural light that existed in 1900, and thus was darker than many pictures, but that added to its loveliness).
Then, by George! the BBC school of filmmaking by rights deserves a belated commendation!
I also haven't seen Poseidon, but I think Nick has scared me away. I might give it a rent for laughs, though.
Understand where you're coming from regarding The Illusionist, but it still seemed underlit and muddy, even by "natural lighting" standards. The problem with natural lighting is that it isn't as bright on film as it is in real life, and it didn't look to me like the filmmakers actually realized this.
I guess what I'm saying is that it looked like an experiment gone wrong.
I saw The Illusionist at home and the lighting was great. Perhaps they brightened it for DVD?
Jackrabbit, save yourself from Poseidon! Only rent it for laughs with many people around. I don't think I've laughed my way through a "serious" movie like this one in a long time.....
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