"______ got robbed!"
"How could ______ get nominated and ______ not?"
"Meryl Streep again?!?!"
This year, there's a lot of disbelief that borderlines on aggravation, and I think the argument is ridiculous. For only the second time in 20 years, there is an almost-complete absence of non-Caucasian nominees in the major categories. The actors, actresses, screenwriters and even the cinematographers are all white, and most of them are also male. Everyone is flexing their Twitter muscles today calling the Academy old and out-of-touch. But let me repeat a sentence fragment from earlier: FOR ONLY THE SECOND TIME IN 20 YEARS. That means 2 out of 20. Is this a pattern? Is this an epidemic? No, for Christ's sake, it's just the way it fell this year. Diversity is not an Academy requirement. No one cares if you're white, black, blue, green or orange. No one cares what genitalia you're sporting. Apparently everyone's already forgotten last year's ceremony.
Yeah, all this vitriol that's popped up in response to the nominations has me a bit pissed off, and I'm sure there's going to be people bitching and moaning all the way up to February 22 when the Oscars are handed out, but fuck 'em. Get over it, people. The ball bounces where it's gonna bounce. When this happens 18 years out of 20 instead of 2 years out of 20, THEN you'll have a valid argument.
Enough about that. What ELSE did we learn this morning?
===
Who needs all those other awards anyway?
The Golden Globes. The BAFTAs. The Critics' Choice Awards. The Screen Actors Guild Awards. None of them gave a Best Lead Actor nomination to Bradley Cooper for American Sniper or to Laura Dern for Wild. The Academy, though? Yep, and yep. There has been a lot of praise for Cooper's role as U.S. military sniper Chris Kyle, and there was just as much surprise as every guild released their nominations list and his name wasn't on them. Today, not only did Cooper get the Oscar nomination, but it's actually the third straight year he's received one (Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle). Dern may not even be in Wild for more than 10 minutes, but she makes the most of those minutes and reminds everyone of the talent that earned her a nomination for 1991's Rambling Rose. The odds are probably still against them both actually winning an Oscar though. The only time in history someone took home gold despite not being nominated by the SAGs or the Globes was Marcia Gay Harden for 2000's Pollock.
Eight is enough
For the first time since the AMPAS instituted the nominating system that would allow for between 5-10 Best Picture nominees, we have 8 films that made the cut. In the three prior years of this system, the total was 9. American Sniper (6 total nominations), Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (9 total nominations), Boyhood (6), The Imitation Game (8), The Grand Budapest Hotel (9), Selma (2), The Theory of Everything (4) and Whiplash (5). If one or two more films were to have made the cut, many expected it to be Foxcatcher and/or Nightcrawler, but it was not meant to be.
X marks the spot
Today's Visual Effects nomination for X-Men: Days of Future Past is the first-ever nomination for the seven-film X-Men franchise. Amazingly enough, despite the Transformers movies being fifty shades of lousy, they always seemed to score Oscar nods. Didn't happen this year.
Maybe he should go by "Richard"
Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, in announcing the nominees for Best Cinematography, accidentally called Mr. Turner's
Dick Pope, "Dick Poop". She quickly corrected herself, but needless to
say, "Dick Poop" has been trending on Twitter all day as a result.
Nothing escapes the internet. To the credit of everyone else in the
room then, there wasn't much guffawing heard when she made the gaffe.
The overachievers
I'm not surprised to see nominations for American Sniper or Foxcatcher, and admittedly I know very little about Mr. Turner other than it exists, but all three of those films got a strong boost from the Academy this morning. Sniper received 6 nominations (although director Clint Eastwood wasn't one of them), Foxcatcher survived the mini-controversy of its subject's brother lambasting the film after its release to score 5 nominations, and Turner scooped up 4 nods, which is probably at least 3 more than many expected. However, I never expected one particular film to score as many Oscar nods as it did, and that's The Grand Budapest Hotel. I was just hoping to see it get a Best Picture nomination, and one for Wes Anderson as either director or screenwriter. It wound up getting all three of those, plus SIX more, tying Birdman for the most overall nominations with 9. Comedies usually don't pick up that many nominations, especially when that comedy was in theaters all the way back in March. Kudos, AMPAS.
Everything is not awesome
Without question, the biggest surprise of the morning was the critically-acclaimed and massive box-office smash The Lego Movie not scoring a nomination for Best Animated Feature. I heard jaws hitting the ground all over the planet when the alphabetical list was being read out and we skipped from "H" to "S". I have to admit, my wife and I enjoyed the film, but we weren't nearly as blown away as we expected to be, and apparently the Academy wasn't either. Hell, even the Golden Globes this past Sunday passed over Lego in favor of How to Train Your Dragon 2. My theory? I think the final half-hour slowed down the movie. It turned into a lot of live-action that brought the animated story to a screeching halt. I honestly think that may have hurt the film's Oscar chances. I really can think of no other reason why it wouldn't have been nominated. Lego did get a Best Original Song nod for "Everything is Awesome", but that's it, and it's not even the favorite to win THAT one. I'd said a couple days ago that the Academy thinks differently than the Globes do regarding animated films, referring to Dragon's Globe win likely not to repeat itself at the Oscars because the Oscar would go to Lego. Now it's the odds-on favorite. Lego director Phil Lord took the snub in stride on Twitter, saying it's OK, they built their own Oscar.
Bennett Miller goes 3-for-3, sort of
Miller has directed three major-studio films thus far in his career: 2005's Capote, 2011's Moneyball and 2014's Foxcatcher. The first one got a nod for Picture and Director. The second one, Picture, and now today for the third one, Director. That's a pretty good streak.
Pick your favorite snub
Really, this last section I debated splitting up into multiple parts, but ultimately it all has the same basis of a topic. There were a lot of stunning omissions this year. Nothing's ever a given, obviously, but when the odds play out as often as they do as far as Oscar buzz, you expect things to happen. Case in point, The Lego Movie as stated above. No one saw that omission coming, and I mean NO ONE. But the surprises didn't end there.
"Life Itself", the acclaimed documentary about the late Roger Ebert, didn't make the cut for Documentary Feature. This despite Hollywood's love for Ebert. I mean, this seemed like an absolute set-table of a topic to get a nomination. A guy who loved the movie industry, his life and his last days, lots of promotion and critical acclaim. If nothing else, there would be sentimental votes, right? Nope. Shows what I know. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the AMPAS had a vendetta against its director, Steve James. Back in 1994, the documentary Hoop Dreams was one of the most critically-acclaimed movies/documentaries/anything-at-all-on-the-silver-screen of the year, and there was support for it to even get a nomination for Best Picture. It didn't get nominated for anything.
"Selma" has had a rough awards season. Despite tremendous buzz and raves from critics and audiences alike, it hasn't found itself in many of the hunts. A nomination here and there, but overall falling short. If nothing else, it seemed a shoe-in for director Ava DuVernay to get a nod and become the first African-American woman in history to land a Best Director nomination, as well as David Oyelowo landing a nomination for his portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Both names were absent from the lists this morning. The film got a Best Song nomination, and a Best Picture nomination. That's it. There's no momentum left from last year's 12 Years a Slave Oscars success, it would appear, for another stirring movie about an important period of African-American history to ride. And with just 2 total nominations, it's the least-likely to bring home top honors next month.
Jennifer Aniston may or may not have been serious with all her statements of having no expectations of getting an Oscar nomination for her performance in Cake, but you know she damn sure would have loved to have gotten one. She scored surprise nods with several other guilds including the Globes, so the Oscar buzz was surely there. Instead, Marion Cotillard snuck in and got the nod for Two Days, One Night, a film I know less-than-zero about, alongside the expected names of Felicity Jones, Julianne Moore, Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl's sole nomination) and Reese Witherspoon.
Of course, there are always some long-shot movies that could sneak in a nomination or two. Critics rave, audiences cheer, buzz builds for a particular performance, etc. That didn't help Big Eyes or Rosewater or A Most Violent Year or St. Vincent or Snowpiercer. The total nominations for those respective films were zero, zip, zilch, nil and nada.
What do I think the biggest loser of the year was, however? I'd have to say Interstellar, and it's weird saying that for a film that got 5 Oscar nominations, but I can't NOT say it. This was supposed to be THE film of 2014. We saw trailers for it for one full year before it was even released. Reviews were tepid. Box office, likewise. It just seems like a 3-hour emotional brain-suck, and that was the opinion I formed just from watching the first full trailer when it was released. This was not the year for the big-budget overhyped film to score with the Academy.
===
The 87th Annual Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, February 22 on ABC. It's pretty much a battle of the independent films this year. Pick your favorite films, your favorite performances, your favorite stories and your favorite makeup and hairstyling, and let's start riding the Oscar Season train tonight with the Critics' Choice Awards on A&E. The next 37 days are going to be fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment