AND THE NOMINEES ARE ... WHITE: No, not everything is awesome with this year's Academy Award nominations, which finds Selma nominated for Best Picture but no other major categories (Argo did have adapted screenplay too), The Lego Movie skipped in Best Animated Feature, Steve James again snubbed in documentary (Life Itself), and no Wormtail in Best Actor.
Still, if Boyhood is going to be the favorite in a lot of major categories, there's a limit to how much I can complain. Because that is an amazingly wonderful movie.
Seriously? The Lego Movie was one of the best animated films in years.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Selma was as amazing as some of the critics said, but I thought it was beautifully directed and acted, so I'm disappointed that Ava Duvernay and David Oyelowo didn't get nominated. (Duvernay's nomination would have been a nice historic nod as well, but I believe it was deserved purely on its own merits.)
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen any of the animated picture nominees, so I don't know how much of a snub the non-nomination for The Lego Movie is, but I thought it was wonderful and so creatively animated. (Lego-block ocean waves? So cool!)
I usually try to see all the Best Pic nominees, but I gave up on trying to get/enjoy Wes Anderson movies a while back, so no Grand Budapest Hotel for me. And I'm really not sure I want to see American Sniper.
From what I've heard, the folks behind Selma screwed up their campaign by only sending screeners to Academy voters, and not to precursor awards groups, thus making it harder to build up buzz. Combine that with not being generally available in theatres until the very last minute and no big names above the title, and they boxed themselves in. Still looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Cotillard over Aniston nomination demonstrates that because of the voting structure the Academy uses at nomination time, it's better to be a small, but passionate, group of voters' number one choice than it is to be everyone's 4th or 5th choice.
And EGOT watch? The Lonely Island--Emmy winners, Grammy nominees, and now Oscar nominees.
ReplyDeleteAnother sort-of surprise (to me, at least): no best score nomination for Birdman. I found it the most memorable score of the year, pretty much only drums, if I recall correctly. Maybe it wasn't a large orchestra or a sweeping sound, but it did something different, and I thought it should be recognized.
ReplyDeleteBirdman was (controversially) deemed ineligible for Best Original Score because in addition to the drum stuff, it uses a lot of non-original score pieces, and portions of the drum stuff are adapted from other scores. The music branch has all sorts of very tight rules on that sort of thing--"The Hanging Tree" from Mockingjay was ineligible for song because the lyrics are directly lifted from Collins' book.
ReplyDeleteAh, interesting - thanks, Matt, I didn't know the Birdman score was ruled ineligible.
ReplyDeleteBe outraged that Oyelowo did not get nominated. Be very outraged.
ReplyDeleteI haven't SEEN most of the films (I tend to not be a big fan of historical biopics which makes a lot of the slate not that interesting to me) so I'm not an accurate judge as to what should have been nominated and was snubbed, or isn't worthy, etc. That said, I LOVED Boyhood. LOVED. And before the Toronto Film Festival, when all the pundits started really getting active on their predictions for the season, I tweeted that I was just going to hang back and chant "Boyhood!" the whole time.
ReplyDeleteSo if it takes a lot of the top prizes I'm good.
Mica Levi was also hosed for not being nominated for the best score of the year, for Under The Skin. This is a really, really conservative score slate this year, about as standard as one can get without nominating Hans Zimmer. Oh wait, they did nominate Hans Zimmer.
ReplyDeleteI am dying for Patricia Arquette to win so my CSI: CYBER promos can start saying "Academy Award-winning"...
ReplyDeleteAnd, as I said on FB, Lego movie was ROBBED.
Assuming I get to both Selma and Sniper this weekend, that'll knock off almost all the major category nominees for me (Picture/Director/Acting/Screenplay) save Moore and Cotilliard (not yet released here), Nightcrawler, and Inherent Vice.
ReplyDeleteAnd Grand Budapest Hotel only qualifies as "fun" (IMO) in a very narrowly defined way. It's "fun" in the same way a local restaurant serves "artisanal corn dogs."
ReplyDeleteShame about that because I agree with Sue. Score perfectly suited the film.
ReplyDeleteLook, I love me some Toothless. I have my very own plush Toothless that lives in my bedroom and can roar and purr. And even I think Lego was better than How to Train Your Dragon 2.
ReplyDeleteI think they got "Foxcatcher" just right. The performances were wonderful - Carrell was captivating - but the film as a whole was oddly paced and boring at times. I'm glad it didn't get the Best Picture nod.
ReplyDeleteHey, you've already got Teen Choice Award Winner James Van Der Beek and Emmy Winner Peter MacNicol!
ReplyDeleteFun, in this instance, defined as "melancholy with a touch of whimsy."
ReplyDeleteDo not underestimate The Beek. He's fantastic.
ReplyDeleteI watched Don't Trust The B. I know better than to underestimate the Beek.
ReplyDeleteI didn't watch Dawson's Creek, so I don't have a lot of history with the Beek, but boy howdy did I love him on Don't Trust the B.
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about it, I think the race is likely to come down to Birdman v. Boyhood, with Birdman's partisans arguing that Boyhood is too "simple" and "ordinary" or "just like a collection of home movies" and Boyhood's partisans arguing that Birdman is "pretentious" and "makes no sense." (FWIW, I am firmly #teamboyhood.)
ReplyDeleteAnd they'll still both be behind Under The Skin.
ReplyDeleteConservative as it is, I'm very taken with many of the scores nominated, Johannsson's in particular. And I would like to see the wonderful Desplat finally win, although the more i think about it the more I think he got robbed for Philomena last year.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to get controversial and say that I could get behind the LEGO Movie a lot more emphatically if the kits cross-marketed with the movie were open-purpose buckets, rather than the same rigid "Construct this exact environment" kits that seem to miss entirely the point of the dialogue the movie is meant to create.
ReplyDeleteI'll just say that if Selma comes to your town, go see it. It's not a perfect movie, but when it works, it is phenomenal.
ReplyDelete