question of the day: What do you think about the Oscar nominations?

I realize it’s a crap shoot anyway, but I’m a little miffed that Moon got nothing. Of course, I haven’t seen the lion’s share of the movies listed.

I’m really pleased that The Hurt Locker got nine nominations. (But I wish there’d been some recognition for the supporting actors.)

How many women are among the Best Screenplay nominees? I only recognised one sharing credit for District 9.

Alli, thanks. I went to Rotten Tomatoes for The Blind Side, clicked on Top Critics (58% fresh for the movie itself), and did manage to find one review that said Bullock gave an Oscar-worthy performance (Dallas Morning News). But scanning those reviews makes a mockery of the nomination of this picture.

I’m telling you, there is revisionist history in the making here. There may have been a few who thought it was Oscar-worthy when the flick first came out, but the vast majority didn’t think so until the last month or so. If this movie had grossed $25M before fading, no one would have suggested any awards for anyone. It’s the money overall that is doing it.

Let me hasten to add that I like Sandra Bullock, and if she wins I’ll be happy for her. This view I have has nothing to do with the movie or her performance. I happen to think Streep or Mulligan deserve it, but I know this is more of a popularity contest than anything, and if Bullock can bring in the business, more power to her. I really am delighted for her personally.

My irritation is with hypocrisy and dishonesty. If you pan a movie when it comes out, or yawn it off at the time, but then when it makes $200M you suddenly call it Oscar-worthy, that irritates me. I hate revisionist history. Be honest about why you are changing your tunes. MaryAnn has the honesty to go “WTF?” about the picture being nominated, but that’s because she gave it a middling “wait for DVD” rating when it came out. She’s being consistent, and I like that.

So it has nothing to do with being irritated at Bullock or the movie, and everything to do with being irritated at inconsistent critics who are following the crowd.

Please remember that it isn’t only critics who make the nominations. If it were, both MOON and Sam Rockwell would be nominated. I’m as p****d off as anyone about THE BLIND SIDE nomination. I guess the Oscars just wouldn’t be the same without the traditional inspirational true story of a pro sports millionaire.

To bring up a totally different topic, as a music score lover, I was VERY disappointed that Hans Zimmer scored a nomination for “Sherlock Holmes”. Why, you ask? Isn’t Hans Zimmer a solid, establish composer? Wasn’t the music for “Sherlock Holmes” fun, didn’t it appropriately add to the atmosphere of the movie? Well, yes, and don’t get me wrong, I do like the music to Sherlock Holmes (I even own the album . . .)
The problem here is that this nomination shows just how little the Oscars know (or care) about the music writing process. Hans Zimmer did not write that score. Lome Balfe did. I’m sure most people here haven’t ever heard of Lome Balfe, who is one of Zimmer’s underlings. Zimmer hasn’t written a complete score in years. To nominate Hans Zimmer for “writing” the score to Sherlock Holmes is laughable, and shows a complete misunderstanding of the film music industry. True, Hans Zimmer was the man who was paid of the score,and he did come up with the ideas along which the score was written, but if he wins and gets an award for work he didn’t do (or at least that he didn’t do alone – I mean, even the credits to Sherlock Holmes mention Lome Balfe – no mention of him in the nomination!) then I will be very sad indeed. Here’s hoping Michael Giacchino pulls out a win for his fantastic, innovative “Up” score.

RE BLIND SIDE: I enjoyed this movie much more than I expected, yet surprised to see it nominated as I feel that Ms Bullock’s performance is the true drawing card for this movie. I believe that the increased number of slots for Best Picture this year has a great deal to do with its inclusion and would expect it to score very low w/Academy voters relative to the other nominees come voting time.

I don’t know that I take issue w/any sort of revisionist history here. Only time can tell (even if only a few weeks later), and a great many movies that are considered established classics now were not critical and/or financial successes when they were first released (movies like THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE SEARCHERS, and VERTIGO come to mind). A movie makes money because people want to see it and, frankly, I like it when the audience’s opinion is taken into account at Oscar time. Most of us may not be critics per se (and most of the Academy is indeed not), but we’re not dummies either. High-tech blockbusters aside, when a character-driven picture like THE BLIND SIDE succeeds at the box office, evidently it has touched some sort of nerve w/the moviegoing public and cannot be ignored that easily. THE SOUND OF MUSIC (a movie I adore and for the right reasons) winning Best Picture is a perfect example of this.

Pursuant to this, the Oscars, (as with any other awards), are really about zeitgeist. I’ve always felt that the Academy should term their awards more along the lines of “Picture of the Year”, “Actress of the Year” etc rather than using absolute qualifications like “Best”. The judgement of the actual quality of the movie/performance is unavoidably subjective that the determination of what is the “best” seems futile: way too many variables. It’s harder to argue with the way a movie or performance touches a mass audience in a memorable way that becomes iconic. TITANIC may or may not have been the Best Picture of 1997, but it was truly the Picture of the Year and deserved that Oscar.

One more thing: the truly astonishing Ms Streep is due for another Oscar and soon. It’s been 17 years now since SOPHIE’S CHOICE and countless nominations later (she keeps breaking her own record!). Time to crystallize it again.

Overall, not as bad as I was expecting: I was bracing myself for a populist Oscars, and it is kind of that, but (barring the Blind Side business which funwithHeadlines has already unimprovably articulated) it’s the right kind of popular movies that are being rewarded, smart stuff like District 9 and Inglourious Basterds. And it’s good to see they didn’t forget A Serious Man, either.

Minor niggles: I would like to have seen In the Loop get more love. No Best Supporting nod for Peter Capaldi? Although it might have been hard to find a clip of him that’s suitable for TV… And in one of the greatest years ever for animated films, it would have been nice to give Pete Docter, Wes Anderson or Henry Selick a Best Director nod. Animated films don’t direct themselves, you know!

If Up is the only animated film to garner a Best Picture nomination, isn’t it by default the Best Animated Feature Film? If there a better one, it would have been nominated instead of or alongside Up in the Best Picture category.

@MarkyD: I’d love to see a best voice acting category, and was saying so years ago.

Part of the problem with breaking down movies into genres, though, is that really good movies tend to be a bit of a lot of different things.

It’s cool to see District 9 get nominated for Best Picture, but is there any chance in hell it could actually win?

I also thought it was great to see The Secret of Kells nominated. And I’d love to see Alexandre Desplat win for his work on Fantastic Mr. Fox – great soundtrack!

I was a bit surprised that former Oscar-winner Chris Landreth (Ryan) was overlooked for his new animated short, The Spine. But happy to see Wallace & Gromit on the list again!

What do you think about the Oscar nominations?

Oh? Was that today?

Please remember that it isn’t only critics who make the nominations.

It’s not critics AT ALL who make Oscar nominations. Members of the Academy work in the industry as actors, writers, directors, costume designers, cinematographers, etc. There are no critics among them.

I don’t think there’s any revisionism going on. Most critics groups did not give Bullock an award… and critics have no control whatsoever over who gets an Oscar nomination. I’d venture to guess that most critics are as annoyed by Bullock’s nomination, but also resigned to her winning.

When critics who think Bullock does not deserve to win, but say that she is the front-runner without explaining WHY she is the front-runner, give the reader the impression that she deserves it.

That’s an interesting point. I mean, she clearly is the frontrunner for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with her performance: it’s more to do with sentimentality and the fact that her peers really just like Bullock. (And it’s her peers, not her critics or her fans, who will be voting for her.) Like I said, I think most critics are resigned to this fact. But it doesn’t mean we suddenly think she gave the best performance of the year. (Maybe some critics just blow with the wind. Not most of them, though.)

If Blind Side wins best picture, it will be Crash all over again.