The Oscar nominations were announced this morning and I continued my usual tradition of sleeping through them. Fortunately, my mom was watching and between her notes and a later visit to the internet for further detail, I am ready for the real award season to commence. (We won’t count last night’s People’s Choice Awards, even though I ended up watching them as usual and hating myself for it, also as usual.)
BEST PICTURE: There were nine picks this year (Lincoln, Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty) and I’ve currently seen seven of them. I’m so happy that Amour was nominated (more on that at the bottom of this post) because I think it’s the best movie I’ve seen in a long time.
MY THOUGHTS: I think Lincoln will win pretty much everything it’s up for this year. In a perfect world, it would be Amour (the best movie of the ones I’ve seen; I still need to see Beasts of the Southern Wild and Django Unchained) but this is far from a perfect world. Of the seven I HAVE seen, though, all are excellent movies and this is the first year where there isn’t a single movie where I’m like, “THAT got nominated for Best Picture?” I’m surprised they didn’t go to ten and throw in a popular choice (Skyfall, for example, or The Dark Knight Rises, but I’m okay with that.)
BEST DIRECTOR: Michael Haneke (Amour), Ang Lee (Life of Pi), David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook), Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild).
MY THOUGHTS: I’m pretty sure Spielberg will win for Lincoln. But I think it’s interesting that Tom Hooper didn’t get a nod for Les Miserables. It’s almost conventional wisdom that, since the Academy has gone over five nominations, the Best Director picks show you what the five “real” Best Picture contenders are and they aren’t the five I would have chosen, necessarily.
BEST ACTOR: Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln), Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables), Joaquin Phoenix (The Master), Denzel Washington (Flight).
MY THOUGHTS: If Lincoln only wins one award, it’ll be this one. Daniel Day-Lewis absolutely embodied Lincoln to an almost creepy degree and I can’t believe he won’t be rewarded for that here. He’s also only won Best Actor twice I think and, like Meryl Streep last year, it’s time for #3.
BEST ACTRESS: Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour), Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Naomi Watts (The Impossible). This is noteworthy because it’s got both the oldest nominee ever (Riva) and the youngest (Wallis).
MY THOUGHTS: This is the one category I’m not sure of. I keep thinking Jessica Chastain but I’ve heard excellent things about Quvenzhane Wallis and Naomi Watts (I plan to watch both movies very, very soon) and I think Emmanuelle Riva gave the best acting performance I have ever seen, ever, and I want her to win but I don’t think she will. And Jennifer Lawrence was wonderful in The Silver Linings Playbook and she’s very “in” right now. So honestly, field wide open.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin (Argo), Robert DeNiro (Silver Linings Playbook), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master), Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln), Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained).
MY THOUGHTS: I’m leaning toward Tommy Lee Jones for Lincoln but an Alan Arkin win wouldn’t surprise me. Or, honestly, a Robert DeNiro one. He’s probably owed something by now. ;)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams (The Master), Sally Field (Lincoln), Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables), Helen Hunt (The Sessions), Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook).
MY THOUGHTS: Anne Hathaway. I love Sally Field in general and for her work in Lincoln, but Anne Hathaway was just on another level entirely. I can’t believe she won’t win. I’m thinking Lincoln will take everything else, so I hope that Anne Hathaway gets this.
AMOUR: This movie is not for the faint of heart. It’s a bit over two hours long, almost relentlessly depressing and to top it off, in French. (I don’t mind foreign films but I know many people do.) It’s about an elderly couple in their eighties. They’re going along really well until she has a medical emergency. Surgery is supposed to be able to fix it but it doesn’t and leaves her wheelchair-bound instead. Things get worse from there. I was expecting it to get nominated for Best Foreign Film but I’m happy it’s been picked for Best Picture. And I’m so happy that Emmanuelle Riva got a nomination for Best Actress.
“Lincoln” winning Picture and Spielberg for Director wouldn’t be unprecedented–there are directors with three Oscars–but I can’t think of anyone with three Best Actor Oscars. Jack Nicholson has two Leading and one Supporting; Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, etc, have two lead Oscars, but I can’t remember a hat trick of leading Oscars. Tom Hooper probably didn’t get nominated because I think “The King’s Speech” was a sort of impulse win, both for Picture and Director. (Colin Firth deserved his, and I think Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were both robbed). Looking at 2011′s Best Picture nominees, I see three that I think are better movies than “The King’s Speech”: “Inception,” “True Grit,” and “Black Swan.” I adored “The King’s Speech,” and I’ve probably seen it eight or ten times, but it’s no “Inception,” which was the purest, most-inventive movie in many moons, or even “Black Swan,” which was freakytrippy and accomplished the impossible task of making me give a crap about ballet. I think the hardest directing job would have been Darren Aronofsky for “Black Swan.” Not only did he have a regular Aronofsky film to direct, he also had to film all that ballet, up close, without letting the seams show through.
By the way, I’m not saying Daniel Day-Lewis won’t win, and certainly not saying he shouldn’t–everyone I know who’s seen “Lincoln” praises him saecula saeculorum–just that the Oscars get political sometimes about stuff like that. Russell Crowe lost for “A Beautiful Mind” (which I thought was a better performance than “Gladiator) mostly because he assaulted a producer at the BAFTA’s for interrupting a poem he was reciting. Val Kilmer wasn’t nominated for “Tombstone” because of the machinations that rushed “Tombstone” out before Hollywood’s then-Golden Boy, Kevin Costner, could get his “Wyatt Earp” into theaters. Most people I know can quote at least five Doc Holliday lines.
I agree that DeNiro is due for something: he won Supporting in 74, I think, for Godfather 2, and lead for “Raging Bull” in 1980. That’s 32 excellence filled years without one. He’s due.
I think Anne Hathaway will win, because she’s due.
I could prattle on endlessly about Oscar history, jiltings and shocks, but I won’t. I do love the Oscars, though. It’s film nerd heaven. :-)
I love that you know this stuff! :) This is my favorite time of year. (I watch Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA, Independent Spirit and, obviously, the Oscars).
I think we can also say that an achievement of Black Swan is the fact that a double was used for Natalie Portman (how much is up for debate) and it was never obvious. That’s impressive. AND Aronofsky got a great performance from her.
Supposedly, Natalie Portman was dancing in 82% of her character’s parts–the editor figured it out. The double exaggerated her role (again, supposedly). Also in “Black Swan,” there were mirrors on all the dance studio walls, yet I never saw a stray camera reflection. That takes some planning and skills.
The thing about “The King’s Speech” is that it wasn’t that involved from a film-making standpoint. It was an excellent movie, but nothing really of high mark. “Inception” was especially demanding to direct–the scenes where Arthur was fighting in the constantly shifting gravity? Seriously: wow. And Chris Nolan didn’t even get nominated for Best Director. There is something screwy about that.
Mr Hooper won the Director’s Guild Award, so maybe I’m the one who’s screwy.
One more fact that kind of blows my mind: Walt Disney (the man, not the company) won 22 Oscars. Twenty-two Oscars. Back in the day, he made a ton of short subject nature documentaries, plus all the animated shorts. Again, though: 22 Oscars. That’s surreal.
I’m not sure I buy the 82%. But sure. :)
I think you almost need to give movies a year or two at least to see how well they hold up.
Also, 2011 was a great year. I love all those movies (although The Town should have been nominated instead of letting Toy Story 3 double-dip).
Film nerds, unite! *fist bump* (I’m watching “The Big Sleep,” as I write this. Love me some pre-therapy noir. lol)
The movie that even the director didn’t completely understand! I love Lauren Bacall. :)
You could tell there were some IRL sparks between her and Bogie, and she was good. What surprised me, though, is that she was a distant third in the alluring woman race for “The Big Sleep.” Her little sister–who was drugged half the time and kept biting her thumb, and saying, “you’re cute”–she would be second. The most alluring woman in “The Big Sleep” is the nerd-babe bookseller across the street from the guy Bogie’s staking-out. She was hot anyway, when she was talking books. Then when Bogie says he has a bottle of good rye whiskey, she locks the door, closes the blinds, and lets her hair down, and does this quickly so that she can get two paper cups out for the whiskey. Loves books and whiskey? Oh, yeah: that’s hot. ;-)
Nice analysis of the contenders! I’ve only seen Silver Lining Playbook, Django and Zero Dark Thirty, but you have me really interested in Amour and Lincoln.
Thanks! :)
Amour is excellent but so sad. It was so sad, I couldn’t even cry.