Amy's Robot

Oscar Nominations

A lot of the Oscar nominations that were announced today were expected, but we've got a few nice surprises as well.

My favorite category this year is Best Supporting Actor. There's Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right (a role he made look effortless but was probably really hard to pull off) and John Hawkes for Winter's Bone (above); Jeremy Renner, who was the best/only good thing about The Town; Geoffrey Rush who kept the scene-stealing in check in The King's Speech; and Christian Bale, who turned the volume up pretty freaking high in The Fighter, but was irresistibly fun to watch. I'd be happy for any of these guys to win.

Some interesting selections:

Coen Brothers > Chris Nolan
Christopher Nolan didn't get a Best Director nomination for Inception, a big surprise. I would argue that directing Inception was much harder and more complicated than directing either The Social Network or The King's Speech, but I wasn't so thrilled with the end result. The Coens were a long shot for True Grit, but that movie's huge box office success seems to be paying off in other ways for them.

Winter's Bone > The Town, and 127 Hours > The Town
Both got nominated for Best Picture, and The Town didn't. Nice.

Michelle Williams > Ryan Gosling
The only nomination for Blue Valentine is for Michelle Williams as Best Actress. She's phenomenal in this movie, while Ryan Gosling, who I usually like, is a little clumsy and awkward.

Hailee Steinfeld < Best Actress
She's in every single scene, but it probably made sense for the True Grit people to offer Hailee Steinfeld as a contender for Best Supporting Actress instead of Best Actress, because she has half a chance of winning. Best Actress is going to be a death match between Natalie Portman and Annette Bening, and the Academy would give it to Bening partially to make up for past losses to Hilary Swank. Melissa Leo will probably win Supporting for The Fighter, which she doesn't quite deserve in my opinion, but at least Hailee's in good company.

Banksy > Eliot Spitzer
Exit Through the Gift Shop, one of my favorite movies last year, got a Best Documentary nomination, and Client 9, the Eliot Spitzer doc that the man himself participated in, didn't. Neither did Davis Guggenheim's education reform doc Waiting For Superman, which looked sort of one-sided and emotionally manipulative. Man, I hope Banksy stencils the Kodak Theatre.

categories: Celebrities, Movies
posted by amy at 10:38 AM | #