With the nominations coming out this morning, I sat anxiously with my pen in hand and my predictions up on my laptop. As you probably know if you are reading this, I got six total wrong in the four acting and directing categories, which is respectable. The Best Picture category was a different story though, the toughest part was picking how many nominees, not what they would be. I settled on six, and all six did get nominated, however there ended up being nine nominees, and I would have put five other films ahead of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, so that was a surprise. In addition Moneyball and The Tree of Life also were nominated. Instead of recapping all the nominees here, I decided the best post today would be a list of surprises that came from the nominations. In later posts we will give our thoughts on the potential winners, and also predict the Movie Ninja Awards for this past year, what we felt were the best films and best performances of 2011. But before that, here are the shockers from earlier today:
-9 Best Picture nominees! The new rules stated films had to have a large percentage of first place votes in order to get a nomination, this should have ruled out films that everyone liked but no one loved, basically Moneyball and War Horse, and benefited films that people felt passionate about like The Tree of Life. Instead, all three of those got nominated in addition to the locks. So how did those all get nominated? And how did Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close get in after getting shut out by every other awards body? The answer is that each of those must have had a body of people who loved the film and named it number one, which not many people expected.
-Demian Bichir and Gary Oldman replace Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Fassbender in Best Actor. Leo has been sliding of late due to medial responses to J. Edgar and the early release date, and Fassbender never was a lock, but its definitely shocking to see both left out.
-No Albert Brooks for Best Supporting Actor. The race was considered to be between Brooks and Christopher Plummer for the win, then Brooks doesn't even get nominated in favor of Nick Nolte in Warrior and Max Von Sydow in EL&IC.
-The Help loses momentum. The Help was a lock for Best Picture, Actress, and two Supporting Actress slots, and that's all it ended up getting. While it seemed it was creeping towards being a legitimate candidate to win Best Picture, no nomination for Director or Screenplay kills its chances.
-Very few nominations for The Tree of Life. While it got a Picture nomination I didn't expect it to, and also got its Cinematography and Directing nominations, that was it. I expected it to have a shot at Screenplay, and to be a strong contender for Editing, both Sound awards, Score, and Best Supporting Actor, but just those three.
-Strong support for Moneyball. While most thought it was set for Actor, Supporting Actor, and Screenplay, it also pulled off Best Director, Sound, and Editing, giving it the third most nominations of any film this year.
I could go on all day with all the surprises, but I am sure no one really cares that Girl with the Dragon Tattoo got snubbed for Best Original Score. Post your surprises or snubs in the comments sections, and keep checking back for further Oscar updates right up until the big day and beyond!
-Maximus
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