A quick take on the surprise omissions and
otherwise from Thursday's nominations announcement for the 85th Annual Academy
Awards:
• Christoph
Waltz, not DiCaprio, turned out to be Django Unchained's representative in Best Supporting Actor. This
didn't surprise
us, but we imagine those nursing a grudge against the Academy on
DiCaprio's behalf are especially aggrieved.
• Affleck,
who can win the Best Picture Oscar for Argo,
was shut out of Best Director.
• Les Mis'
Tom Hooper likewise failed to
make Best Director.
• Tritto
for Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn
Bigelow. While Argo
was viewed as having a more distant shot at Best Picture, Les Mis and Zero Dark Thirty were thought to be right up there. But now with
the Hooper and Bigelow snubs, those films are seemingly out as legitimate
candidates, leaving only Ang Lee's Life of Pi
and David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook with viable
shots at denying Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.
• Bigelow's
Best Director omission even caught the Oscar publicity team off guard. An
Academy-released rundown of factoids notes, incorrectly, the filmmaker is the
"first woman to have more than one directing nomination," and the
"first woman to be nominated for directing and picture twice."
• Overall,
the usually reliable Directors Guild
of America Award did a lousy job at predicting the Best Director
race. Of the DGA's five contenders, only Spielberg and Lee are also up for the
Academy Award.
• The Screen Actors
Guild Awards weren't so perfect, either. John Hawkes (The Sessions),
Javier
Bardem (Skyfall), Marion
Cotillard (Rust and Bone),
Helen
Mirren (Hitchcock), Nicole
Kidman (The Paperboy)
and Maggie Smith (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) are
all SAG Awards nominees who didn't make the leap to the Oscars. The Hawkes
omission arguably is the most glaring, although his buzz seemed to have peaked
some weeks ago.
• The
end of Christopher Nolan's bedeviled Dark Knight trilogy was met with absolute silence. The Dark Knight Rises didn't rate a
single nomination, not anywhere, not for anything. Nolan's previous two Batman
movies combined for nine nominations, and two wins.
• Skyfall picked up the most-ever
nominations (five) for a James Bond film, but, most surprisingly, was touted as
being snubbed from
Best Picture, even though it was never seriously given a shot at
being included in Best Picture.
• The Avengers' critical plaudits and
box-office domination translated into a lone nomination for Visual Effects.
• The Hunger Games, 2012's
third-biggest box-office hit after The
Avengers and The Dark Knight
Rises, failed to hit a single target, even as star Jennifer
Lawrence landed in the Best Actress race (though for Silver Linings Playbook). Taylor
Swift, who might've been The
Hunger Games' best shot at a nod, failed to make the cut in Original
Song for her track "Safe & Sound."
•
Dark-horse candidacies that didn't score surprise nominations included those
mounted by Richard Gere (Arbitrage) and Bill Murray
(Hyde Park on Hudson) and Looper.
• Snow White and the Huntsman
(Costume Design, Visual Effects) earned twice as many nominations as onetime
Best Picture hopeful Moonrise Kingdom
(Original Screenplay).
• The
no-star Beasts of the Southern Wild,
made for under $2 million, came up impossibly big, going four-for-four in the
glamour categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Adapted
Screenplay.
• Beasts, which opened in theaters last
June, was the only Best Picture nominee released before the fall and holiday
movie seasons.
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