Oscars

  • I wrote a pan of Atonement in early January, and had this to say about the Oscars:
    [Atonement] felt like it was pushing all the right Oscar-buttons, from its sweeping typewriter soundtrack to its lush cinematography, but having seen it I wonder about its chances for the big prize. But then what will take the traditionally poorly doled-out prize? Juno? No Country for Old Men? Those are guaranteed noms, but don't seem like traditional winners.
    Well, the only Oscar Atonement won was for its soundtrack, so at least the Academy was with me on that one. As for No Country, I'm glad a non-traditional film was able to take Best Picture. For me, it was the first film to deserve the big prize since American Beauty in 1999. (I'm sure we could bicker about Return of the King.) (57) #
    2/25/2008
  • Jim Emerson brings up a good point: David Fincher's Zodiac was unfairly snubbed by the Academy. It deserved, at the very least, editing nominations. Or maybe it deserved a nod for its subtle visual effects, to escape from the Academy's obsession with nominating movies with *big* rather than *artful* visual effects. (3) #
    1/22/2008
  • The UCLA's California Center for Population Research has released a statistical study of the strongest predictors for getting an Oscar nomination. Some predictors are obvious, such as that dramas and big distributors are favored. Others are more surprising:
    Actresses, meanwhile, proved more than twice as likely to be nominated as actors for any given performance, making being female the study's third strongest predictor of a nomination, the authors say.
    Warning: the article (and maybe the study) does the usual correlation/causation blurring. (thx, lorelei) (0) #
    1/22/2008
  • The nominations for the 80th Academy Awards were announced this morning, and I'm surprisingly happy with the results. Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood are the Best Picture noms, with only Atonement not getting a Best Directing nod as well. I had a lot of problems with Atonement, and I thought Michael Clayton was a straightforward movie with good acting, but I wouldn't complain if any of the other three won. My only major disappointment: that Johnny Greenwood's fantastic score for There Will Be Blood was disqualified for Best Score. (20) #
    1/22/2008

2006 Oscar nominees

Best Picture nominees

The only reason I care about the Oscar nominees announced this morning is because it's the only awards ceremony I watch, both for traditional reasons and to keep up with the zeitgeist. I've seen three of the five Best Picture nominees (Babel, The Departed, and Little Miss Sunshine) and felt that all three were flawed for various reasons (contrivance, Jack Nicholson, and conventionality, respectively). I'd really like to see The Queen and I guess I'll see Letters from Iwo Jima despite the recent manipulations of Clint Eastwood and Paul Haggis.

Here are a list of my favorite nominations: Mark Wahlberg for The Departed, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi for Babel, Children of Men for Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay, The Departed for film editing, Borat for original screenplay, Pan's Labyrinth for Art Direction, and because it's funny, An Inconvenient Truth for Best Song. Admittedly, I still haven't seen Little Children, Half Nelson, Dreamgirls, Water, and several others of the nominees.

Tue, 01/23/2007 - 10:03am
  • Part II of Errol Morris day. (Re-)watch this Morris short, which played during the 2002 Oscar telecast, depicting a bunch of people talking about their favorite films. The people include Shawn Fanning, Susan Sontag, Iggy Pop, Donald Trump, Tom Brady, Laura Bush, Philip Glass, Lou Reed, Michael Gorbachev, Harvey Silverglate, Laurie Anderson, Kenneth Arrow, and a bunch of other people, famous and non-famous. (0) #
    4/27/2006
  • Eh, what can you expect from the organization that called Gladiator the best film of 2000? (10) #
    3/5/2006
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