TV1 Blog

This year’s Oscar nominees were announced today and everyone is talking about who wasn’t nominated as much as they're talking about who was (if not more so).

The big surprise is that Martin Scorsese’s film Hugo leads the field this year with 11 nominations.  Most of Hugo’s nominations are in the technical categories like cinematography, which is why Hugo doesn’t appear prominently in the SAG nominations.

The current favourite for best picture, The Artist, earned 10 nominations.  It’s up against eight films this year: The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (a surprise), The Help, Hugo, Midnight In Paris, Moneyball, The Tree Of Life and War Horse.

Which brings us to our first snubs.  What, no Bridesmaids?  It had been considered a frontrunner for a nod, but comedies have a bad track record with Academy voters.   And no Harry Potter?  It was a sentimental and popular favourite but it too missed out.  (This possibly leaves room for another director to come along and make a definitive version of the novels at some point down the track … )

Also missing out on expected best picture nominations were Drive, The Ides of March, 50/50 and Young Adult.  Also, why only nine films this year?  The Academy made a big fuss about expanding the list to 10 nominees in 2010.  Apparently only nine films were decent enough to be recognised this year.  Are they sending a message this year? Yikes…

The acting categories followed the SAG Awards almost exactly (as they tend to do) but there were a couple of shocks.  Leonardo Dicaprio missed out on a best actor nod for J. Edgar.  Taking his place in the list is Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy.  Leo’s co-star in J. Edgar Arnie Hammer also missed out on a best supporting actor nod (the Academy obviously didn’t take a liking to that film).  Veteran actor Max von Sydow (who never seems to age) takes his place for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (a film the Academy obviously did like).

Tilda Swinton surprisingly missed out on a nod for best actress.  Her place was taken by Rooney Mara for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  I hope I didn’t jinx you Tilda!   Shailene Woodley was also expected to be nominated for a supporting role as George Clooney’s daughter in The Descendants, but was likewise snubbed.  And no luck for Andy Serkis in the campaign to get his amazing work in The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and The Adventures Of Tintin recognised.  Albert Brooks missed out too for his chilling performance in Drive and cheekily let the whole world know about it via Twitter.

Interestingly Cars 2 missed out an expected best animated film nod, which is the first time Pixar has failed to receive a nomination since the category was created in 2001.  The Adventures Of Tintin missed out too, as did the critical favourite Arthur Christmas.  David Fincher again missed out on a directing nomination despite all the other nominations for his film.

Then there’s the music category.  What a bloodbath!  The Academy only announced two nominees in this category this year instead of the standard five.  Eek.  The nominees were The Muppets’ “Man Or Muppet” by Bret McKenzie from Flight Of The Conchords (yay!) and Rio’s “Real In Rio” by Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown and Siedah Garrett.  Missing were Madonna’s Golden Globe-winning song “Masterpiece”, Elton John’s “Hello Hello” from Gnomeo & Juliet, Chris Cornell’s “The Keeper” from Machine Gun Preacher and Mary J Blige’s “The Living Proof” from The Help.  Mary let her feelings be known on Twitter too, although her tongue was not planted in her cheek like Albert Brooks.  If you’re interested in what happened to all these songs, HitFix has a good piece about the voting process in this category here.

However, Aussies were not left out of the Oscars picture this year.  Editor Kirk Baxter was nominated for his  work on David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  It’s his second nomination following a nomination last year for The Social Network. Sound mixer Andy Nelson has received his 15th(!) nomination for his work on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse.  Nelson has actually won an Oscar before for his work on Saving Private Ryan.  And producer Grant Hill is likely to be one of the producers who would accept the best picture prize if his film The Tree of Life happens to win.  I say "likely" as there appears to be a little dispute over the final credits for the film and the final nominees are yet to be determined.

The full list of this year’s Oscar nominees can be found here.

(Image via News.com.au.)