Not much to say here. Things are pretty grim and middlebrow even by Oscar standards. Boo on No Sally Hawkins, Charlie Kaufmann, Let The Right One In, Michelle Williams or The Boss. Yay on the In Bruges screenplay, Richard Jenkins, The Class, Waltz with Bashir, Mickey Rourke and Man on Wire.
Nominations are after the Jump.
BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
_________________________________________
BEST DIRECTOR
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher
Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard
Milk, Gus Van Sant
The Reader, Stephen Daldry
Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle
BEST ACTOR
Richard Jenkins in The Visitor
Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn in Milk
Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie in Changeling
Melissa Leo in Frozen River
Meryl Streep in Doubt
Kate Winslet in The Reader
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR|
Josh Brolin in Milk
Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams in Doubt
Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis in Doubt
Taraji P. Henson in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Frozen River - Written by Courtney Hunt
Happy-Go-Lucky - Written by Mike Leigh
In Bruges - Written by Martin McDonagh
Milk - Written by Dustin Lance Black
WALL-E - Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Screenplay by Eric Roth, Screen story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord
Doubt - Written by John Patrick Shanley
Frost/Nixon - Screenplay by Peter Morgan
The Reader - Screenplay by David Hare
Slumdog Millionaire - Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Baader Meinhof Complex - Germany
The Class - France
Departures- Japan
Revanche - Austria
Waltz with Bashir- Israel
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) - A Pandinlao Films Production, Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath
Encounters at the End of the World - A Creative Differences Production, Werner Herzog and Henry Kaiser
The Garden - Scott Hamilton Kennedy
Man on Wire - A Wall to Wall Production, James Marsh and Simon Chinn
Trouble the Water - An Elsewhere Films Production, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
ANIMATED FILM
Bolt - Chris Williams and Byron Howard
Kung Fu Panda - John Stevenson and Mark Osborne
WALL-E - Andrew Stanton
ART DIRECTION
Changeling - Art Direction: James J. Murakami, Set Decoration: Gary Fettis
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Art Direction: Donald Graham Burt, Set Decoration: Victor J. Zolfo
The Dark Knight- Art Direction: Nathan Crowley, Set Decoration: Peter Lando
The Duchess - Art Direction: Michael Carlin,
Set Decoration: Rebecca Alleway
Revolutionary Road - Art Direction: Kristi Zea, Set Decoration: Debra Schutt
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Changeling - Tom Stern
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Claudio Miranda
The Dark Knight - Wally Pfister
The Reader - Chris Menges and Roger Deakins
Slumdog Millionaire - Anthony Dod Mantle
COSTUME DESIGN
Australia - Catherine Martin
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Jacqueline West
The Duchess - Michael O'Connor
Milk - Danny Glicker
Revolutionary Road - Albert Wolsky
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
The Conscience of Nhem En - Steven Okazaki
The Final Inch - Irene Taylor Brodsky and Tom Grant
Smile Pinki - Megan Mylan
The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306- Adam Pertofsky and Margaret Hyde
FILM EDITING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall
The Dark Knight - Lee Smith
Frost/Nixon - Mike Hill and Dan Hanley
Milk - Elliot Graham
Slumdog Millionaire - Chris Dickens
MAKEUP
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Greg Cannom
The Dark Knight - John Caglione, Jr. and Conor O'Sullivan
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Mike Elizalde and Thom Floutz
MUSIC (SCORE)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Alexandre Desplat
Defiance- James Newton Howard
Milk - Danny Elfman
Slumdog Millionaire - A.R. Rahman
WALL-E - Thomas Newman
MUSIC (SONG)
Down to Earth from WALL-E - Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, Lyric by Peter Gabriel
Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire - Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar
O Saya from Slumdog Millionaire - Music and Lyric by A.R. Rahman andMaya Arulpragasam
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
La Maison en Petits Cubes - Kunio Kato
Lavatory - Lovestory - Konstantin Bronzit
Oktapodi- Emud Mokhberi and Thierry Marchand
Presto - Doug Sweetland
This Way Up - Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
Auf der Strecke (On the Line) - Reto Caffi
Manon on the Asphalt - Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont
New Boy - Steph Green and Tamara Anghie
The Pig - Tivi Magnusson and Dorte Høgh
Spielzeugland (Toyland) - Jochen Alexander Freydank
SOUND EDITING
The Dark Knight - Richard King
Iron Man - Frank Eulner and Christopher Boyes
Slumdog Millionaire - Tom Sayers
WALL-E - Ben Burtt and Matthew Wood
Wanted - Wylie Stateman
SOUND MIXING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce and Mark Weingarten
The Dark Knight - Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo and Ed Novick
Slumdog Millionaire - Ian Tapp, Richard Pryke and Resul Pookutty
WALL-E - Tom Myers, Michael Semanick and Ben Burtt
Wanted - Chris Jenkins, Frank A. Montaño and Petr Forejt
VISUAL EFFECTS
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton and Craig Barron
The Dark Knight - Nick Davis, Chris Corbould, Tim Webber and Paul Franklin
Iron Man - John Nelson, Ben Snow, Dan Sudick and Shane Mahan
The Oscars always have a tendency to piss me off to no end. This year is no exception it seems.
Oi....Oscar bait films just bore the heck out of me. And this year appears to be no exception. Calling it middlebrow is the perfect description.
And yes, the lack of a nom for Springsteen just seems odd.
No nom for Springsteen??? WEAK.
let the right one in and springsteen were both ineligible.
let the right one in because it wasn't released in sweden before the cut off date.
and springsteen because he put the song on his album. stupid rule i know.
I thought Richard Jenkins was one of the correct nominations, good stuff.
Why does anyone outside the industry watch or even care who gets nominated or wins?
Waltz With Bashir should of had a best doc nomination.
It's the Oscars, what does anyone expect? There are some good nods in here - Richard Jenkins, Melissa Leo, Waltz with Bashir. But other than that it's pretty predictable & boring. Who cares anyway?
Interesting. Out of all the noms for best picture, the only movie that I thought was good enough to be there was THE READER. Holocaust or not, it is a rich deep and interesting film which examines guilt, desire, and morality in interesting and complex ways. This is not the movie Kate Winslet was staring in Season 1 of Extras.
Usual snoozefest. Happy to see Jenkins get the nom. Actually shocked Sally Hawkins and Michelle Williams didn't get noms. More so with Hawkins since Leigh got plopped into the screenplay category, and the man doesn't really write screenplays in any traditional sense. But doesn't this always happen with him?
Not sure if Slumdog Millionaire fits into the edgy category. I liked the film, but I think it's by far the most over-rated thing I've seen last year. I wanted an ultimately feel good movie, and I got that for the most part. I realize it's supposed to be feel like a hybrid of Bollywood, Hollywood, and maybe BBC, with a little French New Wave. So maybe the hokeyness is intentional. But as SlumDog went on, I found it to be predictable, patronizing, and overly sentimental. A film that generally treats it's audience like they're idiots by having the characters spell out their thoughts and feelings. It's fun, it's well made, impeccably well shot, and mostly everything involving the characters early childhoods is pretty amazing. But it's not nearly as amazing as the critics have made it out to be.
Wendy and Lucy would have been an edgy choice, even The Wrestler would have been an edgier choice. Having a hard time thinking of anything else, 2008 was a really lackluster year.
I don't think the Reader was a complete piece of shit, but I also found it obvious while watching it that it's a very confused and very flawed film, and with 60% standing on Rottentomatoes, I'm not alone. Shows just how much pull Weinstein has.
There's a semi interesting article on IFC.com on Sundance one hit wonders. All these promising directors who sold their debut films at shocking prices and then never made anything else. Of tht 25, a good 19 of them sold their film to that cocksucker Harvey, had their fillm dumped on 6 screens nationwide and was declared unbankable and blacklisted when the films didn't become blockbusters while playing on those 6 screens. So yeah, I hate, hate hate the Weinsteins.
I'm happy to see Button do well, I think its a great movie. I am shocked at The Reader though. In Bruges got dissed, too bad. I am going to see The Wrestler tonite, we'll see if I end up pissed that it missed out. The Visitor was good not great, I think this is just the Jenkins sympathy vote, which happens. I suspect Slumdog will win both the top two awards. See more at http://thefilmnest.com. Peace!
(And a little Oshii on the Animated film front would have been fab. THE SKY CRAWLERS was bloody fantastic and ambitious filmmaking)
Yeah, I'll admit "Che" was completly screwed by the Oscars and I'm sure the voters were just too lazy and have too much of a short-attention span to sit through a 4 hour plus movie in Spanish. The very least they could've done was nominate Benicio Del Toro for Best Actor. Let me clarify that I think Frost/Nixon is the most overrated movie I've seen in a long time. Why must we have to put up with another rendition on Nixon? Oliver Stone's Nixon was enough.
ChevalierAguila, you make a good point. However, one just likes to see films they love or just like, get some kind of recognition from their peers. Nothing wrong with that, although it tends to get overblown. Bottom line is, I thought they made some decent selections this time around and actually took some surprising picks (much to my respect), despite how amazingly political the whole process is and will continue to be. In any case, I take the Broadcast Critics Awards and any of the Guild Awards much more seriously than the Oscars but anyone in the business will tell you that the Oscars are the granddaddy of them all.
Good films deserve recognition? Yes, but that doesn't mean that they need to win a bunch of golden junk in order to proove the world that they're good films. Just impresionable celebrity-obsessed people think that awards are everything, heck, i still see people how they will come and say how oscars are like the ultimate proof of the quality of a movie. Is sad but then again, those type of people watch nothing but hollywood crap.
ChevalierAguila got it- to me, and I think some of the others who've made known their dislike for the Oscars, the reason we don't like it is because we meet so many people that think that it is the benchmark for deciding which are quality films. I've had many conversations with people that have asked if I've seen and/or liked a certain film, and when I've said no, they act like I've kicked their dog or something and say, "But its been nominated for an OSCAR!" And if I try to explain to them the type of films I like(which I don't usually do, unless they really want to know why I don't care about the Oscars), they've never heard of them and instantly dismiss them them with comments like, "Well, I don't like Asian movies cuz they're all violent" or "I don't like artsy-fartsy stuff". Seriously, "all Asian movies are violent?"
Its not like a have a seething hate for the Oscars(hate is a word that gets thrown about a bit much with what is ultimately entertainment), but I dislike their tastes because they get brought up in so many casual conversations of films I have with people as the justification that a film must be good. If no one mentioned the Oscars to me I'd be entirely neutral to them. How many times have you heard someone mention they disliked a lesser known show like Sundance? Probably only in movie websites that pay attention to such things, or among cinephile friends.
Some things to put into perspective :
1.) Godfather, Part 1 won only three awards, as opposed to Cabaret, which won eleven. No one remembers Cabaret.
2.) I was going to talk about Citizen Kane, but you've probably heard the deal about it, I guess.
3.) Martin Scorcese never won for ' Mean Streets '; never won for ' Taxi Driver '; never won for ' Raging Bull '; never won for ' Goodfellas '.
4.) Francis Ford Copolla's ' Apocalypse Now ! ' didn't nab any Oscar Best Picture prize
5.) Stanley Kubrick never won an Academy Award his ENTIRE LIFE.
6.) Nope, not Jean Luc Goddard, either ( far as I know ). Neither Jean Pierre Melville
and,
7.) WHAT THE FUCK IS ' THE READER ' ?!?
Moral lesson : there will always be great, classic films to come in the future, and at any time.
And the ACADEMY AWARDS will still SUCK.
Let's just hope that the ' Dark Knight ' snub will not discourage other filmmakers from following its significant lead, and bravely go on tackling advanced, intelligent superhero cinema with a straight face. After all, a focus group that does not recognize the greatness of Abbas Kiarostami should not be able to decide.