Earlier today the official nominees for the Academy Awards (more commonly referred to as the Oscars) were announced.
I will spare you the full listing in this post, It can be found Here. Instead I wil focus on the nominations that intrigue me the most.
The Devaluation of the Best Picture Nominations – But it’s not all bad.
As you might have known or guessed by now. There can only be one winner in each category. Up until this year there were also only five nominees in each category, making it a great mark of achievement for a movie to be even nominated. (Søren Høy of the European Film College made an excellent blog post on this here (in danish): Scarlett i mit Badekar)
This year however, there are 10 nominees in the category Best Picture. Resulting in the term “Best Picture Nominee” being slightly devaluated. This also seems like a slightly odd year to expand the category, as I have found there to be quite few “really really good” movies this year. And most of those were even genre movies that I recognized as not being “good movies” as such, but I liked them anyway.
My two greatest trips to the movies this year was for “Watchmen” and “Star Trek” respectively. Yet neither of those movies deserve to win “Best Picture” – “Star Trek” didn’t attempt anything other than being a wide-appeal action/adventure-fest, and while “Watchmen” was perhaps closer to “Best Picture” material, it’s timing was simply wrong in the pop cultural counsciousness.
For similar reasons “Avatar” does not deserve to be in this category. Just as it didn’t deserve to win The Golden Globe for Best Picture. John Campea, formerly of The Movie Blog, pretty much nails it here: John Campea's Cage
However, the expanded list of nominees has let to one of the best movies actually being nomniated. The movie in question is Pixar’s “Up”. Previously it would have been dumped in the “Best Animated Picture” category. I heartily hope that “Up” wins, but I doubt it with most of my mind.
Tarantino, you Glourious Basterd
Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is also a favorite this year. Being nominated for both Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay (which has only 5 nominees).
Tarantino’s film winning in either category would mean a victory for what is indeed an auther-fueled work, not that this is necessarily a good thing.
If Tarantino wins this year, my mind will jump to some of the same theories that surfaced when Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” won in 2007, despite it not being one of Scorscese’s best films (and we can argue elsewhere which one is) – but that the Academy thinks they owed them one for overlooking films such as “Raging Bull”.
However, this is a voting body of around 4000 people at least. That is a pretty hard vote to rig. So if Tarantino wins, chances are people wanted him to.
Besides, Tarantino got a Palme D’Or for his second film (“Pulp Fiction” –1994) so I doubt that a case can be made that he is an unrecognized genius.
Danish Directors Rising
“Burma VJ”, “An Education” and “The New Tenants” are all three films by Danish directors this year. Which of course is a big deal to the Danish press. Normally I’d argue that nationality shouldn’t really play too big a role, but it has been nice to see a tendency to have more Danish actors, and now Danish directors being recognized in the American Market, even if it is only for the purpose of awards.
These were my immediate thoughts on the Nominees. What were your thoughts? Were the right nominees picked? Have any thoughts on who will win what – feel free to comment.
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