The Academy Award nominations are up.
It’s amazing to me how quickly this went from being “ho-hum, this will be an exceptionally boring Oscar race” to “Jesus Almighty, what happened?” First, the Dreamgirls snub for Picture and Director is both startling and extremely gratifying, particularly because it lets Letters from Iwo Jima nestle in.
There is obviously very little love for The Departed – no Leo, and no Jack! Again, this is startling and gratifying. It’s kind of awesome: there are five front-runners for the Best Picture award right now.
Other things that shock and delight me:
–Volver snubbed for Foreign Language film (shock).
–Borat and Children of Men in Adapted Screenplay (delight).
-No match-up between Best Picture and Best Cinematography (shock, but not a bad one, except for Prieto, who should have been here).
–Pan’s Labyrinth in Original Screenplay (delight).
–Poseidon for Visual Effects (shock).
-Very little overlap in general between what the techs liked and the Big 8 (delight).
Nominations leaders:
Dreamgirls – 8
*Babel – 7
Pan’s Labyrinth – 6
*The Queen – 6
Blood Diamond – 5
*The Departed – 5
*Letters from Iwo Jima – 4
*Little Miss Sunshine – 4
Notes on a Scandal – 4
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – 4
How I did in my predictions: 25/30 on the top six, just like last year (I did get the actor line-up 5/5, but I picked the wrong DiCaprio film). A humiliating 6/10 in the screenplay categories, but in every case I’m happier that way. Let us not consider my record for cinematography.
Total number of films nominated for an Oscar (outside of foreign language, documentary or the shorts) that I haven’t seen: 1 (Click, up for Best Makeup).
Updated: More fun. This is the first time since 1927/’28 – the very first Oscar ceremony ever – in which there was no overlap at all between the Best Picture and Best Actor nominees.