Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Jason has some quick thoughts on the Oscar nominations

So I'll follow up with several posts analyzing each category. My rule is I can't make a prediction unless I've seen everything that was nominated, but here are some quick takes:

"Letters From Iwo Jima" and "Notes on a Scandal" have now jumped to the top of my must-see list, followed closely by "Little Children".

Speaking of "Letters From Iwo Jima", I held back on seeing that and "Flags of Our Fathers" in hopes of seeing them as a double feature. But it doesn't look like there are any theaters near me that are cool enough to do that.

Peter O'toole makes me wonder what the record is for number of years after getting an honorary lifetime achievement award someone has won an Oscar.

However, Mr. O'toole will again fall short, as Forest Whitaker will easily win the award, then celebrate by eating the losers (note, I haven't actually seen "Venus", so this is a premature prediction).

I've only seen one best actress nominated performance, and I'm still sure nobody can beat Helen Mirren in "The Queen".

Nice to see Abigail Breslin get a nomination, but did she really have only a supporting role in "Little Miss Sunshine"? Wasn't she kinda the title character? (Yes, I know that the title refers to the contest, but it's another case where the "supporting" actor/actress designation is ill-defined)

I cheered the addition of a best Animated Feature a few years back, but what a huge step down from last year ("Wallace and Gromit", "Corpse Bride", and "Howl's Moving Castle" vs. "Cars", "Happy Feet", and "Monster House"). Hopefully this is just a down year for this category. Because if the nominees continue to be this freakin' pointless, they should retire the category.

"Dreamgirls" gets 8 nominations, but not for Best Picture or Best Director? It makes more sense if you realize that 3 of them were for Best Song.

After you're done doing a double-take about "Dreamgirls" getting nominated 3 times for best song, consider that the Academy didn't nominate "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going", which pretty much anchored Jennifer Hudson's best supporting actress nominated performance. They could've just added a new category for this year--best song in "Dreamgirls".

"Click" was nominated? Really, "Click"? I don't care what it was for (Best Makeup), but take a deep breath and realize that for the rest of time, "Click" can advertise itself as an oscar-nominated movie.

Ditto for "Superman" and "Poseidon". Freaking "Poseidon", dammit! (Note, I haven't seen the movie, so for all I know it's good. I'm just ranting).

In fact, it seems like the Best Visual Effects category was confused with "Movies that have nothing of any value to them except for some effects that aren't even all that impressive because we've seen equal or better on our home PC".

Which reminds me, "The Fountain" wasn't nominated for anything!? I loved that movie, and at least the effects were awesome (and not generated by computer).

I'm confused, why is "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" an adapted screenplay? Does basing it off a TV show character count? Or was it secretly a variation of Hamlet but you just have to know what references to look for? For that matter, how much of a screenplay did it have? Wasn't most of it improvised?

Okay, that is all.

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