OSCAR NOMINATIONS, 2011 - Page 3

I think the Nolan "snubbing" is perhaps overstated a bit. He has a screenplay nomination, his film garnered a lot of nominations including Best Picture, and it's likely he just missed the arbitrary cutoff of 5 and finished 6th out of the hundreds of eligible directors. The Director field is solid as it is and there's no real concensus of who doesn't belong.

Now, that editing nomination should have been Inception's.

It's the directing snub combined with the editing snub that makes it feel like the Acdemy is thumbing their noses at the film.  And honestly, as good as the five directorial nominees ae, Nolan's work on INCEPTION can be held up favourably to pretty much all of them.

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Originally Posted by Walker 

Black Swan's exclusion was due to relying heavily on established musical cues(similar as to why Johnny Greenwood wasn't nominated for There Will Be Blood). Which is a shame because Black Swan presents the Acadmey to have an interpretive dance number that wouldn't feel out of place.

 

I'm surprised Trent Reznor got nominated because of his use of "In The Hall of the Mountain King", and I guess re-using some of his prior work on Ghosts(maybe that doesn't count because he made tha music).

There's some arbitrary percentage of previously composed music you can have before you're declared ineligible. I just can't remember what that percentage is. I do know Inception was on the fence there for a while since most of Zimmer's score is based around Non Je Ne Regrette Rien, so I guess there's your borderline.
 

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Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

Great to see Weaver nominated, would make my oscar night if she upset the apple cart and won her slot. Kind of sad that's Animal Kingdoms only nomination tho.

Yeah, agreed. I'm almost more pleasantly surprised at her nomination than at Hawkes'; she's phenomenal in Animal Kingdom, and if the film only deserves a nomination in one category it's probably Best Supporting Actress. Apart from Michod's direction, she's my favorite part of the entire film.

I fucking love Roger Deakins to death, but it'd be borderline obscene for him to win over Pfister or Cronenweth this year I think.

(ETA: A bit hyperbolic I know, but still.)

Based purely on merit I'd be tempted to give it to whoever was responsible for the cinematography in Enter The Void.

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Originally Posted by joeypants 

I fucking love Roger Deakins to death, but it'd be borderline obscene for him to win over Pfister or Cronenweth this year I think.

Yeah, I agree.  Even though I thoroughly loved TRUE GRIT, I have to admit I was a smidge disappointed in the cinematography, especially considering the highly potent combo of Coens + Deakins + western.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  I won't be too shattered if Deakins wins this, especially given his truly amazing body of work, but I'd give it to Cronenweth.  Although I wonder if there's any anti-RED snobbery amongst the old school DPs and other Academy blue hairs that might undermine his exceptional work on THE SOCIAL NETWORK from winning.  Would this be the first digitally-captured film to win Best Cinematography?

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Originally Posted by Litmus Configuration 

 Would this be the first digitally-captured film to win Best Cinematography?

 

 

Both Slumdog and Avatar heavily used digital cinematography.  I say heavily because I'm not totally sure if there wasn't any film used.

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Originally Posted by Litmus Configuration 

Yeah, I agree.  Even though I thoroughly loved TRUE GRIT, I have to admit I was a smidge disappointed in the cinematography, especially considering the highly potent combo of Coens + Deakins + western.  Maybe my expectations were too high.

 

I agree too, but while True Grit isn't as stunning as some of Deakins' other work, I think its about time the guy brought home a statue.  

The music "qualification" rulings usually have a lot to do with "percentage" of musical re-use: thus, "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is only a small portion of the score to The Social Network, so it's OK, while "Leaning On the Everlasting Arms" is the basis for about 3/4 of the score to True Grit, thus disqualifying it.

The music thing has always been weird: Nino Rota was disqualified for The Godfather, because he incorporated a bit of some of his previously-written music into the score; by the time of Godfather II, they had changed the rules so that he and Carmine Coppola could be nominated (and win!) despite re-using much of the previously-unqualified Godfather score.

ETA: Apologies to Justin for stepping on his lines; I thought I had clicked "View Last Unread" post, but somehow missed several.

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Originally Posted by Litmus Configuration 

 

 I won't be too shattered if Deakins wins this, especially given his truly amazing body of work, but I'd give it to Cronenweth. 

 

 

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Originally Posted by fuzzy dunlop 

I agree too, but while True Grit isn't as stunning as some of Deakins' other work, I think its about time the guy brought home a statue.  

I agree of course. I just always kind of hate the "career award" thing when it's not being given out as an actual lifetime achievement award or something. It's a bit of a fuck you to the people that actually DID do better work that particular year.

But like I said, I LOVE Deakins, of course. It's more the principle of the thing.

It's taken almost thirty years, but with this new crop of nominations, I really feel like I may have crossed a bit of a Rubicon when it comes to the oscars. I've watched every ceremony bar one since I was seven years old and I find myself very much in two minds about the whole event in general this year.

With a bit of age and perspective and a passing knowledge of Americas film history, it seems there are just so many great films every year that history ends up judging as either cult favourites, industry game changers or just dead set classics that never even get acknowledged or even get a look in by the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences year after year, sometimes for seemingly the most specious or political of reasons, with no bearing on the artistic merit of the films in question, that I'm beginning to think the whole awards are nothing but a self congratulatory waste of time.

I know we all know on some level this is the case and that none of what I'm saying is news, I guess it's really hitting home to me and making me ask why I even give the slightest toss about them at all these days.

Out of all the years to come to that fateful conclusion, this is the one?  This year with an incredibly strong lineup of films and nominees?

Not only that, but since THE DEPARTED walked out with the show in 2006, the Academy has very noticeably gotten better at recognising quality as opposed to standard awards-bait. The last four BP winners are the aforementioned DEPARTED, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and THE HURT LOCKER. The best films ot their year? Maybe, maybe not (although without THERE WILL BE BLOOD looming over its shoulder NCFOM would be the best picture of most years). But all exceptional films. The academy had a chance last year to reinforce all the usual starfucking political stereotypes by awarding AVATAR, and they didn't. For the first time in a long time, they've put together a consistent run of good judgement.

To be honest The Departed, while superior in my opinion to the competition that year, was in a big way an apology Oscar for Scorcese.

Of course. But that seemed to be a watershed moment, like the Academy farts suddenly thought "hmm, this "awarding deserving films" thing feels kinda nice. Let's do this more often!". The nominations are often still a barrel of old wank, but generally speaking the quality of the winners has risen sharply over the last five years.

I'd like to think that it was the Crash debacle of the previous year that caused whatever change of heart that occurred. Or we could just be 'lucky' these last few years and another doozy like the Goodfellas snub is waiting around the corner.

Thing is if the mentality was 100% just "Give it to Marty for Christ's sake!" then The Aviator (although a film I like - is the closet thing to Oscar-bait he's made) would have won.

Scorsese deserved it more for Aviator than for Departed.