- Expanding the Best Picture category to 10 entries worked – if by “worked” we mean let a few populist movies slide into the competition. There’s no way in hell “The Blind Side” will emerge the winner on March 7, but giving it a Best Picture nomination is a salute to the people who adored the film – people, not critics (like WWTW). It’s also a bald effort to prove to movie goers that the Academy isn’t a bunch of stuffy shirt-types.
- Matt Damon for Best Supporting Actor in “Invictus?” Damon is an underrated thespian, but his role here is so totally under-developed it didn’t deserve such an honor.
- Michael Moore gets shut out for “Capitalism: A Love Story” – is the corpulent member of the fairer sex singing on his impact as a filmmaker?
- “District 9″ for Best Picture? A real surprise here, and a nice inclusion for that rare science fiction film with brains. Bet the folks behind “Surrogates” are saying, “we were thisclose …”
- “Invictus” shut out of the Best Picture category. Good.
- “A Serious Man” for Best Picture? Really? Third rate Coens, and I’m being kind.
- All in all, not a horrible film slate. Now, if co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin can crank it up to 11 on Oscar night we might have a show worth watching.
- The complete list has more Oscar news …
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ll take ‘Marketing Ploy’ for 100, Alex –
Answer – “The Academy Award broadcast”
Question – “What questionably relevant event unnecessarily increased itself in order to attract a broader, already less-discerning percentage of a diminishing audience share?
…Damon is in there to attract viewers
…The Blind Side is in there to attract viewers
…Dame Mirren is in there because Dame Dench did not have a film to be nominated
…yada yada
D
hah! great line about Mirren filling the Dench slot.
Has there been a year in recent memory without either Streep, Mirren or Dench being nominated?
…prolly not; definitely not successive years, if one rounds out the trinity with Blanchett and Winslet.
It is worth a post, post-Oscar, to observe how the Academy, in all of its reputed Liberalism, seldom makes the effort to have nominated actress performances displaying the same range of roles as those of the actors. Its like the Emmys: the same few women get nominated for one or the other (or both, as has occurred). Indolence alone does not explain this.
D.