Andrew: The nominations for the 84th Academy Awards were announced today at 8:30am EST, and overall, Sarah, we did pretty well with our predictions. But there were some things that I got wrong or you got wrong. Shocking!
Sarah: Of course we got some wrong! That's the nature of the beast. Slightly surprised that Harry Potter didn't get nominated for Best Picture considering it would have been a combination win for the entire collection, but oh well. I wasn't too impressed with the line-up for Best Picture. Of course they had the shoe-ins but they left out some important ones. What about “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?” Not even a Best Adapted Screenplay nom! It really goes to show that the Academy is lacking in range of their tastes. I was surprised that I got as many right as I did. I think it is safe to say that the Academy enjoys labors of love (“The Ides of March,” “Albert Nobbs”) and for that I can't really fault them.
A: If we're going to start off by talking about snubs, let's start with the acting categories. To me the biggest ones that stand out are Michael Fassbender not getting a Best Actor nom for "Shame" and Albert Brooks not getting a Best Supporting Actor nom for "Drive." Brooks had been splitting awards with Christopher Plummer left and right up until now, so his omission is pretty startling. I think Plummer has it wrapped up now. Otherwise I'm fairly okay with the acting categories. We saw "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and I think Gary Oldman deserves his nomination for his quiet performance. Oh! And it's also his first Oscar nomination! EVER! How does that happen???
S: Well he is from across the pond, so maybe that has something to do with it. I'm not sure. Even though I didn’t think she would get on the list, it is a bummer that Shailene Woodley didn't get a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But she can be proud of the fact that she has been getting so much recognition for her work in “The Descendants.” Octavia Spencer will win that category, so I'm not even sure why they put anyone else in with her, but I digress. Best Actor was really no surprise. I will be seeing Max Von Sydow in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” tonight, so I will give my opinion of that in tomorrow’s blog post and I’ll tell you if I thought it was “all that and a bag of chips." We haven’t seen “The Better Life” so I can’t comment on Damien Bichir getting a Best Actor nom. Meryl Streep was a lock for Best Actress, but I’m afraid she will get the shaft for the 17th time. I could be wrong, but she has steep competition this year!
A: Good point on Woodley, I do think she's the one Supporting Actress candidate who missed out, but her spot that I predicted instead went to Janet McTeer. (Which you called, good job!)
Another snub that absolutely KILLS me is in the Best Original Score category. Last year Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won for their score in "The Social Network,” but this year they were left out for their work in "Dragon Tattoo." THE MUSIC IS THE BEST PART OF THAT MOVIE! How does John Williams get TWO noms and these guys get left out? Yeah, "War Horse" had a good score but it wasn't Williams' best effort, and actually was pretty heavy-handed. That's my biggest beef.
S: Oh you silly boy, I will give you one word as to why he got two nominations. Speilberg. Simple and sweet. Both his nominations were for Speilberg movies and he’s a big man in Hollywood. He holds a ton of clout, and John Williams is a dinosaur in the industry. While I don't believe it is fair, they both hold a ton of Oscar cred and the nominations were typical "Oscar" picks.
A: One last thing I want to comment on with the acting categories is I’m really glad Jonah Hill and Nick Nolte got nominated for Supporting Actor. I’m still upset Nolte is the only nomination “Warrior” got, but he definitely deserved his. Also, I’m surprised there were nine Best Picture nominees, what with the new formula. Essentially each movie had to receive five percent of all the first-place votes, and that tells me that the Best Picture race might actually be more widespread than we originally thought.
S: Even though we may not agree with all of the picks, it will still be an entertaining night sure to be filled with gorgeous gowns and funny lines provided by Billy Crystal.
Ok readers, a new element we are going to add to the blog is that once a month we will post some of our favorite movie memories and today will be the first time we do that.
In keeping with Oscar winning films, I would have to say that my favorite movie memory was seeing “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” in theaters and being so moved by the music. I had always loved going to the movies before that, but the score to that movie was so perfectly done that it opened my ears to more than what was going on in front of my eyes. What about you, Andrew?
A: Well besides the obvious answer of any time we go to see a movie together being my favorite movie-going experience (*wink*) I have a few. But for this post the one that comes to mind is seeing "Inglourious Basterds" for the first time and gripping the arms of my chair during the opening scene where Christoph Waltz absolutely owns it, and again in the same movie during the bar scene, in which Michael Fassbender owned it. It was top-notch acting by all and great directing by Quentin Tarantino and it's one reason I thought it should have won the Best Picture Oscar two years ago.
S: My cheesy husband! I still need to see that movie. Ok! Tomorrow I will be posting my review of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” here on the blog, so be on the look-out for that! And as the Academy Awards get closer on February 26th, we will go more in-depth on the individual major awards and predict who we think will win them. Thank you for reading!
Notes: How did we do on our predictions last night? We both went 27-for-35! Sarah nailed the Best Actress category, while I went 4-for-5 in four categories. For Best Picture we had 8 of the nominees on our list, but were wrong in putting “Dragon Tattoo” and “Bridesmaids” on there; while we didn’t have “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” on our list. Overall, not too bad!
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