In Contention: The Academy Awards Nominations

By Josh Spiegel

February 5, 2010

Don't stand so close to me.

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Well, the day has finally arrived, Oscar lovers. Tuesday morning, actress Anne Hathaway and the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Tom Sherak, announced the major nominees for the 82nd annual Academy Awards. Though there were certainly a few surprises, specifically among the ten Best Picture nominees, the list was, by and large, not too wild and managed to do nothing for the presumed frontrunners. They were the frontrunners before the nominations were announced, and they're still the frontrunners. Even the Best Picture surprises...well, they're not going to change the game too much. Your Oscar pools, in essence, have just become more assured, not less so.

It's no surprise that the top film, in terms of overall nominees, was Avatar. The sci-fi epic, which is now the highest-grossing film ever, garnered nine nominations. The surprise, however, is that Avatar was not alone. The Hurt Locker also got nine nods, leaving no movie with more than that many potential honors. Avatar, for all of its box-office record-breaking, couldn't top ten nominations, losing out on the Best Original Screenplay or Best Original Song categories. Still, it pulled in nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. Unfortunately, any hopes you may have had to see Zoe Saldana nominated for her performance (as much as I loved this movie, let's all just calm down and realize how ridiculous that campaign was) have been dashed.




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As I mentioned, The Hurt Locker got nine nominations also, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing. What with its recent wins at the Producers and Directors Guild, The Hurt Locker is looking more and more like a potential upset to the presumed easy Best Picture win for Avatar. Alongside the actors perhaps rebelling against Avatar for not being an "actors'" movie, you never know; this low-grossing action movie set in Baghdad could win the Best Picture Oscar. Its director, Kathryn Bigelow is also an odds-on favorite for Best Director, though those two awards may be the only ones The Hurt Locker can win. Any technical awards are as likely to go to Avatar.

The other three movies that make up the list of the five frontrunners - Inglourious Basterds, Precious, and Up in the Air - were next on the list, getting eight, six, and six nominations, respectively. As expected, Inglourious Basterds was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing. It also got nods for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing, categories usually reserved for less dialogue-heavy movies; chalk it up to the ultraviolence Quentin Tarantino is known for. Christoph Waltz is, as always, the man to beat in the Best Supporting Actor category, while Tarantino's script may very well get the Oscar in just about five weeks' time. Other than that, Inglourious Basterds may go home empty-handed. One common thread here: lots of spreading the wealth.


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