In Contention

By Josh Spiegel

January 25, 2011

Fine.  I *will* take that Garfield job now.

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The Academy Awards do not like Christopher Nolan. If there is a rash takeaway from this morning’s announcement of the 83rd annual Oscar nominations, it’s that the voters just don’t like or get Christopher Nolan, at least as a director. Also, while Inception got eight nominations, including a nod for Best Picture, it’s got a snowball’s chance in hell of winning that big category. I’d be willing to say that Toy Story 3 has a better shot, because clearly the voters just didn’t fall as hard for Inception as some viewers have. We’ll get into the mostly unsurprising Oscar nominations soon, but let’s pause as we consider the fact that Christopher Nolan may be, in terms of Oscar history only, this generation’s Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Kubrick: an auteur who can get nominated for some Oscars, but just can’t ever win.

There were other snubs, but another notable one for Inception was its editing not being nominated. Now, a great film’s editing is usually not evident (or it’s evident for a very particular reason), and I’d argue that a movie where the second half takes place in four different dream layers needs to have great editing to be one of the ten best pictures of the year. So the fact that Lee Smith is not only not being nominated, but he ought to have won is just sad. I’ll get off the Inception soapbox (the film was nominated for eight awards, as mentioned above, and it did get on the Best Picture list), but there were other snubs we can discuss. Andrew Garfield, from The Social Network, didn’t get a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Ryan Gosling didn’t get in for Blue Valentine while his co-star, Michelle Williams, did.



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What the Academy Awards nominations proved is that they still like things old-fashioned. The King’s Speech - which also won the top honors at this past weekend’s Producers Guild Awards - got the most nominations of any film, with 12, including nods for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound Mixing (no, I have no idea what was so exemplary about that film’s sound mixing). Next was True Grit, which was snubbed at the Golden Globes and at various guilds, with ten nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. The Social Network and Inception followed up with eight nominations each, so already, the narrative for the next month is set in motion.

What’s the narrative, you ask? Is The Social Network actually going to win Best Picture, or will The King’s Speech take it down? By losing at the Producers Guild, people have begun to wonder if The Social Network is actually as dominant as everyone assumed it was. In essence, people have finally realized that all the critics’ awards that any film wins don’t mean squat at the Oscars, because critics don’t vote for the Oscars. What’s more, precursors also mean squat. I don’t mean to harp too much on it, but there was nothing in the previous guild nominations to make us think that Black Swan would only get five nominations (though it being nominated for Best Director and Best Film Editing, two historically key categories to being a solid Best Picture contender means it’s still in the race), or that Joel and Ethan Coen would get a Best Director nod.


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