About What I Expected - But Where's Walk the Line?
On Tuesday the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, perfecting the art of the anticlimax, announced their nominees for this year's Oscar awards, to be handed out on March 5th in the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.
As expected Brokeback Mountain & Crash came up big with 8 nominations and 6 nominations apiece. In a minor surprise, Capote, the story of how Truman Capote researched and wrote In Cold Blood, also scored six nominations. Memoirs of A Geisha, generally panned or greeted lukewarmly by critics, also had six nominations, but all were in the so-called craft categories. Most of the "major" categories went as expected, with only a barely raised eyebrow here and there. Allow me to volunteer my own slightly raised eyebrow:
--Best Original Song, "It's Hard Out Here for A Pimp," Hustle & Flow. It's certainly the only original song I remember from the movies I saw this year, but this marks the second time in three years a rap song has made it into the final Oscar circle. Don't know how they're going to perform this one at the ceremony though. Makes me wish Chris Rock was hosting again.
--William Hurt, yes? Viggo Mortensen & Maria Bello, no? A History of Violence was a critic's favorite, probably on as many Top Ten lists as Crash and Brokeback Mountain. (Note that it didn't make mine, and I did see it.) The movie wasn't as well received by the Academy, which probably thought it was too weird and too "noirish", but almost everybody figured the two leads--Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello--would get a mention as well as maybe Ed Harris. Hurt shows up only in the last 15 minutes of the movie and his performance, while memorable, is so weird and jolting it feels like it belongs to another movie. Yet Hurt was the only acting nomination from this movie, and it probably cost either Don Cheadle (Crash) a supporting nomination.
--King Kong is Not King Nominated only for four awards (art directing, sound, sound editing and visual effects), King Kong not only disappointed at the box office, it disappointed on nomination day as well. But then again, if Peter Jackson had cut about half of that middle hour out, who knows?...
--Walk the Line stays in front of the Golden Rope It's a minor surprise to see that the most popular of the movies with multiple top nominations didn't also score a Best Picture nomination. It's two leads are among the front runners to win trophies, but ultimately it most likely came down between Good Night & Good Luck. and Walk the Line and in a year when Hollywood seems determined to honor more politically and socially minded films, the Edward R. Murrow period pic obviously got the nod. Personally, I don't have a problem with that, although to me Walk the Line was the better, more enjoyable movie.
Yawn...can we move the Awards up and get them over with already? For a complete list of nominees, click here. If your curious what won the "Reggie" awards for 2005, click here to check out that blog.
After the weekend I'll review the Super Bowl (including the commercials, if I can remember any of them) and offer a few passing thoughts about random shit you probably don't care about. Or maybe you do--check in and find out. Sleep beckons...
Peace.
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