The Oscar nominations announced yesterday are more notable for who was NOT nominated than who was.
"Lincoln" led the way with 12 nominations. No surprise there. I'm going to go way out on a limb right now and call a win for Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor. You don't need to be Nate Silver to call that one.
Next with 11 nominations was "Life of Pi." I have seen the previews to this one several times. It appears to be about a kid stranded on the ocean in a small rowboat with a wild tiger on board. Sure, that kind of thing happens all the time. Kind of like that movie a few years ago where James Franco cut off his own arm. Nothing in that preview makes me want to see this movie. Nothing.
The biggest story, as I mention in the title was who did not get nominated. Big name directors with Best Picture nominated movies did not get a Best Director nomination - Tom Hooper (Les Miserables) , Katheryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty), Quenton Tarentino (Django Unchained), and, most regrettably, in my opinion, Ben Affleck (Argo). I don't get the snub of Affleck. Seems to me that much of the Hollywood establishment holds it against Affleck that he is popular, once dated Jennifer Lopez and, thus, was a paparazzi target for many years, and he made some poor choices in acting roles (notably, "Gigli") early on in his career. All I know is that in the past couple of years, he has directed three movies - "Gone, Baby, Gone", "The Town", and "Argo" - that are among the best movies that I have seen in that time period.
Instead, some guy named Michael Haneke gets nominated as Best Director for a movie named "Amour". This is a French language movie about an aging couple nearing the end of their lives. Sounds fun, huh? It doesn't open in Pittsburgh until sometime next month. I guess that when all is said and done that maybe seven or eight hundred people will actually go and see this movie across the USA. This is the kind of movie that the Academy showers with nominations every year to prove that it, the Motion Picture Academy, is all about art, and not necessarily about what people actually like to see, and Ben Affleck misses out on a nomination that he surely deserves.
Lots more on the subject of the Oscars in the weeks to come.
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