By Chris Luckett
Oscar season is upon us once again. Most of
Jan. 10’s nominations were exactly what many expected. Every year, though, there
are a few surprise inclusions and a few shocking omissions, and this year’s was
no different.
Major Nominations for Amour and Beasts
Many expected Amour to secure at least one nomination, for Best Foreign Language
Film. Few forecasted it receiving as many as five, let alone in major
categories like Best Picture, Best Actress (Emmanuelle Riva), and Best Director
(Michael Haneke). Similarly, while Beasts
of the Southern Wild’s central performance by 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis
had received early awards buzz, prognosticators weren’t expecting it would be
sitting at the big boy’s table with Best Picture, Best Director (Benh Zeitlin),
and Best Adapted Screenplay nominations. The inclusion of a foreign film and an
indie in the major categories draw attention to how eclectic and progressive a
selection of movies the Academy is recognizing this year.
Two New Best Actress Records
The previous record-holders for being the youngest
and oldest Best Actress nominees were Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider), at 13, and Jessica Tandy (Driving Miss Daisy), at 80. Some had
speculated one of the records might get broken this year by 9-year-old Wallis
or just possibly by 85-year-old Riva, but few expected both to occur. With dual
records shattered and a remarkable 74-year difference in ages between the two
nominees, the race for Best Actress instantly became much more unpredictable.
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| Image property of The Weinstein Company |
No Love for DiCaprio
Few actors in their ‘30s have already
received three Academy Award nominations; even fewer manage to score their first
as a mere teenager. Despite this, DiCaprio is shafted by the Academy just as
much as he is recognized – both The
Departed and Titanic won Best
Picture without his performances in them garnering so much as a nod – and the
trend continued this year. While Django
Unchained’s Christoph Waltz did receive a Best Supporting Actor nomination,
DiCaprio’s portrayal of the deliciously slimy Calvin Candie didn’t make the
cut. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been that surprising, but it still was.
Non Intouchables
One of the festival darlings last year was
the French movie The Intouchables,
which not only scored a whopping eight César Award nominations but also became the third-most watched movie
in France’s history, following a staggering ten weeks of being #1 at the French
box office. As such, most expected it would be nominated for Best Foreign
Language Film, even if it would ultimately lose to the recently emerging
favourite Amour. Instead, the
crowd-pleaser walked away empty-handed.
Stop-Motion Makes a Strong Return
In the prior 12-year history of the
category, 39 animated movies had been nominated for the Best Animated Feature
Oscar, only four of which used stop-motion animation. That stop-motion total
had nearly doubled by the time this year’s nominees were announced; three of
the five nominees were animated with old-school models and clay. While this
record number could partially be attributed to changing aesthetics in modern
animated films, it still stands as a testament to the quality of a movie like The Pirates!: Band of Misfits that The Lorax, Madagascar
3: Europe's Most Wanted, Hotel
Transylvania, Ice Age: Continental
Drift, and Rise of the Guardians
all failed to get nominations.
Lost Amidst the Clouds
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| Image property of Warner Bros. Pictures |
Cloud
Atlas, one of the most polarizing movies of 2012,
walked away without a single nomination. Despite a cast of actors with a
collective five Oscars (and 12 total nominations), the sprawling epic proved
too divisive to snag even Make-Up or Score slots, both of which many presumed
to be sure-things. It wasn’t a complete shock on the day nominations were
announced, as its make-up artists hadn’t even made it to the shortlist of
pre-nomination finalists, but it was still a surprise to see it also shut out
of every other technical category.
Screenplay Snubs
Looper
was one of the best-reviewed wide releases of 2012,
with much credit given to Rian Johnson’s screenplay. Stephen Chbosky adapted
his own book into the screenplay for The
Perks of Being a Wallflower, which led to an acclaimed adaptation. Even so,
both were left unrecognized, in the wake of eight of the Best Picture nominees,
as well as Moonrise Kingdom and Flight.
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| Image property of Warner Bros. Pictures |
Directors Left in the Cold
When there are nine or ten nominees for
Best Picture and only five for Best Director, there will inevitably be
acclaimed films whose directors don’t get recognition. Even so, few expected Argo’s Ben Affleck, Zero Dark Thirty’s Kathryn Bigelow, and Django Unchained’s Quentin Tarantino to all be left off the final
ballot. After all of Affleck’s Argo
buzz/awards, Bigelow’s directorial win three years ago for The Hurt Locker, and the ease with which Tarantino landed a
nomination for Inglourious Basterds’
direction, all were favoured, if not necessarily expected, to be nominated –
especially considering Argo and Zero Dark Thirty were two of the three
Best Picture frontrunners going into the nominations. With all three getting
snubbed and the Academy’s history of awarding its top prize to a film whose
director is also nominated, the overall race now seems to be Lincoln’s to lose.
