Nine Best Picture nominees and a few surprises in Oscar nominations

This year's Oscar nominations are out. Along with the expected films, performers, and crew nominations, there are a decent amount of snubs and a few surprise inclusions.

The most nominated film was the box-office disappointment Hugo. Director Martin Scorsese's feature received great critical reviews, but it's earned just $55 million compared to competing family pick Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked's $124 million. I wonder if the nominations will convince adults, with our without children, to catch it while it's still in theatres.

Even with nine films nominated for Best Picture, there was still one snub: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The David Fincher-directed picture landed four technical nods (including well-deserved ones for cinematography and editing), but only one in a "major" category. Rooney Mara received a nomination for Best Actress, no doubt in part because of the extreme changes she underwent to her physical appearance. I think Fincher is like Hitchcock--one of those directors whose genius always goes unrecognized by the Academy because of his chosen genre and subject matter.

A surprise inclusion in the Best Actor category was Demián Bichir in the little-seen A Better Life. Oscar voters love socially conscious films, and I'm sure this Los Angeles-set tale of underclass hardship hit close to home. Undoubtedly, many of the well-heeled Academy voters have probably employed a landscaper like him at one time, so the story has special resonance.

I'm also enthused that Melissa McCarthy was recognized in the Best Supporting Actress category for Bridesmaids. She was so much fun and also underwent quite a physical transformation. In fact, most of the female acting nominees looked quite unlike themselves in their performances. Glenn Close played a man in Albert Nobbs, and Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams both had to convincingly play a famous person (Margaret Thatcher and Marilyn Monroe, respectively).

In the foreign language category, I was at least a little disappointed that Mexico's Miss Bala didn't make the cut. The fast-paced, suspenseful tale of a beauty queen who gets caught up in the drug wars brought a human face to the destruction the drug lords have wrought in the area. Maybe it just had too many machine guns?

I'm surprisingly unfamiliar with the Best Documentary contenders. Pina, a 3D dance doc, has been a critical darling and has drawn plenty of audiences since it opened in late December. It's also earned three-quarters of a million dollars, along with over $11 million abroad. The rest of the nominees aren't so lucky--yet. I caught If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front when it played on PBS this year (pretty good). When the environmental activism doc played for nine weeks this summer, it earned just $61,000. Soldier doc Hell and Back Again has played for fifteen weeks while only grossing $37,000. Undefeated won't even open properly until February 10th. Neither has Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, which will probably be seen by the most people when it plays on HBO, not in theatres.

Overall, Hugo leads with eleven nominations. Two-thirds of the time the most-nominated movie also wins Best Picture. There's a chance this might be the one-third of the time. The second-most nominated movie, The Artist, didn't have as much of a chance to pick up the technical nominations as Hugo. After all, who would nominate The Artist for sound editing or sound mixing? Like The Artist, The Descendants, which had just five nominations, still scored in all the major categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Editing (which almost always goes along with Best Director). Despite its win for Best Drama at the Golden Globes, it now seems like more of a dark horse. Most people have been predicting The Artist for Best Picture, but Hugo's multiple nominations now make me think perhaps the Scorsese picture could win for Best Picture. With its mix of snubs and surprise nominations, this year's ceremony should have plenty of suspense, and pose at least a few challenges for those looking to win their Oscar pool.

'Rite' and 'Mechanic' compete against specialty pics flush with Oscar nods

By Sarah Sluis

The action thriller The Mechanic (2,703 theatres) sounds like typical late-January B-movie fare, but critic Maitland McDonagh begs to differ. The "sleek, brutally succinct thriller" comes along with an "emotional pitch [that] lies somewhere between those of King Lear and a Roadrunner cartoon, which doesn't sound like much until you stop to seriously consider the range of most mainstream action movies." Jason Statham also turns in a praise-worthy performance, projecting an "elusive warmth."

Marketed as a horror movie, The Rite (2,985 theatres) should draw in plenty of young females. McDonagh, however, feels that the exorcism movie does not fall within the genre, and "anyone who buys in expecting levitation, demonic apparitions and sundry other gross-out clichs will be disappointed." It's really about "the power of faith," told through "the relationship between a cynical seminarian and [an] unorthodox but devout exorcist." Warner Bros. has apparently been marketing this movie heavily to Hispanic viewers, many of whom are Catholic, and avid moviegoers to boot.

In the wake of the Oscar nominations, The King's Speech will up its screen count to 2,553 theatres, an addition of over 800 theatres. Studio head Harvey Weinstein has also reportedly talked about recutting the film to remove the F-word, and thus secure a PG-13 or PG rating. 127 Hours, which received nods for Best Picture and Best Actor for James Franco, is expanding to 916 locations. Franco is not only a nominee for Best Actor, but he's also doubling as one of the Oscar hosts, a nice increase in exposure for the movie.

Biutiful (57 theatres) reach more ticketbuyers this week, sure to benefit from its two Oscar nominations, one for Best Foreign Language Film and another for its star, Javier Bardem. While critic David Noh wasn't the biggest fan of the movie, he praised the "wearily weathered and better than ever" Bardem, who "proves the very heart and soul of this film."

The Sense and Sensibility-inspired From Prada to Nada (256 theatres) follows two wealthy young women who move in with their aunt after misfortune befalls their family. The romantic comedy is an attempt to woo the Latino market, which is a strong consumer of movies, especially in their first week. While few reviews are on the scene, the first-week receipts should predict whether this movie is among the likes of Prada, or nada.

On Monday, we'll return to analyze which Oscar-nominated films saw the biggest bumps over the weekend, and if The Rite and The Mechanic were able to pull in their respective audiences (apparently the Statham pic is tracking extremely well with older males).

Indies rack up Oscar nominations; Preferential Voting Explained

By Sarah Sluis

So The Dark Knight's play for Best Picture may have failed, but the Academy's nominations included

Heath Ledger's performance for Best Supporting Actor amidst all the recognition for independent and specialty films: Fox Searchlight's Slumdog Millionaire garnered 10 nominations, and showed up in the Best Picture category alongside Weinstein Co.'s The Reader and Focus Features' Milk. The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke and The Visitor's Richard Jenkins each received a Best Actor nod, and low-budget Frozen River (starring two women, a rarity) was nominated for Best Actress (Melissa Leo) and Best Original Screenplay. The strong showing of films from specialty divisions came as many studios shut them down. Slumdog Millionaire, for example, was originally supposed to be distributed by Warner Independent Pictures.

Kate Winslet, who won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in The Reader, was nominated for the role in the Best Actress category at the Oscars, not for her performance in Revolutionary Road (for which she won the Best Actress award at the Globes). Philip Seymour Hoffman repeated his nomination as Best Supporting Actor in Doubt--although compared to Amy Adams and Viola Davis, both nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for the film, he seemed to have much more screen time.

Since 1936, the Oscars have used a preferential voting system, complete with Academy-specific caveats, to determine the nominations. Intended to diversify nominations and create compromises among runner-ups, it may also be responsible for much of the Academy's eccentricities and cries that certain films and performances were "robbed" of recognition. The way it works is this: the accounting firm will tabulate up every voter's first choice. Selections receiving more than 1/6 of the vote (for five nominees) will automatically be nominated. Now here's where it can get tricky: any films that were not ranked number one by at least one voter will be eliminated. The counters then look at all the second-choice films, but only among those voters whose first choice was not picked.

Where does the Academy's preferential voting fall short?

It doesn't necessarily pick the "top five" films of the year. People must feel passionate enough about the film to vote it as number one. Surely, in its seventy-plus years, a film or person was well-represented at #2 and #3, without anyone picking it as #1.

If there are two similar films, both of high quality, only one will be nominated. Let's say there are two niche films that have exactly the same audience--two epics, two indie dramas, a Milk and a Brokeback, etc.. If voters almost unanimously think one is better than the other, but still think the second is one of the top five films, the second film will not receive a nomination. It fails what's called the "independence of clones criterion" (thanks Wikipedia!). This adds to the "diversity" of films nominated, and has probably helped balance studio and independent films, but, again, it can push a second-best film entirely out of the top five.

According to Variety, which explains preferential voting here, the method is used frequently in Australia. Apparently, voters there are often told to vote in specific blocs and rankings to ensure the best outcome for their party. It's a wonder studios haven't issued such instructions to optimize their own performance at the Oscars.