Unpacking the Academy Award nominations--and snubs

By Sarah Sluis

Early this morning, the Motion Picture Academy announced its nominees. With ten movies in the Best Picture section, this category actually had the least amount of drama. The five-nominee sections actually narrowed the field, removing strong contenders who had critics rooting for them.

The two tiniest films in the Best Picture nominee section, The Kids Are All Right and Winter's Bone, both assembled a smattering of nominations in other sections. Especially for Winter's Bone, this was a big accomplishment. John Hawkes, who hadn't received nearly as much buzz as Best Actress nominee Jennifer Lawrence, scored a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. After adding in the Ozark drama's Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, Winter's Bone scored a total of four nominations.

The Kids Are All Right had a similar scorecard: two acting nominations (Annette Bening for lead female, Mark Ruffalo for supporting male), Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture. Julianne Moore, who was just as worthy as Bening in my book, was left off. Maybe it's a question of seniority? Or Moore's terrible Boston accent on "30 Rock"?

One tiny movie that barely got any love from the Academy was Blue Valentine. Michelle Williams is in the mix for Best Actress, but her co-star Ryan Gosling was left off the ballot. A bit of an indie dark horse, it's not that surprising this movie struck out at the Oscars. In all honesty, I think it skewed a little young. There was a lot more talk about Another Year, which skewed older, than Blue Valentine. It's only the fact that Valentine is distributed by Weinstein Co. that it got as far as it did. Another Year's Lesley Manville failed to get an acting nomination despite getting raves for her performance, though director Mike Leigh's script is nominated in the original screenplay category. With just one nomination each, both of these films just barely made it into the Oscars.

The Academy treated a few films very well: 127 Hours rallied with six nominations, though some in lesser categories. Director Danny Boyle didn't get a nod, but he and his co-writer (Slumdog Millionaire Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy) are nominees for the Adapted Screenplay Oscar. True Grit, which got completely snubbed at the Golden Globes with Z-E-R-O nominations, received an astonishing ten nominations, leading the Coens to release a statement saying "Ten seems like an awful lot...we don't want to take anyone else's."

This summer's blockbuster Inception scored eight nominations, but the only big ones were for its script and Best Picture. Director Chris Nolan has now made three Oscar-worthy films (Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception) without earning a directing nomination for himself. One thing's sure, however: Inception will bring home a lot of those more technical awards. Whatever the movie was lacking, jaw-dropping special effects and technical prowess were not among them.

The announcement of the Oscars still puts us over a month away from the big day (33 days away!). Awards fatigue has definitely set in, at least for me--I mean come on, giving out awards for 2010 three whole months after the year ends? Now that the nominations have been announced, however, there will be plenty of time to strategize Oscar picks (hint from Awards Daily: The Social Network) and win the office pool.