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.

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.