the Oscar Nominees
Jodie Foster Teaches Filmmaking
It’s that time again! The nominations for the 85th annual Academy Awards were announced this morning. Before I get to my thoughts on the nominations, I thought I should make some observations about the presentation. Traditionally, the nominations are announced by the Academy president (and a celebrity guest), but this year they were announced by Oscar host Seth MacFarlane (along with Emma Stone). This made the nominations announcement a bit more jokey than they usually are and I thought the jokes were a bit on the bad side (not a good sign for the actual ceremony).
Anyways, here’s my random thoughts on the nominees:
-
Once again there are nine nominations and once again there are only three I have yet to see (Amour, Zero Dark Thirty, and Lincoln). Unlike last year, I might actually go out and see those three.
-
Some people seem surprised that Beasts of the Southern Wild got a Best Picture nomination. I’m not.
-
Best Actress has both the oldest (Emmanuelle Riva) and youngest (Quvenzhané Wallis) nominees
-
As jokingly pointed out during the announcement, every Best Supporting Actor nominee this year is a previous winner.
-
This is the year Stop-Motion got more Best Animated Film nominees than CGI with 3 of the 5
-
I’ve seen many great documentaries in the past year (including supposed shoe-in The Imposter). Only one of them (Searching for Sugar Man) received an Oscar nomination.
-
Does it break the rules that Amour is nominated for BOTH Best Picture and Best Foreign Language film?
-
Speaking of which, Rebelle (War Witch) marks the third year in a row a Canadian film got nominated in the Best Foreign Language film category.
-
Seth MacFarlane is not only Oscar host, but he’s also a nominee (for Best Song)
That wraps up my thoughts on the Oscar nominations. The Academy Awards will be presented on February 24.