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Over the past week the Oscar race has become incredibly tuned. No one's nearly close enough to make a list of nomination predictions, but we're beginning to get the general idea, and a few frontrunners have definitely emerged. The New York and LA Film Critics associations both announced their own awards nominations, but most importantly, the Golden Globes, probably the closest Oscar predictor there is (next to the SAG awards for actors), unveiled their nominations last week.
If you want to see the full list, it's right HERE. As an overview, the leading films were Sideways with 7 nominations; 6 nominations for The Aviator; and five each for Million Dollar Baby, Closer, and Finding Neverland. The latter four were all nominated for Best Motion Picture - Drama, along with Kinsey. In the Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical category were Eternal Sunshine, The Incredibles, The Phantom of the Opera, Ray, and Sideways. Picking up Best Actor - Drama nominations were the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Liam Neeson, and Johnny Depp, along with Don Cheadle for Hotel Rwanda and Javier Bardem for The Sea Inside. And in what is clearly a weak category, Best Actress - Drama nominations went to Nicole Kidman for the flop Birth, Uma Thurman for Kill Bill 2, Imelda Staunton for Vera Drake, Scarlett Johansson for A Love Song for Bobby Long, and the clear frontrunner (at this point) Hilary Swank. Best Actor in a comedy went to Paul Giamatti and Jamie Foxx, and three other performers who probably won't make it into the crowded Oscar category: Kevin Spacey for his Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea; Kevin Kline for De-Lovely, and Jim Carrey for Eternal Sunshine. Jim Carrey won this category in '99 for Man on the Moon and didn't get nominated for the Oscar - he'll lose it to Jamie Foxx this year, so he won't make it into the Oscars either.
As for the Supporting Actor category (which is nicely not split up into Drama and Musical/Comedy categories), both Natalie Portman and Clive Owen got nominated for Closer, which to me, of course, is good news. Meryl Streep probably got nominated for The Manchurian Candidate out of habit, and the other three actress noominations went to Virginia Madsen (Sideways), Cate Blanchett (Aviator), and Laura Linney (Kinsey). Personally I didn't think Madsen was that great, but then again see my review for more of that. On the Actor side, aside from Owen was David Carradine for Kill Bill 2 (he was Bill), Thomas Haden Church for Sideways, Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby, and Jamie Foxx for Collateral. (Foxx makes a small bit of history by being nominated three times in one year at the Globes - for Collateral, Ray, and the TV movie Redemption). Best Director went to heavyweights Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby), plus Alexander Payne (Sideways), Mike Nichols (Closer), and Marc Forster (Finding Neverland).
Who did they leave out? Well, the Best Actor category is probably the most crowded this year, and left out were Kevin Bacon for the indie The Woodsman, and Gael Garcia Bernal, for either The Motorcycle Diaries or Bad Education. Bad Education, however, is a Pedro Almodovar film, who's last movie, Talk To Her, came out of nowhere to swipe two big nominations, so his fate remains to be seen. Sean Penn was also absent from the list for his new drama, The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Penn is obviously an Academy favorite so you can't count him out either, but Nixon hasn't been getting the kind of advanced praise you seem to need. As for the Picture category, Phantom of the Opera stays afloat thanks to its nominations for both Picture and Actress, but indie hopeful Hotel Rwanda, James L. Brooks's comedy Spanglish, and the foreign-language films A Very Long Engagement and The Sea Inside were nowhere to be found. Engagement, in particular, wasn't represented anywhere except the foreign language category, so chances at an Amelie-like crossover is looking less likely. Spanglish, which was once thought to have a chance thanks to the Academy-friendliness of the writer-director (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good as it Gets), is getting quite mixed reviews, which I think is kind of a shame since it's cool to see Adam Sandler in a normal movie acting normally for a change.
So here's our chances thus far, for the top four categories, using my ultra-technological methods:
BEST PICTURE:
BEST ACTOR:
BEST ACTRESS:
BEST DIRECTOR:
Finally, I'm done. Making unordered lists in HTML is really easy but also frustratingly tedious. (But I do it for you.) (Pity me.) (Send me money.)
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