Oscar Nominations 2009
Submitted by AJDaGreat on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 12:11
Tags:
- Best Picture:
- Hurt Locker
- Up in the Air
- Precious: Based on a Book That Extends the Film's Title Unnecessarily
- Avatanic
- Inglourious Basterds
- Invictus
- An Education
- Up
- District 9
- A Serious Man
- Before Nine's weak reviews, I would have predicted that here, but I feel that the film wore out its welcome. Up may still miss out on this nomination yet, if people ghettoize it in the Best Animated Feature category, but I feel that so many people are buzzing about Up's Best Picture chances that I have to predict it here. The biggest question mark, I think, is A Serious Man. It's always been on the tail end of the prediction lists, but is the Coen's offbeat, cerebral humor going to be off-putting for the Academy? Burn After Reading wasn't nominated for anything last year, after all, despite getting nominated for WGA, BAFTAs, and the Globes. But because I'm also not sure what to replace it with (Star Trek? 500 Days of Summer? The Messenger?), I figure I might as well leave it on.
- Best Actor
- George "I'm playing myself!" Clooney
- Morgan "I'm playing myself with an African accent!" Freeman
- Jeff "I'm playing Mickey Rourke!" Bridges
- Colin "I'm so very sad" Firth
- Jeremy "who am I again?" Renner
- In my mind, the most impressive performances of 2009 were Matt Damon in The Informant! and Sharlto Copley in District 9. Sadly, these two have only a very tiny chance of being nominated. Of these five, my favorite was Mr. Firth, although the likely winner Mr. Bridges is a close second.
- Best Actress
- Meryl Streep, for the 16th time
- Helen Mirren, for the 4th time
- Carey Mulligan, for the 1st time... she's ever starred in a movie
- Gabby Sidibe, for the 1st time... she's ever been in a movie
- Sandra Bullock, for the 1st time... that this box office draw made a half-decent serious film
- Emily Blunt is also a strong contender; she may replace Mirren. My favorite is Gabby.
- Best Supporting Actor
- CHRISTOPH WALTZ, who doesn't need to worry about the following people:
- Christopher Plummer
- Matt Damon
- Woody Harrelson
- Christian McKay
- Something tells me the Academy will go for Christian McKay's Wellesian portrayal. They certainly love their legends. If he's out, Stanley Tucci is in.
- Best Supporting Actress
- MO'NIQUE, who doesn't need to worry about the following people:
- Vera Farmiga
- Anna Kendrick
- Diane Kruger
- Marion Cotillard
- Cotillard may swap out for Penelope Cruz. Kruger may swap out for Melanie Laurent. Then there's Julianne Moore and Samantha Morton. May be a tricky category.
- Best Director
- Kathryn Bigelow, for making an action-packed examination of masculinity that's socially relevant for once
- Jason Reitman, for making an offbeat romantic comedy that's socially relevant for once
- Lee Daniels, because Mo'Nique was so fucking good that we wanted to honor her director too
- James Cameron, for all those super-neato flying jellyfish
- Quentin Tarantino, for killing Hitler
- Clint Eastwood may sneak in here if the Academy decides they like feel-good sports movies more than they like Mo'Nique's performance. Or if they decide they like old, white legends better than gay, black rookies. Actually, that last one should be an easy call for AMPAS... maybe I should be predicting Clint.
- Best Adapted Screenplay
- Up in the Air
- Precious: Yada Yada Yada
- District 9
- An Education
- Fantastic Mr. Fox
- Honestly, so many great screenplays were excluded from the WGA noms this year, that I have no idea how these categories will play out. These are my best guesses.
- Best Original Screenplay
- A Serious Man
- Inglourious Basterds
- Up
- The Hurt Locker
- 500 Days of Summer
- I'll be rooting for the Basterds.
Author Comments:
That's enough.
Cloned From:
I love this list!
I especially enjoyed your Best Actor commentary...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Haha, thanks! I decided the whole hullabaloo of awards season is too ridiculous to not try to find some humor in it, so I went with that instead of the agonizing analysis I've written up in years past.
So how'd I do? Pretty well I think, nailing Best Actor, Actress, and Director, and with only one off for the ten-film Best Picture category. And to be fair, I think Blind Side toppling Invictus was pretty out of the blue. I actually had a nagging voice in my head telling me to take off Invictus from my Pic predictions. After all, last year the Academy proved they aren't as enamored of Clint as they used to be, and since (if I'm not mistaken) everyone only gets to nominate one film, is Invictus really great enough to be someone's top choice? Probably not. I thought Invictus was mediocre so I'm glad it got snubbed, but I haven't seen the Blind Side because I think I'm going to hate it, so I guess it's a mixed bag. Clearly they should've just stuck with nine nominees.
As for the supporting categories... it's obvious to me that no one has seen Me and Orson Welles. That's okay. I liked Tucci a lot too. As for supporting actress, I am very disappointed at the lack of Inglourious Basterds ladies, but I'm glad Maggie Gyllenhaal got in. I thought she was great, and that may be the biggest surprise of the acting nominations.
As for the screenplays... I am pretty surprised that 500 Days of Summer got completely shut out of the noms, based on its popularity. But I thought that the Messenger's screenplay was better, so I was happy about that. I also thought that the In the Loop lovers were crazy to think that film would be nominated for anything, but hey, shows what I know. It was a funny film, but I preferred Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Finally, sometimes one can tell which film the Academy likes best by which one scored the most nominations. So I think it's funny that now that the race seems like a dead heat between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, both scored the same amount.
Also, let's rate the Academy's decision to expand this to ten nominees. It is widely believed that they did this to include more blockbusters so that the masses would care more about the awards and feel like films they actually saw were getting nominated.
So presumably the 5 best picture nominees would've matched up pretty well with the 5 directors. Assuming that, then the 5 bonus films were: The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, A Serious Man, and Up.
According to Box Office Mojo, those films' domestic grosses (so far):
Up: $293,004,164 (5th highest of the year)
The Blind Side: $237,914,805 (8th highest of the year)
District 9: $115,646,235 (27th highest of the year)
A Serious Man: $9,228,768 (142nd highest of the year)
An Education: $8,795,228 (144th highest of the year)
Total: $664,589,200
Average: $132,917,840
Compare this to the original five:
Avatar: $595,752,416 (highest of the year)
Inglourious Basterds: $120,540,719 (25th highest of the year)
Up in the Air: $73,273,311 (44th highest of the year)
Precious: $45,447,889 (66th highest of the year)
Hurt Locker: $12,671,105 (130th highest of the year)
Total: $847,685,440
Average: $169,537,088
Which is higher. Of course, this isn't really fair since Avatar is throwing the numbers wayyyy off. Indeed, without Avatar, the average would be $62,983,256. So the ten nominees is indeed allowing the Academy to nominate a wider array of blockbusters that the masses have seen. Of course, the two lowest-grossing films were in the bonus five too, so the decision also allows the Academy to nominate a wider array of smaller indie films. Everybody wins!
I liked the idea of expanding to ten films from the start, and I am even more happy about it seeing some of the films that squeezed into the ten...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Nice job! I'm very impressed with how well you did!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
And while we're on the subject, I just discovered this chart, which I think is awesome:
http://blog.dailyfill.com/bestpicture.html
A few observations: wow, who would've thought that so few Best Pic nominees take place in California? The only two that take place entirely in CA are the back-to-back Paul Haggis-penned winners.
Four continents are represented. Sadly, no Best Pictures have taken place in South America, Australia, or Antarctica.
There are some pretty incongruous pairings here, such as Scotland (Gigi and Braveheart), Italy (Ben-Hur and The English Patient), etc. Apparently Texas is a good place for weepy tearjerkers and nihilistic Westerns.
I love the Middle Earth inclusion, and I guess this year it's looking like they'll have to start including either Iraq or Pandora.
P.S. Yes, I know there are a number of inaccuracies here ("Something is rotten in the state of London!"), but I think the map is fun nonetheless.