The nominations for the Oscar Award season were announced early this morning, with some surprises and lack of surprises.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leads with 13 Oscar nominations, including best picture. Based on the 1921 F. Scott Fitzgerald novella, Button is definitely one of those fiction tales laced with science fiction / fantasy and deserves the nominations it received. It also was nominated for best actor Brad Pitt and actress Taraji P. Henson, as well as director David Fincher.
Posthumous Golden Globe winner Heath Ledger, meanwhile, got a nomination for supporting actor for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. But sadly Knight was shut out from all other major nominations like best picture, screenplay and direction.
Like The Dark Knight, science fiction, fantasy and supernatural movies were mostly ignored by the Academy altogether. Iron Man, a movie I considered one of the best last year, got nominated in technical categories as did Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Amusingly, Robert Downey, Jr., who played the reborn Tony Stark in Iron Man, was nominated for best supporting actor for Tropic Thunder
WALL-E got nominated for original screenplay, however, leaving me quite happy about that as it is an unusual occurrence for an animated movie. Gotta keep my fingers crossed for that one. Such a great movie!
What do you think about the nominations? Are the Oscars relevant any more? Do you watch? Do you care?
The Oscars will be handed out in ceremonies Feb. 22 in Hollywood, which will be broadcast live at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
Okay Dark Knight was robbed. Seriously robbed. Every year the Oscars are more and more pretentious to me. Honestly, Dark Knight is my favorite film of 2008 but just because it's based on a comic book it will never win an Oscar. It took 3 films before LOTR won... how many before a Nolan Batman film is even nominated?
Has anyone seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?
It's so full of itself that it's painful to watch.
It's as if every moment the director was contemplating "what do I need to do to get a
I don't understand how a film that is such a chore to watch can get nominated for Best Picture?
I've seen bad movies before, but rarely do they get nominated for best picture.
Just remember -- this is the same organization that thought Titanic was a good movie.
Zing!
Wall-E deserved a slot as best picture of the year.
Let the Right One In was totally ignored, which is tragic (but not surprising).