Oscar Road, Part 2: The Nominations

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has come out with this year's Academy Award aka Oscar nominations the day before and the whole world knows about it. Indians all over the world are excited because an Indian has garnered 3 nominations and movie made with Indian backdrop and in desi style has got 10 nominations (second highest this year). This complete list is available at this link on the imdb site.

This is how they chart out. The David Fincher-Brad Pitt movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button earned 13 oscar nominations along with previously mentioned 10 of Slumdog Millionaire. Button's 13 nominations are second highest ever as Titanic and All about Eve are the only two movies to get more nominations (14 each). As expected Frost/Nixon and Milk raked in a good number getting 5 and 8 respectively. However the surprise was the Reader which raked in 5 major nominations including Best Picture, best director and Best Actress. 2 or 3 more than what one had expected. Kate Winslet's other film Revolutionary Road got no love from the oscar committee. It got only 3 oscars with 2 being technical and other than Michael Shannon's best supoorting actor. The Dark Knight got love too with 8 nominations of which all but Ledger's obvious supporting actor nomination were technical. Wall E got nominated for 6 with a delightful inclusion in the Best Screenply, directly written for screen category. A.R Rahman got nominated for 3 oscars; 2 in the original song and one for original score making him the first Indian to get an individual nomination. Lagaan, Mother India and Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay are the Indian films which earned a foreign language film nominations.


In the last post I had given my own predictions taking into consideration the trends AMPAS generally follows and how its voter pool polls. Also I have mentioned how the Golden Globes are fair indicator of what is expected in the Oscars (atleast in the nominations) Here is the golden globe chart at imdb.

Now reviewing my own predictions and comparing them to the oscar ones. 4 of the best movie oscar were spot on but The Reader jumped from the unlikely list to complete the 5. The best director category was a ditto to the Best Movie as a I had said in the previous post. The best actor was as expected and that wasn't a surprise because the same 5 or 6 actors have been shuffling across all awards this year. However the biggest shocking exclusion from the whole of the oscars list is in the Best Actress category with Sally Hawkins not even making it to the top 5. Have the voters even seen the movie? How can one ignore her brilliant performance. Kate Winslet wins a nomination, her 6th for the reader and Revolutionary Road is snubbed. The critics have not embraced the movie so it was kinda expected. The supporting categories have some new faces and some I havent expected.

With the nominations now out, We at too much cinema shall start reviewing the nominated movies one by one and see which ones deserved attention which dint. Which ones were overvalued and which ones were treated badly. Do chip and tell us what movies you want to see reviewed.