On the face of it, the nominees for the 83rd annual Academy Awards seemed fairly unremarkable. Aside from the deafening nature of not hearing Christopher Nolan’s name in the line-up for Best Director (the only true shock of the major categories), everything seemed to be within the expected parameters (even Javier Bardem sliding in, which seemed, increasingly, like a very real possibility these last few weeks).
But then I got to looking through the craft category nominations and the real interesting beats started to surface. First and foremost, “The King’s Speech” led the field with a whopping 12 nominations, even scoring in the Best Sound Mixing category. That’s major, to say the least. And enough, along with the PGA win, to consider it the frontrunner to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
“True Grit” wasn’t far behind with 10 nominations, including a bid for the Coen brothers in Best Director after all. Hailee Steinfeld stayed in Best Supporting Actress and Bridges was chalked up, but again, let me go back to the more intriguing crafts fields.
Like, oh, Best Film Editing? Where somehow, some way, Lee Smith was outright shafted for his immaculate construction of “Inception?” That, coupled with Nolan’s directing snub, indicates to me that the film just didn’t have the support we thought it did. I find myself wondering if it would have been one of five after all. But I don’t want to overstate it, because the film did manage eight nominations.
I’m quite bummed that “Shutter Island” didn’t register at all. Not a single nomination for some of the most amazing work above and below the line this year. Chalk it up to an early release and a timid push, I’d say. But the film did its job in the grand scheme. It made money.
My other underdog fave, “The Way Back,” managed to score a nomination after all, and in the field I’ve been expecting for it since I saw it: Best Makeup.
I’m ecstatic for Mike Leigh’s inclusion in the original screenplay field, though it came at the expense of “Black Swan” (which was starting to look shaky here as of late, if you asked around). The other screenplay field, adapted, was the only one that I nailed 100%. But I imagine many did.
One thing I did see coming was that sound mixing nod for “Salt.” The mixing community really dug the work in that film and a last-minute screener mailing aimed strictly at the sound branch clearly did the trick. Congrats to Greg P. Russell on his 14th Oscar nomination.
Another shocker: “Waiting for Superman” was completely shut out. That means no nominations for Best Original Song OR Best Documentary Feature, the latter obviously being the shock as it was largely considered the frontrunner. I’m long on the record for thinking the film a bit less as a work of filmmaking than it is as a work of activism, so it’s certainly how I would have nominated. I’m nevertheless surprised at the doc branch’s individualism there. GREAT line-up this year.
Let’s see. There a few more things to note by way of instant analysis before breaking away for a bit. Speaking of the original song category, it only had four nominees, and none of them were for “Burlesque.” Instead, “Coming Home” from “Country Strong” scored. Meanwhile, Alan Menken WOULD have tied Randy Newman for fourth-most-nominated-dude-still-living…if Newman hadn’t chalked up #20 today, that is. Now Newman joins Kevin O’Connell under Woody Allen and John Williams for third-most among those still upright.
And the biggest left-field pick (which put a smile on my face) might be “I Am Love” grabbing a nomination for Best Costume Design. How frisky of the branch.
“TRON Legacy” was snubbed in the visual effects field, which is worth noting. And it was “Hereafter” rather than “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” that took its place. I heard there was snickering about the handling of the younger Jeff Bridges at the bake-off, but that shouldn’t take away from all the other quality work on display in that film. Alas.
Oh, and I’m happy that “Blue Valentine” saw some love for Michelle Williams, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was saddened by the (however expected) exclusion of Ryan Gosling, who gave the year’s best performance, bar none.
I went 92/120 in overall predictions, 82/105 in the ones most predicted (excluding shorts) and 38/45 in the top eight categories. Check out the full list of predictions at The Circuit. And stay tuned later today for a special edition of Oscar Talk with Guy Lodge and (hopefully) Peter Knegt joining in. I’ll also have the sidebar updated and a fresh set of winner predictions soon.
Wait, one last thing……BANKSY!
[Photo: The Weinstein Company]
Comments
114 responses to “‘King’s Speech’ leads the pack with 12 Oscar nominations”
Five first-time nominees that I’m happy for:
1. John Hawkes, Supporting Actor
2. Mary Zophres, Costume Design
3. Matthew Libatique, Cinematography
4. Jess Gonchor, Art Direction
5. John Powell, Original Score
They’ve all been around the block for quite some time and done plenty of excellent work, yet never got Oscar’s recognition until now.
Kris, you HAVE GOT TO ASK Anne about that “David O. Russell will never get nominated for an Oscar” comment. I’d love to her response. Not because, I want you to throw it to her face, quite on the contrary I think she had something of a point and would love to hear what she thinks now.
Can someone give the total nomination numbers for movies?
TKS– 12
True Grit 10
TSN 8
The Fighter 7
What about others?
I am too lazy to count :))
And how’s that for Best Foreign line-up?
Renner is pretty good, but Affleck and Rebecca Hall are the ones that deserve a nod from that film.
And so, True Grit is so scary strong that I fear for Melissa Leo.
Sam @ 35, completely agree.
Here are my complaints:
Winter’s Bone over The Town.
No Nolan for Director! Jesus, what the fuck does that guy have to do to get a nomination.
I haven’t seen Bardem, but I loved Wahlberg, Gosling and Duvall in their films.
Hawkes in a film that will be an afterthought in 2 years beating out a potentially iconic performance from Garfield in “The Social Network”.
Weaver, who was kind of a letdown in the otherwise awsome “Animal Kingdom”, beating out Kunis.
No “Town” screenplay nom, but I kinda saw thar coming. Once again, “Winter’s Bone” showing up where it doesn’t belong.
No film editing for “Inception” is beyond astounding and will hopefully go down as one of the most absurd omissions in Oscar history. It was really one of the best accomplishments in editing history if you ask me.
“TRON: Legacy” with no VFX nom is also pretty stunning. Considering “Iron Man 2” and “Hereafter” are such lesser accomplishments.
This is always a more dissappointing day than it needs to be. I’m also sick of the “actor’s actor” nominations at the expense of younger performers.
Loyal,
I second your predictions…Very good and fairly distributed (I’d like to see Amy Adams win just because i like her and i believe she was good, even better than Melissa Leo. But i could live with Hailee win!
Thank god Jacki Weaver was included! Also was really surprised by John Hawkes, but happy for all the Winter’s Bone love!
I wish that voters who would’ve supported the Social Network would now vote Winter’s Bone!!
Maxim: Should have said “second-most-nominated-dude-still-living.” Is that not accurate?
Thanks Sertan!
I would actually prefer one of the Fighter actresses to win but I feel True Grit has a big win or two coming it’s way thanks to such an impressive showing (10 noms, Coens directing nom, likely 150+m at the box office).
And while I would love Zimmer and Pfister to win for their amazing work on Inception, I think it’s time for Desplat and Deakins to shine. Inception will find it’s glory in Sound, VFX, and Art Direction.
Great nominees all around.
Winter’s Bone gets its due, finally.
Cant wait to see Dido performing on the Oscar night. Now that Burlesque song is out, “If I Rise” must be the odds on fav to win it. And truly deserving too. What a song!!!
A handful of autopilot nominations for The King’s Speech for sure.
Worst snub is Garfield for sure, as he’s the best in the category, even better than Bale. Nolan for director isn’t far behind, as the Coens clearly don’t belong in that category this year. And Inception should have probably won film editing, so I don’t understand that choice at all.
Disappointed at the love for The Kids Are All Right, which sports some good performances, but a garbage screenplay with loads of holes. I hope it goes home empty handed.
I wonder if this will be a year where we look back and say “yep, the Academy definitely made the wrong choice there”. The King’s Speech is good, but The Social Network is a masterpiece.
Kris,
You don’t need to worry about overstating Inception’s snubs in Editing and Director. Both of those categories are considered a pretty good indicator of the top 5, so it’s pretty obvious that Inception wouldn’t have made the cut if there were only 5 slots in the Best Picture category.
Argh, no Andrew Garfield?! MAARRKK!!!
Restrepo!!!!!!!!!!!
This is all.
Kris: Oh, I really wasn’t concerned with accruracy or semantics. It just sounded like you were taking a jab at Williams so I wanted to make sure. Glad it’s not the case.
In any case, I can think of at least one more person who’s ahead – Woody Allen. I know some audio editing/mixing professionals are somewhere up there too.
The King’s Speech technical recognition is embarrassing.
I am extremely happy that John Hawkes got nominated. He gave one of the best performances of the year (in any category) in my opinion.
I also have to admit that I’m pretty happy with how I did on my predictions (http://auteurfan.blogspot.com/2011/01/predicting-nominees-everything-in-its.html if you want to look at the proof). In the “major 8” categories, I was 41/45 (only if I had gone with my gut and predicted Hawkes and Bardem) and was 85/105 overall (I skipped the short categories). Not too bad I think.
Across the eight top categories, I think this is the best set of nominees in years:
BEST PICTURE
The best slate that could have been expected from the eleven-strong field which was sadly locked up weeks ago. I’m happy with ‘127 Hours’ over ‘The Town’, partly because it is the better film but also because it suggests that a movie need not enjoy massive financial success in order to be nominated.
BEST DIRECTOR
Shoot me, I always thought Nolan was the weakest of the bunch. To shepherd him into the fold based on one glaring past snub wouldn’t have been as validating as many commentators seem to believe. I would have loved to see last year’s trend continue and Granik or Chodolenko take his place, but the increasingly secure status of the Coens as Academy staples is cheering enough.
BEST ACTOR
I wish Ryan Gosling could be in there too, but there’s no denying a terrific lineup. Honestly, Javier Bardem deserves to win it.
BEST ACTRESS
I wish Lesley Manville could be in there too, but there’s no denying a monumentally terrific lineup. Hilary Swank empty-handed means we can wipe our collective brow.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
I’m not on board with Jeremy Renner, but John Hawkes’ presence more than makes up for it.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
This category was a potential disaster zone, with voters phoning in undistinguished supporting players on the grounds that their films had great support elsewhere. HBC has obviously benefited from that, and even without the egregious category fraud I’m unconvinced that Hailee Steinfeld belongs here, but the fact that the one-note performances in ‘Black Swan’ were jettisoned in favour of a real critical darling should be a cause for celebration.
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
They’ve been locked for ages, but that shouldn’t detract from the excellence of this lineup. I’d sub out ‘127 Hours’ for something more adventurous, but that’s not the biggest concern in the world.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Even if his actresses are consistently snubbed, the love for Mike Leigh from this branch is a wonderful thing.
On top of all this, the lineups for Animated Feature, Documentary Feature and Foreign Language Film are stellar. What a year!
Only two nominations in the entire list that irk me, and neither of them was a surprise, so that’s a good Tuesday morning.
As far as omissions go, it’s too bad about Gosling (I personally would replace Eisenberg with him) and Manville (no room at the inn).
And what an understated Best Makeup line-up.
Maxim: Actually, it’s as follows. You’re right:
John Williams: 45
Woody Allen: 21
Randy Newman: 20
Kevin O’Connell: 20
Alan Menken: 19
So, THIRD-most-nominated-dude-still-living. :)
Nolan is the modern version of 70’s/80’s Spielberg: directs entertaining films, quality films, films that are BOTH. That’s a non-starter for the Academy; they’ll toss you nominations for everything else, but that good work has nothing to do with the dude in the director’s chair.
Russell should get down on his knees and pray to whatever deity he holds dear and thank it that he’s one of the final five. I wound up being half-right on my no guts, no glory pic on AwardsDaily. I thought Inception would be shut out of both BP and BD. I hate even being half-right. :(
Too much 127 Hours love for my taste… bummed about Nolan not getting in for Director of Smith for Editing… I knew it wouldn’t happen, but I really wish Gosling got a nom, he gave my fav performance of the year and he stuck out as better than Williams, but Actress was a weaker field. Shocked Dogtooth made it in, FINALLY going to catch it tonight.
In one night, the Academy managed to declare:
-that The King’s Speech had sound that was *in the top 5 of the year*
-that Unstoppable deserved a nomination for its terrifyingly one-note and grating sound mixing
-that Garfield was worse than Ruffalo or Renner or Hawkes
-that Inception directed AND edited itself
-that while Williams was worthy of a nomination, Gosling was not.
You go, AMPAS!
Loving the server problems across the board on all Oscar sites this morning. Makes me feel half as annoyed as Christopher Nolan right now.
Seriously, what does the guy have to do to get a Best Director nomination? The man has three DGA nominations but nothing from the Academy. What did he do that was so bad that justifies him being snubbed on two separate occasions? I can understand not being nominated for Memento but come on now he missed for The Dark Knight and now he misses for Inception. To the members of the Academy: Wake the Fuck Up!!!!
Also, I thought that Inception was easily one of the best, if not the best, edited films of the year. To see Lee Smith miss with the Academy for a film that demonstrated a supreme mastery of the craft is a great shame.
Other than that, I love how Another Year got a nod somewhere, even if it was for its improvisational screenplay.
The King’s Speech with a sound nomination? Again, Wake the Fuck Up….but now The King’s Speech is the frontrunner based on two things: the PGA victory and this morning’s announcements. To me, that’s a shame because it looks like The Social Network is about to get royally shafted.
I did love the showing for True Grit because I think it’s also a truly great film. The lack of an editing nomination hurts its chances in stealing the big prize. I also think there were more deserving contenders than Jeff Bridges this year but I’m not complaining that much because I loved True Grit.
Waiting for Superman…supposed frontrunner turned to Oscar snub…very interesting.
Four nominees in the Original Song category deserves another Wake the Fuck Up
Supporting Actress is probably the hardest race to call this year. If they want to make this a big night for The King’s Speech (which is certainly possible given this morning’s announcement), then they could give the award to Carter. If they want to spread some love around for True Grit, they would recognize Steinfeld and then give cinematography to Deakins. The Academy will already be recognizing The Fighter through Bale so it’s incredibly possible that Adams and Leo could cancel each other out. Weaver has no shot but again, most interesting race by far on Oscar night.
A little surprised by the low nod count for Black Swan. Like Inception, it was cleaning up with all the guilds so to see it miss in the sound categories and for costume design is a bit surprising. But I’m not as big on the film as everyone else seems to be. Guess I have to watch it again.
Oh, and I agree with you Kris. I wish that Shutter Island was recognized somewhere at least in Art Direction or Cinematography because it truly was one of the year’s most underrated gems as far as I’m concerned.
We’ll see what happens…there’s still a lot of things left to be determined in this 2010 Oscar race.
Man, I really hope Kevin O’Connell wins an Oscar one of these days. He both deserves it and needs to have it so that he’s not overshadowed by the non-recognition recognition.
41 of 45 for me above the line, including all 10 Best Picture nods. I’d be happy if I weren’t furious over the Nolan snub. Till next time, I suppose. At least “Deathly Hallows” landed an Art Direction nod, though I’d have liked it to show up for Cinematography as well.
I hate that Nolan got snubbed (He should have three nominations, not two) but I’m not as pissed off as I was the last time.
Who do you replace? It’s a good list. It’s not like last time when the answer was simply Stephen Daldry.
I’d swap out Russell in a heartbeat. But that’s me.
I think I’m more disappointed this time around just because I was fully expecting Nolan to receive a nomination for “Inception”, whereas I thought his chances for “Dark Knight” were less than 50-50.
Nolan snubbed. So what else is new?
On the flip side…
Go:
Steinfeld
Hawkes
Weaver
Amen,praise the Lawd & pass the ammunition.
Sad by the lack of love for Inception, TRON Legacy, Black Swan, and Andrew Garfield. However, that’s okay. Waiting for Superman didn’t get nominated, so maybe Exit Through the Gift Shop will hopefully win. Fingers crossed!!!
Now that I’ve come down from cloud nine over Restrepo getting in, I do have to register my sadness over neither Ed Harris or Matt Damon getting into Supporting Actor. Then again, I like a lot of what happened this morning. I wasn’t particularly impressed with either Black Swan or Inception, so the lower than expected totals for those two films make me rather happy. And I loved True Grit and TKS, and liked TSN quite a bit, so I’m happy to see the love for those films.
Another thing to add is that despite the “surprises” the people who replaced the people that were predicted (Bardem over Duvall or Gosling, John Hawkes over Andrew Garfield, etc.) it isn’t like previous years where it’s some stupid out of the blue surprise. All of the people that were nominated were completely deserving, and even in the directing field, everyone is good. It seems odd that people didn’t predict this scenario. The Academy seems to hate Nolan or something. Maybe they’ll apologize by giving him a screenplay win.
“Maybe they’ll apologize by giving him a screenplay win.”
No. King’s Speech or Kids Are All Right will get Original Screenplay. David O. Russell getting in over Nolan is an embarrassment that will be laughed at 50 years from now.
Happy: Bardem, Kidman, Williams, Hawkes, Another Year screenplay, I Am Love (wow!), The Way Back make-up, HTTYD (music!), The Illusionist.
Unhappy: Gosling, Manville, Garfield, no Inception editing.
The song There’s a Place for Us was not at Oscar.com. At first they’ve made 2 mistakes: In the best actor field they didn’t include Colin Firth and in the makeup category they include Adrien Morot, but not for what film he got a nomination.
I am SO sad about Manville. Having just seen the performance …. pfffsh, yeah.
She rode the line btwn. both categories too finely, I guess.
Biutiful shouldn’t be nominated. It’s released in the US on January 28. Fuck the 1-week in NY and LA stuff, this is a 2011 film vying for a 2010 Oscar.
Delighted for Another Year’s nod in the screenplay category, Jacki Weaver, John Hawkes, Michelle Williams, The Illusionist, Jeremy Renner.
Saddened by Lesley Manville’s and Ryan Gosling’s snubs.
For full analysis check out the blog Imitation of Life.
After months campaigning for her, here is my last tribute to the great Lesley Manville. Read the interview I held with her in Imitation of Life.
Paul, to be in the Foreign category you don’t need a US release
PaulH: Rules is rules.
-I hope that the Hereafter nod just went to Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World (I think the bad reviews of Tron Legacy affects its VFX nod)
-Nice to see I Am Love Costume Design nomination (I was hoping for a Secretariat nod in this category instead of True Grit)
-I really hope Rush and Bonham-Carter won respectively especially the latter not just for a subtle and different performance in TKS, but for a convincing performance in Harry Potter 7: Part 1 and yes in Alice in Wonderland… My hopes are still high for both supporting nods…
-Art Direction nominees are well deserved… Clap Clap!
-I still don’t get the The Social network Cinematography nod…. How I wish it was Shutter Island….
-Maybe Nolan should make a Memento 2 film to sneak a Directing nomination… I didn’t think he deserved a Directing nod as well for Inception, well it’s just me.. Coen Brothers did a good job in True Grit…
-127 Hours nod was nice even in Editing…
-Over all, I’m satisfied with the nominations…. Nice to see The King’s Speech leading the pack…
Words can`t discribe how disgusting Nolan snub in director and editing is. I`m so sick right now, I won`t be able to go to work tomorrow because I`m having a meltodown of epic proportions over this unfathomable tragedy. This is no hyperbole, I`m calling in sick tomorrow.
I love how everyone considers the academy one brain as if everyone in the branch got together and made these decisions as a whole.
Thrilled with the 12 nods for “The King’s Speech” and hope this will encourage more productions like this. Surprised but gratified over the exclusion of “Inception” for direction and editing; the real outrage is that Nolan received a writing nod for a one-note, not-so-original screenplay which features barely-there characterizations and flat dialogue…
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