Once again this year, Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International are teaming up to bring the Best Short Film nominees to a theater near you on February 11. It’s the third straight year of this partnership and it remains a stellar way of getting these otherwise fringe categories out to the masses.
This year’s animated short field features a typically varied mixture of styles and approaches. But it is, I feel, a less impressive line-up than we’ve seen in recent years. Nothing really stands out as profound or instantly worthy of awards consideration, but there are certainly particulars of each that warrant praise. What’s more, it could be perceived as a relatively open race.
The nominees are:
“Day & Night” (Teddy Newton)
“The Gruffalo” (Jakob Schuh and Max Lang)
“Let’s Pollute” (Geefwee Boedoe)
“The Lost Thing” (Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann)
“Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)” (Bastien Dubois)
The race for Best Original Screenplay is full of worthy competitors this year. Four Best Picture nominees and the year’s best screenplay period make up the field, and even if there are a few that should have been in the mix, I find it difficult to argue with what squeaked through in the end.
The music branch’s process of nominating in the Best Original Song category changed a few years ago. Members now screen clips and view contenders as used within the context of their films. It generally means music used organically has a better shot than the usual closing credits fluff of yore.
The animated feature field unfortunately fell one film short of the required 16 eligible contenders to expand the category to five nominees this year. As a result of this bewildering and arbitrary “rule,” some great work was left off the list in this, a pretty decent year for animation in general.
Like last year, this year’s Best Supporting Actress race was a free-for-all when it came to the last spot. Potential category confusion almost had two spots up for grabs. And there was absolutely no shortage of possible spoilers once the BAFTA had spoken up with a slate of formidable possibilities.
You might recall last year’s 
And here we are. With one day until the Oscar ceremony, we wrap up our Oscar Guide series with a look at the 10 nominations for Best Picture. Yes, 10. The Academy decided to pump up the intrigue by expanding its Best Picture field this year in an attempt at securing some love for more populist films with a wider audience, and it seems to have worked.
Best Original Screenplay: 2009’s most difficult category to predict. Why? Certainly not because of each contender’s merits (when does that ever come into play with the Academy). No, this field is a hair-puller because you have a vibrant, likable personality up against the Best Picture frontrunner, always a recipe for a close race (and, sometimes, a recipe for upset).
Welcome to the first of two (and the only two) categories that have me pulling my hair out. The cinematography race is a strange breed this year. There isn’t the usual one or two “pretty” films that turn the Academy on at large, nothing with sweeping vistas and postcard composition, all the stuff that allows voters to stop being analytical and vote for mere aesthetic.
This year’s Best Director category has stirred a media frenzy for featuring, along with Best Picture, a face-to-face duel frequently dubbed “the battle of the exes.” Unfortunately the desire to tout that headline has clouded the discussion of the films, their merits and the actual accomplishments of those at the helm. But who cares about that stuff?
For three straight years the Academy Award for Best Costume Design has gone to a film that received no other Oscars. In each case, the films could be considered “period porn,” as it were, lavish productions with massive thread ensembles. “Most Costume Design” would be a more applicable moniker for the award, given how the Academy traditionally sees things.
In most cases, the adapted screenplay category of a given Oscar race is packed with Best Picture nominees or contenders. This year, however, there was a nice balance of adapted and original screenplays in the Best Picture category, and in fact, of the “top five” films that trickled down throughout the season, three were original and two were adapted, a rarity.
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For years the composers of the music branch tended to be a bit insular. Impressive newcomer talent was often ignored while the usual suspects showed up year after year. Not long ago, there seemed to be a shift, yielding slates much like the one we have for 2009.
Much like the live action and animated short fields, in order for voters to cast their ballots for the documentary short category, they have to attend screenings of all the nominees. This tends to make these categories a bit tougher to predict, because they are frequently immune to noise in the media. You screen, you vote.
This year’s Best Actress race is easily the most debated of the major categories. Though one can’t help but wonder why that is, as the writing has seemingly been on the wall for a number of weeks now, stretching back to before the nominations were announced.
The year’s documentary feature category hasn’t offered up a lot of suspense so far this season. One contender has been a dominant force on the circuit and the nominations, for the most part, lined up accordingly. A lot of the intrigue, of course, is taken out by the mid-season announcement of a 15-film shortlist, which sometimes has its own shockers (as it did this year).
Year after year, the original song category tends to prove that something is broken in the music branch of the Academy. But to be fair, that’s a bit of a half-truth overall, as the original score field has begun to loosen up a bit and allow for newbie talent to get a foot in the door as of late.