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January 24, 2007
In Other Awards…
I haven’t seen a shocking number of the films garnering Academy Award nominations this year; I hadn’t even heard of a couple. Book, shmook, I need to get myself to the movies. Usually I do my last-minute Oscar running with Jennifer, but that's proving a bit impractical since she moved to North Carolina. (WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME, JENNIFER? WHY DID YOU LEAVE???) It’s worth noting that she highly recommends the multiple-nominee Pan’s Labyrinth, which I have plans to see next week, when I'll also be seeing an important (oddly not nominated) documentary that I’m sure you’re all anxious to see, too.
And now for the nominees.
Tammy says that Will Smith acted well in that travesty The Pursuit of Happyness, but the Academy should know better than to encourage the production of that type of film by giving it any nominations for anything. Bad, Academy, bad. I haven’t seen any of the rest of the films that got Best Actor nominations, but let me go on record that I’m keeping my fingers crossed for everyone else. Alan Arkin should totally win Supporting for Little Miss Sunshine. He was at once repulsive and lovable, a bright spot in a thoroughly enjoyable film. Mark Wahlberg was unforgettable in The Departed, though, too, so I’d go for that.
I’m going to jump out on a limb and say that it’s a little weird that the main character of Little Miss Sunshine got a Supporting rather than a full-fledge Leading Actress nomination. Ageists.
Monster House got nominated for Best Animated Feature? As if we needed another sign that animated features are in a very, very bad place.
I was most excited about the Best Documentary category. I have a thing for documentaries anyway, but I saw Deliver Us from Evil at the High Falls Film Festival this past November and heard director Amy Berg speak about making and promoting the film. The film is powerful, tackling a difficult subject in a respectful and challenging way, and I’m thrilled to see it nominated. Its biggest competition will be An Inconvenient Truth, which I finally watched last week. It’s good, but, you know, it’s a slide show – an interesting, thought-provoking slide show, but still. Slide show.
How, exactly, is Borat an Adapted, as opposed to Original, Screenplay? Because it’s based on a character? Usually one sees things adapted from books or plays in this category. Kudos to the Academy for recognizing the film, in either case.
I don’t want to see Letters from Iwo Jima, but I guess I’m going to have to. Everyone says it’s better than Flags of Our Fathers, which is good, I guess, but ugh. Another freaking war film.
Posted by adrienne at January 24, 2007 09:21 AM
Comments
I think the whole submission for Best Actress vs. Best Supporting thing is a calculated move by the studios. As adorable as Abigail Breslin may be, she certainly has no chance in hell of being nominated over stalwarts like Meryl Streep or Helen Mirren. The Supporting category has a lot more wiggle room for the dark horses. (In fact I think all the kid actors who won Oscars were in supporting categories. As far as I can recall, only the little girl from Whale Rider may have been nominated in Best Actress, and that was just in a really thin year for female performances.) The supporting categories usually are the wild cards that screw up my Oscar predictions.
I too have been bad about seeing the nominated movies again this year, despite the abundance of good indie theaters here. You will just have to come back for another visit before Feb. 25.
And yes, if you don't like Pan's Labyrinth, you are probably a soulless person whom I do not wish to know. Or one of those backlash hipsters, for whom I also do not have the proverbial time of day.
Posted by: Jen at January 24, 2007 03:53 PM
Ah, Jen, how I miss you!
Posted by: adrienne at January 24, 2007 10:16 PM