Nominations, Baby!

Oscar Nominations were announced yesterday - yay! No major surprises, unless you look deep enough.

This year the Best Film category was expanded to include ten nominations, which I think is an excellent idea. The aim is not to ignore an intelligent summer film, as the Academy sadly did last year with The Dark Knight (2008), which should have been nominated and only had a couple of effects Oscars & Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger. The biggest surprise here is District 9 (2009), along with the rather wonderful news that, for only the second time in Oscar history, an animated film is nominated for Best Film, Up (2009) which is a shoe-in anyway for Best Animated Feature. The likely winner will be Avatar (2009), though this will also win all the effects Oscars this year - interestingly, no actor nominations for it or script nominations.

Best Motion Picture of the Year Nominees:

Avatar (2009)
The Blind Side (2009)
District 9 (2009)
An Education (2009)
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
A Serious Man (2009)
Up (2009)
Up in the Air (2009)

The Actor and Actress categories are less surprising, in my opinion. It's wonderful to see Colin Firth up for Best Actor, though the trend seems to be at the moment to give Jeff Bridges his long-overdue award - a "Scorsese moment" as it shall now be known. However, you shouldn't count your chickens too soon. Let's remember what happened last year, when Mickey Rourke was winning all the awards for The Wrestler (2008), only for Sean Penn to clinch the Oscar for Milk (2008). British wise, Carey Mulligan and Helen Mirren are up for Best Actress - isn't it amazing for Mulligan, who's probably pinching herself. If she doesn't win, which she's unlikely to as the money's on Sandra Bullock, this nomination will really boost her chances at getting more meaty roles, particularly in Hollywood.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role Nominees:

Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart (2009)
George Clooney for Up in the Air (2009)
Colin Firth for A Single Man (2009)
Morgan Freeman for Invictus (2009)
Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role Nominees:

Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (2009)
Helen Mirren for The Last Station (2009)
Carey Mulligan for An Education (2009)
Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia (2009)

Supporting nods have gone to a nice mix of actors and actresses. One would argue that the fight for Supporting Actor will be between Matt Damon for Invictus (2009) and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009). In the Supporting Actress category Penelope Cruz, last year's winner here, gets one of only a few nods for Nine (2009), but everyone is talking about Mo'Nique for Precious (2009), which will probably be one of the few Oscar wins that actually deserves it.

It would be a shame if The Hurt Locker (2009) didn't win anything. At the very least, it should win Kathryn Bigelow Best Director, as she won the Director's Guild equivalent recently, but chances are her ex, James Cameron, will win instead. If he does, I don't mind saying that it will annoy me a lot. Cameron is NOT a film maker, he's an event maker. If Avatar wins Best Film that's fine, but if you want proper suspense and real life drama, then The Hurt Locker is your cup of tea.

The last few surprises for me are as follows:

1. Five nominations for Best Animated Film, with Coraline (2009) and Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) standing up for Stop Motion; also The Princess And The Frog (2009) has brought traditional hand-drawn animation back in a big way.
2. No nominations for Let The Right One In (2009) in Best Foreign Feature, which is a real shame. Money is now on either A Prophet (2009), a winner at Cannes, or The White Ribbon (2009), Michael Haneke's latest.
3. Absolutely no nominations for The Road (2009).
4. No Screenplay nomination for The Hangover (2009). Now, admittedly, this wasn't the greatest film in the world last yer BUT if the Academy were trying to be more inclusive for a year's worth of features rather than a few months then they've completely overlooked the top grossing comedy for last year, unlike BAFTA who have nominated this film in this category.

Finally, it's good to see Nick Park nominated again for Best Animated Short for his latest Wallace & Gromit film, A Matter Of Loaf & Death (2008), though it wasn't as good as some of their previous outings and the brilliant The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005).

Some interesting choices, then, and some rather more obvious choices too. But, like I said, we should never take Oscar for granted; he always has some tricks up his golden sleeve.

Laters.