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Oscar Surprises, Part 3: Films That Made Out Big, Plus: Foreign Invasion!
George Clooney in Michael Clayton courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
And now to the films that made out like bandits:
There's Juno, of course, and Paul Thomas Anderson's bleak There Will Be Blood, based on Upton Sinclair's muckraking 1927 novel Oil!, was nominated for best picture, best actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), best director and best adapted screenplay. The quietly effective Paul Dano, of last year's indie favorite Little Miss Sunshine, was passed over for best supporting actor. Lewis was widely considered a shoo-in, but the rest of the nominations were less than givens, despite critical raves for this lengthy (158 minutes), epic examination of greed, false prophets and near-biblical retribution.
Thinking-man's thriller Michael Clayton scored big with critics without exciting much attention among moviegoers. It's nominated for best picture, with star George Clooney recognized in the best-actor category. Costars Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson were both nominated in the supporting categories and first-time director Tony Gilroy got a nod both for direction and for his original screenplay. Way to go! Let's hope that the multiple nominations get moviegoers to take a look when it goes back into theaters this Friday.
The Coen brothers' grim No Country for Old Men, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name, also took a best-picture nod, along with best supporting actor recognition for Javier Bardem as a sociopathic killer and double recognition for Joel and Ethan Coen in the directing and adapted screenplay categories. Apparently my feeling that there's far less to this gloomy, Texas-set thriller than meets the eye is very much the minority one.
A WWI-era drama with a vicious sting in its tail, Atonement — based on Ian McEwan's novel — came away with only two major nominations: best picture and best supporting actress for 14-year-old Saoirse Ronan. That's not too shabby, but it falls short of expectations. Perhaps it looked too much like a highbrow soap opera for Academy members, though it's much more than that… and anyway, highbrow soap operas have a tradition of doing just fine come Oscar time.
On the other hand, three French-language films found themselves in the spotlight outside the best foreign-language film ghetto: The animated Persepolis, based on the autobiographical graphic novels by Iranian writer Marjane Satrapi (nominated for best animated feature); painter turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which nabbed him a best-directing nomination and screenwriter Ronald Harwood recognition for adapting the late Jean-Dominique Bauby's heartbreaking memoir Le Scaphandre et le Papillon); and La Vie en Rose, which earned star Marion Cotillard a best-actress nomination for her no-holds-barred performance as tragic French singer Edith Piaf.
Perhaps it is a small world after all, even in Hollywood!
• Oscar Surprises, Part 1: Juno and Tommy Lee Jones
• Oscar Surprises, Part 2: Blanchett, Mortensen and Hal Holbrook
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Jan 22, 2008 10:11 AM
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My first impressions of the nominations is how good all of them are. Of the best movie nominations, I would honestly be pretty happy with any of them winning. Atonement, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men (a movie that has WAY more than meets the eye) are all fantastic movies, and they all deserve the prize. Michael Clayton isn't quite as good, but still fantastic movie, and it goes without saying how delightful Juno is. Same for best director, although I would much prefer if Joe Wright got his due for Atonement over Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton. That battle scene long-take is a marvel of direction.
Best Actor seems like a foregone conclusion, Daniel Day-Lewis is going to get it. I would much prefer Viggo Mortensen for Eastern Promises, mostly because of his unrewarded performance in A History of Violence, which is for my money one of the best of all time.
I would be so happy if Ellen Page won best actress. All of the other ones are fine (and Julie Christie is spectacular), but she really deserves the award. I don't think there is another actress who could have delivered that role. I'm also kinda cheering for Amy Ryan to win for Gone Baby Gone, which is a flawed movie, but she and the actress who played Dottie ("The neighbuhood is really comin' togetha") nailed every line.
Javier Bardem has to get his due for No Country. That was a role for the ages, he's the scariest SOB I've ever seen. He plays Death even better than Bengt Ekerot.*
Finally, I really hope Enchanted wins Best Song. I'm still humming "That's How You Know" and "Happy Working Song" (my girlfriend is super-annoyed every time I sing that while doing the dishes), and it's been weeks since I saw the movie.
(*That's a Bergman-joke, for all you cinephiles out there)
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Jan 22, 2008 2:21 PM
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I am with you in that minority about No Country for Old Men- I thought it was good but not necessarily deserving of all of the huge fuss it's gotten!
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Jan 22, 2008 3:11 PM
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I wouldn't count Johnny Depp out of the running for Best Actor. He is very well liked. And Viggo, Daniel and George might just be splitting up the "drama" vote.
OK. I hate awards talk. That's all I intend to say about the Oscars this year!
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Jan 22, 2008 3:20 PM
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With the exception of Tom Wilkinson's riveting performance, I found Michael Clayton to be boring and its resolution only possible because of a moment of the wrost kind of idiot plotting.
When Swinson's character first hears about Clayton's involvement, she asks who is this guy. Then, instead of ordering her people to find out who he is and what his weaknesses might be, she goes pretty much straight to Plan B - kill the sucker.
And we're supposed to believe she's the best and brightest her company's legal department has to offer? I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now.
Had Gilroy not had that lapse, Swinton's character would've made decisions that would have required a lot more work on Clayton's part - and therefore, the movie would have been smarter and more entertaining.
As it is, as Dick Martin used to say, they "lost me at the bakery."
Wilkinson is the only participant in the film that deserves an Oscar® nomination.
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Jan 22, 2008 4:24 PM
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ATONEMENT wasn't as big with the Oscars as it was with me for two reasons, I think:
No eclectic underdog involved in the filming.
Not enough star power.
That beind said, it's my pick as best movie of the year.
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Jan 22, 2008 8:20 PM
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The surprise is not that Persepolis got nominated for animated feature as much as it is that Surf's Up did while Shrek the Third did not. (Perhaps there are more Blu-Ray than HD-DVD owners in the Academy's animation branch?)
(Speaking of animation, which is the bigger sure thing: Ratatouille for animated feature, or Sicko for documentary feature?)
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Jan 22, 2008 9:27 PM
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So glad Johnny Depp got nomated for Sweeney Todd. Hope he wins!
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Jan 23, 2008 3:20 AM
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