That Best Picture field is awfully solemn this year, isn't it? There's not a light, fun movie on the list, and you have to think that the TV audience for the ceremony will be on the small side.
Some oddities:
- It's the first time in 25 years that there's been a 5-for-5 match between the Best Picture and Best Director nominees.
- Only three Best Song nominees. The music branch hears each song at a special meeting, with each member rating the song somewhere between 6 and 10 (Why 6-10 and not 1-5? I dunno); the five highest rated songs are nominated, but a song has to have an average rating of 8.25 to be eligible, and apparently, only three songs were rated that highly this year.
- Fourteen of the twenty acting nominees are first-timers, an unusually large number. Only Dench, Theron, Phoenix, Keener, McDormand, and Hurt have been nominated before.
- Favorite "someone's got too much time on their hands" stat: It's been 25 years since the Best Picture winner didn't get nominated for Best Editing; Brokeback Mountain, the presumed favorite for Best Picture, was not nominated for Best Editing.
Most of the major races seem to have clear front runners: Brokeback Mountain for Picture; Ang Lee for Director; Philip Seymour Hoffman for Actor; Reese Witherspoon for Actress; Rachel Weisz for Supporting Actress.
Supporting Actor's the exception; that looks like a battle between George Clooney and Paul Giamatti, with the Academy having to decide whether they'd rather atone for their earlier snubs of Giamatti or reward Clooney for his King-of-Hollywood year. I don't think Clooney's performance in Syriana is quite good enough to win the award, and they'll give it to Giamatti.
And I don't think all of those clear front runners are going to win, either. I think the Best Actor field is extremely strong, and the race extremely tight; Ledger's probably running in second, but the only name that would shock me is Terrence Howard.
Best Actress, I think, is a close two-woman race, and I think Felicity Huffman is going to beat Witherspoon (if anyone else wins, it will be a tremendous upset). Between Transamerica and Desperate Housewives, Huffman is as hot as an actress can get; she and husband William H. Macy are adored in Hollywood; and she's at an age where she's not likely to get many more juicy leading roles (unlike Witherspoon, whom the Academy will have many more chances to reward).
As for the Supporting Actress race, the first thing to say is Hooray! for Amy Adams making the cut; that made me happier than anything else on the list. I don't think, alas, she stands a chance to win. I fear that Michelle Williams is going to win, which will have me screaming at the TV; hers is the most undeserved nomination in the major categories, for the most overrated performance of the year.
Who would I like to see win? Capote; Lee; Hoffman; Huffman; Giamatti; Adams.
Who do I think will win? Brokeback; Lee; Ledger; Huffman; Giamatti; Williams.
Biggest snub (of someone who had no chance in hell of ever being nominated): Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mysterious Skin.
Biggest snub (of someone who actually had a chance): Joan Allen, The Upside of Anger.
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