First Impression: Oscar Nominations

I’ll have my usual coverage of the Academy Awards coming up in February including detailed overviews of the main categories and live coverage of the ceremony itself; in the meantime, however I do have some initial thoughts.

• The biggest oversight this year is in the Best Picture category. The omission of Dark Knight and the inclusion of The Reader will go down as one of the great clusterfucks in Oscar history. Hell I’d say they were a number of films including Wall-E that were more deserving than The Reader based on critical and commercial reception.
• Thank god the Best Original Song category is only three strong. Should be very competitive as well.
• Saddened to see Kate Winslet nominated for The Reader versus Revolutionary Road. Again while this is only based on critical response and not my own first hand experience, it sounds like the lesser role was nominated which could once again deny Kate her golden man.
• Cheers to the obvious Heath Ledger nomination but too bad the expected win comes at the expense of Robert Downey Jr.’s Oscar worthy turn in Tropic Thunder.
• Directing category is once again a disappointment as both Chris Nolan and
Darren Aronofsky were overlooked in favor of The Reader. The only way to make this up is to give David Fincher his long deserved recognition.
• Toughest category might be Make Up with Hellboy II, Dark Knight, and Benjamin Button.
• Speaking of Benjamin, I’ve got a feeling this is one of those Oscar occurrences where a film gets a ton of nominations but ends up winning very few.
• Finally, I have some serious viewing to do so I can give some more first hand opinions.