2009 Oscar Nominations

Cafe Society
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PICTURE
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air
ACTOR
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
ACTRESS
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
SUPP.ACTOR
Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds
SUPP.ACTRESS
Penelope Cruz, Nine
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Mo’Nique, Precious
DIRECTOR
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
James Cameron, Avatar
Lee Daniels, Precious
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino, Inglorious Basterds
ORIG.SCREENPLAY
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
The Messenger
A Serious Man
Up
ADAPT.SCREENPLAY
District 9
An Education
In the Loop
Precious
Up in the Air
CINEMATOGRAPHY
*Avatar
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
The White Ribbon
*

ART DIRECTION
Avatar
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Nine
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria
EDITING
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
COSTUME DESIGN
Bright Star
Coco Before Chanel
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Nine
The Young Victoria
SCORE
Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Hurt Locker
Sherlock Holmes
Up
SONG
“Almost There”, The Princess and the Frog
“Down in New Orleans” The Princess and the Frog
“Loin de Paname”, Paris 36
“Take It All”, Nine
“The Weary Kind”, Crazy Heart
SOUND MIXING
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
SOUND EDITING
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Star Trek
Up
VISUAL EFFECTS
Avatar
District 9
Star Trek
MAKE-UP
Il Divo
Star Trek
The Young Victoria
ANIMATED FEATURE
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up

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I just printed out 5 pages of Oscar nominations from Oscar.com’s “Printable” list before realizing that they were LAST year’s nominees. Argh. knocks together some oscar.com people’s heads

I’m so happy that The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus got 2 nominations!

I mourn the non-nominations of Sam Rockwell and Ben Foster.

A SERIOUS MAN!! I whooped at that! It was not expected. So A Serious Man and The Blind Side got in over Star Trek and Invictus.

I thought I kept on top of things, but I’ve never even heard of The Secret of Kells and Paris 36!

I’ve seen all the Best Picture nominees. In the Top 8 I’ve seen everything except The Last Station, which hasn’t opened here yet. In all the other nominees other than Foreign-Language, Documentary and Shorts, I’m only missing Kells, Paris 36, Il Divo, The White Ribbon and Transformers.

Geez, I usually work nights, but this week I’m working days, which means I have to leave in about 5 minutes and can’t enjoy the chatter. Sigh.

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Ok, now this year’s nominees are up. I wanted to take them to work with me so I could study them a bit closer.

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DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Ajami (Israel)
El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
Un Prophete (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)
Tally

9: Avatar, The Hurt Locker
8: Inglorious Basterds
6: Precious, Up in the Air
5: Up
4: District 9, Nine, Star Trek
3: Crazy Heart, An Education, The Princess and the Frog, The Young Victoria
2: The Blind Side, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Invictus, The Last Station, The Messenger, A Serious Man, Sherlock Holmes, The White Ribbon
1: Bright Star, Coco Before Chanel, Coraline, Il Divo, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, In the Loop, Julie & Julia, The Lovely Bones, Paris 36, The Secret of Kells, A Single Man, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

5

All I can say is that I’m thrilled Jeremy Renner is up for The Hurt Locker! I don’t know what his chances are of winning, but him getting some validation for his fine acting is wonderful.

6

Hmm, I’ve only seen 5 of the 10 BP nominees (and I have one waiting at home). I’d better get to work.

I have to say I’m not overwhelmed by the Supporting Actor category, although I haven’t seen Lost Station. Tucci was good and creepy but who’s gonna vote for a pedophile child killer?

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I’m thrilled “District 9” got some recognition

8

As am I. Most pre-Oscar predictions I saw thought that “District 9” would be skipped and “Star Trek” would get the non-“Avatar” sci-fi slot.

9

I’m glad to see The White Ribbon and A Serious Man represented, as time goes on, they were my two favorite movies from last year. I’m a little sad that A Serious Man didn’t get a cinematography nomination, it was my favorite in that respect. Also would’ve liked to see a best actor for Stuhlbarg.

I’m disappointed by Stanley Tucci getting a nomination. Dont’ get me wrong, I think he’s a fantastic actor, I just really hated his performance in A Lovely Bones (but not nearly as much as I hated that godforsaken movie, almost makes me want to go back and watch Heavenly Creatures just to make sure he can direct a good movie).

The best picture noms were exactly as I expected. I nailed all 10 (I’m pretty sure) in that other poll thread (didn’t post, I don’t think).

Explain to me how The Blind Side is more than a paint by numbers sports movie? Didn’t hate it, but didn’t love it much either. I also thought Sandra Bullock was a bit of a caricature.

Carey Mulligan better win best actress, but they’ll probably give it to friggin Sandra Bullock or some nonsense. I’d also like Helen Mirren, she was good in The Last Station, even if the movie was a bit mediocre.

Of those nominated, I hope Tarantino gets best director, that’d be pretty cool. Loved that movie. The Hurt Locker was good (may watch it again today, just bought it on blu ray) but Basterds was better.

Costume design has the usual suspects, at least in terms of the types of movies included, but I don’t think mid 20th century movies get the credit they deserve in that respect.

Having seen every movie but 1 foreign language, 1 doc, and 4 of the shorts, I’m pretty satisfied with the nominations overall. (even though I’m complaining a lot - it’s what I do…)

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One nice consequence of having 10 BP nominees is that Up didn’t get relegated solely to the “Best Animated Feature” ghetto. Not that it is going to win, of course, but it’s nice to see it nominated. First animated movie since 1992 (and second overall) to get a BP nomination.

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I was excited to see that too. I’m betting that Bridges will win, but glad Renner got nominated.

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I feel 9 should have gotten at least a nomination for best animated feature.

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Why are there ten Best Picture nominees? What is this, kindergarten? Are we just giving everybody a trophy now? What the hell?

I don’t see a clear Best Picture. My personal favorite was Inglourious Basterds, but I liked District 9 as well. I don’t see Avatar as really being a Best picture other than technically. Maybe The Hurt Locker.

Jeff Bridges shoul win Best Actor, Merryl Streep best Actress (I do not think Sandra Bullock was that good in The Blind Side).
Christoph Waltz is probably the biggest lock of the year for completely stealing Basterds. Best Supporting Actress, I have no idea.

Best Director will probably end up being James Cameron, but I think what’s her face that directed The Hurt Locker might be a dark horse.

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Yeah, that’s what shocked me, too.

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I don’t really think *Avatar *has any business being in the Best Picture category either, but I don’t make the rules. I don’t think it’ll win either, but I do think it’ll clean house in the technical award categories its nominated in.

I so want Jeremy Renner to win, but I think he’ll lose to Jeff Bridges.

Christoph Waltz owns his category. I’ll admit, I haven’t seen the other performances there, but Waltz certainly deserves it.

I’d love to see Inglorious Basterds win Best Picture, but I don’t think it will. I do think that Tarantino has a chance at Best Director, though. I don’t think the academy will give it to Cameron again, and I think it’ll be a shootout between Bigelow and Tarantino. I’d give Bigelow the edge here, but I think it’d be close.

I’d also really like to see *Up *win Best Picture, but the academy weaseled here, I think. By putting it in two categories, they can give it an Oscar regardless, which I think is rather weaselly. They did this to Life Is Beautiful a few years ago. Yes, I want those movies to win awards, but this smacks of stacking the deck to me.

Happy to see District 9 getting recognition.

I also don’t think we need 10 contenders for Best Picture - this seems silly and watered down to me.

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We’re talking about the emotions of Hollywood here, soo… yes.

Crazy Heart was very formulaic but I’ll be rooting for Jeff Bridges. I have a lot of the other top nominees in my Netflix queue but I won’t be seeing most of them for a long while yet. Avatar’s not going to win best picture, I don’t think, but if they hadn’t nominated the thing it would have hurt the legitimacy of the show, such as it is. I’m almost rooting against Precious because the full title is so stupid.

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Actually, I would put my money on Kathryn Bigelow winning for best director, and saying that James Cameron only has a small chance. He did win the Golden Globe for best director, but she won the Director’s Guild Award, as well as a crapload of critic’s awards. The Director’s Guild is significant, since only six times the winner has not gone on to get the Oscar. The whole list of previous winners is shown here on Wikipedia.

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The more I think about it, the more I have a sneaking feeling that The Hurt Locker will win both for Motion Picture and Director. It’s the only contender that’s anything close to a “prestige” film, at least superficially. At bottom, it’s just a suspense movie with no real political message, but it does have some genuine observations about EOD units in Iraq (the screenplay was written by a journalist who’d been embedded with one), and it works as a serious character study for the Jeremy Renner character, so I think it could end up with a plurality of votes in ten movie field.

I still think that Basterd was probably a better film, with some of the very best individual scenes, images, dialogue and acting, but I’m not sure that a Tarantino movie will be seen as “serious” enough to net the big prize.

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The fact that a woman has never won for Best Director might work in her favor too. Hollywood loves to give out historic wins.

Here’s an interesting bit of trivia – Kathryn Bigelow was once married to James Cameron.

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Considering that the Golden Globes and the SAG awards were in lockstep wrt acting awards…and that the SAG voters and Oscar acting voters overlap considerably (I think); picking the acting winners this year is ridiculously easy: Bridges, Bullock, Monique, Waltz.

I only went to the movies 4 times last year, and all 4 were nominated. I have excellent taste. :slight_smile: