Thursday, January 16, 2014

2014 Oscar Nominations and Observations

The 2014 Oscar nominations were announced a few hours ago.  Going down through them I didn’t see any really huge surprises among the major nominees.  This is a big change from last year when the Best Director category had multiple WTFs in it.  In 2013 the nominations were announced before the Golden Globes were awarded, so I couldn’t do any observations there.  This year they once again came after the Globes, so I will be able to have some analysis on that.

Here are the nine Best Picture nominees:

12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street

I will post reviews for as many of these movies as I can prior to the Oscar telecast on March 2nd.  At this point I have seen only a few of them.  I will also post my predictions in the days leading up to the ceremony.  And I will have another Oscar quiz like last year’s one on early films from Oscar winners.  This year’s quiz will be on the titles of Best Picture nominees.

Click “Read more” for a complete list of the nominees, what got the most nominations, and some other things of interest.


Most nominations among the Best Picture nominees:

American Hustle – 10
Gravity – 10
12 Years a Slave – 9
Captain Phillips – 6
Dallas Buyers Club – 6
Nebraska – 6
Her – 5
The Wolf of Wall Street – 5
Philomena – 4

Multiple nominations among other “Oscar bait” films:

Blue Jasmine – 3 (Actress, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay)
August: Osage County – 2 (Actress, Supporting Actress)
Inside Llewyn Davis – 2 (Cinematography, Sound Mixing)
The Great Gatsby – 2 (Production Design, Costume Design)

I don’t know that any of them are likely to win any of those.  Last year Anna Karenina had four nominations.  Does anyone even remember that there was an Anna Karenina film last year?

Mainstream movies with nominations:

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – 3 (Visual Effects, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing)
The Lone Ranger – 2 (Makeup, Visual Effects)
Lone Survivor – 2 (Sound Editing, Sound Mixing)
Iron Man 3 – 1 (Visual Effects)
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa – 1 (Makeup)
Prisoners – 1 (Cinematography)
Star Trek into Darkness – 1 (Visual Effects)

Last year Skyfall had five nominations.  This year there’s the usual assortment with a couple of technical nominations and that’s it.

Best Animated, Foreign Language, or Documentary nominees with any other nominations:

Despicable Me 2 – 2 (Animated Film, Original Song)
Frozen – 2 (Animated Film, Original Song)

I will note that foreign language film The Grandmaster received two nominations for Cinematography and Costumes, but did not receive a Best Foreign Language Film nomination.  None of the nominees in that category received a second nomination.  Last year Amour had five total nominations.

Movies Nominated Only for Acting:

August: Osage County (Meryl Streep – Actress, Julia Roberts – Supporting Actress)

Every other film with an acting nomination also received a Best Picture nomination, except for Blue Jasmine, but it received an Original Screenplay nom.  Last year three films – The Master, The Impossible, and The Sessions – received only acting nominations.

One Movie was nominated in all five major categories; plus, a bit of history – again:

Last year I wrote about how Silver Linings Playbook received nominations in all five major categories, which was rare enough, but how it received nominations in the Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress categories, too.  Only Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sunset Blvd., A Streetcar Named Desire, Network, and Reds had ever done that in the history of the Oscars.  Silver Linings Playbook was written and directed by David O. Russell.

Well this year he has gone back to back.  His film American Hustle has done exactly what Silver Linings Playbook did the year before and what only five films had ever done before that – receive nominations for Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay (Original), Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress.

Out of all of those Silver Linings Playbook only won for Best Actress for Jennifer Lawrence.  This year she is probably their best chance of winning again, this time in the Best Supporting Actress category.

Other observations:

  • AMPAS first expanded from five Best Picture nominees to ten for the 2010 Oscars.  They must have felt that was going to be too many because it only lasted that way two years then they changed it to be “up to ten” nominees.  Well, nine appears to be the magic number for them because since that change there have only ever been nine nominees for the top award each year.
  • Looking at the “real” Best Picture nominees (those that also received one of the five Best Director nominations) none of the remaining four – Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, and Philomena – are really surprises for not being nominated for Best Director.  This is a big change from last year when Ben Affleck did not receive a nomination for Argo.
  • Gravity is the only one of the nine Best Picture nominees that did not get nominated for either Best Original or Adapted Screenplay.  This does not bode well for it.  Last year Les Miserables was the only film on the outside looking in.  Blue Jasmine appears to have taken Gravity’s spot in the Best Original Screenplay category.  Woody Allen is a perennial nominee for his writing. 
  • In fact, most of Gravity’s ten nominations are in the minor categories.  “Minor” means those categories where the nominees have spent just as many years and decades as the actors/actresses perfecting their craft, but which the general movie-watching populace knows little about.
  • And I’m not sure why Before Midnight is in the Adapted Screenplay category other than it has characters that have appeared in two prior films.  The story was written directly for the film.
  • Unlike the last two years where Hugo and Life of Pi each received eleven nominations without one of them being in an acting category, this year almost all the Best Picture nominees also received acting noms, including the top nomination recipients American Hustle, Gravity, and 12 Years a Slave.
  • Two years ago there were two nominees that separated from the rest – The Artist and Hugo.  Last year the nominations were more spread out and this year continues that trend with every Best Picture nominee receiving at least four nominations.
  • In the Actor category things are interesting in that we’ve got both Matthew McConaughey and Chiwetel Ejiofor who are first time nominees, and we’ve got Bruce Dern who has been nominated for the first time in 35 years (since way back in 1979 for Coming Home.)
  • In the Actress category we’ve got four women who have already won an Oscar (Streep, Bullock, Dench, and Blanchett)…and Amy Adams.  This is already Adams’ fifth Oscar nomination, and the third in the last four years.  It’s the first one in the main category, though; all her prior nominations have been for Supporting Actress.  Is this the year she finally breaks through and wins?  She’s got some tough competition.
  • The two prior years none of the Best Original Song nominees has come from a movie nominated for Best Animated Film.  This year we get back to normal with two of the songs coming from nominated animated films.
  • Once again AMPAS swaps out a single nominee from the Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing nominations to try to show that they should remain separate categories, which then allows them to continue to freeze out a Best Stunt Production category.  This year All Is Lost is in the Sound Editing category while Inside Llewyn Davis is in the Sound Mixing one.

Oscars to Golden Globes observations:

  • Among the ten Golden Globe nominated films only Rush from the drama category did not receive a similar Oscar nomination.  Both winners – 12 Years a Slave (Drama) and American Hustle (Comedy) – were nominated.
  • All six acting winners from the Globes – McConaughey, Blanchett, DiCaprio, Adams, Leto, and Lawrence – received Oscar nominations.
  • Like the Oscars, the Globes only have five nominations for Best Director.  They included Paul Greengrass for Captain Phillips.  AMPAS swapped him out for perennial Oscar nominee Martin Scorcese.
  • Only two of the Globes’ original song nominees received a similar honor from the Oscars – Let It Go from Frozen and Globes winner Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
  • The only Golden Globe winner from the film categories not to receive an Oscar nomination is in the Best Original Score category.  All Is Lost won the Golden Globe, but didn’t make the cut at the Oscars.

Here is the complete list of nominations in all twenty-four categories.  I will list my picks for all of them just prior to the Oscars:

Best Picture

12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Animated Picture

The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Ernest & Celestine
Frozen
The Wind Rises

Best Foreign Language Picture

The Broken Circle Breakdown
Belgium
The Great Beauty
Italy
The Hunt
Denmark
The Missing Picture
Cambodia
Omar
Palestine

Best Documentary

20 Feet from Stardom
The Act of Killing
Cutie and the Boxer
Dirty Wars
The Square

Best Actor

Christian Bale
American Hustle
Bruce Dern
Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio
The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor
12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey
Dallas Buyers Club

Best Actress

Amy Adams
American Hustle
Cate Blanchett
Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock
Gravity
Judi Dench
Philomena
Meryl Streep
August: Osage County

Best Supporting Actor

Barkhad Abdi
Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper
American Hustle
Michael Fassbender
12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill
The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto
Dallas Buyers Club

Best Supporting Actress

Sally Hawkins
Blue Jasmine
Jennifer Lawrence
American Hustle
Lupita Nyong’o
12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts
August: Osage County
June Squibb
Nebraska

Best Director

Alfonso Cuaron
Gravity
Steve McQueen
12 Years a Slave
Alexander Payne
Nebraska
David O. Russell
American Hustle
Martin Scorcese
The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Original Screenplay

American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Dallas Buyers Club
Her
Nebraska

Best Adapted Screenplay

12 Years a Slave
Before Midnight
Captain Phillips
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Original Song

Alone Yet Not Alone
Alone Yet Not Alone
Happy
Despicable Me 2
Let It Go
Frozen
The Moon Song
Her
Ordinary Love
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Best Original Score

The Book Thief
Gravity
Her
Philomena
Saving Mr. Banks

Best Cinematography

The Grandmaster
Gravity
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Prisoners

Best Editing

12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity

Best Production Design

12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Gravity
The Great Gatsby
Her

Best Costumes

12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
The Grandmaster
The Great Gatsby
The Invisible Woman

Best Makeup

Dallas Buyers Club
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
The Lone Ranger

Best Visual Effects

Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
The Lone Ranger
Star Trek into Darkness

Best Sound Editing

All Is Lost
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor

Best Sound Mixing

Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Inside Llewyn Davis
Lone Survivor

Best Animated Short

Feral
Get a Horse!
Mr. Hublot
Possessions
Room on the Broom

Best Documentary Short

Cave Digger
Facing Fear
Karama Has No Walls
The Lady in Number 6
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

Best Live Action Short

Aquel No Era Yo
Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?
Helium
Just Before Losing Everything
The Voorman Problem

7 comments:

  1. I'm planning on seeing 12 Years and Her this weekend (once my vertigo/chronic lightheadedness/whatever the f*&#@ this is eases up), and I've already seen Philomena, Nebraska, and Hustle. I'm me, so I'm a huge Alexander Payne fan, and I was really pleased with Nebraska's 6 nominations. The cinematography nod there was surprising - well deserved, but surprising. I don't necessarily favor the film's chances, but I was very pleased to see it getting more than just a best picture or best actor nod.

    I was thinking about the ending of Nebraska on my way home from work today and I almost started crying. Stoopid movie...

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    1. Well, now that I know it's got a sad ending I'm not looking forward to it as much. Of course, most Oscar nominated films aren't happy ones - that's why they get nominated.

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  2. Well, I've seen exactly two of the nominees. I suppose I should get to a theater.

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    1. By my count you just had 16 more movies added to your lists. Better get cracking. For what it's worth, some of the nominees are available streaming on Netflix, although not in the major categories. The Hunt (foreign film) is one. Most of the documentaries are also available that way.

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    2. Just 14. I've reviewed both Gravity and Despicable Me 2.

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  3. I should get my act together and see the hunt. It is supposed to be good.
    Most of the nominees will only come to the cinema here in 2014.

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    1. I've had The Hunt in my Netflix Instant queue since it appeared on the IMDB Top 250 2013 year end list. Since I know I can watch it anytime, though, that means I tend to watch others first.

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