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 2^nd.  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