Alternative Film Guide

A few brief remarks about the Oscar 2008 nominations:

The top nominees are: There Will Be Blood (8 nominations), No Country for Old Men (8), Atonement (7), Michael Clayton (7), Ratatouille (5), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (4), Juno (4).

Whether in dramas or in comedies, dark themes — greed (There Will Be Blood, American Gangster), murder (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Sweeney Todd, Eastern Promises, No Country for Old Men, In the Valley of Elah), corruption (Michael Clayton, Sicko, Charlie Wilson’s War), war (No End in Sight, War/Dance, Beaufort, Katyn), illness (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Savages, Away from Her), political/religious repression (Taxi to the Dark Side, The Counterfeiters, Persepolis), dishonesty (Atonement, Gone Baby Gone), death (most of the aforementioned films, plus Into the Wild) — dominated in just about every category.

Though all but ignored by U.S. critics, Atonement was a big hit among the Hollywood Foreign Press Association voters, earning more nominations than any other film. The publicity surrounding the multiple Golden Globe nominations may well have made Academy members curious to watch Joe Wright’s drama, which ended up receiving 7 Oscar nods, including best film. Even so, both leading lady Keira Knightley and leading man James McAvoy were snubbed. (This is the second McAvoy snub; last year he was ignored for The Last King of Scotland.)

Laura Linney is the only American among the best actress nominees.

Among the acting nominees, Julie Christie is the Oscar veteran-est of them all: her first nomination was in 1965, for Darling. She won that year. Ruby Dee, however, is the overall veteran, having begun her show business career in the 1930s.

Six of the acting nominees have already won Oscars (Julie Christie, George Clooney, Tommy Lee Jones, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman). Nine of the nominees are Oscar first-timers.

Cate Blanchett, nominated as best actress for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and best supporting actress for I’m Not There, is the eleventh performer to receive two acting nods in the same year. The others were: Fay Bainter (38), Teresa Wright (42), Barry Fitzgerald (44 — for the same role in Going My Way), Jessica Lange (82), Sigourney Weaver (88), Al Pacino (92), Holly Hunter (93), Emma Thompson (93), Julianne Moore (02), and Jamie Foxx (04). The only double losers in this list were Weaver, Thompson, and Moore.

Joel and Ethan Coen are the third duo to share an Academy Award nomination for best directing. The other two were winners Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961 and nominees Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait in 1978.

This year, the Coens received a total of four nominations: best film (as producers), best directing, best adapted screenplay, and best editing. Warren Beatty has also received four nominations in a single year: for Heaven Can Wait in 1978 and for Reds in 1981.

Five of the six nominated directors are first-timers in that category. Joel Coen received solo director’s credit for Fargo in 1996. Ethan Coen was the solo producer of that thriller, which received a best film nod. Additionally, the Coens shared nominations for original screenplay and editing.

Sean Penn and his drama Into the Wild received nominations from the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild. The Academy opted instead for Jason Reitman (for Juno), and for Away from Her and Atonement – in, respectively, the best director and best adapted screenplay shortlists. (Zodiac was the other film left out of the Academy’s best adapted screenplay list.)

Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Unknown was the big winner at the 2007 David di Donatello ceremony, but it failed to land a nomination in the best foreign-language film category. The other non-nominated shortlisted foreign-language films were Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Brazil), Srdan Golubovic’s The Trap (Serbia), and Denys Arcand’s Days of Darkness (Canada).

Enchanted, composer Alan Menken, and lyricist Stephen Schwartz are competing against themselves for the best song Oscar. Enchanted received three nominations, all of them in that category. The nominated songs are: "Happy Working Song," "So Close," and "That’s How You Know." (The Oscar will probably go to Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s "Falling in Love Again" from Once, but since those are the people who picked that pimps-and-bitches song a couple of years ago, one never knows…)

The official composers of the song "Raise It Up" from August Rush are yet to be determined. (Full list of shortlisted songs.)

Roger Deakins is competing against himself in the best cinematography category: for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and There Will Be Blood.

Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood was deemed ineligible reportedly because "the majority of the music was not composed specifically for the film." Alan Menken’s score for Enchanted was also deemed ineligible because it was based on the "predominant use of songs" and not on actual scoring of dramatic/comedy scenes. There was no "best adapted/best song score" category this year — though apparently there should have been. (More at The Envelope.)

Best costume design nominee Marit Allen — for La Vie en rose — died of a brain aneurysm in November 2007. She was 66.

Non-Americans, as so often happens, had a strong showing in this year’s Oscar list: from Canada, Ellen Page (best actress), Jason Reitman (best director), Sarah Polley (best adapted screenplay); from Britain, Daniel Day-Lewis (best actor), Julie Christie (best actress), Tom Wilkinson (best supporting actor), Tilda Swinton (best supporting actress), Christopher Hampton (best adapted screenplay), Roger Deakins (best cinematography), Marit Allen (best costume design), in addition to South African-born but UK-based Ronald Harwood (best adapted screenplay); from Australia, Cate Blanchett (best actress and best supporting actress); from France, Marion Cotillard (best actress), Vincent Paronnaud (best animated feature); from Iran, Marjane Satrapi (best animated feature); from Spain, Javier Bardem (best supporting actor), Alberto Iglesias (best original score); from Poland, Janusz Kaminski (best cinematography); from Ireland, Seamus McGarvey (best cinematography), Glen Hansard (best song); from the old Czechoslovakia, Markéta Irglová (best song); from Italy, Dante Ferretti (best art direction), Dario Marianelli (best original score), Marco Beltrami (best original score); and others.

Kazakhstan had its first best foreign language film nomination. The movie in question, Mongol, is an international production mostly shot in China, with talent from Russia, Finland, Holland, Iceland, Hollywood, Mongolia, and, I’m assuming, Kazakhstan. (The film’s director, the Russian Sergei Bodrov, reportedly carries a Kazakh passport.)

Nikita Mikhalkov’s best foreign-language film nominee 12 is a remake of Sidney Lumet’s 1957 best film nominee 12 Angry Men.

Missing in action (not already mentioned above): Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead; Zodiac; 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (it was eligible in the regular categories); The Orphanage (right, also eligible in regular categories); Hairspray; Lust, Caution; Redacted; The Simpsons Movie; Beowulf; Eddie Vedder’s Golden Globe-winning song "Guaranteed" from Into the Wild; Sicko and No End in Sight in any of the non-documentary categories; Once in the non-song categories; SAG nominees Angelina Jolie for A Mighty Heart, Ryan Gosling for Lars and the Real Girl, Emile Hirsch for Into the Wild, Tommy Lee Jones for No Country for Old Men, and Catherine Keener for Into the Wild; American Gangster in the best film and best direction (Ridley Scott) categories; Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts for Charlie Wilson’s War; Tony Kaye’s abortion-themed documentary Lake of Fire (see other shortlisted documentaries); Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter for Sweeney Todd; Frank Langella for Starting Out in the Evening; Paul Dano for There Will Be Blood; Amy Adams for Enchanted.

The WGA allowing, the Oscar ceremony, in all its grandiose tackiness, will take place in Hollywood on February 24.

 

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