Shock, yawn, vomit: our reactions to the Oscar nominations

Of course the big movie news of yesterday was the announcement of the nominees for the 2010 Academy Awards. Today we are bringing you a full list of nominations in all categories, as well as some reaction from the ever-intrepid Indie Movies Online editorial team.

In many ways the Oscars period is an utter pain in the posterior. It is a time when media outlets with no apparent interest in, liking for, or knowledge of film all suddenly start sticking their oars in and delivering inane bulletins on this subject of which their ignorance is completely without boundaries. Last night, viewers were subjected to TV news report after TV news report fixated upon the battle at the apex of the Oscar nominations table between James Cameron's Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, with tele-journalists who were last week covering a story about a carrot in the shape of Elvis Presley and next week will be looking at a poodle who can play the banjo all taking turns to gormlessly exclaim, “They used to be married, don't you know”, in the irksome, Johnny-come-lately manner of a drooling jerk accosting Archimedes on his death-bed and excitedly rabbiting on at the ancient Greek about how bathwater rises when you stick your bare ass in the tub.

Then again, it is not only the mainstream media who are shovelling the bilge in Oscars season; the nominees are in there, getting no little amount of dumb muck under their fingernails as well. To illustrate this point, we have taken the liberty of compiling a few of the reactions from some of the movie bods who yesterday learned that their name was on that little magic short-list. Be warned though, the levels of sanctimonious gushing contained within some of the released statements reached levels that could easily sear the eyeballs right out of the skull of anyone who does not spend the majority of their existence with their lips pressed firmly against the smelly backside of the Hollywood movie machine. We have therefore taken the liberty of reducing each reaction down to the absolute minimum, in order that you might get a flavour of the expressed sentiment without any attendant risk of being washed away in a tsunami of cornball showbiz crap.

- Jeff Bridges, nominated for Best Actor for his role in Crazy Heart – 'grateful'

- Maggie Gyllenhaal, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Crazy Heart – 'surprised'

- Vera Farmiga, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Up in the Air – 'humbled'

- Anna Kendrick, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Up in the Air – 'thrilled'

- Gabourey Sidibe, nominated for Best Actress for her role in Precious – 'honored'

- Mo'Nique, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Precious – 'an honor' (Hmmm, bit similar to Gabourey's quote, but we'll let it slide)

- Henry Selick, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film for Coraline, which he directed – 'grateful' (Hold on, wasn't that Bridges' line?)

- Joel and Ethan Coen, nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture for A Serious Man – 'happy'

Jon Landau, nominated for Best Picture for Avatar, which he produced – 'grateful' (Oh come on, now we've definitely already had that!)

As it actually happens, Jon Landau's gratitude only extended so far. For The Hollywood Reporter suggests that the Avatar producer was peeved that the cast of James Cameron's blockbuster of blockbusters were not considered in the acting categories. “A disappointment” was how Landau described the Academy's decision to ignore the merits of Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana's motion-captured performances, also remarking, “I blame ourselves for not educating people in the right way.”

The intimation from Landau here is clearly that the Oscar voters were confused about the degree to which the blue-skinned Na'vi were the creation of the actors themselves and to what extent they were cooked up in the whirring processors of some special effects house mainframe. Consequently, had the voters understood the motion-capture process more clearly than they would not have hesitated in bestowing nominations upon the cast of the cash-swallowing event horizon that is Avatar. In no way could the perceived snub be because the Academy members simply did not think the acting was all that great. Although to be fair Worthington, Saldana and the rest of the gang do deserve some credit for stoically wrestling with Cameron's soggy crisp packet of a script. “I see you.” Not if I see you first, you jerk.

One mooted solution is to establish a category rewarding the Best Motion-Captured Performance. Now as good ideas go, that might sound roughly on a par with walking up to a sleep and food-deprived Kodiak bear, yelling “Yo! Teddy Ruxpin!” and trying to high-five the claw and fang-equipped behemoth. However, it would continue the current Academy trend of trying to ensure everyone grabs a little bit of the Oscars action. This desire to chuck nominations out with the same casualness that Malcolm Tucker tosses out expletives is most apparent in the expansion of the Best Picture category from five to ten films – a move which seems every bit as likely to unnecessarily elevate mediocrity as it does to reward quality.

- Paul Martin

The Oscars, personally

What I’d love to see one year is a shake-up. Some surprises. Maybe even a shock or two, instead of the parade of worthy or shiny pictures that have made the list again.

The Hurt Locker, Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, Up in the Air and Precious dominate this year’s Oscar nominations (in that order). Not only are their nominations unsurprising but the awards clustering each year means that only people associated with a handful of films get any kind of mention. Are we really to believe that the ten best performances by actresses in an entire year occurred in just eight films? And what a coincidence that five of those eight films are up for Best Picture.

It seems like a poor summation of a year in film. The number of categories would allow a more even distribution, some radical inclusions, rather than a single movie getting ten nominations. Avatar – we’re so tired of writing that word that we’re now going to refer to it as ‘that film’ – got a nomination in everything it possibly could, except for anything to do with acting, and that’s got to be saying something (as John Landau might be huffing).

As great as it is to see The Princess and the Frog nominated for Best Animated Feature it is again unsurprising – my surprise levels are so low I’m actually slipping into a coma. When you think animation the first thing that pops into your head is Disney, and when that big name is coupled with a return to a classic style: what else did you expect?

Fantastic Mr Fox: I’m not even going to go there. (Those who are interested, please see everything I’ve written on it up until now.)

There were two names that popped up unexpectedly: Coraline and District 9. The first of these was unexpected purely because I liked it so much and films that win awards tend to leave me lukewarm. Sorry if I’ve jinxed you, Coraline.

Finally District 9’s inclusion on the Best Picture list was another surprise. And in a good way too, although giving Sharlto Copley a best actor nod could have been a better move. Since he’ll soon be gracing our screen as HM Murdoch in the upcoming A-Team movie, this awards season might be his last shot for a long time.

- Angela

Why the Oscars matter

At long last, the nominations are out and our guesses were pretty good. For the ten best picture nominees, we expected to see Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, Up in the Air, A Serious Man, A Single Man, An Education, Up and The Blind Side named.

So we got nine out of ten. Yay for us. We didn't see District 9 coming – but its nomination proves that sci-fi is not automatically screened out come awards time, as long as said SF functions on a political or cultural level too. That may come as cold comfort for anyone disappointed that Moon didn’t get a single hit. It would have been nice to see Sam Rockwell’s performance rewarded but let’s face facts: the Academy is a pretty conservative body. The plight of illegal aliens/illegal aliens (clever!) as seen in D9 is enough of a nudge in the ribs to wake the sleepiest voter up, but a film that uses cloning to make an emotional point about the nature of being – well, that’s a little out there, right?

Looking forward to the ceremony itself, I’m crossing my fingers, toes and tail that Avatar doesn’t sweep the board. That’s not only because I don’t think it’s the best film but because it’s already the biggest film of all time. The Oscars matter and they do so because of the profile uplift they offer to winners. In practical terms, this can translate into millions of dollars and tens of thousands of arses on seats – none of which Avatar needs.

The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, would greatly benefit from some awards love. So far, this astonishing film – which proves you can combine great depth of characterisation with knuckle-gnawing tension – has grossed a mere $12 million in its home market. Was because people mentally corralled it along with the preachier Iraq war movies? Or because distributors failed to see its potential? (It showed on 535 screens in the US, compared to Avatar’s 3,461.) Whatever the reason, it has certainly not mopped up all of its potential audience – there are plenty of people who have not yet seen it who’d get a kick out of it. And that’s what the Oscars could and should do: shine a little light on the films that have been overlooked. Not heap more glory on the already glorious.

The films that made it to the best picture shortlist have all enjoyed a certain critical consensus – not unanimous, but persuasive. The Lovely Bones and Nine, which had the right kind of pedigree to make the list, received a righteous drubbing on release and only appeared on the nominations list in terms of best supporting actor/actress nods for Stanley Tucci and Penelope Cruz, both highly rated and awards-friendly performers who could appear in a holiday video and still got a nod. But there is one film which the critics all liked as much as they did any of the best picture nominees and much more than some (like the divisive Inglourious Basterds) and which still didn’t get a nomination in any of the big categories. That film is Star Trek, the best blockbuster of last year. It goes to show that however blatantly commercial and dollar-worshipping the Oscars seem there are still rules. Your film can be cheesy if you’re heartwarming and emotional (The Blind Side), it can be an animation that hinges on a serious rewrite of the laws of physics (Up), and it can include some of the silliest dialogue in living memory (Avatar) and still pick up an award – but my goodness, if you add a bit of lens flare and a man with stick-on ears, you resign yourself to the technical categories, my friend.

- Emma

And here are the rest of the nominations (that we didn’t print yesterday):

Art direction
Avatar (art direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; set decoration: Kim Sinclair)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (art direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; set decoration: Caroline Smith)
Nine (art direction: John Myhre; set decoration: Gordon Sim)
Sherlock Holmes (art direction: Sarah Greenwood; set decoration: Katie Spencer)
The Young Victoria (art direction: Patrice Vermette; set decoration: Maggie Gray)

Cinematography
Avatar (Mauro Fiore)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Bruno Delbonnel)
The Hurt Locker (Barry Ackroyd)
Inglourious Basterds (Robert Richardson)
The White Ribbon (Christian Berger)

Costume design
Bright Star (Janet Patterson)
Coco Before Chanel (Catherine Leterrier)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Monique Prudhomme)
Nine (Colleen Atwood)
The Young Victoria (Sandy Powell)

Documentary (feature)
Burma VJ (Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller)
The Cove (nominees to be determined)
Food, Inc (Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein)
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith)
Which Way Home (Rebecca Cammisa)

Documentary (short subject)
China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill)
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner (Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher)
The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant (Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert)
Music by Prudence (Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett)
Rabbit à la Berlin (Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra)

Film editing
Avatar (Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron)
District 9 (Julian Clarke)
The Hurt Locker (Bob Murawski and Chris Innis)
Inglourious Basterds (Sally Menke)
Precious (Joe Klotz)

Makeup
Il Divo (Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano)
The Young Victoria (Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore)
Star Trek (Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow)

Music (original score)
Avatar (James Horner)
Fantastic Mr Fox (Alexandre Desplat)
Up (Michael Giacchino)
The Hurt Locker (Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders)
Sherlock Holmes (Hans Zimmer)

Music (original song)
Almost There, from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman
Down in New Orleans, from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman
Loin de Paname, from Paris 36 by Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas
Take it All, from Nine by Maury Yeston
The Weary Kind, from Crazy Heart by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Short film (animated)
French Roast (Fabrice O Joubert)
Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty (Nicky Phelan and Darragh O'Connell)
Logoramam (Nicolas Schmerkin)
The Lady and the Reaper (Javier Recio Gracia)
A Matter of Loaf and Death (Nick Park)

Short film (live action)
The Door (Juanita Wilson and James Flynn)
Instead of Abracadabra (Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellström)
Kavi (Gregg Helvey)
Miracle Fish (Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey)
The New Tenants (Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson)

Sound editing
Avatar (Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle)
The Hurt Locker (Paul NJ Ottosson)
Inglourious Basterds (Wylie Stateman)
Star Trek (Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin)
Up (Michael Silvers and Tom Myers)

Sound mixing
Avatar (Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson)
The Hurt Locker (Paul NJ Ottosson and Ray Beckett)
Inglourious Basterds (Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano)
Star Trek (Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J Devlin)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Greg P Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson)

Visual effects
Avatar (Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R Jones)
District 9 (Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken)
Star Trek (Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton)