Quick Thoughts on Oscar Nominations

Quick Thoughts/Facts/Surprises/etc.

• The King's Speech leads with 12 nominations follwed by True Grit with 10 and The Social Network 9, and then Inception with 8. We thought that The Social Network would get some across the board technical nods, which it did, but TKS really penetrated deep into a lot of categories, and that combined with its PGA win, means that the Best Picture race is far from over and TKS could potentially be our frontrunner.
• Some nice surprises in the categories were: Michelle Williams, Javier Bardem, Jacki Weaver, John Hawkes, Winters Bone for Picture, I Am Love for Costume, The Way Back for Makeup, and The Illusionist for Animated Feature.
• Black Swan and Inception were not as strong as they were in precursors as both received less nominations that expected, and were snubbed in different categories (See below)

Snubs

• The most obvious one is the absence of Christopher Nolan. Inception got a Pic and Screenplay nod, but was completely snubbed in both Directing and Editing. I'm starting to wonder whether Nolan will ever get a nod for Directing.
• Andrew Garfield should have gotten in instead of the overrated performance of Jeremy Renner.
• TRON Legacy may not have been a masterpiece, but its visual effects were stunning to say the least, and should have been honored.
• The Town, should have maybe gotten something else, except for the one nomination that I thought it didn't deserve.
• Shutter Island was completely snubbed, even in technical categories I figured it would get at least an Art Direction nod, but alas, in this year of great movies, something was bound to be left out.
• Waiting for 'Superman' was considered the frontrunner for Best Doc, and a huge contender for Best Original Song. However, it shamefully recieved neither, and now makes the Doc. race into a wide open contest.

Overall, there were some nice surprises, and luckily, was was becoming a highly predictable Oscar season is now a little more interesting than we thought. Check back either tonight/tomorrow for a more in-depth analysis of each individual race, and my initial predictions.