Oscar season has officially begun!

Since Germany is a whopping six hours ahead of Eastern time, I got to live stream the Oscar nominations this afternoon for the first time! I am an Oscar fanatic but I have never actually watched the nominations being announced. I feel sorry for those poor fools in Hollywood who had to be there at 5AM this morning! The Academy tends to nominate predictably so there weren't too many surprises this morning - they did ten nominees for Best Picture again (which I hate). The King's Speech got the most nominations (12) of the lot - I found it kind of boring, but Colin Firth is always amazing. Anyways,  now that Oscar season has officially kicked off I will share some of my yays and nays for this batch of nominations.
Click here to view the full list of nominees.

YAYS 

1. Javier Bardem's nomination for Best Actor for Biutiful: To be honest, I haven't seen this movie yet but I love Javier Bardem and I am sure he is spectacular. More importantly though, this is the first time an actor has been nominated for best actor for an entirely Spanish speaking role. I like that the Academy had the balls to do this, because there are a lot of great foreign language films made each year that only get a nod for the foreign language category when the acting performances are just as great as those in the Hollywood big budgets.

2.  10 big ones for the Cohen Bros: Joel and Ethan Cohen earned 10 nominations for True Grit including Best Picture, Best Actor (Jeff Bridges), Achievement in Directing, Cinemetography, and Adapted Screenplay. The Cohen Brothers can do no wrong in my eyes. While I am not a huge fan of Westerns I really enjoyed what I saw of True Grit (have yet to finish watching it, but its high on the list), and I think it was an interesting genre for them to explore.

3. Exit Through the Gift Shop's nomination for Best Documentary Feature: Since 'Waiting for Superman' didn't get a nomination, I have a feeling this film is going to win and I really hope it does because I am so curious to see if the ever illusive Banksy will show up to the awards, and if he does - will he wear a disguise or something? Will he accept his award? I don't know! Exciting!

4. The Kids are All Right gets a Best Picture nod: This was one of my favourite movies I saw in 2010 and I am so happy it is getting some awards show lovin' even though it was a summer release. This movie is just so full of heart and each of the actors give such a raw, emotional performance. I would really love to see this film win Best Picture (sadly I don't think it will), but I think Annette Benning is a real contender for the Best Actress category (after the almighty Natalie Portman, of course).

5. Harry Potter potentially an Academy Award winner: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows got a few nominations for visual effects today, yahoo! Not the most important awards of the night, but I love all things Harry Potter so I had to give it a shout out.

NAYS

1. Inception gets a whopping 8 nominations, Dayna continues to scratch head: I could write a whole blog entry about how baffled I am about Inception getting a Best Picture nomination but I don't want to obsess so I will keep it (kind of) brief.  There is no way in hell it will win Best Picture so I don't really need to worry about that but even the nomination pisses me off. A lot of the nominations for Inception are for visual effects which makes sense. Visually, it is a stunning film.  However, what angers me the most is its nomination for Best Original Screenplay to good ol' Christopher Nolan. I realize he wrote the movie and that takes a lot of hard work and talent but the whole 'dream within a dream within a dream' concept of Inception is not in anyway Nolan's original idea. There is a Japanese anime movie from 2006 called Papurika that explores this concept, and even an old Daffy Duck cartoon. Now, everyone can gently remove their noses from up Christopher Nolan's ass and lets call a spade a spade: Inception is just yet another action movie with good visual effects and it is therefore not worthy of any Academy Awards! The end.

2. 8 Nominations for The Social Network:  A lot of people think that The Social Network is the front runner for Best Picture, I like to wait until the SAG awards to place any bets as they usually hold more influence then the Golden Globes (which the Social Network won). I am not as peeved about this one as Inception, but I was not as taken with The Social Network as most people. It's a good movie, the acting performances are all fine and the story is told in a smart way to keep things interesting - this movie has a lot of potential to be boring, and it's not. But, as my mom would say 'there's nothing wowsville about it.'

3. What about Sofia?: I thought Sofia Coppola's new film Somewhere was nomination worthy, especially in the cinemetography and directing categories. I really enjoyed this film and I thought it was visually beautiful, I loved the theme of classic hotels and it showcased Los Angeles in an interesting way.

4. Only four Best Actor nominees - WTF Academy!?: (Note: This actually was a mistake, they have forgotten to list Colin Firth as a nominee on the Oscar website but I will keep my original rant in place because I feel these actors also deserve a nod to the great performances they gave this year.) Apparently only four actors are worthy of a Best Actor nomination this year!? Immediately, two performances came to mind that I felt were Oscar worthy. The first is Stephen Dorff's in the aformentioned Somewhere. The second is Ben Stiller in Greenberg. I know, I know - Ben Stiller is kind of a dud most of the time but his performance in this film is really incredible (the whole movie is great, by the way). Regardless of who is nominated, I find the four nominations thing really odd and I would have predicted Ben Affleck getting nominated for his role in The Town.

I usually try to watch all of the movies nominated for the big awards before the show airs, I have already seen quite a few of the Best Picture nominees and my favourites were definitely Black Swan and The Kids are All Right. However sometimes really great films can go unnoticed by the award shows and there are two films that I am really disappointed didn't get any nominations. However, everyone has different taste and to be honest, the Academy usually chooses to promote big budget flicks so they have a more mainstream audience. So I have to pay a small tribute to two of the films I really loved this past year: Somewhere and Greenberg. They are untouched by the awards shows but still loved by me! Here are the trailers to both if you want to check them out.

For those of you in Canada interested in getting some professional insight on the nominations, CBC Radio's Q always has a great discussion on the Oscar nominations. I think it airs at 10AM and 10PM but you can also listen on the CBC website or download the podcasts on iTunes. That's about it for my Oscar rant... Until the 30th when the SAG Awards air, of course. Tschüs!