Academy Award Nominee Reactions

2007 Academy Award Nominee Reactions (The Big Six): (Actual nominees in bold, my predictions in italics:)

Best Picture of the Year:

Babel
The Departed
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

Babel*
The Departed*
Dreamgirls
Little Miss Sunshine*
The Queen*

Alternates: Letters From Iwo Jima*, Pan's Labrynth, Bobby

Four out of five correctly predicted here with the exception being the stunning omission of Dreamgirls from both the Best Picture and Best Director categories (it was nominated for both the PGA and the DGA Awards and won best comedy/musical at the Golden Globes). There could be a number of reasons for the omission. First of all, while the film has made money it hasn't really pulled in the kind of numbers they were expecting it to (it was never the number one film in the country at any point) and while they may have been banking on the nominations to get a higher box office gross they might not have campaigned very hard for them. Maybe they felt like campaigning was unnecessary but if that's the case it was clearly a gross oversight on their behalf. I'm personally happy with the omission. Dreamgirls is a boring, predictable, shallow film with not much to say about anything and it felt more like a filmed broadway production than an actual movie. Still, the omission has to be viewed as shocking although the fact that a Clint Eastwood movie bumped it off makes a little bit more sense. The Academy LOVES Clint Eastwood (multi Oscar winner, American movie icon, California native, former California politician, classic movie star) and while Letters From Iwo Jima has barely been released in America yet it's been getting far better reviews than it's predessesor Flags of Our Fathers. Could be that they appreciated Eastwood putting the effort into two big epic WWII films and wanted to honor him or it could just flat out be that they love the guy. Hard to predict a favorite to win at this point. The Departed is the most successful film from a box office standpoint. The PGA Award went to Little Miss Sunshine which I just can't IMAGINE winning best picture, but the majority of the world loves the film more than me so I could be wrong. Comedies just don't tend to win Best Picture (or Oscars in general) and LMS wasn't as deep as anybody thinks it is. I'm guessing votes will be all over the place and I wouldn't rule out wins for any of these films other than The Queen (which is a great film, but all of the attention is going to the actress).

Best Achievement in Directing:

Clint Eastwood for Letters From Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears for the Queen
Paul Greengrass for United 93
Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu for Babel
Martin Scorsese for The Departed

Bill Condon for Dreamgirls
Clint Eastwood for Letters From Iwo Jima*
Stephen Frears for The Queen*
Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu for Babel*
Martin Scorsese for The Departed*

Alternates: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris for Little Miss Sunshine, Guillermo Del Toro for Pan's Labrynth, Paul Greengrass for United 93*

Once again, four out of five with the biggest omission being Dreamgirls. Bill Condon is a very good director, but as I already mentioned I felt that Dreamgirls was very much lacking in filmic qualities. It seemed more like a filmed stage musical and that's largely due to the fault of the director. Everybody else was an obvious choice and while I hate to jinx it Scorsese is the frontrunner at this point. He won the Golden Globe, and while the Director's Guild hasn't been given out yet he's facing no competition from Eastwood (not a DGA nominee), Dreamgirls is DOA after not getting the big Oscar nominees or winning the Producer's Guild, Frears and Innaritu have virtually no chance and the directors of LMS were nominated for the DGA but not the Oscar. The Departed is Scorsese's most succesful film (box office wise) EVER and they're giving it a brief theatrical re-release to capitalize on the Oscar nominations (the last time that happened was with a little movie called Braveheart, and I'd say that worked out pretty well). I was pleased to see Paul Greengrass, a solid action director nominated for his intense work in United 93, facing the task of making the first movie about a great national tragedy and succeeding without being overly political is a very difficult one but he pulled it off. Frears and Innaritu are mostly riding the success of their pictures and Clint Eastwood is Clint Eastwood. I would have gladly lost all of them (except Scorsese) just to see Guillermo Del Toro be nominated for his work in Pan's Labrynth but it's likely to win best Foreign Language film so I digress.

They was robbed: Guillermo Del Toro for Pan's Labrynth, Robert Altman for A Prairie Home Companion

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole in Venus
Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed
Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson*
Peter O'Toole in Venus*
Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happyness*
Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland*

Alternates: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Blood Diamond*, Sacha Baren Cohen for Borat, Aaron Eckhart for Thank You For Smoking

Four out of Five yet again. TECHNICALLY could be counted as five out of five as I picked all of the correct actors just the wrong DiCaprio film. Of the five nominees, Gosling's was the only one that was really in question but being that it was a fairly weak year for leading male roles it was a pretty safe choice. The other four were basically locks with the only debate being as to which film DiCaprio would be nominated for. The Blood Diamond wasn't a financial or critical success but DiCaprio (and fellow nominee Djimon Hounsou) certainly had their share of supporters. It could be that the physical demands of The Blood Diamond as well as the accent change drove voters towards that performance or that DiCaprio shared so much screen time with other people in The Departed that voting him as a lead actor might not seem fair. The award is pretty much Whitaker's for the taking at this point. He has the Golden Globe and the SAG award as well as just about every critical prize you could name. I'd personally love for them to shock us and give the award to legendary screen vet Peter O'Toole (8 nominations, no wins unless you count a lifetime achievement Oscar) because he's likely not going to be around much longer and the acceptance speech would be incredible. However, I have NO problem with Whitaker winning as he's an actor who has always impressed me. He's always great yet never nominated for anything plus I like it when strange, unconventional looking actors who take unique roles in oddball films get nominated (Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote last year for example). If anybody than Whitaker wins I'll be shocked but there is a minute chance that they give it to O'Toole.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:

Penelope Cruz for Volver
Judi Dench for Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren for The Queen
Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet for Little Children

Penelope Cruz for Volver*
Judi Dench for Notes on a Scandal*
Helen Mirren for The Queen*
Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada*
Kate Winslet for Little Children*

Alternates: Maggie Gylenhaal for Sherrybaby, Beyonce Knowles for Dreamgirls, Renee Zellweger for Miss Potter, Annette Benning for Running With Scissors

Five for Five and it was a very easy category to predict. These five women pretty much dominated the nomiees all throughout the awards season, with most of them being nominated and Helen Mirren winning everything (literally). None of my listed alternates had a real good shot. Sherrybaby wasn't seen by many despite Gylenhaal getting a Golden Globe nod, Knowles was upstaged by the entire rest of the cast in her film and didn't really do much acting, Benning had critical support but the film was released WAY to early and lost steam quickly. I thought an easy push could have been made for Renee Zellweger playing Beatrix Potter but with a released date that BARELY met the Oscar qualification time and very little commercial hype (I don't think it's playing anywhere outside of New York and LA yet) killed her chances. My only problem with this category is the inclusion of Meryl Streep. Streep is one of the best actresses of the last 30 years, that's not even debateable, my problem is that she has been nominated as best lead actress in a film in which she was not the lead actress. I have heard no reasonable argument otherwise. Anne Hathaway is the lead in that film, period. She's the central protagonist, she has the most screen time, the story is about her, Streep's character floats around on the outside most of the time. While Streep's performance was okay I think it was more a matter of her delivering well-written lines (and while that character's lines were well-written, the film itself was NOT, but I'll get to that later) while staying in character. It's not one of her better performances although I understand how people are being fooled into thinking so. Regardless, the biggest lock of the entire night is Helen Mirren. She's winning, period and she deserves it for her absolutely wonderful, stunning, dead-on portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in a performance more about subtlety than serious dramatics. She has something like 12:1 odds of winning, which is the best of any actress in the lead category in history and I believe makes it statistically impossible to win money if you bet on her.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:

Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley in Little Children
Djimon Hounsou in The Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg in The Departed

Jackie Earle Haley in Little Children*
Djimon Hounsou for The Blood Diamond*
Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls*
Jack Nicholson in The Departed
Brad Pitt in Babel

Alternates: Michael Sheen for The Queen, Ben Affleck for Hollywoodland, Mark Wahlberg for The Departed*, Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine*

A fairly shocking selection of nominees here, as the only real clear cut favorite to snag a nomination was Eddie Murphy. Perennial nominee and Hollywood legend Jack Nicholson plays one of his nastiest characters ever and gets overlooked for Mark Wahlberg in the same film. Wahlberg is extremely entertaining in The Departed and steals a lot of scenes he's in but he's more comic relief than anything else. I think he's a talented actor but there were other recent performances of his (most notably I Heart Huckabees) that I felt were more deserving of nominations than this one. Another shocked so Brad Pitt, one of the biggest stars in the world who was almost universally praised for his work in the heavily-nominated Babel (many critics called it his best performance) didn't get nominated while two relative unknowns from the cast landed best supporting actress nods. Jackie Earle Haley is a former child star (he was one of the main children in the original Bad News Bears) who garnered a ton of critical attention for his comeback role as a former aging child star who just finished serving a lengthy sentence for child molestation. He had the reviews and a SAG nomination certainly helped but I was skeptical as to whether or not he was a big enough name or if the performance may have been too controversial for some voters. Djimon Hounsou is a powerful, intense actor with a commanding screen presence who probably benefitted strongly from both A) a SAG nomination and B) working with Leo DiCaprio. I'm badly apathetic about Alan Arkin's work in Little Miss Sunshine. I honestly felt that every other male in the film gave a better performance (Greg Kinnear in particular) but Arkin is a veteran, once really famous actor who has never won so he got the attention. The award is Murphy's for the taking. He has the Golden Globe and the SAG Award, he did his own singing in the film and on top of all that he was actually really, really good. In a year of really great, standout supporting performances by famous actors this is unquestionably and oddball list of nominees.

[b]Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role:[/b]

Adriana Barraza in Babel
Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandel
Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi for Babel

Adriana Barraza in Babel*
Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandel
Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi for Babel

Alternates: Toni Collette in Little Miss Sunshine, Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada

Another Five for Five, as both female acting categories got easier to predict as the awards season went on. The five nominees here echo the same nominations as the Screen Actor's Guild and given that the SAG Awards have more weight towards Oscar nominations than the Golden Globes, Golden Globe nominees Collette and Blunt weren't likely candidates. Barraza and Kikuchi in Babel, despite not being well known actresses played crucial roles in the film, both performances were quite powerful and they both managed to garner Golden Globe and SAG nods. Blanchett had another high profile year, appearing in a bevy of awards season films but her work opposite Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal was the most highly-recognized and given the strength of those two actresses it isn't surprising that they've been said to have great chemistry in the film. Abigail Breslin I thought delivered an absolutely wonderful performance in Little Miss Sunshine. She goes through tough emotions, is able to garner laughs, sympathy and pathos. She acts with the curiousity and delight that real children do and she performs a rather daring dance number at the end. It's a great little piece of acting for such a young girl and I wouldn't mind if she won. She won't however, and that brings me to Jennifer Hudson. First of all, the fact that people who are LOSING on American Idol are still going on to have successful careers, and in some cases more successful than people winning the show defeats the entire purpose of it making me question why even bother having one winner? But that's another rant. Is Jennifer Hudson a good singer? Absolutely. She's incredible. She has a great voice. She performs a certain musical number in the film that's absolutely breathtaking and steals the whole film. Of course, that scene, song and character were written to do exactly that but I digress. She's got a great voice. Give her a grammy award. Give her a Tony. Give her Best Original Song for all I care (although I highly doubt she's ever written a lyric) but she does not deserve an award for acting. She has a minimal amount of dialogue in the film and the dialogue she has is over the top and stagy, as are the musical numbers she performs. The main argument people seem to have for her winning this award is: "she steals the movie." She does, but anybody cast in that part would steal the movie. It's designed that way. To me, you don't give out a FILM acting award for singing stagy broadway numbers. That being said, Golden Globe + SAG + Cinderella story = American Idol reject winning an Academy Award.

They was robbed: Meryl Streep in A Prairie Home Companion

Next will be writing and technical awards...