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Oscar Nominations (LotR, Spirited Away, and more)
An anonymous reader noted that the
Oscar Nominees
are now online. The Two Towers is nominated for Best Picture, and Miyazaki's Spirited Away is nominated for Best Animated Picture (someday an Anime will be nominated Best Picture). Road to Perdition, Spider-Man, and even Star Wars have random nominations throughout the list. Even Eminem's got a nomination now ;)
There's tons of other good movies in there too (Adaptation, Chicago) and a bunch of movies I've never seen. Anyway, talk amongst yourselves ;)
Despite the campaign for recognition Andy Serkis has not been nominated for Supporting Actor in his role as Gollum.
Not everybody who deserves to win wins -- the system's not perfect. O'Toole, for example, reportedly turned down an honorary Oscar (he's never won a Best Actor, despite being nominated 5 times or so and clearly deserving it) this year because he's still acting and wants a chance to win it outright.
There is no 'i' in team, but there is in fiasco...
They'll thow a bone to Jackon and crew with a "Visual Effects" award, and maybe "Sound Editing".
On the whole, it's tough to get particularly pissed off about the nominations on the whole. It's been a very, very good year, and none of the nominations in the major categories is truly ridiculous.
Individually:
Best Picture:
Will win: Chicago
Should win: Gangs of New York, probably
Should have been nominated: Adaptation, Spirited Away, or Punch-Drunk Love, in a perfect world
Thoughts: Not a bad set of nominees. Nothing particularly outrageous, except for The Hours, which was designed for the express purpose of winning year-end awards. But on the whole you can't complain.
Director
Will win: Scorsese
Should win: Scorsese
Should have been nominated: Spike Jonze for Adaptation or Peter Jackson for The Two Towers.
Thoughts: It'll be a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for Scorsese, essentially. Gangs is far from his best work, but he runs circles around everybody else even on a bad day. (Side note: How do you nominate a movie for Best Picture, but not its director, a la TTT? These things don't direct themselves.)
Original Screenplay
Will win: Talk to Her
Should win: Y Tu Mama Tambien
Should have been nominated: Spirited Away
Thoughts: I'll be glad when they send Vardolos back to made-for-TV land where she belongs.
Adapted Screenplay
Will win: Adaptation or Chicago
Should win: Adaptation
Thoughts: A close call-- Condon could win for Chicago if it rides the wave in, even though Adaptation deserves it. Kudos to Charlie Kaufman for figuring out a way to get the first nomination ever for a person that doesn't exist.
Best Actor
Will win: Jack Nicholson
Should win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Thoughts: Everybody loves Nicholson. But watching Day-Lewis perform is like having ring-side seats for a hurricane.
I don't really care about the other acting categories. Nothing too interesting happening there. Sorry.
In the end, I'm glad overall. Spirited Away got some recognition it deserves-- I'm not an anime fan in the least and it was still my favorite movie of the year. There's not an unworthy film in the bunch, by my reckoning. Like I said, it was a good year. Lots of treats, lots of movies that'll last.
Thoughts?
So don't get too offended when Spirited Away loses to Lilo & Sitch, and The Two Towers gets beaten by Chicago.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I am by no means a cinematic expert, but like most people, I enjoy movies and I see my fair share. I think I can appreciate an off-beat, artistic movie (Adaption), as well as a solid dramatic piece (White Oleander) or a hard-edged cop thriller (NARC). You might like or dislike any of those movies, but in my opinion they all have appeal and I enjoyed them.
Far From Heaven, on the other hand, was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I saw it with my two closest friends, and we left after 90 minutes of agony. I've only walked out of one other movie in my life (Bloodwork), and the three of us spent the rest of the evening talking about how painstakingly bad Far From Heaven was.
And then I look at the internet. Almost every movie critic thought Far From Heaven was a masterpiece. Why? The dialogue was painful, the story was farfetched and flat out laughable at times, and I thought Dennis Quaid's acting was a joke (I ordinarily like him). What do these critics see that I am missing?
Anyway, I'm glad that Paul Newman received an Oscar nomination for Road to Perdition. I was greatly disappointed by this movie as Tom Hanks is my favorite actor and the movie just wasn't very interesting. But Paul Newman was stellar in his role and very much deserved a nomination.
Another movie that has received critical acclaim of which I do not understand is Gangs of New York. Leo DiCaprio was pitiful in his role, and Daniel Day Lewis spent half the movie talking like Deniro, and half the movie talking like some guy from Brooklyn. The story was flat out boring - revenge stories have simply been done to death, and this added nothing new. Cameron Diaz was especially bad in this (as bad as she is in everything). Yet this movie received tons of critical acclaim. Why? DiCaprio was very good in Catch Me If You Can, where he could play a young, cocky kid who schmoozes his way through life. But he has no edge, and looking angry for two hours doesn't count.
White Oleander was one of the most underrated movies of the year in my opinion. Alison Lohman was just fantastic in this role, and this movie was very interesting and entertaining at the same time. Minority Report was probably my favorite movie of the year, but was dismissed.
Anyway, I don't understand what makes movie critics tick. Adaptation was an inventive movie, that I liked. I can understand critics liking it. But Far From Heaven and Gangs of New York were total throwaways as far as I'm concerned, and I don't understand how anyone could watch them and come away thinking, "that was great!"
Why oh Why Dear Slashdot Editors dose Lord of the Rings not have a Logo? Starwars has a Logo.. the Ipod has a Logo.. why dosent LOTR?
9 16 794d =4983 792d =5033 027
Think about it.. all the Posts that are going to be made over the next +2 Years for LOTR.. Movie Reiviews, Spoilers, Trailers, DVD's, DVD Reviews, Special Ed. DVD's, Cast Interviews, Award Shows, ect.. ect... ect..
LOTR DESERVES its own Logo/Icon
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The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Miyazaki's Spirited Away is nominated for Best Animated Picture (someday an Anime will be nominated Best Picture).
Uh, no. No animated film will ever again receive a Best Picture nomination (Disney's Beauty and the Beast in 1991 is the only time it's happened). For some reason the Academy believes it's inappropriate for cartoons to compete with "real" movies for honors, so last year they created the Best Animated Feature Film category (won by Shrek). Yeah, it's a load of bullshit. But this way Disney's happy; they have three movies up for the award (Lilo & Stitch, Spirited Away, and the wholly undeserving Treasure Planet).
Somebody explain this: If Y Tu Mama Tambien was one of the best movies of the year and earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination, why isn't it a Best Foreign Language Film candidate? Isn't Mexico its country of origin? Instead we get a movie I've never heard of.
And be totally honest with yourselves: did The Two Towers really deserve a Best Picture nomination this year?
The Oscars make no sense these days.
I never conciously think about awards when I see a movie, but I've had several conversations with people about how Sean Astin, a.k.a. Samwise Gamgee deserves best supporting actor nods... In my opinion, as well as the others that have brought it up, Sean Astin has done a marvelous job by protraying his character genuinely and insodoing added that much more realism to the fantasy that is LotR. I have yet to, while watching LotR, pull back and consider Sean Astin the actor. He's always Samwise on-screen. [blah blah blah.]
"I just want to thank bla bla bla. Camera 10 (shows that person in the audience, something like that). Camera 3 (back to him). This means a lot, and I'd like to thank my wife and kids at home. This one's for you guys! Camera 8. Cue music. Camera 4. Fade booth audio..."
Something like that. Pretty funny.
Sure he won last year, but Howard Shore's soundtrack for Two Towers was widely praised so it does seem like a snub to not even be nominated this year.
Might as well throw in: "Too bad for Peter Jackson," too. If you aren't nominated for Best Director, there's really no shot of your movie winning Best Picture.
It is interesting to note that Miramax (guess who owns them?) has some 30+ nominations. It is no secret that Miramax pushes heavily on Academy voters to vote for their stuff because an Oscar Award (and lesser extent Nomination) means advertising dollars. This includes the much vaunted Spirited Away...
Miramax in the days of Clerks used to be about a production company that wanted to do off beat and out of mainstream stuff. Of course all of that changed when Shakespeare in Love came along and dumped a huge pile of cash in their laps. Oh well...The Oscars were never for the outside and indie film industry anyway. No one should labor under the delusion that the Oscars are anything but a big advertising gig.
Can anyone explain to me why this movie was nominated? It has to be the STUPIDEST movie I have seen in a while. The entire movie is waiting for the kid to kill that guy...boring and silly. And for the blood and guts, disgusting...yeah yeah it was part of the picture bull.
Now, catch me if you can was a FANTASTIC movie and how that was not nominated is crazy. it was much more enjoyable then Gangs (which I have not met one person who actually liked it).
I think the problem may be that he did his job too well. They say the greatest honor you can give to a special effects artist is to say you didn't see any special effects. Perhaps this was the problem with Gollum. Until this moment, it didn't really even occur to me that Gollum was played by an actor. He was just Gollum. One thing I will say, however, is that I've read the books three times, and seen the cartoon movie version a few times as well, and while I distinctly remember the scene, I had always seen it as the incoherent ramblings of an insane Gollum. Serkis' performance is the first one I've seen that made it clear to me that Gollum was having a coherent conversation between his two personallities. In my mind I gave Peter Jackson credit for that performance. I'm glad I have now been set straight.