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Return of the King Leads Oscar Nominations
PurdueGraphicsMan writes "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, the final chapter in Peter Jackson's directoral masterpeice is leading the 76 Annual Academy Awards with 11 nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. Next in line with 10 nominations including Best Picture and Best director is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Here is a full list of the nominees in all categories."
Go see "City of God" and see if you still think Peter Jackson should get best director. I definitely think TRotK deserves an oscar for Adaptation and Art Direction, but City of God was really powerful, and it was mostly kid actors.
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While I gave high marks to Master and Commander for their coverage of the tiniest technical details of period naval warfare, and while I thought the foley work of the battle scenes was truly visceral, and while I enjoyed the basic setting and premise in which the characters found themselves, I was really let down by the movie.
It's a thirty minute plot, at most. It can be summed up as "whups, I guess we fucked THAT up, but let's not let that happen again..." about five times in a row. That's it. We blundered, let's move on. Oops, again. Ouch, let's try to avoid that. And oops, we didn't think of that.
It's like the premise behind Moby Dick. Have you read it? Incredible details, no plot. But a movie can't capture these details to a tenth of the degree that print can. You need story. You need arc. You need something to advance and change.
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I'm a bit upset that Sean Astin didn't get nominated for best supporting role (I didn't care if he won or not, but he should have been at least nominated).
On the bright side, RoTK got the Golden Globe for best picture, so maybe the oscars will take not and follow suit?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
But yeah - with no "Chicago" style frontrunner, ROTK has a better than average chance.
Schnapple
Of all categories, I expected to seem them nominated (and win) in this one. The cinematography was easily the best I've seen in years. Without that ROTK wouldn't be nearly as good -- it added to the tone tremendously.
Actually the only other movie I saw on the list was Lost in Translation. The closer you look at the film itself the more flaws you see. The script is full of cliches (particularly when you think who the director is) but thankfully spends most of the time observing the characters being themselves - and Bill Murray put in what is without a doubt the finest and most honest performance in his career. He totally deserves best actor.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
That was one area where I was sure ROtK (or in fact the whole trilogy) was going to win.
I'd wager those aren't considered "consolation prizes" by the makeup artists, composers, sound designers, writers, or costume designers.
mbbac
Very disappointed that Sean Astin (sp?) didn't get a nomination for best support. I haven't seen anyone play a role as well as that for a long time - certainly better than some of the lead actor nominations!
...is that Sean Astin was passed over for Best Supporting Actor. After his turn in RotK--particularly the scenes on the slope of Mt. Doom--he really deserved at least the nomination. I can't believe they left him out.
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It's possible that RotK could win Best Film and Best Director. Best Director seem almost obvious, until you consider that no woman has ever won the Best Director award before. In fact, only two women have previously been nominated, Lina Wertmuller and Jane Campion.
This raise the question of whether women in the Academy will vote for Coppola, to see a woman get the award for once and set a precedent. It's not as if Coppola doesn't deserve it either, she made a delightful and semi-profiund film on a 3 million dollar budget.
Of course, Jackson's achievement with The Lord Of The Rings is amazing and probably the largest single project a director has ever taken on, so he deserves it too.
All I'm saying is don't be too surprised if there's an surprise upset, for Coppola, in these two categories. Coppola has a strong chance, especially since RotK may be considered a "boy" film by female members of the Academy.
It's interesting that they basically ignored Cold Mountain... when it came out everyone was crying "Oscar bait!" I mean, if a decent Civil War epic love story, featuring a host of Academy Award winners and nominees, directed by the same man as a previous Best Picture, and released by Miramax can't even get nominated, what does that say about the Academy? Maybe they aren't so shallow after all...
-3Suns
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>But why not at least NOMINATE an actor for best supporting from LOTR?
Because they can't/won't nominate Gollum - there'd be too much uproar if a (even partially) CGI character won an award.
For the first 20 years of Oscar's history it was traditional for the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars to be awarded to the same film.
Then in 1948, they split for the first time with the Best Director Oscar going to John Huston for "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and Best Picture going to "Hamlet".
Since 1948 the two Oscars have split only 11 more times in the 75 years of Oscar's history. The past 20 years have seen only 4 splits.
This year I suspect there will again be a split with Peter Jackson being awarded the Best Director Oscar and "Lost in Translation" getting Best Picture. There's no way they will allow Jackson's achievement on his 3 fabulous LOTR movies to go unrecognized, but I think it's generally thought that "Lost in Translation" is the better film. So it would seem reasonable they'll split the awards in an effort to recognize both films.
Only time will tell.
Hey, you have to be nominated to win. No Matrix nominations at all. Not even for effects.
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You need arc.
Arc is not soley provided by plot; Someone missed the interplay of the 2 main characters in the film (played by Crowe and Bettany), which is central to both the books and the film.
As for the actual plot summary, it's a painfully simple excercise to cut down most any movie in this way.
For example, ROTK's plot can be summed up as "bunch of people try to get rid of an item that makes people turn bad. whoops, someone almost turned bad! whoops, someone did turn bad! whoops, someone almost turned bad! [repeat]."
What blatant screwage - the biggest flaw of this film was that it opened so close to when ROTK opened.
ROTK has perhaps no more than two or three memorable scenes while Big Fish is a beautifully shot, extremely imaginative piece of art.
Perhaps it will indeed take the route of Fight Club and become a cult classic in the years to come.
What I want to know, is how can Sean Astin (Sam) NOT be up for Best Supporting Actor!? He did a phenomenal job in that film. Heck... Sean's also a member of the Academy... figured he might be able to pull some strings...
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Mod parent up! I don't think I've EVER seen a Wong Kar-Wai recommendation on this site and you deserve Karma until your dying day for that! Everyone should have the honor to experince such fine filmmaking and you deserve to go up to a +5 underrated just for your last paragraph.
...and now I want to go buy another WKW movie! Thanks!
Alright, enough asskissing. I have work to do
fs
Personally I thought that Sean Astin, Sir Ian McKellen, Bernard Hill and Andy Serkis all did excellent jobs. One problem is that a studio can only put one person from a film forward in each category for consideration.
Serkis got to really act in this one (so no arguments about it being only CGI). I guess McKellen wouldn't be bothered about more awards, and that Sean Astin and Andy Serkis are too early in their careers. Bernard Hill (Theoden) would have been a good nominee, he essentially played a Lear, but did so extremely well, however he is British and that is always a small minus.
Others have recognised the cast and recognised them as an esemble, which is probably the best. I don't think the time that any of the cast spent on the LOTR would be wasted career-wise.