Oscar Gets Blindsided

What can we make of today's announce-ment of Oscar nominations (known by some as the "gay Christmas Eve," even for us heterosexuals)? In the categories with the traditional five nominees, there aren't many surprises. Oh, sure, I raised an eyebrow at Maggie Gyllenhaal in Supporting Actress for Crazy Heart (credit to Nathaniel Rogers at thefilmexperience.net for pegging that one) and what exactly is The Secret of Kells or Paris 36? They're Oscar nominated films, whatever they are.

All the hubbub about these nominations surrounded what the field of ten Best Picture nominees would look like. The Academy, perhaps in a naked attempt to boost sagging interest in the event, doubled the field, hoping for a more diverse selection, maybe one that would include films people actually went to see. In a certain sense, they got what they wanted.

The irony is that the top grosser of all time, Avatar, would have been nominated if there was a two-picture category. But the bigger net did manage to catch a few pictures that ordinarily would have never got a sniff of such an important nomination. Since there are still only five Best Director nominations, we can sort of determine what the five films would have been if there were only five nominees (strictly speaking, Best Picture and Best Director usually didn't match up entirely, but close enough to continue this line of reasoning). Therefore, we can conclude that Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious and Up in the Air figure to be the top five vote getters. Up, which becomes only the second animated film ever nominated for Best Picture, and District 9, a hard-core sci-fi film, would have been left wanting in a five-film year. The same has to be said of An Education and A Serious Man, art-house staples that made less money in their entire run than Avatar does on a typical Tuesday. And then there's The Blind Side.

I haven't seen The Blind Side, so I can't be too splenetic. And I can't say it's a total shock that it was nominated, as the name was circulating in the Oscar blogosphere. But, really? I hate judging films by the trailer, but this thing looks like a by-the-numbers TV movie of the week, with nary a scene that can't be predicted beforehand. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's pure genius, but I doubt it. I think it's there because it made over two-hundred-million dollars and is the Academy's way of trying to be "of the people," the way a Harvard professor may stoop to talking NASCAR with his neighbors.

I think, I hope, that The Blind Side has no chance at winning (I'll have to check, but I would imagine it's been many, many years since a Best Picture nominee has only two total nominations--Sandra Bullock got the only other nod). The race is on between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, which has the built-in story of their respective directors being ex-spouses. It's a shame that they don't seem to hate each other, which would make for a much sexier story (then again, maybe an Oscar night hookup, a la It's Complicated, would be even better). There's a little over a month to dissect and analyze the race between these two very different films, but it figures to be a nail-biter (an early indicator will be Best Editing--if The Hurt Locker wins that it may be over).

As for who got left out, well, I don't think anyone has a federal case. Some are melancholy that crowd-pleasers like Star Trek or The Hangover didn't crack the genre ceiling, but baby steps, people. I also don't think there's a performer out there who needs to cancel their Oscar outfit--Julianne Moore of A Single Man is the closest thing to a snub, and she was no lock.

A few tidbits of information: Kathryn Bigelow becomes the fourth woman nominated for Best Director, while Lee Daniels is the second in that category of African heritage. Randy Newman picks up his eighteenth and nineteenth nominations for two Best Song nominees, while Meryl Streep gets her already record sixteenth nomination as a performer.

The ten-film experiment turns out to be a good-news/bad-news proposition. I'm certainly happy that A Serious Man and An Education got nominations, but shouldn't an expansion of the category mean a better display of excellence? Can anyone who has seen both The Blind Side and The White Ribbon say that the former was a better film?