Oscar nominations omit several Vassar favorites

Margaret Files Guest Writer

Nominations for the 77th Annual Academy Awards were announced on Tuesday, Jan. 25, featuring as always a few surprising snubs and inclusions in an otherwise predictable race.

Martin Scorcese’s Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator dominated the nominations with eleven, including Best Picture and Acting nods for stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett. The Aviator is a big-budget historical picture on exactly the grand scale the Academy has traditionally rewarded, but odds are slim to none that the film will make a record-tying clean sweep like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King did last year. The Aviator is a favorite to claim the Best Picture statuette (as it did at the Golden Globes), beating out the competition of Ray, Sideways, Finding Neverland, and the only film considered to have a fighting chance, Million Dollar Baby. All Best Picture nominees are currently playing in local theaters.

The Best Picture and Best Director categories often go hand in hand, and this year’s nominations are no exception. The Best Director category features the same lineup of films, except Finding Neverland is replaced by the quiet drama of an English abortionist, Vera Drake. Martin Scorcese will be hoping that he finally gets the Best Director statuette that has eluded him four times, while once again the closest competition comes in Million Dollar Baby, whose director Clint Eastwood took home the Golden Globe in this category.

When it comes to Best Actor in a Leading Role, the race can basically be described as “Jamie Foxx and…some other guys.” Foxx is a shoo-in, not just for his uncanny portrayal of Ray Charles, but also because Academy members hope he will deliver another entertaining acceptance speech. Foxx’s moving Golden Globe speech was a higlight at the award ceremony. The “other guys” are, specifically, Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator), Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda), Johnny Depp (Finding Neverland), and the unexpected Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby). Paul Giamatti, star of the critically adored indie Sideways, was a surprising omission.

This is clearly the year of the Foxx: he has accomplished a rare feat by being nominated in both Lead Actor and Supporting Actor categories. The race is unusually close among nominees Foxx (Collateral), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby), and Clive Owen (Golden Globe winner for Closer). The only nominee who is not considered a contender is Alan Alda, who was unexpectedly nominated for his portrayal of a corrupt senator in The Aviator.

The category to watch this year is Best Actress in a Leading Role, which features a dramatic competition between Annette Bening (Being Julia) and Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby). The actresses famously faced off in the year 2000 when Swank came out of nowhere to beat out the veteran Bening.

This year the race is again seen as a matchup between the two, though other nominees include Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Imelda Staulton (Vera Drake), and Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace).

Best Supporting Actress, like Best Actor, is dominated by performances based on real people. The forerunner seems to be Cate Blanchett, who notoriously walked the line between caricature and character in her recreation of the brassy Katharine Hepburn for The Aviator. Other nominees in real-life roles are Laura Linney (Kinsey) and first-time surprise nominee Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda).The category also includes Virginia Madsen (Sideways) and Natalie Portman (Golden Globe winner for Closer). Despite a Golden Globe nomination for her role in The Manchurian Candidate—not to mention a record thirteen Academy Award nominations under her belt—Vassar alumna Meryl Streep ’71 was not nominated in this year’s race.

A Vassar favorite, Michael Moore’s incendiary political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, has not been nominated in the Best Documentary category or any other. But don’t feel too bad for Moore—he intentionally disqualified his film by opting to broadcast it on television before the elections, and the film has also racked up five facetious “Razzie” award nominations, including one for Worst Onscreen Couple, “George W. Bush and either Condoleeza Rice or His Pet Goat.” At least one person should be happy about Fahrenheit’s absence: smart bets are now on Morgan Spurlock, director and human guinea pig for Super-Size Me, which Vassar students may remember from its screening here last semester.

The other most controversial movie on the year, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, is in the running for three Oscars in the categories of Makeup, Cinematography, and Score. Anther film to look out for include Pixar’s The Incredibles, a sure winner in the Best Animated Feature category, and also a strong contender in the Sound categories.

The Writing categories are hard to call, but look for Sideways to pick up a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar as compensation for losing out in the other categories, while Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind author Charlie Kaufman may find the third nom’s the charm and take home a statue for his mind-bending Best Original Screenplay.

Many critics have argued that several movies have been forgotten in these nominations. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for instance has only one nomination. Sideways additionally has been called “forgotten” by many and the process of selecting nominees has further been questioned.

Comedian Chris Rock will host this year’s Oscars, a job that has been filled by Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Steve Martin in recent years. Rock is no stranger to the awards circuit. He hosted the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. Look for a complete list of nominees, clips from the films, and other information on the official Academy Awards website, oscars.com. The 77th Annual Academy Awards will air on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 27.