Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations

I know that I'm pretty out of it this year (the only film that was nominated for anything that I've actually seen is Up), but the nominees for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards seem kind of... (insert shoulder shrug here). There just doesn't seem to be a lot to get excited about this year.

I am glad to see that Colin Firth was nominated for Best Actor for his role in A Single Man, but that was the only nomination the film received.

I'm also thrilled to see Nick Hornby, one of my favorite writers, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for An Education! I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't even know he'd written the screenplay for this film before today.

Other than those two nominations, though, I see nothing to get excited about. This is probably because I've seen none of these films, I'm sure, but even so it seems that there is usually someone or something that I'm really rooting for at the Oscars. This year, not so much.

I'm sad that there were no nominations for Joseph Gordon-Levitt or (500) Days of Summer. After the Golden Globes, I'd thought there may be.

I think increasing the number of Best Picture nominees to ten makes some sense, but I think in practice it's going to be about nominating a lot of films that are just filler, with no real chance to win. Of course, that might lead to some great upsets in the future if enough people get behind one of the filler nominees at some point and upset the favorite. It will be interesting to see how much longer it makes the ceremony, too.

Well, I guess I'll have to try and see some of these films between now and March 7th. Maybe that will give me something to care about here.

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