Check out the Academy Awards nominations: There’s always someone who gets left out — like peers in the rain. See who, or what, they were this year.
(Photo by Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection)
Despite a Certified Fresh hot streak over his last six movies, Villeneuve hasn’t picked up a Best Director Oscar yet, having only been nominated once for 2016’s Arrival. With Blade Runner 2049, he had the enviable yet arduous task of adding to the legacy of a beloved cult sci-fi mood piece. And what he delivered was…a beloved cult sci-fi mood piece with a guaranteed legacy. Villeneuve’s insistence to not cut from the indulgent 3-hour run time may have been its most alluring charm, yet ultimately fatal flaw.
(Photo by Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection)
In the Academy’s 90 year history, science fiction films have been nominated for Best Picture but never won, most famously in Star Wars‘ loss to Annie Hall. The long wait will continue. However, BR2049‘s Best Picture snub isn’t a huge surprise: Look at our Awards Leaderboard and you’ll see the film’s been getting real technical (like today’s 4 pick-ups) but left parched in regards to topline stuff.
(Photo by A24/courtesy Everett Collection)
The imitation game didn’t work here. Despite winning the Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe Best Actor awards, the Academy didn’t see fit to nominate Franco’s turn as filmmaking prodigy/parody Tommy Wiseau for The Disaster Artist. And it wasn’t so much Franco’s scandals of recent days that kept him out, and more the Academy seeing little value in supporting a clownish cipher like Wiseau. Disaster Artist‘s lack of cinematic presentation didn’t assist the performance either, forcing the film to settle for a lone Adapted Screenplay nod.
(Photo by Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection)
Ferdinand and Boss Baby make it in for Best Animated Feature, but not this extension of the LEGO franchise? Set up the Bat signal, crime’s afoot! In all seriousness though, perhaps Lego Batman‘s whizbang spoofery was less appealing that assumed to Academy voters, who voted in broader material like Ferdinand and Boss Baby, along with prestige work like Loving Vincent, crafted frame-by-frame in oil paint.
(Photo by Ben Rothstein/20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection)
2017 was a banner year for superhero movies, what with Lego Batman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Wonder Woman, and Thor: Ragnarok all connecting with critics and audiences. (Only Justice League didn’t go Certified Fresh.) But you wouldn’t have known it from this year’s Oscar nominations, which makes Logan‘s Adapted Screenplay nomination all the more a fun surprise. Logan‘s dramatic treatises on death and duty, combined with its lovingly complex character work and an actual conclusion (a lacking feature in superhero films these days), sealed the deal for the Wolverine.
What were your biggest snubs and surprises from this year’s Oscar nominations?
