Making Sense of the 2012 Oscars

If anything was gonna to get me blogging here again, it was gonna be the goddamn Oscars...

I can't even fully explain my obsession with the Academy Awards. Sure, I really, REALLY love movies. That part makes sense. I also love competition and the Oscars give me a fun chance to win things from people foolish enough to bet against me. Above all, I'm obsessed with the way America sells its own culture back to itself. Best Of lists and award shows really intrigue me on those grounds. The Academy Awards are the last relevant American award show with any amount of credibility left. Thus, I've made the following pact: every year, I will watch every film nominated, in every category. Longtime readers will know that this is my third year attempting this.

So, all of this is important because... the Academy Award nominations were announced this morning! I've spent the past several months trying to watch as many relevant movies as I could. I ended up seeing 71% of the non-short films nominated. The Master has eluded me now that it has exited theaters, but all the other missing films are in the Documentary, Foreign or Art categories. This will soon be remedied.

Here's my initial thoughts on the nominations. I'll be back in February to break down each race in detail and announce my own personal favorites from the year's cinema.

-Let's get the big snub out of the way first: Kathryn Bigelow, director of Zero Dark Thirty, only woman to ever win an Academy Award for Best Director. The heavy favorite to win the award going into today. And then... she doesn't get nominated. I'm really at a loss here. There is no precedent for a snub this huge in recent memory. Sure, she's directing a politically charged, controversial movie. Sure, she's a successful woman working in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by men. But this is just inexcusable. I'm not going to quibble with the Academy for not nominating a personal favorite performance or screenplay, but to entirely ignore the director of one of the year's most universally acclaimed films is just a mistake. This is a bad one, guys.

-Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild both enjoyed surprising amounts of success with Academy voters. Amour has crept out of the Best Foreign Film ghetto to snag Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay nominations, all of which I can endorse. Meanwhile, Beasts wrangled up a Best Actress nomination for 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis and a Best Director nod for Benh Zeitlin. The Bigelow power vacuum had to filled somehow...

-A few names that ended up falling through the cracks: John Hawkes (Actor, The Sessions), Marion Cotillard (Actress, Rust and Bone) and the entire mess that was Supporting Actor, including both Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson for Django Unchained and Javier Bardem (Skyfall). Also, Rian Johnson failed to pick up a screenplay nod for Looper.

-I'm thrilled that the Academy avoided The Intouchables for Best Foreign Film. A feelgood French comedy about a crippled man who learns to live again thanks to his lower-class, black assistant, the film's haphazard dance around racial politics isn't nearly worth the acclaim ii got from certain circles. Pleasant surprise in the same category: Kon-Tiki, a fairly wonderful film about a raft full of Norwegians sailing across the Pacific Ocean.

-And so we have a problem on our hands: who the hell is going to win Best Picture? Had you asked me 24 hours ago, I would have said Zero Dark Thirty and then gone searching for cookies. Now, I'm full of confusion and doubt that even cookies can't dispel. Without Bigelow nominated, ZDT's chances have tanked. It's been 23 years since a film won Best Picture without having its director nominated. That was Driving Miss Daisy, generally seen as one of the worst choices in the Academy's voting history. Lincoln appears poised to pick up the pieces, as Steven Spielberg suddenly looks uncontested in the Best Director field. Does that make Lincoln the Best Picture favorite as well? Maybe... but I'm not ready to put my money there yet. Watch the Producer's and Director's Guild Awards this following month. If Zero Dark Thirty can get the predicted wins there, hope may remain.