cleolinda | (no subject)

OH SHIT I FORGOT TO SET MY ALARM.

So, Oscar nominations! There is outrage on the Fametracker POTO thread that Phantom did not get a costume nomination ("NO BEST COSTUME??? Are they out of their minds?! No pants. No. Pants.")--instead, Troy got it, which... rrrrright. But yay for Clive Owen! Yay for Cate and Kate! Yay for Snicket! And two nominations for Jamie Foxx--I know he kept getting Supporting and Best noms at other award shows, but somehow I'm just shocked that the Oscars were on the ball with that. Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) and Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) and Morgan Freeman were also nominated, so it's an extremely multicultural year. What I love about this is that it should be completely normal and we shouldn't even bat an eyelash, you know, that the noms aren't 99% white people, but historically, that's what you'd get every single year, and everyone would start wailing about all the great non-white actors who got snubbed. But somehow--I don't know, maybe the great Berry-Washington twofer broke some kind of mental block for Oscar voters, because this is one of the best, most evenhanded nomination groups I've ever seen. There's not a single person nominated who doesn't seem to belong there.

Interesting snubs: No Paul Giamatti? Yeah, it looks like Sideways is kinda screwed now; I would say that Best Picture is squarely between The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby now, with The Aviator more likely to take it. No Liam Neeson for Kinsey; no Marc Forster for Finding Neverland; no Fahrenheit 9/11--Michael Moore held it out of Best Documentary in hopes of getting a Best Picture nom--and no Passion of the Christ for picture or acting. Michael Moore is one of those people I wish would stop being on my side because he makes my side look stupid--I was really glad when Bowling for Columbine won and then he had to get up there and be a gigantic frickin' ass about it, so I'm sort of pleased by the snub this year. As for Passion of the Christ and Crazy Mel Gibson--well, it's probably not fair of me to rag on a movie I haven't seen, but I decided very early on that two solid hours of beating and whipping and bleeding and hey hey ow it hurts was not for me. As far as I can tell, an actual "Passion of the Christ in Fifteen Minutes" would have been something along the lines of--

ROMANS: *thrash!*

ROMANS: *scourge!*

ROMANS: *pistol-whip!*

JIM CAVIEZEL: GODDAMMIT, THAT ACTUALLY HURT!

GOD: *lightning bolt*

Wash, rinse, repeat. I'm kind of glad about this snub, too, but mostly because of the Crazy Mel Gibson megalomania, though, not because of the subject matter of the movie.

And yet... I'm as big an Oscar hound as anyone, but somehow... this year just isn't all that exciting to me. It's the first time in about ten years, maybe more, that I haven't had something I was actively rooting for. I'm not real fond of Clint Eastwood's directorial oeuvre--I'm conscious that they're Great Movies, but... yeah. So I've got to root for The Aviator, which (as I've said) I liked, but... well. It could have been easily trounced by stronger movies in a different year. This just seems like an off-year for the Oscars--good stuff, yes, but nothing that just sets you on fire. Kind of reminds me of 1995-96--I loved Sense and Sensibility, but really, the whole year competition-wise was just kind of meh. And then Braveheart won anyway. Eh. Your mileage may vary, etc.