The Oscar-Nominated Norbit, and Other Curiosities

This morning, about 5:30 AM California time, this year's Oscar nominations hit the internet. This is a national holiday for me, and also a starting gun -- I have between rightnow and the date of the show to see as many as I can of the nominated films I'd previously missed.

As my title suggests, there are several odd bumps on this year's list, and the entire event is buried under a steaming pile of writer's strike rhetoric. It's going to be a strange year. But it's also probably the most solid year, top-to-bottom, since the mid 90's.

Here are my initial reactions to the nominations in various categories:

Best Picture: Aha! This is the first year I can remember where I've seen all five nominees by the day they're announced. Juno, There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men are all possibilities right now, but I think it's probably going to come down to Juno and No Country, as I think many Oscar voters will be turned off by the dour attitude of Blood. No Country might get knocked due to its violence, but The Departed won last year, so why not? Atonement is traditional Oscar bait (ala The English Patient) but it has a terrible third act and is generally overrated. Michael Clayton is the only one here that could come close to being a surprise. It won't win, but it really is a honor to be nominated this year in such a competitive season.

Best Actor: Like Forrest Whitaker last year, there is no stopping Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. None at all. To compensate, the rest of the field is full of a batch of crazy roles. Johnny Depp got another nomination for playing wacky in Sweeny Todd, Viggo Mortensen and his swinging junk got a nomination for Eastern Promises, and Tommy Lee Jones scored a nod for adroitly navigating a terrible script in In the Valley of Elah. Clooney gets a nod for playing Michael Clayton, but no surprise there. This is a recent rarity, by the way -- no biography film performances in sight (ala Capote or Ray or The Last King of Scotland)

Best Actress: Congrats to Ellen Page for the first of what could be many Oscar nomination for Juno, but the real surprise for me here was Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Her performance in the trailer was bad-ass, but the film itself was directed and written so poorly that I thought she came off like a shrill harpy... not easy with Miss Cate. She's now been nominated for playing the same role in both the original film and its sequel, which has to be some kind of rarity, if not unprecedented. The rest of the assortment pulls the usual Best Actress routine of pulling from quirky or hard-to-find indie and foreign films, such as Julie Christie in Away From Her, Laura Linney in The Savages, and Marion Cotillard in the French film La Vie en Rose. This probably confirms some feminist theory about female roles in mainstream Hollywood, but I'm not qualified to comment.

Best Supporting Actor: Who the hell decided that the part of Robert Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was a supporting role? If you asked me, the part of Jesse James is the supporting role. Still, this nod for Casey Affleck is his best shot at an Oscar, as he would have been eclipsed by Day-Lewis in the main category. As this is also the ONLY nod for Assassination apart from cinematography, he's got all my sympathy on awards night. The rest of the list is perfect. Javier Bardem for No Country, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Charlie Wilson's War, Tom Wilkinson for Michael Clayton, and a well, well, well deserved nomination for Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild. His part is the emotional dynamite in the film's last half, and I'm glad to see he wasn't ignored. Tremendous pick.

Best Supporting Actress: Another excellent batch of nominations. The young Saoirse Ronan was the best part of Atonement, as was Cate Blanchett (again) in I'm Not There. Tilda Swinton was fantastic in Michael Clayton, too. The interesting bits here are Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone, who was co-starring in her first major film, and Ruby Dee for playing Denzel Washington's mom in American Gangster, a performance that hinges basically on one key scene. Some surprises there, but it should be Blanchett's Oscar to lose.

Best Director: The strongest part of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the film's directing and writing, so it makes sense that both the director and the screenplay received nominations. Julian Schnabel sneaks in and plays spoiler for Atonement, kicking its director off of the list. The other four Best Picture nominees made the cut.

Screenplay Awards: Diablo Cody is very close to a sure thing for the best original screenplay award, but she has tough competition from Lars and the Real Girl and Michael Clayton. Nice to see Ratatouille grab an unexpected nod. As for the adapted screenplay, it's a horse race between There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, and the film that should probably win this, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Best Animated Feature Film: This is probably the surprise of the day. Only three films are nominated in this category each year, and one of them was definitely going to be Ratatouille. The Iranian film Persepolis was another assumed shoo-in, so that left an assortment of others. Beowulf? The Simpsons Movie? No... Surf's Up. You know, the surfing penguin movie. I've got no answers on this one, and I know it was on exactly zero prediction lists earlier this week. I'll check it out and report on its suckitude or non-suckitude. But, jeez. Odd pick.

Original Song: I usually yawn my way through this category, but there's actually a spot of fun this year. "Falling Slowly" from Once was nominated, which is the likely winner, plus THREE songs from Enchanted. That's a very fun movie, and the rumor is that Amy Adams was on the short list for the Actress nominations. A burst of happy, satirical songs won't hurt on Oscar night.

Oddballs: My favorite blip every year -- scouting the films that grabbed nominations in the technical categories that would otherwise have never sniffed Oscar otherwise. This year's batch include the above-mentioned Norbit (for makeup), The Golden Compass (art direction and visual effects), Transformers (the sound awards and visual effects), and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (effects and makeup).

Movies that I need to see before Oscar night: Away From Her, La Vie en Rose, The Savages, Persepolis, Surf's Up, and as many of the documentaries as I can -- Sicko, No End In Sight, etc.