Overall Reactions to the Nominations

I did most of the reacting this morning before rushing off to my first class of the semester. Overall, this was a massively exciting season which culminated in a list which is not that interesting but pretty cool otherwise. While this year "Michael Clayton" and "There Will Be Blood" are for me like last year's "Babel" and "The Queen" (i.e. way overrated), I am happy that "Atonement" defied almost all the odds and got in. I am surprised by the snubbing of "Into the Wild", especially in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. It is if voters went out of their way to select Sarah Polley's meh script for "Away from Her" instead. The lukewarm reaction to musicals is also weird. "Sweeney Todd" somehow ended up with only three nominations, "Hairspray" got shut out, "Across the Universe" made it in for Best Costumes, and all five Best Original Song nominees come from musicals. I would have loved for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" to deservedly make it in for Best Picture, but alas foreign films rarely do. At least Tommy Lee Jones got in. I do love a good surprise, especially one I predicted almost to the end. My overall total was 59/99, or 59% (the technical categories killed me), as compared to 53% last year (I also predicted 3/5 of the Best Picture nominees, as opposed to 2/5 last year). My prediction rate in the top eight categories was a lot better: 29/40, or 73%. I am particularly proud that I left "Atonement" in, almost left Tommy Lee Jones in, and that I correctly called the omission of "The Simpsons Movie".

Out of all the films nominated, I am missing 9 at this point: all five foreign films, three of the documentaries, and "Norbit". I have no desire to see "Norbit" and can forgo my say in the Best Makeup category ("Sweeney Todd" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" are not even represented, so it by default goes to "La Vie en Rose" in my mind). I plan to see both "Taxi to the Dark Side" and "Beaufort" in the coming weeks as well as anything else I can get my hands on. For people who may have missed a lot of the films, VideoEta is a great site to find out when movies are coming on on DVD. Between February 5th and 19th, the following films are being released, among others: THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES, GONE BABY GONE, INTO THE WILD, and MICHAEL CLAYTON. The Oscars air (hopefully) February 24th. In the meantime, the SAG awards air this Sunday night on TNT and then all the other guilds determine their winners. I'll be here with frequent predictions and thoughts.