I'm actually less annoyed with The Dark Knight not getting any nominations than I am with The Wrestler's many snubs - Aronofsky not even getting a Best Director nod and Bruce Springsteen not getting any recognition for Best Song are especially bad examples. Hell, Frost/Nixon got nominated over it for film editing, of all things, over it. Very strange.

Actually, I'm more surprised that The Dark Knight didn't get nominated for its great score than it not getting nominated for Best Picture.

I am befuddled about the Best Song snubbing. I'm not a huge fan of it (although my wife is) but it certainly deserved the nomination. I wonder if it was disqualified for some obscure reason. That's the only reason I can think of why it wasn't entered into a field that only has three competitors.

I think voters forgot that The Dark Knight's score ended up being eligible. It was a big deal when the score was declared ineligible and upon reversing the decision, no one cared. Weird.

You're 100% right about that, James. As I said in another thread:



I do hope that WALL-E and Peter Gabriel claim the win, though. (of course, Springsteen deserves it)

There have been rumors of a disqualification, but it's actually because the academy uses an incredibly ineffective system where the academy members vote on a song on a scale between 6 and 10 and any song that doesn't get at least 8.25 doesn't get the nomination. Only three songs got past 8.25 this year.

The whole "Soundtrack" thing isn't true - the song was released on the album well after the movie was released (The album was actually released after the nominations were given out), and the academy allows this.

Ah, the disqualification must be a very popular internet rumor, then. That's bizarre that Springsteen didn't get above an 8.25.

I think the Academy really doesn't like Arronofsky for some reason. They didn't even nominate The Fountain for Best original score - an award that many believed it deserved. Not to mention the unswervingly ignored Requiem for a Dream and now The Wrestler.

There has been a bit of a recent backlash concerning The Dark Knight in the 'buzz' surrounding the award season. It seems that those that LOVED the movie in the summer have recoiled a bit and now just really like it.

The only reason I was a little 'hmm-?' when The Dark Knight wasn't nominated for Best Picture was due to all the guild nominations it had picked up (including the Producer's Guild nom). But looking at the largest guild, the SAG, and how The Dark Knight was not necessarily an 'actor's movie,' I'm am most definitely not shocked.

It is true though that it would have brought in a bigger audience for television. There is no doubt about that.

And James hit a special place in my heart when he mentioned the possible snub for Wall-E as a best pic nominee. In my opinion, Wall-E should have been nominated. And quite frankly, should have won. It's only the best movie to come out in years.

And meh to the Springsteen song. While it's well written (and actually strikes a haunting note in the final blackout shot in the film), my vote goes to Peter Gabriel's Wall-E contribution. Those closing credits are some of the best I have ever seen for a film.

Damn I love that movie.

Oh, and yeah, The Wrestler should have been nominated too.

I was so sure they would nominate The Dark Knight, if only because their ratings have been deteriorating so surely, every year.

I suppose its because Aronofsky isn't a Hollywood harlot like Harvey whats-his-face. Was anyone really lobbying that hard for The Wrestler this year?

I don't think Darren has any studio backing him. He's made four difficult motion pictures, the first three being almost unwatchable by the general public. The Wrestler is by far his most accessible movie to date, but it's still a bit too slow for "regular" people.

And I mean, it's about a washed up wrestler coming to terms with his future. The five nomiated flicks are about a president, the holocaust, the first gay politician, india's rising culture in the world-wide lens, and life/death. A dude in tights just doesn't measure up I guess.

Not that I believe any of that, it's easily in the top 5 best films of the year. Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Let the Right One In, and Slumdog being the others.

Best picture being subjective with a ridiculous bias, fine, I can live with that. My greater annoyance is the snub for Christopher Nolan in the directors category. The man literally helmed this film from the ground up: produced, directed, and wrote the story! Taking the step to film several of the most difficult scenes in IMAX (something no other mainstream film had done before) and putting together such an ensemble where every single part of the movie made the other part stronger, down to the acting and the effects and even the score - 10 hours of it which he was known to have memorized. Failure to award this, what I believe to be the highest modern standard any director can aspire to, is dissappointing.

Yeah but he made an action/superhero flick. We can't go awarding those, otherwise it will become a trend in hollywood or something.

Well, the fact that he wrote or produced or did anything else shouldn't affect whether he gets a direction nod. Same with the IMAX stuff -- yeah, it was ambitious and challenging, but that doesn't mean it was directed well. And I know many will strongly disagree with me here, I promise I'm not trying to be sexy by going against the grain -- I think TDK's biggest flaw is that it isn't perfectly directed. It's well directed, yes, but many films were better helmed this year, I feel. It was confusing when it didn't want to be, some of the action scenes are a little messy, etc. Again, let me make clear that I think it's a wonderful film, genre nature aside.

I think the snubs for The Wrestler in Direction and Song are the biggest snubs. Simply no excuse for either of them.

One of the points I was trying to make is that from a purely practical point-of-view, TDK should have been on the list of nominees. It's good for business, and - regardless of how people want to argue this - the Oscars are all about business. The falling ratings have greatly concerned AMPAS over the past few years. I would be willing to bet that ratings would have been a lot better with TDK nominated as Best Picture versus the way things are. And for those who think there's something sacrosanct about the way nominations are voted for, don't be fooled. There's already a lot of manipulation going on. I'm not arguing TDK's case on the basis of whether it's a "good" or "bad" film but that it was respected enough to make the nomination legitimate and it would be good for the business of the Oscars.

I will be irritated if an AMPAS spokesman comes out and whines about poor ratings this year. They have only themselves to blame.

The credits were great, but that was due to a combination of the song and the animation.

I actually think Jai Ho will win. Everyone comes away from Slumdog feeling uplifted and it is that song that sends you off with that feeling during that dance number at the end.

The problem with the Slumdog song is that there are two of them. The voters will split on the two, and the win will go to WALL-E. That's what happened last year with Enchanted and Once.

Yeah, the votes will probably be split between the two Slumdog Millionaire songs. If any other song (except for maybe The Wrestler) that third spot, I would call Jai Ho the winner. Down to Earth's good competition, though, and O...Saya is only complicating things for Jai Ho. I'm actually really satisfied with all three songs, so I don't care who wins, but Down to Earth has the double-nominee in its favor. Jai Ho, though, is part of what makes Slumdog Millionaire memorable, so it's a crap shoot.

I long ago stopped viewing the Oscars as anything other than a highly political beauty contest. For me, it fulfllls the role of a sort of sign off for the movie year.

This years mess ups were many but continued the annual tradition. Of course we all have our favorite movies and performances. But can anyone tell me that The Reader was a superior film to Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, Dark Knight and Wall E.

It's actually intersting to look back and see the films that won Oscars and the ones that you'd have been sure would have won, that did not. Very famously, in 1942 two of the greatest films of all time (The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane) lost to How Green Was my Valley. But better still Gregg Toland did NOT win for cinematography. Today, his pioneering work in that film and the introduction of deep focus is considered a milestone of all cinema.

So no blood boiling here - well maybe a little

Rob

But you forget Rob that William Randolph Hearst threw gobs upon gobs of money around to cripple Citizen Kane's stature. If Heast threw a bit more than Kane wouldn't even won the Original Screenplay Oscar.