Today brought good news for the people behind Hugo, the 3D family-drama spectacle that led the pack of this year’s Oscar nominations with a whopping 11 nods: Not bad for a movie so effects-driven none of its actors were singled out for praise. This was also a cheerful morning for the people behind Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the 9/11-themed drama that has divided critical and public opinion but nonetheless scored a nod in the Best Picture category. In fact, the list of people who woke to unexpected glad tidings this morning is quite long, including several foreign actors who snuck into the acting races that tend to be dominated by Hollywood performers.
But who got bad news? The list of people fitting that description is sizable, because a number of folks whom pundits expected to see among the nominees failed to earn slots in the big races. For example, consider this survey of the year’s ten biggest Oscar snubs (presented in descending order from most to least suprising).
1. Bridesmaids for Best Picture. Partially due to affection for the movie and largely due to a longstanding backlash against the Academy’s seeming unwillingness to take comedy seriously, there was a huge groundswell of support for placing this R-rated comedy in the biggest race of all. A nomination for Bridesmaids would have been interpreted as a celebration of the contributions women make to movies (since the cast was almost entirely female) and as a step forward for an institution that historically treats comedy professionals as second-class citizens. Alas, it was not be so, but this one probably stings a little more than it might have because only nine movies made the Best Picture race out of a possible ten; accordingly, there will be a great deal of speculation about how close Bridesmaids came.
2. Cars 2 for Best Animated Feature. When Disney bought Pixar, wags worried the Mouse House would push the acclaimed animation company toward cranking out rote sequels that stimulate merchandising profits rather than concentrating on what Pixar does best, which is creating bold original films. And while director/Pixar boss John Lasseter undoubtedly considers the Cars franchise an ongoing passion project, since he’s an automobile nut, the critical drubbing that Cars 2 has received defines the picture as the least-liked movie Pixar has made. Now that the movie has become the first Pixar release not to score a Best Animated Feature nomination, the humiliation is complete. One hopes that Disney will learn from the misfire and refocus on maintaining Pixar’s otherwise spotless record of artistic achievement.
3. Michael Fassbender for Best Actor. Listing every actor who did potentially Oscar-worthy work in any given year, but then failed to earn a nomination, can get exhausting. Therefore, observers need to accept that the process of selecting the year’s “best” performances is imperfect and subjective. So, while Leonardo DiCaprio delivered a solid performance as notorious FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood’s mediocre J. Edgar, and while Woody Harrelson did typically intense work as a cop in the little-seen Rampart, their omissions from this category are par for the course: It just wasn’t their year. However, 2011 absolutely was actor Michael Fassbender’s year, since he broke out with star-making performances in A Dangerous Method, Shame, and X-Men: First Class. One could conjecture that appearing in so many films split his potential nominations (although that phenomenon didn’t hurt 2011’s breakout female, Jessica Chastain), so it seems likely (and unfortunate) that Fassbender’s most important movie, the sex-addiction drama Shame, was too rough for Academy voters to stomach. Apparently, the Oscar folks are comfortable praising actors who cry and simulate disease, not actors who parade their manhood and simulate group sex.
4. Tilda Swinton for Best Actress. Another way to view Fassbender’s omission is to say that indie movies did not fare particularly well in this year’s nominations. It’s true that many foreign films scored key nods, and it’s true that many familiar Hollywood players earned nominations for work in independently distributed flicks, but very few people were singled out for genuinely independent work. Just as egregious as Fassbender’s absence is that of Tilda Swinton, whose performance in the school-shooting drama We Need to Talk About Kevin was shattering. The fact that she’s a past Oscar winner adds to the confusion, because it’s not as if she exists completely off Hollywood’s radar. Based on widespread predictions of who might land in this race, it seems the slot predestined for Swinton went to Rooney Mara for her impressive turn in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, suggesting that voters opted for a familiar brand name over something esoteric. Other actresses who were considered dark horses for their work in indies, but who were overlooked in favor of more established performers, include Like Crazy‘s Felicity Jones and Martha Marcy May Marlene‘s Elizabeth Olsen.
5. David Fincher for Best Director. Particularly after his loss last year for The Social Network, it was reasonable to expect the Academy would at least throw a nomination to Fincher for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; even though critical opinion surrounding the movie is not unanimously positive, there’s no overlooking the impressive feat of making a nearly three-hour thriller including two graphic rape scenes into a compulsively watchable popcorn movie. Moreover, Fincher has been flying high at the top level of directorial achievement since the late ’90s, so he’s way overdue for recognition. But it seems the movie’s middling reception and scandalous subject matter impeded his progress, although Fincher can take comfort that he got slighted in a competitive year. The most successful director in history, Steven Spielberg, was shut out despite helming two movies this year (one of which, War Horse, earned a Best Picture nomination), and The Help‘s writer-director, Tate Taylor, was snubbed even though three members of his ensemble cast received acting nominations. Apparently, they directed themselves.
6. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for Best Original Score. Once-and-future Nine Inch Nails mastermind Reznor, working with collaborator Ross, won an Oscar last year for his very first movie score (The Social Network). Working with the same director on an ambitious new project, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Reznor failed to earn even a nomination. This one’s just plain weird.
7. Will Reiser for Best Original Screenplay. Although the Academy included a trio of sentimental favorites among the acting nominations (veteran actors including Nick Nolte, Christopher Plummer, and Max von Sydow have never won Oscars), each of those thespians did universally lauded work, so their nominations are not examples of praise being showered on older people simply for surviving. In other words, the Academy apparently wasn’t feeling particularly warm and fuzzy this year. Which might explain why newcomer Will Reiser failed to earn a Best Original Screenplay nomination for the well-liked but not necessarily well-loved dramedy 50/50. In case the following information escaped your notice, Reiser and producer-star Seth Rogen based upon Reiser’s real-life triumph over cancer. The guy beat cancer and wrote a movie about it, people, and he didn’t get nominated! Tough room. Also not feeling the love in this category, despite charming legions of critics and fans with his words, was Dan Fogelman, the writer of the summertime rom-com for grown-ups, Crazy, Stupid, Love.
8. Albert Brooks for Best Supporting Actor. I’ll confess that I don’t belong to the constituency that was pushing for a nomination recognizing funnyman Brooks’ performance as a bloodthirsty criminal in Drive, the gory thriller made in a throwback style recalling the chrome-and-neon 1980s. Brooks was fine, but he’s a skilled actor with a lot of experience playing a crowd-pleasing one-note role, so there was not a tremendous degree of difficulty, to borrow terminology from the sports world. That said, Brooks has reason to be disappointed today since nearly every critic who wrote an article predicting the nominations cited Brooks as a virtual shoo-in. It’s possible Brooks was another victim of the Academy’s aforementioned comedy bias; his shutout recalls the way Eddie Murphy got robbed despite delivering an amazing dramatic performance in Dreamgirls a few years back.
9. Andy Serkis for Best Supporting Actor. Just as there was a major push for a Bridesmaids Best Picture nomination, many fans hoped Andy Serkis would land in the Best Supporting Actor race for playing Caesar, the revolutionary chimpanzee, in the better-than-expected franchise reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes. As the hype went, a nod for Serkis would represent the Academy’s realization that motion-capture acting is as valid as traditional on-camera performance. Serkis, after all, is the de facto king of motion capture after playing Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong in Peter Jackson’s monkey movie. But like voting for Bridesmaids, this was a step the Academy was apparently not yet ready to take. Luckily for Serkis, an Apes sequel is in the works, so he’ll have another shot later, and because his character learned to talk at the end of Rise, his part in the next picture will be showier.
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 for Best Picture. There’s no need to cry for Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and the legion of artists and technicians who turned her series into a film franchise, since the pictures have earned obscene amounts of money and are already considered classics in the family-film genre. Nonetheless, an Oscar nomination (or win) would have been the icing on a very rich cake, and there was ample precedent: The final Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, won Best Picture after the previous two pictures failed to nab a statuette. Best guess? Bridesmaids and Harry Potter split the vote for the tenth Best Picture slot, so each failed to reach the necessary number of No. 1 votes on ballots.
There are other snubs among this year’s nominations, like teen actress Shailene Woodley, whose presumptive Best Supporting Actress nomination for her breakout performance as George Clooney’s willful daughter in The Descendants probably fell a few votes shy of the support for Janet McTeer’s work in Albert Nobbs, and of course Ryan Gosling is probably wondering who he has to bribe to earn a nomination after delivering strong work in three films (Crazy, Stupid, Love; Drive; and The Ides of March). But even with these oversights, there’s reason to appreciate the nominations. Any year when a French silent film scores ten nods, trumping dozens of high-profile Hollywood releases, is a year when something is going right.