Has any year in recent Oscar history been this dramatic? The nominations made jaws drop around the globe, and the awards ceremony looks to be just as surprising. This season’s telecast promises several categories with clear front-runners, and other categories with neck-and-neck races that will go down to the wire until the envelopes are ripped open on live television Feb. 29.
Rarely has an Oscarcast been harder to predict than this year, mostly due to the lack of clear favorites on this year’s roster of nominees. The Academy showed uncharacteristically good taste in its nominations, ignoring many big-budget mainstream films and opting to bestow laurels upon a bevy of lower-profile but infinitely more deserving independent films.
Films like “American Splendor,” “The Cooler,” “In America,” “Monster,” and “Whale Rider” scored major nominations while Sofia Coppola’s art-house hit “Lost in Translation” snagged four major nods including Best Picture. It’s the first time since 1996 that independents have outweighed major studio pictures in the top categories.
Also reassuring is the large number of first-time nominees in the acting races. Four of the Supporting Actor candidates are freshmen, and Best Actress has three women making their first march down the red carpet.
Bill Murray came back from his “Rushmore” snub of 1998 to land a Best Actor slot for “Lost in Translation.” Johnny Depp and Patricia Clarkson have finally made it to the Oscars after deserving performances from each have gone unnoticed in several years past. And Keisha Castle-Hughes made Oscar history when she defied all expectations and became the awards’ youngest ever Best Leading Actress contender at the age of 13. Even more amazing is that she has a good chance to win.
Many Oscar-watchers were shocked by the exclusions of big names like Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, and almost everyone was caught off-guard by the omission of “Cold Mountain” in the Best Director, Screenplay and Picture category. The Miramax head office chalks this up to the late release date of the film (apparently Academy members didn’t have enough time to see it), but popular opinion believes that the Academy just didn’t like the film as much as it liked several others.
“Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” grabbed 11 nods, for example, while Peter Weir’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” netted 10. The Academy simply votes for what it likes, and this year Miramax couldn’t muster a Best Picture nod for the first time in over a decade.
If there’s one certainty this year, it’s the inevitability of “Lord of the Rings.” Hollywood has yet to honor the films or director Peter Jackson with a golden statuette, but this is the last chance the Academy will have to recognize the incredible achievement that was Jackson’s treatment of the “Rings” trilogy. It’s a chance the Academy will not miss. If there’s one film to rule them all this year, it’s “Return of the King.”
That’s it from me movie freaks. Enjoy the Oscars, and pencil in your ballots with care.