Oscar Nominations Announced

The nominations for the 76th Annual Academy Awards are always announced a few days after the Golden Globe winners are named. That way, the Academy can make sure it doesn’t forget anything obvious. Usually what happens is the Golden Globes goes gaga for some lightweight foreign film such as Amelie or Life Is Beautiful and the Academy goes, “Hold the phone, we gotta nominate this movie no one actually saw for something!”

Well, surprise surprise.

This year the Academy has turned to those movies that were actually shown in American theatres (not just New York and Los Angeles), for the bulk of its nominations. Art flick lovers may quibble but it only makes sense to concentrate on movies the public is familiar with if you want to have good television ratings come Oscar night.

Best Picture nominations went to blockbusters The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Mystic River, and Seabiscuit. Lost in Translation could be considered an art-house film but it received nationwide distribution thanks in part to everyone’s familiarity with leading man Bill Murray.

Of the nominations given to actors and actresses, only Patricia Clarkson’s Best Supporting Actress nod for Pieces of April and Charlize Theron’s Best Actress nomination for Monster went to performances in movies not yet in wide release. And both of those films should be in theatres nationwide before February 29’s Oscar telecast.

If there’s a surprise in the nominations, it is the respect given Mystic River, a film that seemed to fly under the radar when it was released in August. It is nominated for Best Picture and its leads Sean Penn and Tim Robbins are nominated for Best Actor and Supporting Actor, respectively. Marcia Gay Harden, the actress who took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 2000’s Pollock, is once again nominated in the category for her work in Mystic River.

The other big surprise is Johnny Depp’s Best Actor nomination for his work in Pirates of the Caribbean. It just goes to show you how much can be accomplished when you mix the vocal stylings of Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew.