10 Big Surprises of Nomination Morning: From Batman to Ben

Before you can ever delve deep into the nominated fields, you have do the requisite double takes to process the surprises. Herewith the most shocking turns of events this morning. If I haven't included something you found truly eyebrow-raising and faith-shaking ('how can I ever turst the pundits again?!') make sure to share it in the comments. 

poll by twiigs.com

10 The Supporting Actor List is All Previous Winners
In the entire history of the Oscars, I can't recall any acting category having been composed entirely of men or women who already had Oscars. At least one newbie always manages to join the celebrated. Other than that it's not a surprising list really given that all five of the men had precursor support (typical) and two are leads masquerading as supporting (typical) and all are veterans (typical). This is the kindest category to acting veterans and the most impervious to actual excitement. Year in and year out, it's the dullest major Oscar category even when the field to choose from is brimming with electricity. And to think we could have had a rising star playing an android, a rising star singing and crying his heart out, a rising star shaking what his mama gave him while stoned in Mexico, an A list reaching a career peak with nothing but a G string and a great great performance, and a baker turned actor among the dozens of possibly more thrilling choices.

The Legend Ends... and so do Batman Oscar Dreams09 The Dark Knight Rises with Zero Nominations
It's a beautiful symmetry. Batman f***ed Oscar over by sending them into a tizzy of low-confidence voting rule changes after the infamous 2008 snub (presumably to include more populist choices in Best Picture) and now Oscar has f***ed Batman over by ignoring The Dark Knight Rises altogether -- this despite the series being very popular with voters since long before Chris Nolan took over.  

Eight more increasingly startling morning alarms after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Fun Facts About This Year's Best Picture / Director Nominees

The Official Best Picture and Best Director pages have been posted. I'm brainstorming some way to make the charts less static this year so you can enjoy returning to them whenever the mood strikes you. So now that the pages are up, you can vote on your choice of best (not your prediction) and read about the nominees. Let's spitball fun facts!

Box Office

You mean to tell me a sober drama about old age and death hasn't outgrossed The Avengers? 

• I believe Amour is the lowest grossing Best Picture nominee ever (with under $350,000 in the can at the US box office as of this writing). At least for now! Box Office Mojo used to have before and after nomination box office gross charts for the Best Picture nominees of each year though I can't seem to find them now. The lowest previous pre-nomination gross I can personally recall was Clint Eastwood's Letter From Iwo Jima (2006), also a subtitled picture in miniscule release before the nominations arrived.

Acting

• Silver Linings Playbook becomes the first film since Reds (1981) to win nominations in all acting categories
• No Spielberg directed performance has ever won the gold -- no, not even Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List (only one of the greatest performances of all time) -- but Daniel Day-Lewis and maybe even Tommy Lee Jones may well break that unlucky stat in February.
• The Best Director Nominees have all directed actors to nominations: Haneke & Zeitlin (1 each), Lee (5 nominees), Russell (7, two of which have won), Spielberg (11 nominees)

Genre

• Les Miz is the first musical nominee since Chicago (2002), which won and it received the same # of nods as Dreamgirls (2006), though Dreamgirls missed BP (back when there were only 5 nominees)
• Lincoln is the first biopic nominee sinc --- kidding! We don't ever go a year without.

Trends & Stats

• 5 of the 9 nominees have terrifying scenes involving drowning/flooding/watery-death (more on that here)
• Les Misérable's Fantine sings about tigers and Life of Pi stars a tiger. Coincidence?! ;) 
• Benh Zeitlin is the 8th youngest ever at only 30 years of age and also the first with an extra h in his name. He's also the 8th youngest nominee ever in this category at 30 young years.  The youngest is still John Singleton who was 24 when his debut film Boyz n the Hood made him a nominee.  

"Previously On..."

• Lincoln is almost an exact carbon copy of Schindler's List in terms of Oscar noms. 12 nominations for each and the only difference is Lincoln has Supporting Actress in place of Schindler's List had "Makeup". Schindler's List eventually won 7 Oscars... can Lincoln replicate that success?
• Life of Pi, with 11 nominations, becomes the great Ang Lee's most nominated picture. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon won 10 nominations in its year, also without any acting nods
• The only other film version of the Victor Hugo novel Les Misérables to win Oscar attention was way back in 1935. It received 4 nominations. 
• I keep starting trivia sentences about Kathryn Bigelow only to remember she was not nominated, the director's branch nominations being the Most Shocking of the Morning. 

Oscar Nominations Announcement

[DRUM ROLL PLEASE] 

8:03 The nomination announcement begins in half an hour. My synapses are firing wildly, the coffee is brewed, and in a failed attempt to feel like a sane normal person going about one's daily routine a load of laundry was started. This was perhaps a bad idea since I'm likely to forget said laundry exists in 1/2 an hour. Once again, to borrow Tiffany's sound advice from Silver Linings Playbook I warn myself "Calm down, crazy." 

8:05 If you're as touched as I am in the head by those 13 ½ inch gold men you're up watching this

COMPLETE LIST OF NOMINEES AND MORE EARLY MORNING FREAKOUT AFTER THE JUMP (BUT HERE'S A VISUAL CHART INDEX IF YOU'D PREFER... AND HOW I PERFORMED PREDICTIVE-WISE and the TEN BIGGEST SURPRISES )

Click to read more ...

A Proposal For Kathryn Bigelow's Next Picture

I snapped this pic in my last hotel room and forgot to share it.

I lol'ed like a crazy person at the time alone in a hotel bathroom because my brain immediately went here:

Breaking: KATHRYN BIGELOW to direct Invitation To Tea starring Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Helen Mirren, Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Joan Plowright and Dame Julie Andrews. 

No matter what the plot is. I'm in.

Oscar likes to reward people for 'playing against type' but they wouldn't reward Bigelow for doing so in a million years. There's a reason she's the only woman who ever won Best Director (Jane Campion & Sofia Coppola movies are way too girly for Oscar wins) and will be the first to win a second directing nomination as soon as this Thursday.

One Day More (of Oscar Voting)

Everyone join them in a rousing chorus of "One Day More ♫"I think this must be a first. In the response to technical difficulties and voting problems with their new online balloting system, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has extended Oscar nomination balloting by a single day. Ballots are now due by Friday January 4th, by paper or online, instead of January 3rd. (The nominees will still be announced on January 10th). I'm not sure how much 24 hours will help but given all the long-ass movies on offer, but it can't actually hurt. (I've taken their cue and also given myself a couple more days on my top 20ish list so that starts on Thursday.) 

So herewith my plea to voters:

Have a Great 2013 Academy Members!
It's Nathaniel at the Film Experience. One of the ways you can make the new year happy is by really thinking over your ballot. So many film fans obsess over your choices.

And though you'll never please everyone, those Supporting lineups are going to be so much more exciting (think of the Oscar night clips!) if you include Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike and Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy. No matter what you think of either film, great risky artistic stretching from big stars shouldn't be tossed aside just because the film containing it isn't being widely "considered" in any other way if you know what I mean. I mean why give all the nominations to the frontrunning heavyweights like Lincoln, Les Miz, and Argo when there's so much good work out there in so many films! Put in those Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom screeners (to name just two examples) -- aren't you curious? -- and see how visually and sonically rich movies can be without mega-budgets.

Finally, here's to the underdogs -- have you seen Perks of Being a Wallflower or Anna Karenina or Middle of Nowhere or Amour or Compliance yet? You've got a whole extra day. Stay in and watch some movies!