Top Ten: Surprise Nominations

Michael C. here from Serious Film for Tuesday Top Ten.

The great contradiction of awards season is that there is nothing spectators enjoy more than a surprise yet that doesn't stop anyone from doing everything but pick through the trash of Academy members looking for clues that might help in divining their choices. The truth is that film awards, like presidential elections or tomorrow's weather, are not all that difficult to predict once you know a few basics. That's what makes genuine shockers such a rare treat.

So, with the Golden Globe winners suggesting a year of easy calls across the board and the BAFTA nominees giving tiny flickers of hope to a few longshot candidates (particular in the actress categories), let's dive into past out-of-the-blue choices with the ten most surprising Oscar nominations and see if they hint at any rays of hope for this year's long shots.

     Ten Most Surprising Recent Oscar Nominations

Michael Shannon (2008) Supporting Actor

People talk a lot about momentum and popular films having coattails when it comes to supporting performances. There is truth to this, but in the end sometimes it's better to simply give a killer performance. This was the case when those predicting Dev Patel would take this slot due to Slumdog fever turned out to be wrong and the nomination instead went to Michael Shannon's brief, explosive performance in Revolutionary Road. Social Network contenders Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake no doubt hope that their film's frontrunner status is enough to keep any dark horses from sprinting past them at the finish line.

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) Picture

Part two of Clint Eastwood's WWII double feature (immediately following Flags of Our Fathers) got nominated despite subtitles, minimal precursor attention, and tiny box office. It took the slot universally expected to go to Dreamgirls proving that all the prerelease hype in the world can't land a Best Picture nomination if voters simply don't go for a film - a lesson Clint learned three years late with Invictus. 

Ed Norton (1998) Lead Actor

In this awards race, SAG (the Screen Actors Guild) ignored Ed Norton's intense work in American History X for the more conventional choice of Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love. The switch on the Oscar ballot was undoubtedly an example of Norton doing well with Oscar's system of weighted ballots, with an extremely passionate fan base pushing him over the top of more widely seen choices. Actors like Tilda Swinton or Ryan Gosling with similarly strong supporters might find themselves the beneficiary of this system come the morning of the 25th.

Samantha Morton and Djimon Hounsou (2003) Lead Actress, Supporting Actor

In America was looking like a sentimental also-ran after neither of these actors landed SAG or Golden Globe nominations. Just goes to show that certain late bloomers can hit the Academy sweet spot without making much of a ripple in the early stages of awards season. Hopefully, that means contender's like Another Year's Lesley Manville have more of a shot than the odds suggest.

Troy (2004) Costumes

This entry could just as easily be The Village's Best Score nomination from the same year. It's to the credit of the Academy's smaller branches that they've shown a willingness to stray outside the frontrunners to pick out quality work in otherwise forgettable projects. Are there any standout elements from otherwise off-the-radar 2010 films that could pop up unexpectedly? The nicely realized costumes from Centurion spring to mind.

The Secret of Kells (2009) Best Animated Film

The nomination of this beautiful, obscure Irish animated fable is a strong reminder that when the voters actually watch all the eligible films in a category, the conventional wisdom falls by the wayside pretty quick. Imagine if actors could only vote for Best Actress if they could prove they've seen Blue Valentine, I Am Love and Another Year? I dream, I know. As far as eligible animated contenders this year, I've heard My Dog Tulip is incredibly moving and Idiots and Angels is a feature from beloved animator Bill Plympton, a guy who certainly has some fans in the animation branch. Look out for those two.

The Reader (2008) Picture

This shocker is going to have reverberations for years to come. When Stephen Daldry's sober drama side-swiped The Dark Knight out of its expected Best Picture nod the Academy panicked, expanding the Best Picture field to ensure that small independent films wouldn't lead them down the road to obsolescence. The only lesson to draw from this - Oscar voters still don't dig superheroes, especially when there's a film with Nazis available - doesn't exactly apply this year, although the snub has granted Christopher Nolan "overdue" status that can only help Inception.

Mike Leigh (2004) Director

The lone director slot has become something of an Oscar tradition over the years with the director's branch making sure to recognize deserving auteurs whose films are too out of the mainstream for the big prize. Examples range from David Lynch in '01 back to such icons as Akira Kurosawa in '85 and Fellini four separate times. I selected Mike Leigh because these lone directors are usually not that hard to spot - a couple of people, including Nathaniel right here, saw Almodovar coming in '02 - but nobody picked up on any buzz for Vera Drake outside Imelda Staunton. If voters heard how hard Blue Valentine's Derek Cianfrance fought for years to get his film made he might be the latest member of this very exclusive club.

Keisha Castle Hughes (2003) Lead Actress

Even if people generally agree that a category designation is false it still tends to stick. My guess is that most voters would rather go with the inaccurate classification than risk wasting their vote by swimming against the current. This wasn't the case in '03 when to everyone's amazement Oscar voters plucked this child actress's performance in Whale Rider out of the supporting category where it was nominated by SAG and promoted it to the big leagues. The parallel to 2010 is all too obvious so I will merely say that the leading ladies should watch their back for a precocious 14-year old armed with her father's revolver and the Coen brothers' dialogue. 

City of God (2003) Director, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography

These four out-of-nowhere nominations for Fernando Meirelles's Brazilian crime epic are the kind that give hope to followers of the gaudy circus that is Oscar season. They suggest that voters will not only go out of their way to see small films of quality, but will remember them from early in the year and then ignore the frontrunners to vote for them in sufficient numbers to make a difference. It gives free rein to imagine your dark horse favorite isn't totally out of it. Maybe an out-of-the-blue Best Picture nod for I Am Love or Somewhere this year? I wouldn't bet on it, but look at those four nominations again before you tell me it's impossible.