It’s that time of the year again. New Year’s resolutions are slowly falling by the wayside and are being replaced by Krispy Kreme. Birds are slowly making their way back North to poop on our newly washed cars, and now that the Patriots have been eliminated from the playoffs, the greater Boston area gets to make up excuses for why the Patriots haven’t won a Superbowl in 8 years even though Tom Brady is supposed to be the best quarterback in the NFL. Shut up and enjoy the hockey season Boston, because the Red Sox stunk it up too.
Oh, and the Oscars are coming again.
Once again, the list of nominees features a who’s who of Hollywood’s best and brightest all in pursuit of that little golden statue that could probably be replaced with the robot from the cover of Aerosmith’s “Just Push Play”. In case you’re looking for a way to spice up your ratings Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sex still sells.
The films gunning for top prize this year shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone who doesn’t keep at least one ear to the beat of Hollywood. Your stereotypical Oscar bait makes their appearance with films like “Lincoln,” “Les Miserables,” “Amour,” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”
The other films rounding out the nominees includes Tarintino’s oft-remade “Django Unchained,” Golden Globe winner Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” dark horse “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and finally, in what will be seen as a huge victory to the collective “Castaway”/ “The Jungle Book” fan fiction writers out there, “Life of Pi.”
In a surprising snub, despite both “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” being nominated for best picture, the Academy has chosen to leave Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow off of the nominee list for Best Director. If either of the films were to win Best Picture, like “Argo” already did at the Golden Globes earlier this year, that director would become only the 4th director in history to win an award for Best Picture and not even be nominated for Best Director. While Bigelow already has an Academy Award for Best Director and Picture for “The Hurt Locker”, Affleck has had no such success at the Academy Awards and the snub is a little surprising considering his past directing success in “Gone Baby Gone” and “The Town.”
Another notable snub is Leonardo DiCaprio for his role in “Django Unchained”. With this latest oversight, DiCaprio continues his Oscar drought despite being one of the most consistently amazing actors of his generation. Seriously Academy members, at this point I think you should be held accountable to the Geneva Code for war crimes. The only explanation plausible is that DiCaprio ran over the dog of a member of the Academy and that member never let it go and DiCaprio refuses to apologize because leash laws are there for a reason and his dumb Schnauzer shouldn’t have been in the middle of the road in the first place.
To summarize this years Oscar crop: “Lincoln” has been nominated for everything, Bond films never wins any awards and “Skyfall” looks to be no different, “The Hobbit” was way too long but very pretty so it’s only been nominated for things like music, visual effects, and costumes, and just to prove that this world is actually a computer simulation prone to occasional glitches and hiccups, “Snow White and the Huntsman” can now call itself an Academy Award Nominated film.
The entire list of 2013 Oscar Nominees can be found at http://www.oscar.com/nominees.
