Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Oscar nominations are in

Without further ado, here are the most relevant nominations for the 2007 Academy Awards:

Best picture
Babel
The Departed
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

Best actor
Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole, Venus
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

Best actress
Penelope Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

Best supporting actor
Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

Best supporting actress
Adriana Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

Best directing
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Babel
Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Clint Eastwood, Letters From Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Paul Greengrass, United 93

Best foreign language film
After the Wedding, Denmark
Days of Glory (Indigenes), Algeria
The Lives of Others, Germany
Pan's Labyrinth, Mexico
Water, Canada

Best adapted screenplay
Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips, Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, Children of Men
William Monahan, The Departed
Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, Little Children
Patrick Marber, Notes on a Scandal

Best original screenplay
Guillermo Arriaga, Babel
Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, Letters From Iwo Jima
Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine
Guillermo del Toro, Pan's Labyrinth
Peter Morgan, The Queen

Best animated feature film
Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

Best art direction
Dreamgirls
The Good Shepherd
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

Best cinematography
The Black Dahlia
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prestige

Reminded me that I still have a few pictures to catch up with: Dreamgirls and Letters from Iwo Jima are still to be released here and I'm going to try to rent Little Miss Sunshine on DVD. The 2007 line-up strikes me as a better selection than recent years even if some choices are still baffling: Leo getting a nom for Blood Diamond instead of The Departed? Surprised too at the snub of Children of Men in the technical noms except the cinematography (pleased to see The Black Dahlia in there) and the lack of major nominations for Dreamgirls which I thought would carry some momentum over from its Golden Globe wins into the Oscars but it only ended up with Supporting Actor entries. The Best Director category stands out for me: Scorsese (who surely is going to win it this year? Even if The Departed is not among his best work, it still is a wonderfully entertaining film and a better choice to award him the Oscar for than either Gangs of New York and The Aviator), Greengrass (United 93), and Eastwood (not seen Letters yet but it got very good reviews).. The only suspicious name in the list seems to be Alejandro Innaritu (reactions to Babel are all over the place).

Best Picture? personally, I'd pick The Departed or Letters (The Queen will be recognised with a surely dead-cert win for Helen Mirren in the Best Actress category).. realistically though, I wouldn't be surprised if Little Miss Sunshine emerges as the big winner of the night.

1 Comments:

At 2:28 PM, Blogger ChristineCB said...

Every time I see something like THE FIVE HEARTBEATS or DREAMGIRLS, I am reminded that - somewhere - Motown music is still being written and still capable of creating a wonderful entertaining sound. It's a shame that this style of music has been replaced by rubbish that 6-year-olds skip rope to. I always hoped a 15- or 20-year-old was capable of doing something at a higher level than 6-year-olds - at least musically.

 

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