Oscar nominations — my own two bits

The Academy has spoken, and it looks like Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln will be the big winner when the final envelopes are opened on February 24.

All the usual indicators point in that direction, at any rate. It has the most nominations. It is one of only two Best Picture nominees whose directors were also nominated for the Directors Guild Award (the other such film being Ang Lee’s Life of Pi). It was nominated for Best Film Editing. And, perhaps just as importantly, it is a box-office hit in a year when the Oscar will probably go to a box-office hit. (More on that in a later post.)

Everyone and his dog will have something to say about the top nominees in the days and weeks to come, and I’d rather not duplicate all that right now. I do, however, want to comment on three trends that stand out to me this morning:

First, Skyfall is the first James Bond film since For Your Eyes (1981) to be nominated for anything, and it is only the second film in the series, following The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), to receive multiple nominations. No Bond film has actually won an Oscar, however, since Thunderball (1965) got one for Best Visual Effects.

Second, the Hobbit prequels now have one more thing in common with the Star Wars prequels, namely, whereas the original trilogy got quite a bit of attention from the Academy, the prequels are being all but ignored.

Third, the Best Animated Feature category is especially interesting this year. Disney was shut out of the category entirely last year, but this year it has three of the nominees, whereas DreamWorks — the studio that won the first-ever Best Animated Feature award eleven years ago — was left out in the cold. Not only that, but the Academy nominated three (three!) stop-motion films in this category, including the relatively little-seen The Pirates! Band of Misfits.

I’m sure other thoughts will occur to me over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are the films that have been nominated for Oscars, ranked from those with the most nods to those with only one. The titles of those I have seen are in bold:

12 nominations:

• Lincoln — Picture, director (Steven Spielberg), adapted screenplay, cinematography, actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), supporting actor (Tommy Lee Jones), supporting actress (Sally Field), production design, costume design, film editing, original score, sound mixing

11 nominations:

• Life of Pi — Picture, director (Ang Lee), adapted screenplay, cinematography, production design, film editing, original score, original song, sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects

8 nominations:

• Les Miserables — Picture, actor (Hugh Jackman), supporting actress (Anne Hathaway), production design, costume design, makeup and hairstyling, original song, sound mixing
• Silver Linings Playbook — Picture, director (David O. Russell), adapted screenplay, actor (Bradley Cooper), actress (Jennifer Lawrence), supporting actor (Robert De Niro), supporting actress (Jacki Weaver), film editing

7 nominations:

• Argo — Picture, adapted screenplay, supporting actor (Alan Arkin), film editing, original score, sound editing, sound mixing

5 nominations:

• Amour — Picture, director (Michael Haneke), original screenplay, actress (Emmanuelle Riva), foreign language film
• Django Unchained — Picture, original screenplay, cinematography, supporting actor (Christoph Waltz), sound editing
• Skyfall — Cinematography, original score, original song, sound editing, sound mixing
• Zero Dark Thirty — Picture, original screenplay, actress (Jessica Chastain), film editing, sound editing

4 nominations:

• Anna Karenina — Cinematography, production design, costume design, original score
• Beasts of the Southern Wild — Picture, director (Benh Zeitlin), adapted screenplay, actress (Quvenzhané Wallis)

3 nominations:

• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — Production design, makeup and hairstyling, visual effects
• The Master — Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), supporting actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman), supporting actress (Amy Adams)

2 nominations:

• Flight — Original screenplay, actor (Denzel Washington)
• Snow White and the Huntsman — Costume design, visual effects

1 nomination:

• Adam and Dog — Animated short
• Asad — Live action short
• Brave — Animated feature
• Buzkashi Boys — Live action short
• Chasing Ice — Original song
• Curfew — Live action short
• Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw) — Live action short
• 5 Broken Cameras — Documentary feature
• Frankenweenie — Animated feature
• Fresh Guacamole — Animated short
• The Gatekeepers — Documentary feature
• Head over Heels — Animated short
• Henry — Live action short
• Hitchcock — Makeup and hairstyling
• How to Survive a Plague — Documentary feature
• The Impossible — Actress (Naomi Watts)
• Inocente — Documentary short
• The Invisible War — Documentary feature
• Kings Point — Documentary short
• Kon-Tiki — Foreign language film
• Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’ — Animated short
• Marvel’s The Avengers — Visual effects
• Mirror Mirror — Costume design
• Mondays at Racine — Documentary short
• Moonrise Kingdom — Original screenplay
• No — Foreign language film
• Open Heart — Documentary short
• Paperman — Animated short
• ParaNorman — Animated feature
• The Pirates! Band of Misfits — Animated feature
• Prometheus — Visual effects
• Rebelle (aka War Witch) — Foreign language film
• Redemption — Documentary short
• A Royal Affair — Foreign language film
• Searching for Sugar Man — Documentary feature
• The Sessions — Supporting actress (Helen Hunt)
• Ted — Original song
• Wreck-It Ralph — Animated feature