2009
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 2009
Best Picture
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/posters/hurtlockertitle.jpg)
THE HURT LOCKER (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/avatar.jpg)
Avatar (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/blindside.jpg)
The Blind Side (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/district9-title.jpg)
District 9 (2009, US/NZ/Can./S.Afr.)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/education.jpg)
An Education (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/inglouriousbasterds.jpg)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/precious.jpg)
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
(2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/seriousman.jpg)
A Serious Man (2009, US/UK/Fr.)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/up-pixar.jpg)
Up (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/upintheair.jpg)
Up in the Air (2009)
|
Best Animated Feature Film
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/up-pixar.jpg)
UP (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/coraline.jpg)
Coraline (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/fantasticmrfox.jpg)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/princessandfrog.jpg)
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
|
![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/secretofkells.jpg)
The Secret of Kells (2009)
|
Actor:
JEFF BRIDGES in "Crazy Heart," George Clooney in "Up
in the Air," Colin Firth in "A Single Man," Morgan
Freeman in "Invictus," Jeremy Renner in "The
Hurt Locker"
Actress:
SANDRA BULLOCK in "The Blind Side," Helen Mirren in "The
Last Station," Carey Mulligan in "An Education," Gabourey
Sidibe in "Precious," Meryl Streep in "Julie & Julia"
Supporting Actor:
CHRISTOPH WALTZ in "Inglourious Basterds," Matt Damon
in "Invictus," Woody Harrelson in "The Messenger," Christopher
Plummer in "The Last Station," Stanley Tucci in "The
Lovely Bones"
Supporting Actress:
MO'NIQUE in "Precious," Penelope Cruz in "Nine," Vera
Farmiga in "Up in the Air," Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Crazy
Heart," Anna Kendrick in "Up in the Air"
Director:
KATHRYN BIGELOW for "The Hurt Locker," James Cameron
for "Avatar," Lee Daniels for "Precious," Jason
Reitman for "Up in the Air," Quentin Tarantino for "Inglourious
Basterds"
In
2009, the Academy decided to return to featuring an expanded
field of nominees for Best Picture. From now on, there would
be ten films nominated for Best Picture instead of five - the
last time this happened was 1943 (66 years ago). [Note: From
1931 to 1943, the Oscars had between eight and 12 Best Picture
nominees.] This change was expected to result in:
- a box-office (or DVD sales) boost for more
pictures, with some smaller movies getting more exposure
- a possible increase in TV ratings for the
awards ceremony (held two weeks later than last year), and
- enhanced interest in a broader and varied
range of types of films that were more populist or mainstream
in nature (e.g., the sports weepie The Blind Side, Tarantino's Inglourious
Basterds, the animated Up and the
gritty sci-fi alien drama District 9), mixed
in with independent fare and specialty films
Unexpectedly, there were no foreign-language,
traditional comedies, musicals or documentary choices in the
expanded Best Picture category. This year featured one of the
most even distributions of top nominees, with five films receiving
at least six nominations, and no film receiving more than nine.
Six of the top 10 contenders were released in the fourth quarter
of the year -- only Up, The Hurt Locker, District 9, and Inglourious
Basterds were released earlier. In addition to Avatar,
four Best Picture-nominated films had grossed over $100 million
domestically. [In the previous year, only one of the five Best
Picture nominees had done so, The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button (2008).]
The Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker,
a low-budget film from Summit Entertainment with a production
budget of $15 million, turned out to be the lowest-grossing
winner of all-time, at $14.7 million at the time of its win.
It was also the fifth consecutive R-rated Best Picture winner,
and the second of only two Best Picture winners to be a film
festival acquisition (the first was in 2005).
Two films shared the most Oscar nominations
(nine) and competed in a dead heat in the period between the
nominations and awards: the science-fiction/fantasy visual
effects masterpiece Avatar and the tense,
nail-biting Iraq war-related drama The Hurt Locker from
female director Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow's film went on to
earn six wins (Best Original Screenplay (Mark Boal), Best Sound
Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing, Best Director
and Best Picture) and upended Cameron's (and Fox's) blockbuster
film of all-time (at $720 million when the Oscars were presented).
It marked a milestone win for a female director (and American
director), the first ever. The suspenseful tale was
about bomb defuser SFC Willliam James (nominated Jeremy Renner)
whose recklessness and addiction to risk endangered his bomb
squad support team. Its tagline was: "CUT THE RED ONE."
In addition, Disney's/Pixar's animated film Up,
the second animated film ever nominated for Best Picture
(and the first computer-animated film ever nominated
for Best Picture), won two Oscar awards: Best Animated Feature
Film and Best Original Score, and was one of the top moneymakers
of the year (at $293 million to date).
Five other Best Picture nominees scored at least
one win, including (in descending order):
- James Cameron's Avatar (nine
nominations, with three technical wins for Best Art Direction,
Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects), a 20th Century
Fox blockbuster spectacle, reportedly budgeted at over $300M
that was ballyhooed by its incredible visual effects and
3D IMAX presentation. It was the first Best Picture
nominee to be entirely filmed using 3-D technology. It was
a futuristic, sci-fi adventure-action story about humans
invading a fantastic planet inhabited by blue-skinned aliens
for its rare radioactive natural resource - unobtanium. Avatar lacked
a Best Screenplay nomination -- coincidentally, the last
film to win Best Picture without a screenplay nomination
was Cameron's own mega-blockbuster film, Titanic
(1997).
[Note: Remarkably, this was Cameron's first narrative
film since Titanic (1997), which had a record
14 nominations and 11 wins. No director has ever attained a
total of 23 total nominations in consecutive non-documentary
feature films. Cameron only directed two documentaries during
that 12-year span of time: the hour-long digital-3D IMAX documentary Ghosts
of the Abyss (2003) and the 47-minute 3-D IMAX nature
documentary Aliens of the Deep (2005).]
- Lee Daniels' strong independent contender Precious (subtitled Based
on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire) (six nominations,
with two wins for Best Adapted Screenplay (Geoffrey Fletcher)
and Best Supporting Actress), a downbeat morality tale
from Lionsgate about Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) a
pregnant, overweight, nearly-illiterate 16 year-old high
school student who has suffered severe sexual, physical
and physical abuse from her parents (Mo'Nique); this was
the first-ever Best Picture nominee to be directed
by an African-American filmmaker. [Note: Quincy Jones was
the first black to be nominated as producer for
a Best Picture, The Color Purple (1985).
This was the second instance -- producers for
the film included Lee Daniels, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey.
Geoffrey Fletcher was the first African-American
to win an Oscar for screenwriting.]
- Disney/Pixar's Up (five nominations,
with two wins for Best Animated Feature Film and Best Original
Score), the second animated film to be nominated
for Best Picture, following Beauty and the Beast
(1991), the first CG-animated Best Picture
nominee, and the first to receive a Best Picture
nomination since animated films received their own category
in 2001 (see below).
- Quentin Tarantino's and the Weinstein Company's Inglourious
Basterds (eight nominations, with one win for
Best Supporting Actor), a World War II fantasy/comedy about
flamboyant American Lt. Aldo Raine and his troupe of Jewish
soldiers who sabotage Nazi installations behind enemy lines.
The film was nominated for Best Original Screenplay despite
sharing the same English title as Quel maledetto
treno blindato (1978), another film about American
GIs wreaking havoc behind enemy lines
- The Blind Side (two nominations
and a sole win for Best Actress), Warner Bros.' formulaic "feel
good" tearjerker sports drama about real-life African-American
football player Michael Oher's high school years when the
young homeless teen was boarded by the Tuohys, a suburban
Southern (Memphis, Tenn.) family headed by strong-willed
housewife Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) [Note: the film was
co-produced by African-American Broderick Johnson, and became
the highest-grossing football film of all time.]
There were four Best Picture nominees that were
complete shut-outs!
- Jason Reitman's Up in the Air (six
nominations, three for acting!, with no wins), a bleak comedy
set in the recession revolving around freelancing corporate
downsizer Ryan Bingham (nominated George Clooney) who spends
his entire life travelling without human connection until
he meets two women: Alex Goran (nominated Vera Farmiga),
a mature businesswoman traveller, and Natalie Keener (nominated
Anna Kendrick), Ryan's newly-assigned protege
- Neill Blomkamp's District 9 (four
nominations, with no wins) gritty science-fiction film was
part-apartheid allegory, mock documentary and tense action
thriller about prawn-like alien creatures (bi-pedal and taller
than humans, with facial tendrils) who were segregated in
a Johannesburg, South African slum-internment camp (called
District 9), and the harrowing tale of a bumbling, incompetent
bureaucrat - a MNU field operative named Wikus van de Merwe
(Sharlto Copley) to peaceably evict the 1.8 million oppressed
aliens to a new camp (District 10) over 200 kilometers away,
when he slowly mutated from a virus infection into one of
the prawns, became a beleaguered fugitive from the nefarious
MNU, and befriended intelligent alien Christopher Johnson
(Jason Cope) - helping him to escape in a downed command
module and return to the mother ship to leave Earth. It was
a rare nomination for a science-fiction film.
- An Education (three nominations,
with no wins), a Sony Pictures' coming-of-age melodrama about
a 16 year-old English schoolgirl named Jenny (nominated Carey
Mulligan), who is courted by an older man and introduced
to British high society
- The Coen Brothers' A Serious Man (two
nominations, including Best Screenplay, with no wins), a
quirky black comedy set in 1967 that retold the Book of Job,
revolving around the trials suffered by physics professor
Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg)
The nominees for Best Director represented a
very diverse group (including ex-spouses). All five Best Director
nominees were attached to Best Picture nominees, though unsurprising
due to the presence of ten Best Picture nominations
rather than the usual five. The films of the five Best Director-nominees
had the highest number of nominations for Best Picture. It
is fairly safe to assume that if there had only been 5 Best
Picture nominees, the picks would have paralleled the five
nominated directors. There were two first-time nominees, and
three second-time nominees.
The Best Director winner was 58 year-old Kathryn
Bigelow (her first nomination) for The Hurt
Locker. It was an historic win - she became the first woman
ever to win in the category. [Note: Bigelow was the second American
woman nominated as Best Director (following Sofia Coppola in
2003), and only the fourth woman nominated in the category.
Bigelow won the Directors Guild Award, the first woman
ever to win the top award from the DGA, a solid predictor of
her eventual win since the DGA feature film award winner went
on to win the Academy Award for Best Director all but six times
since 1948. Ironically, Bigelow was James Cameron's ex-wife.
Action film director Bigelow had been a collaborator with fellow
nominee James Cameron, who executive-produced Point
Break (1991) and was also writer-producer for her
film Strange Days (1995). The longtime Oscar
snub Bigelow also directed such overlooked films as Near
Dark (1987) and Blue Steel (1990).]
The other Best Director nominees were:
- 55 year-old James Cameron (his second nomination)
for Avatar. [Note: Cameron previously won
three Oscars, all for Titanic (1997) (Best
Picture (producer), Best Director, and Best Film Editing).
He was personally up for the same three Oscars in 2009.]
- 32 year-old Jason Reitman (his second nomination),
with only his third feature film, for Up
in the Air. [Note: Reitman was previously nominated
for Juno (2007). With this nomination, he
became the youngest filmmaker to have received two
Oscar nominations for Best Director. It was also his second
Best Director nod in 3 years.]
- 46 year-old Quentin Tarantino (his second nomination,
but first directorial nomination) for Inglourious
Basterds. [Note: Tarantino was previously nominated
for Pulp Fiction (1994),
for which he won his sole Oscar for Best Original Screenplay
along with Roger Avary]
- 50 year-old African-American producer/director
Lee Daniels (his first nomination, for his second-directed
film ever) for Precious, the first-ever Best
Picture nominee to be directed by an African-American filmmaker.
[Note: Daniels was only the second African-American
ever nominated for Best Director - the first was John Singleton
for Boyz N the Hood (1991).]
For the first time since 2002, there were enough
eligible animated films released (17) to warrant five nominations
instead of three. Strangely, the nominees included two classically
cel-animated films, two stop-motion animated films,
and only one CGI-animated film! Did this signal a
trend back to traditional animation techniques? Three animated
films received at least two nominations, an unprecedented feat
in Oscar history.
The Animated Feature Film winner was the heavily-favored,
Best Picture-nominated Disney/Pixar film Up (with
five nominations and two wins including Best Original Score),
a CGI-animated film about cantankerous, bitter 70 year-old
widower Carl Fredricksen (voice of Edward Asner) who launched
his house into the air using hundreds of helium balloons to
travel to South America, while slowly befriending an accidental
8 year-old stowaway Boy Scout named Russell. It was the third
consecutive Oscar in this category for Disney/Pixar, following Ratatouille
(2007) and Wall-E (2008), that has
now won 5/9 awards since the new category was established in
2001.
The other four nominees were:
- The Princess and the Frog (three
nominations and no wins), Disney's cel-animated film set
in 1920's Jazz era New Orleans about a frog prince (voice
of Bruno Campos) who is kissed by Tiana (voice of Anika Noni
Rose), who is transformed herself into a frog because she
is not a real princess; it was Disney Studios' first traditional
2-D animated film in 5 years, since Home on the Range
(2004). It also featured the studio's first-ever
black female protagonist, an African-American princess named
Tiana (voice of Anika Noni Rose)
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (two nominations
and no wins), Wes Anderson's and 20th Century Fox's stop-motion
animated fanciful, slightly updated retelling of Roald Dahl's
classic 1970 tale about Mr. Fox (voice of George Clooney),
whose animalistic urges cause him to reject his safe job
as a newspaper reporter and attempt to steal chickens from
demonic farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean
- Coraline, Harry Selick's
surrealistic stop-motion animated film (from Focus Features)
based on comic book legend Neil Gaiman's graphic novel titled
Coraline, in which a young girl finds a mysterious portal
in her home to a disturbing funhouse mirror version of her
nomal life
- The Secret of Kells, an English
language, watercolor cel-animated (mostly ornately hand-drawn)
film, independently co-produced by French, Belgium and Irish
producers, about a young 12 year-old boy Brendan (voice by
Evan McGuire) who is sent to live among monks at a medieval
Celtic abbey, where one monk, Brother Aidan, and his unusual
cat discover Brendan's artistic talents, which leads the
boy on a dangerous quest to gather berries needed to make
ink in order to complete the unfinished mysterious manuscript
for the Book of Kells
Among the 20 nominees for acting nominations,
there were 12 first-time nominees, 5 previous Oscar winners,
and 3 previous Oscar contenders (with Meryl Streep as the only
two-time winner in contention again). Three of the four acting
awards went to first-time nominees. All four winners
were favorites that were almost universally predicted to win:
previous nominee Jeff Bridges and first-timer Sandra Bullock
(both with long careers without wins), and first-timers with
formidable performances: Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique.
The Best Actor winner was front-runner, 60 year-old
Jeff Bridges (his fifth nomination and first win)
for his performance as broken-down, aging, boozy country-music
singer Bad Blake, in first-time director Scott Cooper's Crazy
Heart (three nominations, not including Best Picture,
with two wins, Best Actor and Best Original Song "The
Weary Kind"). (Bridges previously had an unsuccessful
lead nomination for Starman (1984), and three
unsuccessful supporting nominations for The
Last Picture Show (1971), Thunderbolt
and Lightfoot (1974) and The Contender (2000))
[Note: Real-life country singer Waylon Jennings was sought
for the role, a combination of Jennings himself, Kris Kristofferson
and Merle Haggard, but passed away before he could be cast.
Bridges did his own singing and guitar playing in the film,
including Jennings' own "Are You Sure Hank Done It This
Way."]
The other Best Actor nominees included:
- 72 year-old Morgan Freeman (his fifth nomination)
for his role as real-life South African leader Nelson Mandela,
in director Clint Eastwood's Invictus (two
nominations and no wins). (Freeman previously had two unsuccessful
lead nominations for The Shawshank
Redemption (1994) and Driving Miss Daisy
(1989), and two supporting nominations, including
a win for Million Dollar Baby (2004) and
for Street Smart (1987))
- 48 year-old George Clooney (his third acting
nomination) for his appealing role as Ryan Bingham, a cynical
professional corporate hatchman who prided himself on his
emotional isolation, detachment and his constant travel,
in Up in the Air. (Clooney won his sole
Oscar for his supporting role in Syriana (2005).
He also received an unsuccessful lead nomination for Michael
Clayton (2007) and writing and directing nominations
for Good Night, and Good Luck (2005))
- 49 year-old British actor Colin Firth (his first nomination)
for George Falconer, a gay Brit expat in the early 1960s
who taught at an LA college, who must hide his suicidal grief
over the death of his long-time lover Jim (Matthew Goode),
in director Tom Ford's debut feature film A Single
Man (the film's sole nomination), a period
drama
- 39 year-old Jeremy Renner (his first nomination)
as Sergeant (SFC) William James, a risk-taking, unflappable
bomb defuser in Iraq who thrived on the danger of his job,
in The Hurt Locker
The Best Actress nominations included Meryl Streep's
astounding 16th acting nomination, but the award went to the
actress with the most momentum, 45 year-old Sandra Bullock
(her first nomination) as Leigh Anne Tuohy, a saintly,
strong-willed, wealthy Southern suburban mother who took in
a homeless African-American teen - football player Michael
Oher (now a star player for the Baltimore Ravens), in The
Blind Side.
[Bullock was previously a longtime Oscar snub, despite her performances
in Speed (1994), While You Were Sleeping
(1995), Practical Magic (1998), Miss
Congeniality (2000), Crash (2004),
and Infamous (2006). Already the winner of the
Critics Choice Award, the Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors
Guild Award for her lead role in The Blind Side,
Bullock received her first, long-overdue Oscar. However, she
also marked a career low-point as the Razzie winner for Worst
Actress and Worst Screen Couple (shared with co-star Bradley
Cooper) for her role in Worst Picture-nominated flop All
About Steve - a film she produced! Bullock became the first person
ever to win a Razzie and an Oscar in the same year.]
The other Best Actress nominees were:
- 60 year-old Meryl Streep (her 16th nomination,
and her record 13th lead nomination, surpassing
Katharine Hepburn's twelve nods) as real-life, bubbly, cheerful
famed chef Julia Child, focusing on her early life in Paris
where she discovers her talent and her efforts to write a
definitive book on authentic French cuisine, in director
Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia (the film's sole nomination)
(Streep had two Oscar wins: for her supporting role in Kramer
vs. Kramer (1979) and her lead role in Sophie's
Choice (1982))
- 64 year-old British actress Helen Mirren (her fourth nomination)
for her role as Countess Sofya Tolstoy, the supportive wife
of dying, famed Russian author Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer),
in director Michael Hoffman's The Last Station (two
nominations and no wins). (Mirren previously had a leading
role win for The Queen (2006), and two unsuccessful
supporting nominations for The Madness of King George
(1994) and Gosford Park (2001))
- 24 year-old British actress Carey Mulligan
(her first nomination) for her performance (her
first-ever leading film role) as Jenny, a sixteen year-old
virginal English schoolgirl in 1961 who was introduced to
British high society during an affair with older suitor David
(Peter Sarsgaard) twice her age, in Danish director Lone
Sherfig's coming-of-age romance An Education
- 26 year-old Gabourey Sidibe (her first nomination)
in her film debut as Precious Jones, a quiet, pregnant (her
second child by her own father), overweight, and illiterate
high school girl who suffered severe abuse by her parents,
in Precious
The Best Supporting Actor nominations included
nods for two actors, Christopher Plummer and Stanley Tucci,
whose work had been long overlooked by the Academy. However,
the winner was the expected victor: 53 year-old Austrian Christoph
Waltz (with his first nomination) as diabolical, over-the-top,
seductively-charming villainous "Jew hunter" and
quadri-lingual Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (whose performance has
been compared to Javier Bardem's in No Country For
Old Men (2007)), in Inglourious Basterds.
The other Best Supporting Actor nominees were:
- 39 year-old Matt Damon (his second acting
nomination) in the lead role of real-life South
African rugby player Francois Pienaar, the captain of the
1995 world-champion team, in Invictus.
[Note: The 5'10" Damon was criticized for his miscast
role as the hulking 6'3" Pienaar.] (Damon had an unsuccessful
lead nod for Good Will Hunting (1997), the
film for which Damon received his sole Oscar alongside Ben
Affleck for Best Original Screenplay)
- 48 year-old Woody Harrelson (his second nomination),
for his performance as Captain Tony Stone, an alcoholic military
officer struggling with his job to bring casualty "messages" (from
the Casualty Notification Office) to the families of slain
soldiers, in director Oren Moverman's debut feature film The
Messenger (two nominations and no wins) (Harrelson
was previously nominated for his lead role in The
People vs. Larry Flynt (1996))
- 80 year-old Christopher Plummer (his first nomination
in a 56 year acting career!) as famed Russian author Leo
Tolstoy, who struggles with his ideals of a life of austerity
with his fame and wealth, in The Last Station
- 49 year-old Stanley Tucci (his first nomination)
as George Harvey, a serial killer who murders his neighbors'
14-year-old daughter Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), in Peter
Jackson's visually stunning and moody adaptation of The
Lovely Bones (the film's sole nomination)
The Best Supporting Actress nominations included
two nominations for Up in the Air, and four first-time
nominees. The winner was the heavily-favored nominee, 42 year-old
Mo'Nique (with her first nomination) for her role
as the reprehensible Mary - the cruel abusive, inner-city welfare
mother of a pregnant 16 year-old high school student who turns
a blind eye to her husband's incestuous rape of her daughter,
in Precious.
The other Best Supporting Actress nominees were:
- 35 year-old Penelope Cruz (her third nomination)
for her performance as Carla Albanese, the passionate obsessive
mistress of married Italian film director Guido Contini (Daniel
Day-Lewis), in Rob Marshall's big budget musical flop Nine (four
nominations and no wins). (Cruz won for her supporting role
in the previous year's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and
also had an unsuccessful lead nod for Volver (2007,
Sp.)) [Note: it was thought she might have been
better served with a Best Actress nomination for Broken
Embraces]
- 36 year-old Vera Farmiga (her first nomination)
for her role as Alex Goran, an intelligent and sexy travelling
businesswoman who begins a no-strings-attached affair with
a freelancing corporate downsizer (Clooney), in Up
in the Air
- 32 year-old Maggie Gyllenhaal (her first nomination)
for her role as Jean Craddock, an aspiring journalist (and
divorced single mother) who falls in love with 57 year-old,
broken-down country-western singer (Bridges), in Crazy
Heart
- 24 year-old Anna Kendrick (her first nomination)
as Natalie Keener, a ruthless, Type-A college grad - and
a young protege assigned to an older corporate downsizer,
in Up in the Air
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
Although the popular rebooted franchise film Star
Trek received four technical nominations (including
Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual
Effects and an expected win for Best Makeup), it was denied
a spot in the enlarged Best Picture category. With its
single Best Makeup win, it became the first Academy Award-winner
in the entire history of the Star Trek series.
It was unlikely that the top-grossing R-rated comedy The
Hangover would also be one of the top nominees,
but its omission was noticed. Clint Eastwood's Invictus,
about Nelson Mandela's interaction with a white rugby team,
came up with two acting nominations (Best Actor for Morgan
Freeman as Mandela, and Best Supporting Actor for Matt
Damon, although their categories seemed inexplicably switched),
but there was no Best Picture or Best Director nod (for
a director who won two of his three Oscars for directing
Best Picture champs: Unforgiven
(1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004)).
Past Oscar-winning Peter Jackson's The
Lovely Bones, an adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel,
received only one nomination, for Best Supporting Actor (Stanley
Tucci) - although Tucci should have more appropriately received
a nod for his portrayal of Julia Child's supportive husband
Paul in Julie & Julia. And Rob Marshall's
musical Nine came up with only four nominations
(Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Original Song,
and Best Supporting Actress - Penelope Cruz) and no wins,
although it had many prominent stars in the ensemble cast
including Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman and Marion Cotillard. An
Education's three nominations with no wins (Best
Actress, Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay) neglected
Alfred Molina's supporting role as Jenny's overprotective,
bigoted suburban London father Jack.
Many of 2009's films admired by some film critics,
such as Michael Jackson's This is It, the
post-apocalyptic tale The Road starring Viggo
Mortensen and Charlize Theron, Steven Soderbergh's The
Informant! with Matt Damon, Michael Mann's gangster-crime
drama Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp
(as John Dillinger), and Spike Jonze's Where the Wild
Things Are, were unaccounted for, as were director
Mira Nair's highly tauted Amelia with two
time Oscar winner Hilary Swank as the legendary flyer, and
British director Joe Wright's biographical drama The
Soloist featuring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx
(as real-life homeless street musician Nathaniel Ayers). Although
nominated for three Oscars (including Best Art Direction, and
Best Makeup) with a sole win for Best Costume Design, the romantic
love story The Young Victoria was devoid of
an acting nomination for Emily Blunt as the lead character.
Director Marc Webb's offbeat breakup dramedy (500)
Days of Summer was conspicuously absent from the list
of Best Screenplay nominees.
Some of the populist, mainstream hits with tremendous
box-office success (all of the following films topped $100
million, and are listed in descending order of box-office clout)
were virtually non-existent in terms of Oscar:
- the sequel Transformers: Revenge of
the Fallen (with a sole nomination for Best Sound
Mixing)
- the sixth Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (with a
sole nomination for Best Cinematography)
- the vampire-related, teen romance fantasy
sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon
- the raunchy comedy The Hangover
- director Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (with
only two nominations: Best Art Direction, and Best Original
Score) starring Robert Downey, Jr. as the legendary detective
- the third film in the animated series Ice
Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
- Ben Stiller's sequel Night at the
Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
- Anne Fletcher's romantic comedy The
Proposal featuring Sandra Bullock
- the comedy farce Paul Blart: Mall
Cop with Kevin James
- the excellent French action thriller Taken starring
Liam Neeson
- director Ron Howard's follow-up film adapted
from Dan Brown's best-seller Angels & Demons
- the fourth Terminator film, McG's Terminator
Salvation, with unnominated Sam Worthington
and Christian Bale
- the low-budget breakout horror hit Paranormal
Activity
However, big box-office wasn't a deterrent for
a number of films, such as the British political satire In
the Loop (with one nomination, Best Adapted Screenplay)
- the first instance that a film that premiered on
VOD (video-on-demand) concurrent with its theatrical release
was nominated for a major Oscar. Or for Oren Moverman's The
Messenger (with two nominations, Best Supporting Actor
- Woody Harrelson and Best Original Screenplay - the only non-Best
Picture-nominee to get a screenplay nod) - an Iraq-themed Sundance
movie distributed by upstart Oscilloscope. The latter film
could have had other cast members additionally nominated, including
Ben Foster as reluctant, injured war hero SSgt. Will Montgomery
assigned to the US Army Casualty Notification Office to assist
Harrelson in delivering death news, and Samantha Morton as
Army wife Olivia Pitterson - a newly-widowed mother. In The
Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner's co-stars Anthony Mackie
and Brian Geraghty were conspicuously ignored, as was the central
character in Best Picture-nominated District 9:
the bumbling, incompetent, and beleaguered MNU field operative
Wikus van de Merwe (portrayed by Sharlto Copley in an astounding debut performance).
The little-seen exhilarating crime thriller Julia,
due possibly to a token US film release, was little seen and
completely neglected, including the Best Actress caliber performance
of Tilda Swinton as desperate, troublesome, promiscuous, out-of-control
alcoholic title character Julia who botched a get-rich-quick,
crackpot kidnapping scheme. Also, outrageous Danish director
Lars von Trier's controversial, nihilistic horror film Antichrist was
shut out, although Charlotte Gainsbourg's portrayal of a grieving,
pained, devastated mother (named She) was phenomenal (she was
the Best Actress prize-winner at Cannes) - although it was
tremendously shocking (with graphic scenes of genital mutilation).
Two actresses appeared to be denied recognition
in supporting roles: Julianne Moore (who has never won an Oscar!)
for her scene-stealing performance as British divorcee party
girl Charley (opposite Best Actor-nominated Colin Firth) in
the sorrowful love story A Single Man, and
German actress Diane Kruger for her role as German movie starlet
turned Allied spy Bridget von Hammersmark in Quentin Tarantino's
lengthy WWII epic Inglourious Basterds. Brad
Pitt was also bypassed in Tarantino's film as Tennessee-born
Lt. Aldo Raine - leader of the Jewish commandoes eager for
Nazi scalps. Actor Michael Stuhlbarg was missing from the nominees
for his central role as physics professor Larry Gopnik in A
Serious Man. Christian McKay was ignored for his supporting
performance as the legendary filmmaker Orson Welles in Me
and Orson Welles. Also neglected was Sam Rockwell's
tour-de-force role in director Duncan Jones' Moon (no
nominations, for either its director or screenplay) as solitary
lunar mining specialist Sam Bell slowly driven insane and interacting
with a mysterious doppelganger of himself. Both Oscar-nominated
actors George Clooney and Jeff Bridges might have been nominated
for Best Supporting Actor for their roles as US Army psychic
soldiers (dubbed "Jedi Warriors" in a New Earth Army),
Lyn Cassady and Bill Django, in the M*A*S*H (1970)-like
satire The Men Who Stare At Goats, Grant Heslov's
directorial debut film.
The recognition given to Kathryn Bigelow for The
Hurt Locker was well deserved, but two other women
were denied Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay
nominations: Nora Ephron for Julie & Julia (with
its sole nomination for Meryl Streep), and New Zealander
writer/director Jane Campion for the romantic period piece
about young British poet John Keats, Bright Star (with
only one nomination for Best Costume Design). In the latter
film, Abbie Cornish was also ignored for her critically-praised
performance as Frances "Fanny" Brawne, an outspoken
student who began a passionate but tragically short love
affair with the poet.
In the Best Animated Feature Film category, Hayao
Miyazaki's critically-acclaimed Ponyo was
left out, as was the heavily-marketed animation Cloudy
With a Chance of Meatballs. Also ignored was Shane
Acker's 9, a frightening, awe-inspiring PG-13
CGI-animated, post-apocalyptic film about small burlap "stitchpunk" robots
who attempt to survive in a dark world full of terrifying machines;
the film itself was an expansion of Acker's Oscar-nominated
short 9 (2004).
|