The 10 Biggest Oscar Snubs of 2009

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Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

7. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” by Woody Allen for Best Original Screenplay

VCB” is Allen’s best script in years, a breezy, easy-going examination of love, sex, and cultural clashes during a summer in Spain. Like the Springsteen snub, this one just doesn’t make sense. The Academy clearly loves Woody Allen. They’ve nominated him fourteen times before. And this work was better than half of those choices. The WGA nominated him, which almost always means an equivalent one here. Did someone mis-count the votes? Honestly, this category ended up the most random. “Happy-Go-Lucky” was excluded from several categories, indicating perhaps the Academy didn’t like the movie, but they nominated it here. And I like “In Bruges” and “Frozen River” but the screenplays are not as good as “The Visitor,” “Rachel Getting Married,” or “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”. Maybe too many quality choices made this one too difficult for Academy members and they did make some good choices here, just not the right ones.

Director CHRISTOPHER NOLAN on the set
Director Christopher Nolan on the set
Photo credit: Stephen Vaughan

6. Christopher Nolan for Best Director for “The Dark Knight”

I’m angry that Darren Aronofsky was excluded for his excellent work on “The Wrestler” in favor of dull, boring choices like Ron Howard for “Frost/Nixon” or Stephen Daldry for “The Reader,” but the exclusion of Nolan hurts the most. I would like to talk to the voting body as a whole for a minute. How can a film be worthy of eight nominations, most of them technical, but not Best Director? Do you think editors, cinematographers, etc. act of their own volition? That they’re not guided by the director? Or were you merely prejudiced against what you saw as a superhero movie? Nixon and the Holocaust are more important subjects, so they have to be better directed films, right? It’s just sad.

Rosemarie Dewitt
Rosemarie DeWitt
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

5. Rosemarie DeWitt for Best Supporting Actress for “Rachel Getting Married”

Many, many people are predicting Anne Hathaway to win for “Rachel Getting Married” and you’ll get no argument from me there (especially with Sally Hawkins out of the running…more on that later), but her counterpart in the film, the performance that truly supported the lead and made it great, was snubbed. Hathaway does incredible work but it is largely in part because of how she is balanced by DeWitt’s complex portrayal of the bride-to-be. It’s hard to say who shouldn’t have been nominated in this category - it’s one of the top fives that feels the most correct - but I would probably axe Amy Adams for either DeWitt or Hiam Abbass’ great work in “The Visitor,” and if I had to pick one it would be the former.

James Franco
James Franco
Photo credit: Dale Robinette

4. James Franco for Best Supporting Actor for “Milk” or “Pineapple Express

One of the acting stories of 2008 was ignored by the Academy. James Franco is no longer “that guy from Freaks and Geeks and the Spider-Man movies”. He gave two of the best performances of the year in his vastly different roles in “Milk” and “Pineapple Express” and he should have been nominated for one of them. I feel like the Academy decided they could nominate only one performance from “Milk” and they, correctly, went with Josh Brolin and they decided they could only nominate only one comedic performance and they went with Robert Downey Jr. from “Tropic Thunder”. Of course, someone should have told them that they could nominate two performances from “Milk” or two funny characters, but that would have been too easy. Eddie Marsan’s great and truly supporting work in “Happy-Go-Lucky” being shown the door in favor of what should have been a role that competed in lead actor from Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt” was nearly as annoying.

Anonymous's picture

The Dark Knight and WALL - E

The Dark Knight and WALL - E “timeless masterpieces” ……….hahaha what a joke, your opinion is now rendered invalid. Please don’t write anything on film ever again, thank you. How can they be timeless masterpieces when they have only been out for less than a year. Only time will tell so please don’t write silly comments like that in future.

Anonymous's picture

agreed

The Dark Knight does not have the qualities of a Best Picture. Sure it had one great performance, surrounded by a couple mediocre ones. The writing was not that great. So I agree with the previous post. There are some great critics in Chicago, but its plane to see that you are not one of them.

Now I will agree with you that Wall-E is a great, and pretty a much flawless picture, well for the first half. but it still lacked the qualities that a best picture should possess.

Anonymous's picture

I have to disagree with your

I have to disagree with your opinion there. The Dark Knight does in fact have all the qualities of a Best Picture barring one - it is a genre film and worse yet, it’s a superhero film. And that was enough for the academy members to ignore it in the major categories. It’s nothing but prejudice and it’s exactly that sort of narrow minded thinking and inability to look past the genre that makes prompts people to say that it does not have the qualities of a Best Picture.

It’s wrong to say that Ledger’s performance is surrounded by mediocre ones. Yes Ledger was brilliant, but that does not automatically make everyone else mediocre in comparison. They all did a very good job, Aaron Eckhart in particular was sublime.

I suppose despite my arguments, it was always going to be a fools hope for TDK to get a Best Picture nomination. But, Nolan deserved that Best Director nomination, more so than anyone from last year. When you look at a film for its directing, you’re looking at every single department from acting to sound mixing, because a director’s job is to bring all these departments together to function like a well-oiled machine (and I’m a director myself, so I know exactly how that machine needs to work). The only other films from 2008 that are in the same class as TDK in this respect are Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire.

Anonymous's picture

The Dark Knight

I must politely defend the Dark Knight’s writing, as it deserves a nomination for best adapted screenplay. Granted, its dialogue does not exactly ring with Tarantino’s deceptively natural and sublime fusion of poetry and prose, but TDK utilizes forces of antagonism in deliciously brilliant and complex ways. For example, as a villain, the Joker requires much more of Batman than simple right/wrong, good/evil decisions. Ledger’s character traps him in situations where he must wage an ethical war within himself before reacting and pulls this off not once, but multiple times throughout the film. This is a terrifically intellegent, mature script. It takes the traditional superhero genre and elevates it to a gorgeous morality play. It is grossly underrated, and the fact that this slice of cinematic beauty did not earn a Best Picture nomination is a travesty.

Anonymous's picture

Disagree

What qualities did Wall-E not possess?

James's picture

I think that the main

I think that the main problem is the voting process…there is no larger monster called “The Academy”, it is thousands of individual votes. They pick their top five in every category, in ascending order (1st is best 5 is least best) and then submit them. Halfway through the counting process, the nominations are released based o n the first half of the ballots recieved. This is so that nobody knows until that night exactly who won. The process is retarded.

HollywoodChicago.com's picture

The members who vote...

James wrote:
I think that the main problem is the voting process…

Is the problem the process or the members who vote? The academy’s demographic is much older. I’d argue that the members who vote skew to the 50-plus age range.

It also seems like they figured Heath Ledger getting “The Dark Knight” supporting nomination and “WALL-E” getting nominated for best animated film was enough. It’s not fair to exclude one nomination because of another.

I’ve been on juries before (including for the 2008 Chicago International Film Festival) and I understand the thinking, but it’s still not right. As a jury member, you shouldn’t do it.

Anonymous's picture

I’m sorry James, but your

I’m sorry James, but your post is “retarded.” That is not even close to the actual process. Read this:

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/01/academy-awards.html

Joey Nolfi's picture

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN’s lack of a nomination was not a snub…Sweden did not submit it.

BrianTT's picture

Submission Not Needed For Adapted Screenplay

In the intro, I suggest that the process for Best Foreign Film, which requires country submission is deeply flawed when I write..

“The fact that the Academy still employs a process that makes one of the best foreign films of the year (Let the Right One In) ineligible…”

…acknowledging that it couldn’t be nominated for Best Foreign Film because of the submission process.

However, it could have been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Films are regularly not submitted for Best Foreign Film and nominated in other categories. Pedro Almodovar’s Talk to Her was not submitted by Spain and, consequently, not nominated for Best Foreign Film but WON the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

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