Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Oscar Noms

The Academy nominations are announced and they have decided not to pit Leonardo DiCaprio against himself, as the Hollywood Foreign Press did, but snubbed him for the wrong movie. Nominated for Blood Diamond they passed over his great performance in the otherwise dubious The Departed. One of the best big performances I've seen since Edward Norton in 1998's American History X.

Paul Greengrass's United 93 was nominated for Best Director (which he was no shot at) and the Academy continues to be prejudiced against comedy by failing to nominate Sacha Baron Cohen for his rude, crude, brilliant Borat. And no David Bowie nomination for The Prestige as he was the best thing about that movie, playing Nikola Tesla.

3 comments:

Christian W. said...

Brian, what didn't you like about The Prestige, specifically. It'd be in my top-10 of the year. Much better than The Illusionist, but a notch below Nolan's Batman movie. So, flawed but only in small ways, IMO.

Brian said...

My criticism starts with the performances which I thought were bland and mostly mediocre (with the noted exception of Mr. Bowie). From the beginning I was never involved with the characters and drawn into their world and that problem was due to the density of the plot and the confusion that followed. So by the end I was not only confused but not caring enough about it to try and unravel it. The Nolan brothers captured me with Memento but this one just didn't hold my interest.

Christian W. said...

Huh. I thought the performances were pretty good, but I'll have to rent it when it comes out in a couple weeks--the wife hasn't seen it yet--and look closer at it this time. Maybe I'd just had more than my share of coffee that day, but I didn't have trouble following the story (which, yes, was very involved--in terms of plot). I even saw a few of the final surprises coming, though some of my friends find this hard to believe.

BTW, I picked up Lewis Agonistes this week and am enjoying it very much.