First, a little perspective. There's a common thread that bonds such films as Aliens, Blade Runner, Cool Hand Luke, The Manchurian Candidate, The Matrix, Spartacus, Toy Story, The Wild Bunch, and Wild Strawberries. What do those great films have in common? The answer: NONE of them were nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. The Academy Awards ceremony is a lavish affair and an entertaining TV spectacle that will never go away, but let's be honest - the Oscars aren't the best barometer for what will eventually become legendary in the annals of cinema history. Of course, that doesn't mean we have to stop trying to analyze the often mysterious decisions on a yearly basis. The fact is that the Oscars have long been divisive, and writing about them is bound to anger someone ... But, as we all know, that's part and parcel of what comes with the Oscars.
One man's masterpiece is often another man's pretentious crap, but that's just part of life. As in past years, 2007's Oscar nominees once again reflect the vagaries of Academy voting. Show me a person who thinks it's a historic tragedy that The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford only landed two nominations and ten bucks says the person next to him probably thinks it was two too many. Much has been made about the incredible failure of the Oscars' Foreign Language Film committee this year, a group that excluded the two most award-winning eligible films - 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days and Persepolis - before they could even be considered. To be blunt - that category is a joke. A select group of nearly-retired Academy members seem to bungle it every year. How and why, who knows for sure? While the nominees might be worthwhile, I'd like to speak to someone who can tell me with a straight face that all of this year's nominees are better than 4 Months, Persepolis, The Orphanage, or even The Host. It can now be seen as an outdated, ridiculously designed category that makes for the perfect bathroom break as it's being awarded.
The same can be said for Best Original Song. With the clever songwriting in Walk Hard, excellent work by Eddie Vedder in Into the Wild, and new recordings by John Mayer, The Flaming Lips, Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, John Legend, Sondre Lerche, and BOB freakin' DYLAN - all who were eligible this year - the Academy chose to nominate three songs from Enchanted. Sure it's a cute Disney movie, but three? A hat trick for a movie as musically profound as Once would be understandable, but did anyone walk out of Enchanted humming the tunes? With Best Foreign Language Film and Best Song out of the way, here are our picks for the ten biggest Oscar snubs from 2007.
10. Best Animated Feature - Anything but Surf's Up... you name it!
The surfing penguins were cute, but one of the three best animated movies of the year? Animated Feature is a category that threatens to devolve into a situation like Foreign Language Film - totally off the pulse of the medium. I'm willing to bet that people heard about the concept of Surf's Up and voted for it sight unseen. Even if the voters wanted to nominate an animated family comedy to offset the adult-driven Ratatouille and Persepolis, they could have picked the more-clever Meet the Robinsons or the much funnier Bee Movie instead of Surf's Up. Still, even those weren't the best. If the Academy really wanted to reward people for trying to move the medium forward, they clearly would have chosen Beowulf, one of the most visually stunning films of the year (although the division between what is animation and what isn't in the world of motion capture hasn't been defined to everyone's taste). Clearly, they should have just gone with the funniest animated movie of the year - The Simpsons Movie.
9. 300 for anything
300 was far from a perfect film, but it was undeniably a technically accomplished work that should have been recognized in one or two the technical categories. Not a single nod was granted to the film that blew out more than a few theater speakers last March, and that's just not right. The sound design, the editing, and the visual effects all deserved consideration. The movie received accolades from the Art Directors Guild, Cinema Audio Society, Costume Designers Guild, and Visual Effects Society, but couldn't land a single Oscar nomination. Sin City also missed out on the Oscar party a couple of years ago, scoring a goose egg for nominations, which makes it clear the Academy hasn't figured out how to deal with, or correctly honor, green-screen films. Don't hold any hope for Speed Racer to have the words "Oscar-nominated" on its DVD case.
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