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Oscar nominations
Feb. 2nd, 2010 08:38 amare out. It is perhaps rare to have so many films with similar titles. There's A Single Man and there's A Serious Man. You can go Up or you can go Up in the Air. We're running out of titles. Someone tell the melancholy elephants.
As usual, this is my opportunity to see how out of touch I am. Of all the films nominated, I've seen only three - two, Avatar and Coraline, because they were genre films that caught my interest, and which I fairly well enjoyed, and one, Julie & Julia, a non-genre film I disliked. I had a similar score last year: saw two or three films, was bored by one of them.
Since then, I've seen a couple more of last year's nominees on DVD, of which the best was Frozen River, a film I hadn't even heard of until it got Oscar nominations. Dire dramas set in the snow: it worked for the Coen brothers too. I'm waiting for someone to tell me that Frozen River was actually a knee-slapper of hilarity.
I may well see the single and serious men, and take the two trips up, at some future point on DVD. But everything else on the major-awards list looks either like not my kind of thing, or else I can't remember from the title what it is.
The change from 5 to 10 nominees for Best Picture hasn't expanded the overall list of films nominated for major awards. All five Best Director nominees are also nominated for Best Picture, but that's not unusual: the overlap is either four or five almost every year, at least in recent times. And all of the Best Picture nominees have either an acting or screenplay nomination, or both, as well, except Avatar, no surprise, which is also one of the directing nominees, also no surprise.
As usual, this is my opportunity to see how out of touch I am. Of all the films nominated, I've seen only three - two, Avatar and Coraline, because they were genre films that caught my interest, and which I fairly well enjoyed, and one, Julie & Julia, a non-genre film I disliked. I had a similar score last year: saw two or three films, was bored by one of them.
Since then, I've seen a couple more of last year's nominees on DVD, of which the best was Frozen River, a film I hadn't even heard of until it got Oscar nominations. Dire dramas set in the snow: it worked for the Coen brothers too. I'm waiting for someone to tell me that Frozen River was actually a knee-slapper of hilarity.
I may well see the single and serious men, and take the two trips up, at some future point on DVD. But everything else on the major-awards list looks either like not my kind of thing, or else I can't remember from the title what it is.
The change from 5 to 10 nominees for Best Picture hasn't expanded the overall list of films nominated for major awards. All five Best Director nominees are also nominated for Best Picture, but that's not unusual: the overlap is either four or five almost every year, at least in recent times. And all of the Best Picture nominees have either an acting or screenplay nomination, or both, as well, except Avatar, no surprise, which is also one of the directing nominees, also no surprise.
