It’s that time of the year again, the time when film audiences wait with baited breath to find out which films and filmmakers have been honoured with that most tantamount of accolades, the Academy Award Nomination. Naturally, the only thing better than being nominated for an Oscar is winning one, but it’s still a huge honour to be nominated, especially for Science Fiction films that manage to make it through. Though geek has arguably been becoming chic since the late 90’s, ours is not the most mainstream of genres. In recent years, this has been changing and more and more Scifi and Fantasy films have been rearing their heads at Academy Awards ceremonies; judging from the list below it looks like this positive trend is continuing with a vengeance this year!
There are of course loads of nominations for loads of films, you can check them all out at the Oscars official site here. In the meantime, here’s a rundown of the nominations netted by genre films:
Avatar
Art Direction
Cinematography
Directing
Film Editing
Music (Original Score)
Best Picture
Sound Editing
Sound Mixing
Visual Effects
Coraline
Animated Feature Film
District 9
Film Editing
Best Picture
Visual Effects
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Animated Feature Film
Music (Original Score)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Cinematography
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Art Direction
Costume Design
The Lovely Bones
Actor in a Supporting Role
The Princess and the Frog
Animated Feature Film
Music (Original Song)
Music (Original Song)
Star Trek
Sound Editing
Sound Mixing
Visual Effects
Makeup
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Sound Mixing
Up
Animated Feature Film
Music (Original Score)
Best Picture
Sound Editing
Writing (Original Screenplay)
A mixed bag, certainly, and not uncontroversial. While the fantastic District 9 has come away with a respectable for nominations, Avatar’s managed to score a whopping 9 nominations ““ including one for Best Picture. Now I loved Avatar for what it was, a technological achievement and a special effects marvel ““ but the story’s hardly Best Picture material, surely? The cynic in me suspects the huge marketing hype-generating behemoth is behind this nomination, but that’s probably just me.
I mean, it’s very pretty and all, but wasn’t the story a bit flat?
Most notably snubbed film this year? In my opinion, Moon deserves to have at least a nod for best Director and Actor, perhaps even Best Picture and Soundtrack too. Whether it would win any of those is debatable, but as a fantastic little film I feel it should at least have had its achievements recognised by the Academy.
Who do you think will win? Who do you think SHOULD win? Answers on the back of a postcard “¦ or in the comments!
Apologies for the formatting troubles at the beginning – I have yet to learn that the Preview button is my friend, it seems. Er, oops. Still, it’s much shinier now, right?
My prediction – Avatar will certainly win the effects awards, but as to whether it’ll win Best Picture (it damned well better not), I think it’s up against strong competition from District 9 – and, perhaps more importantly, non-genre film Precious.
I thought Avatar was visually stunning and had a great story. I was engaged the entire time. For a big budget, popcorn flick like that, it had very few cringe worthy moments. James Cameron deserves all the praise for his innovations in technology and film making for Avatar… in my opinion. The story was beautiful, too – I felt very connected to the characters and the events.
I’m ashamed to say, I haven’t seen it yet…
Moon was not a good film. It was dull and completely without pace. I actually couldn’t be bothered to wait during the interlude, which where I was was actually more interesting than the film, and left without watching the last third of the film. Admittedly the acting was good but none of it was original or that interesting, just a little confusing.
Unfortunately, I think, Avatar should win the best picture. I say unfortunately because I honestly don’t want it to, I’m a big fan of District 9, but despite all the hype, I have to say Avatar probably deserves every drop of it.
Coraline was an embarrassing Alive in Wonderland rip off. The worst part of Coraline was that it was excruciatingly boring. Coraline give Science Fiction a bad name. If a girl falling through a hole is Sci Fi, why didn’t you include “Up” where the characters take off in a house tied to balloons? Your system is a little odd to say the least.
@Tristan : That’s fighting talk! :P I thought Moon was superbly paced, if the pace is set to ‘slow boil’. To me it was an excellent example of classic Sci-fi (like Silent Running, say) with a decent enough budget to pull it off by today’s standards. But hey, different strokes for different folks, right?
@Frank : I was taking a bit of a liberty by listing fantasy and Sci-fi films under ‘genre’, but you’re absolutely right, I overlooked Up. I’ll amend that straight away, as a house being carried away is a fairly fantastical concept indeed!
Its not a shock that there weren’t any nods for the cast of Avatar as all the performances were lacking, although I guess this wasn’t helped by the painful lack of depth (or even personality) to the characters. Adding to this the lack of a truly original or stimulating story there is no way that this film deserves best picture.
I agree with you on moon, it deserved a nod for director and for Sam Rockwell’s outstanding performance but it is going to be another one of those films that is criminally underrated. Personally I thought it was the best film I saw last year.
The only one I think I can call is that Kathryn Bigelow will take away best director for The Hurt Locker.
Can’t help but feel Star Trek deserved a tad more than few technical nominations.
I am going to have to agree with Chris, Star Trek did get a snubbed. On a positive note, I nearly leaped out of my seat when I saw District 9 was nominated for Best Picture and Kathryn Bigelow got the nom for The Hurt Locker.