About a week ago, nominations for the Academy Awards were announced. As a huge film buff and possibly future star and filmmaker, I would like to take a few minutes to comment on the nominations.
There wasn't any reason to nominate anyone else than Forest Whitaker because he's going to win Best Actor by a landslide. Christian Bale should have been nominated and would have been a contender, but the Hollywood establishment didn't even recognize him.
There also wasn't any reason to nominate anyone other than Helen Mirren because she's already locked in as the winner for Best Actress. I haven't seen THE QUEEN, but apparently there isn't a female performance out there that can compare to Mirren's portrayal of Elizabeth II.
Paul Greengrass should win the Best Director award for UNITED 93, but the award will probably go to Martin Scorsese because he has never won before and Marty's not getting any younger.
As for Best Picture the five films nominated were:
BABEL, THE DEPARTED, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, THE QUEEN.
Out of all of those the only film that actually even deserves a nomination is THE DEPARTED. Hollywood likes to have a little quirky film as part of the race, so I can understand LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. As for the other three, I just don't get it. Until BABEL was nominated, I hadn't heard much positive about it. LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA is an attempt to be politically correct since it's a WWII movie told from the side of the Japanese but TORA, TORA, TORA did it better over twenty years ago and FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is probably the better of Eastwood's two films from the past year. Helen Mirren is remarkable in THE QUEEN so her performance rightly deserves a Best Actress Award, but that doesn't mean the movie deserves a Best Picture nomination.
There are at least two films that should have been nominated. The biggest glaring omission is UNITED 93. Until about the start of November UNITED 93 was on everyone's Best Picture list. I don't know what happened in two months to change people's minds so much, but UNITED 93 should have been nominated. It's the best picture of 2006 hands down. The other blatant omission is APOCALYPTO. If anyone but Mel Gibson had been responsible for APOCALYPTO, it would have been nominated for every award in town. However, because Mel's behind it, no one wants to recognize it for the masterful achievement that it is. I know that some will ask me, what would be the other film I would rather see in the fifth slot. To be honest, I'm not sure. I just saw CHILDREN OF MEN and loved it. That would probably be my choice. Although, I've heard a lot of good comments about BLOOD DIAMOND and DREAMGIRLS, so they would have been worthy contenders, too. Even CARS would have been better than some of the other films nominated (CARS might not be the Best Picture of the year, but it is the Best Animated Picture and will win that, but it is better than some of the other nominees).
I'll be making my own favorite film list of 2006 in the near future. Keep reading and stay tuned.
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