Maybe the Oscar nominees aren’t all popular, but they’re all deserving
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
This Oscar season the entertainment press has fixed on a common question. What
should the Academy Awards be about?
Is the goal to honor art?
To promote excellence?
And if that means an Oscar night filled with movies that most people haven’t seen, isn’t it time to tinker with the formula?
Yes.
Yes.
And absolutely not.
If you went to see “Wild Hogs” and not “Michael Clayton” or “Juno” or “There Will Be Blood,” that’s your choice. But no rule says the academy has to validate your taste.
This year the Oscar voters got it right. There are other films and performances I’d like to have seen on the list, but those nominated are of such high quality that I’m happy.
No “Gladiator” this year. No dull and/or ridiculous costume epics.
As far as I can tell, no nominations were made in the name of political correctness.
Nor do I see much evidence of the old-boy system that so often gives a veteran actor (like Al Pacino) a nomination for a questionable performance in an iffy movie (“Scent of a Woman”) to make up for denying him an Oscar when he really deserved one.
Though several of this year’s acting nominees are in their golden years, their work speaks for itself.
If the Academy Awards were meant to validate popularity, Steven Seagal would have a little golden man on his mantel.
No, Oscar-nominated movies and performances should challenge, should aspire to something more than the conventional, the convenient and the comfortable.
In fact, good movies should make us uncomfortable. And this year’s Oscar race should make you squirm.
The winners will be announced in the strike-free ceremony beginning at 7:30 tonight on ABC.
But while we still have a few hours for speculation, here are my thoughts on who’ll win and who deserves to.
ON TV TONIGHT
5 p.m.: “Live From the Red Carpet,” E!
6 p.m.: Barbara Walters interviews Ellen Page, Miley Cyrus, Harrison Ford and Vanessa Williams, ABC
7 p.m.: “Oscar’s Red Carpet” pre-show, ABC
7:30 p.m.: The 80th Academy Awards ceremony, ABC
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The nominees: Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There”; Ruby Dee, “American Gangster”; Saoirse Ronan, “Atonement”; Amy Ryan, “Gone Baby Gone”; Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton.”
Who will win: Ruby Dee.
Who should win: Cate Blanchett or Amy Ryan.
Who got cheated: Helena Bonham Carter for “Sweeney Todd” and Marisa Tomei for “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.”
The reasoning: Acting vet Dee won the Screen Actors Guild award in this category, and that automatically makes her the front-runner for the Oscars.
But my heart is with the astonishing Blanchett, who in “I’m Not There” played the late-’60s version of Bob Dylan so convincingly that after a few minutes I believed she was a man. I’ve also got a soft spot for newcomer Ryan, whose crack-puffing, drug-dealing, irresponsible mother in “Gone Baby Gone” was so much more than a white trash caricature. I expect to see her in future Oscar competitions.
The omission of Bonham Carter from this category is part of an overall snub of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The nominees: Casey Affleck, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”; Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”; Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Charlie Wilson’s War”; Hal Holbrook, “Into the Wild”; Tom Wilkinson, “Michael Clayton.”
Next page >
Join the discussion
Share your observations and experiences about news. Lively, open debate is the goal, but please refrain from personal attacks or comments that are racist, vulgar or otherwise inappropriate. If you see an inappropriate comment, please click the "Report as violation" link to notify a KansasCity.com editor. Thanks for your feedback.