Roll out the black carpet. A lineup of films bleak in tone and worldview will take center stage at the 80th annual Academy Awards next month, with critical darlings like “There Will Be Blood,” “No Country for Old Men” and “Michael Clayton” dominating the nominations, including the best picture category.
Unlike last year’s competition, when flashy hits like “The Departed” and “Dreamgirls” received multiple nominations, the 2008 Oscar race swings back toward less mainstream films. The nominations, which come despite uncertainty about the ceremony’s fate because of the lingering writers’ strike, were marked by dark themes and unconventional endings.
“It’s tapping into a generalized fear that people have about the state of the world they are living in,” said Scott Rudin, the veteran producer who has credits on both “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood.” He added, “There is just that zeitgeisty thing that happens sometimes. It is more alchemy than planning.”
“No Country for Old Men,” about the ruthless aftermath of a botched drug deal, and “There Will Be Blood,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a scheming oilman in an epic about American capitalism, each nabbed eight nominations. Besides best picture, both movie’s directors — Joel and Ethan Coen for “No Country for Old Men” and Paul Thomas Anderson for “There Will Be Blood” — received nominations.
Warner Brothers pulled off a coup with seven nominations for “Michael Clayton,” which stars George Clooney as a corporate fixer mired in dirty dealings. The movie captured nominations in almost every major category, including best picture, best director (Tony Gilroy), best actor (Mr. Clooney), best supporting actor (Tom Wilkinson), best supporting actress (Tilda Swinton) and best original screenplay (Mr. Gilroy).
But apparently even Oscar has his limits when it comes to dark and depressing. “Into the Wild,” a lengthy look at a man’s journey to the Alaska wilderness and ultimate death by starvation, was largely shut out, despite aggressive campaigning. The film, directed and written by Sean Penn, received a lone nod in the major categories, for Hal Holbrook as best supporting actor. (The Oscar nomination was Mr. Holbrook’s first.)
A little sunshine did manage to break through. “Juno,” the runaway independent hit ($87.1 million and counting) about a sardonic teenager who gives her baby up for adoption, secured four nominations, including best picture, best director, best actress and best original screenplay.
“The producers are just crying,” said Jason Reitman, the film’s director, from the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be sitting here and have my named called.”
Reached in London, Ellen Page, the 20-year-old star, said of her nomination: “It’s crazy! It’s absolutely crazy!”
“I act because I love to act,” she added, “and when something like this happens, it just obviously helps me immensely.”
“Atonement,” a British romance about lives that are altered (mostly for the worse) by a lying teenager, received seven nominations, including best picture. It was shut out of most of the other major categories, however.
The bulk of the nominations were not a surprise. Mr. Day-Lewis, whose gritty portrayal of an oil man in “There Will Be Blood” has already won him a wheelbarrow full of accolades, continued his march to the ultimate awards podium with a best actor nomination.
He will square off against Mr. Clooney; Johnny Depp, nominated for his murderous barber in “Sweeney Todd”; Viggo Mortensen, singled out for his murderous Russian-mob chauffeur in “Eastern Promises”; and Tommy Lee Jones, noted for his “In the Valley of Elah” portrayal of a police officer grappling with the aftermath of his son’s return from Iraq.
Julie Christie, of “Away From Her,” and Marion Cotillard, of “La Vie en Rose,” will vie for the academy’s top female acting honor. (They won best actress plaudits at the Golden Globe Awards for those films.) Joining them will be Ms. Page; Cate Blanchett, nominated for her royal reprisal in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”; and Laura Linney, for her role in “The Savages” as a self-involved single woman who must deal with her father’s deteriorating health.
Ms. Blanchett is the first actress to be nominated for playing the same person in two different films, according to the academy. On Tuesday she was also the only acting nominee to pop up in multiple categories, receiving a best supporting actress nod for playing Bob Dylan in the Weinstein Company’s “I’m Not There.”
Commercial success mattered little to voters, a shift from some recent years. For example, “American Gangster,” the Ridley Scott epic starring Denzel Washington as a Harlem heroin kingpin, received attention in only two categories: best supporting actress (for the veteran Ruby Dee) and art direction.
In the historically male-dominated field of screenwriting, four women made the cut this year. “It’s a huge sign of progress,” said Nancy Oliver, nominated for best original screenplay for “Lars and the Real Girl.” Of her nod, Ms. Oliver said: “Two things that I think are fundamental to human experience are loneliness and kindness. Both are absolutely at the heart of the movie.”
With the exception of Ms. Dee and Javier Bardem, singled out for best supporting actor for his creepily cold killer in “No Country for Old Men,” the nomination roster notably lacked diversity. The nominations are the opening pistol shot for the movie industry’s most important contest. As always, the Oscars have the power to catapult a niche film into the mainstream and rewrite Hollywood’s pecking order.
“We will have a solid month where these nominations will make a significant difference in the potential for these films, both domestically and internationally,” said Daniel Battsek, the president of Miramax. The studio, a division of the Walt Disney Company, received 21 nominations across four movies: “No Country for Old Men,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “There Will Be Blood” (for which it holds international distribution rights).
But for the first time in decades nobody is certain what the terrain ahead, never mind Oscar’s finish line, will look like.
The screenwriters’ strike, now in its third month, has thrown the road to the Oscars into chaos. The Golden Globes imploded earlier this month after the Writers Guild of America promised to picket the ceremony, frightening away nominees and presenters and forcing the organizers to hold a glorified news conference instead. The guild has promised to give the academy the same treatment.
The academy on Tuesday said its show would go on, although it was not sure in what fashion. Sid Ganis, president of the academy, said several contingency plans were being considered in case the writers’ strike was not settled (or at least nearing settlement) in time for the ceremony, but declined to provide details.
The selections made for a bad day at ABC, which is scheduled to broadcast the ceremony on Feb. 24, with Jon Stewart, the political satirist and star of “The Daily Show,” as host. The network has already been on tenterhooks over how the writers’ strike will play out. Now it faces a nightmare situation of persuading viewers to celebrate a batch of difficult films that most have never seen. (The expected pontificating on the strike from the podium probably won’t help increase audience excitement.)
In general, the telecast’s success in the ratings turns on the popularity of the movies the academy chooses to honor. When the low-budget film “Crash” won the big prize in 2006 — also the first year Mr. Stewart served as host of the ceremony — about 38.9 million viewers watched, one of the smallest turnouts for the so-called Super Bowl for Women since Nielsen Media Research started delivering overnight ratings. In contrast, when the immensely popular “Titanic” swept the awards in 1998, more than 55 million people tuned in.
On the other hand, there may be pent-up viewer interest in Hollywood glamour because of the absence of the Golden Globes. An ABC spokeswoman declined to comment.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/movies/awardsseason/23osca.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=58c8e7f7b80212f7&ex=1358830800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
