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Thursday, January 15, 2015

10 "Quick" Reactions to the 2015 Academy Award Nominations

1) The fact that Jake Gyllenhaal wasn't nominated this morning is a damn travesty. He not only gave the best acting performance of the year but he gave the best acting performance ever since Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. He was so freaking good.

What's even worse is that there was a very good chance that he was going to get a Best Actor nomination. According to the statistic expert at the Huffington Post- there was an 87.7% chance Gyllenhaal was going to get a nomination- tied for the third highest chance. Grantland's Oscar Expert Mark Harris stated that there really only seemed like there was enough room for one of two "nutcases" in this category; Gyllenhaal or Steve Carell for his work in Foxcatcher. In turns out the Old Fogie group that is the Academy voting committee went with the movie that fell in their category as opposed to the better film (and one meant for Millennials and Generation X) as Carell earned his first Oscar nomination and Gyllenhaal was left snubbed.

2) Speaking of snubs, The Lego Movie failed to earn a Best Animated Feature nomination- which seems absolutely insane. Almost everybody thought The Lego Movie was the frontrunner to win, so to be completely shut out is mind boggling. However, as a strong proponent that How To Train Your Dragon 2 is infinitely better than The Lego Movie, I'm secretly happy as that means HTTYD2 is now the heavy favorite to win.

3) The last snub that "broke" Twitter was that Jennifer Aniston failed to earn a Best Actress nomination for her work in Cake as her "spot" seemingly went to Marion Cotilliard for her work in Two Days, One Night. Not only was Jennifer Aniston's nomination by far and away the least secured out of the five predicted nominees, but from everything I've heard, Cotilliard actually gave the better performance. I'd bet you that anyone who claims Aniston was snubbed has either a) never seen Cake, b) never seen Two Days, One Night, or both.

4) These nominations are some of the whitest nominations in a while. This is only the second time in the past 20 years where all 20 acting nominees were white. Four out of the five directors are white (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is Mexican) and all five are males.

Semla's director Ava DuVernay and it's main star David Oyelowo failed to earn a nomination this year which would have added diversity to these nominations; however, I think Selma's barren two nominations were the result of the film's super late release and many voters not given a Selma screener in time as opposed to latent racism. Further, one film shouldn't make a difference whether the Oscar field is white or not. The lack of prestige films that would have added diversity to any Oscar nominees is the result of racism for those who fund, distribute, and campaign for films.

5) Welp, it looks like I have to see The Grand Budapest Hotel now as it earned a Best Picture and Best Screenplay nomination and its director Wes Anderson earned his first Best Director nomination. I've seen a handful of Wes Anderson flicks and I haven't enjoyed any of them, so I can't imagine I'll enjoy a film that's been entitled the most Wes Anderson-y film to date.

6) Films David Fincher did receive an Oscar nomination for: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network. Films David Fincher did not get a nomination for: Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, and now Gone Girl. Because that makes sense.

On the flip side, I'm glad Gillian Flynn didn't earn a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination like many were predicting. The reason Fincher did such an amazing job was because he had such a garbage and bat shit crazy story to deal with.

7) Huge win for American Sniper this morning as it earned a Best Picture and a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination and Bradley Cooper shocked the world by earning a Best Actor nomination for his work in the film. Bradley Cooper now has three Oscar nomination in three straight years.

8) I can not tell you how overjoyed I am that Angelina Jolie's Unbroken didn't earn any major Oscar nominations because it looked like a big, steaming, heaping pile of Oscar-bait shit, and there's only room for one of those films this year- The Theory of Everything.

9) WHIPLASH! I can not tell you how excited I am to see Whiplash. It looks great and it got great word of mouth reviews. Whiplash was a film that was barely scraped together on a shoestring three million dollar budget that was just going to come and go this fall; however, because of how good it was, it forced its way to the top. The film earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for the great J.K. Simmons as well as an Adapted Screenplay and Best Film nomination. With all of these nominations, I'm really hoping it will come to a theater that's actually within 50 miles of me or On Demand so I have a chance to see it.

10) Dick Poop. Lolz.


WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS THAT WERE RELEASED THIS MORNING? ANY SNUBS OR SURPRISES THAT YOU LIKED? LET US KNOW ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE!

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