Dann Gire: Few surprises in 80th Oscar nominees
Jubilation time at the Oscar nominations!
"Juno" star Ellen Page won a best actress nomination for her role as a sassy, pregnant teenager in the movie I ranked as No. 1 for 2007.
In fact, "Juno" amassed four big nominations: picture, director, actress and screenplay. I like the way this particular group of Academy voters thinks.
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Apparently, Academy voters also agreed with me that the human characters in Robert Zemeckis' CGI adventure "Beowulf" looked like reanimated escapees from a wax museum. Both it and the box office smash "The Simpsons" (2007's 10th highest grossing film) failed to nab a nomination for best animated feature. "Persepolis," "Ratatouille" and "Surf's Up" earned the berths.
Tuesday's announcement of the 80th annual Academy Award nominations didn't pack many surprises, but just enough of them to keep Oscar prognosticators on their toes until the big show, scheduled for Feb. 24.
The biggest surprise on super-duper Tuesday?
Tommy Lee Jones' nomination as best actor for his role as a retired military investigator in "The Valley of Elah." His unexpected nomination undoubtedly stole the slot that would have otherwise gone to Denzel Washington ("American Gangster") or Ryan Gosling ("Lars and the Real Girl").
Academy favorite Cate Blanchett pulled off a neat two-fer with double nods, first in the best actress category with "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," then in the supporting actress category as musician Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There."
(Don't laugh. The last time a woman received an Oscar for playing a man was in 1982's "The Year of Living Dangerously" when Linda Hunt played journalist Billy Kwan.)
Popular favorite Amy Adams did not win a best actress nomination for her musical role in Walt Disney's delightful "Enchanted," but the movie mopped up in the best song category, snatching three of the five slots with "Happy Working Song," "So Close" and "That's How You Know." Alan Menken composed them. Stephen Schwartz wrote the lyrics.
Three worthy features are missing in the Foreign Film category: the ghost story "The Orphanage," the animated "Persepolis" and the abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." The latter two were disqualified by Academy rules.
Also absent were most of the year's overtly political movies dealing with Mideast issues, films such as Brian De Palma's "Redacted," Robert Redford's "Lions for Lambs," the Angelina Jolie vehicle "A Mighty Heart" and the Reese Witherspoon project "Rendition." Exceptions went to "Charlie Wilson's War" (a comedy) and "The Valley of Elah" (a murder mystery).
The year's two biggest cinematic, heavyweight contenders, "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood," each grabbed eight nominations. "Michael Clayton" picked up seven. A total of 306 movies had been eligible for the Oscars in 2007.
Final Academy ballots are due Feb. 19. Producers of the Feb. 24 awards program insist the show will go on, despite the current writers strike that has already caused the cancellation of the annual Golden Globes awards ceremony.