Oscar Nominations: The Critics Have Spoken?

With a few notable exceptions, the nominees for the 80th Academy Awards look pretty much like what the critical consensus has been telling us for nearly two months.
This raises some questions.
Have the academy fogeys finally gotten past their militantly middlebrow taste threshold? Or have the critical ranks’, swelled in recent years with Internet bloggers with limited film-watching experience, standards been collectively lowered?
If all of the other film judging groups came to more or less the same conclusions weeks before the Oscar voters, do we really need the academy to tell people which quality movies they should see anymore? Or, vice versa, are critics the superfluous ones? As much as some would like to argue the latter, I’m pretty sure that a lot of the stronger, less conventionally likable stuff that made this year’s academy cut wouldn’t have without a month or more of loud critical drumbeating. And the fact that the big story this year is whether or not the Academy Awards show will go on in its usual, money-making format indicates that everybody fundamentally understands that film art isn’t Oscar’s primary concern.
But perhaps the most haunting question posed by this general agreement among movie watching orgs is: Were there really that few great films to choose from in 2007? I mean, wasn’t it supposed to be the decade’s best movie year? If true, you’d think that the love would be spread a little wider.
Maybe it’s just reality settling in. For a long time now, in any given year, there are really only about a dozen titles that approach greatness. Anybody who watches most of the stuff that’s deemed worthwhile eventually develops some kind of discernment for the most outstanding work - even most members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, I’d reckon. So, AMPAS members and critics come closer together (as long as they’re not judging foreign films, anyway), because interesting movie culture is contracting.
Hmm. Maybe that shouldn’t be celebrated with a glitzy, high-rated TV show. Just spitballin’ here.
But let’s look at the positive comparisons for awhile.
“No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood,” the prohibitive winners of critics group best picture prizes and runaway toppers of every mass critics poll, are also the leading Oscar contenders with eight nominations each.
Close-behinds “Atonement” and “Michael Clayton,” with seven noms each, have also received much year-end praise, if not as intense as that for the two men-behaving-badly-without-many-women-around favorites. And although fifth best picture entry “Juno” has been both overhyped and backlashed against, it’s by many measures the smartest runaway hit that could reasonably join the four underseen art films.
Er, make that three art films and whatever this pack’s one big studio release, “Michael Clayton,” is trying to be.
The always-one-different-director-from-best-picture rule went a little oddly this year. It was generally believed that “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s” Julian Schanbel would be the spoiler, but he was supposed to knock “Juno’s” Jason Reitman out of the helming category. I know that “Atonement” generates more grudging admiration than real love - otherwise, it wouldn’t have been blanked in this and the lead acting races - but if Joe Wright did anything, he directed the hell out of it with all those sonic and camera and editing tricks. Of course, while Reitman may have only seemed to direct traffic in the dialogue- and actor-dominated “Juno,” he did maintain that wonderfully accepting and forgiving tone that, more than anything, makes up for any of the film’s faults. And that’s something only a director can do, so maybe the academy made a decent call there.
One real surprise in the best actor category: Tommy Lee Jones’ fine work in the critically forgotten “In the Valley of Elah.” One semi-surprise on the lead actress list: Cate Blanchett’s shrill reprise of her virgin queen in the instant camp classic “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” It’s nice that they love Cate, but really, anything that distracts from her brilliant, also nominated Dylan cloning in “I’m Not There” isn’t welcome, expecially when it comes from a movie as bad as the Liz sequel. Some dumb academy habits, like falling for anyone who plays a British monarch, obviously die hard. They’re not all Helen Mirren, y’know.
In those supporting categories, the shootout between Casey Affleck and Javier Bardem continues with a recognizable trio of seconds. Blanchett and “Gone Baby Gone’s” Amy Ryan have been leading the ladies’ tournament, and still do over the “How Nice They Got Their First Nominations” variety pack of veteran Ruby Dee, unnerving kid Saoirse Ronan and arthouse provocateuse Tilda Swinton. No big disconnects with the critics here.
Other stuff we probably approve of: double cinematography nominations for Roger Deakins (“No Country,” “Assassination of Jesse James”) along with a fine field of colleagues (“Atonement’s” Seamus McGarvey, “Diving Bell’s” Janusz Kaminski and “Blood’s” Robert Elswit); the unique “Persepolis” making the animated feature cut (if not the foreign language film shortlist); a pretty strong slate of documentary features, three of which (“No End in Sight,” “Operation Homecoming” and “Taxi to the Dark Side”) boldly and meticulously address the box office poison subject of the War on Terror, and all of which (Michael Moore’s “Sicko” and the Uganda-set “War/Dance” are the other two) are as exceptionally well-made as they are disturbing; and a not entirely expected, original screenplay nod for the quirky, delicate and very judiciously crafted “Lars and the Real Girl.”
And thanks to the academy for the biggest laugh of the morning: “La Vie en Rose” and “Norbit” competing in the same category, makeup.
Also nice:
Five of the six directors are first-time nominees, although Ethan Coen probably helped previously nominated brother Joel direct a lot of “Fargo” uncredited.
In a year that seemed dominated by movies about men with little interest in females, a record four nominated screenplays (“Away from Her,” “Juno,” “Lars and the Real Girl,” “The Savages”) were credited solely to women.
One year after “Borat,” Kazakhstan gets its first legitimate foreign language film nomination - for a movie entitled “Mongol.”
That’s just funny. But as for the one thing Oscar almost never seems to get right, yes, there is a difference between real critics and whoever those people are on the foreign language film filtering committee. To be honest, I haven’t seen any of their nominees - Israel’s “Beaufort,” Austria’s “The Counterfeiters,” Poland’s “Katyn,” “Mongol” and Russia’s “12.” But the disinclusion of the most acclaimed international movie of the year, Romania’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” - the Cannes Film Festival and European Film Awards’ best picture, eligible in this category and seen by most members of the FLF nominating committee - proves that many AMPAS members will never understand film the way serious critics do.
But, y’know, whatever enlightenment they manage to achieve is appreciated. Good luck with your TV show, guys.