There may or may not be an Oscars show, but there will be blood. Paul Thomas Anderson's not-that-bloody, critically adored film about the self-destruction of a California oil magnate, and "No Country for Old Men," Joel and Ethan Coen's grisly chase thriller, led yesterday's Academy Award nominations with eight apiece, including best picture.
Their fellow best-picture nominees are equally swept up in bad news. "Michael Clayton," Tony Gilroy's story of corruption at a New York law firm, was right behind "There Will Be Blood" and "No Country" with seven nominations, as was "Atonement," a romantic wartime epic about nosiness, gossip, and remorse. The leading mood elevator was "Juno," America's favorite teen-pregnancy comedy, which got four nominations, including a surprising nod for director Jason Reitman.
In the best-director derby, Reitman joins Anderson, the Coens, Gilroy, and Julian Schnabel, for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," which along with "Ratatouille," "Into the Wild," and "American Gangster," didn't make the best-picture cut. Joe Wright, who made "Atonement," was left off the directing list (maybe that five-minute tracking shot bugged the Academy's directors branch). So was Sean Penn for "Into the Wild," which got just two nominations, one for Hal Holbrook's performance and another for editing.
Before a foxy Kathy Bates and a tired-looking Sid Ganis made the televised announcements yesterday, "Atonement" was considered a front-runner. But with no directing nomination for the film, the best-picture race is slightly more open. Neither of the movie's leads, James McAvoy and Keira Knightley, were nominated, either.
With a box-office take of more than $85 million, "Juno" is the only one of the best-picture nominees that can count as an outright commercial hit, which could turn it in the Academy's favor. Then again, we may not get a chance to see any winner get an award, as the ongoing writers' strike shows no signs of ending.
For best actor, George Clooney's stressed-out lawyer in "Michael Clayton" faces Daniel Day-Lewis, as a mad oil baron in "There Will Be Blood"; Johnny Depp, as a heartsick serial killer in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; and Viggo Mortensen, the dour Russian mobster in "Eastern Promises." In the happiest surprise, Tommy Lee Jones joined the list as the stoic military dad looking for his AWOL son in "In the Valley of Elah." Like most of 2007's Iraq-themed movies, it never drew an audience, though Jones's performance won raves.
The Academy's acting branch clearly didn't know what to do with either of Philip Seymour Hoffman's blazing performances in "The Savages" and "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," nominating him only in the supporting-actor category for "Charlie Wilson's War."
In the best actress category, it's a bunch of indomitable women - Blanchett in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"; Julie Christie living with Alzheimer's in "Away From Her"; Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose"; and Laura Linney as an intellectual narcissist in "The Savages" - squaring off against one sardonic 19-year-old. That would be Ellen Page as a teen mother-to-be in "Juno."
Notably absent were Angelina Jolie, who played Mariane Pearl in "A Mighty Heart," and Amy Adams, as a fairy-tale princess stranded in Manhattan in "Enchanted." The race would seem to be between newcomer Page and Christie, who won the award in 1966, for "Darling."
Joining Hoffman's porcine CIA agent and Holbrook's teary codger in the supporting-actor category were Casey Affleck as a proto-celebrity stalker in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," Javier Bardem as the killer with the kooky haircut in "No Country for Old Men," and Tom Wilkinson as a high-powered lawyer who suddenly believes himself to be Shiva the Goddess of Death in "Michael Clayton."
Blanchett appears again, more expectedly, in the supporting-actress category for playing a pseudo-Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's "I'm Not There." Her fellow nominees are 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan, the budding playwright with the destructive imagination in "Atonement"; Amy Ryan as the embittered mother in "Gone Baby Gone"; Tilda Swinton as a high-strung attorney in "Michael Clayton"; and, holy of holies, Ruby Dee as Denzel Washington's momma in "American Gangster."
The two screenwriting categories are remarkable because they include four women; it shouldn't have to be noteworthy, but it is. They are actress-director Sarah Polley, who adapted an Alice Munro story into "Away From Her," and, in the original screenplay category, Diablo Cody ("Juno"), Tamara Jenkins ("The Savages"), and Nancy Oliver ("Lars and the Real Girl").
The documentary feature category continues to remain credible after adjustments in the nominating process. Three Iraq-themed films are on this year's slate: Charles Ferguson's "No End in Sight," a methodical assessment of how the US went to war; Richard E. Robbins's "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience," recollections of soldiers who've fought in Afghanistan and Iraq; and "Taxi to the Dark Side," Alex Gibney's look at the murder of a cab driver at Bagram Air Force Base. Michael Moore's disquieting health-care farce, "Sicko," and "War/Dance," Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine's film about kids in a Ugandan dance competition, round out the category.
This is a good year for fun Oscar history: Cate Blanchett is the first woman to be nominated for playing a man who isn't a cross-dresser or transsexual. She's also the second actor to be nominated two different times for the same character. (Her first nomination was for 1998's "Elizabeth.") Paul Newman was twice nominated for his work as Eddie Felson in "The Hustler" and "The Color of Money," for which he won an Oscar. And "No Country for Old Men" marks only the second time two people have been nominated for directing the same movie. (Warren Beatty and Buck Henry shared a nomination for 1978's "Heaven Can Wait.") And at 83, first-time nominee Ruby Dee is the second-oldest nominee, after 87-year-old Gloria Stuart of "Titanic."
Of course, the only Academy Awards history that really matters right now is whether this will be the first year the telecast, scheduled for Feb. 24, won't go on. Will the writers' strike and the actors' refusal to cross the picket line result in a canceled event? Will negotiations heat up at the last minute, meaning a postponed broadcast? Or will there just be a sad little Golden Globes-style press conference presided over by, say, Ryan Seacrest and Star Jones?
Stay tuned. This could be the first year Oscar is a loser at his very own show.
Correction: Because of reporting errors, several facts about the history of the Academy Award nominations were incorrect in a story in the Jan. 23 Living/Arts section about this year's nominations. Linda Hunt was the first woman nominated for playing a man, in "The Year of Living Dangerously," for which she eventually won the Oscar. The first time two people shared a nomination for best director was in 1961, when Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins won for co-directing "West Side Story." Actors nominated more than once for playing the same character were Bing Crosby, as Father O'Malley in "Going My Way" and "The Bells of St. Mary's"; Peter O'Toole, as Henry II in "Becket" and "The Lion in Winter"; and Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II."
