Viva Oscar!
January 24, 2007
By Robert W. Butler
Comedy rarely gets Oscar respect.
Neither do Hispanic actors and filmmakers.
But Tuesday both scored big time when this year's Oscar nominations were announced.
The comedy is "Little Miss Sunshine," about a dysfunctional family on a road trip to a children's beauty pageant. Last year's Sundance hit pulled in noms -- for best picture, original screenplay, supporting actor (Alan Arkin) and supporting actress (10-year-old Abigail Breslin).
Meanwhile Spanish-speaking actors and films from Mexican directors generated a mini-landslide of nominations.
# Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel," a sprawling story of interconnected lives on three continents told in several languages, was nominated for best film, director (Inarritu) and original screenplay. Two of its performers -- Mexico's Adriana Barraza and Japan's Rinko Kikuchi -- were nominated as supporting actresses.
# Spain's Penelope Cruz received a best actress nod (her first) for Pedro Almodovar's "Volver," although the failure of that film to get a nomination in the foreign language film category left plenty of industry watchers scratching their heads.
# "Pan's Labyrinth," a grim fantasy from Mexico's Guillermo del Toro, was nominated for best foreign language film, original screenplay, art direction, makeup, original score and cinematography.
# Yet another Mexican auteur, Alfonso Cuaron, was nominated for a best screenplay adaptation for "Children of Men," which also won a place in the cinematography and film editing categories.
"There are so many Mexicans!" Mexican actress Salma Hayek giddily exclaimed to a TV reporter after reading off the names of the nominees at an early-morning press conference in Los Angeles.
Future Academy Award historians may come to regard this year's edition as the "minority Oscars." Besides Cruz's best actress nod, most acting categories include more than one nonwhite nominee: best actor (Will Smith for "The Pursuit of Happyness" and Forest Whitaker for "The Last King of Scotland"); supporting actor (Eddie Murphy for "Dreamgirls" and Djimon Hounsou for "Blood Diamond"); and supporting actress (Jennifer Hudson for "Dreamgirls" and "Babel's" Barraza and Kikuchi).
In addition to "Sunshine" and "Babel," the best picture race includes Clint Eastwood's Japanese-language "Letters From Iwo Jima," "The Queen" and "The Departed." Of these only "The Departed," Martin Scorsese's knotty crime drama, qualifies as a true studio film.
Moreover, the inclusion of two mostly subtitled films in the best picture category further emphasizes the idea that if you're looking for cinematic art, don't expect to find it in mainstream Hollywood.
Expect cries of elitism from meat-and-potatoes moviegoers. The overwhelming majority of this year's nominations are virtually unknown to the mass of moviegoers.
Films like "Half Nelson" (for which Ryan Gosling won an actor nomination), "Little Children," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Venus" (an actor nod for Peter O'Toole), "The Last King of Scotland" and "Notes on a Scandal" (which earned an actress nomination for Judi Dench, a supporting actress nom for Cate Blanchett, as well as nominations for original score and screenplay adaptation) either opened in theaters only in recent weeks or resided in the art house ghetto.
This year's slate of nominees is heavy on quality. Popularity, though, is an altogether different thing.
More thoughts on this year's Oscar race:
# The morning's biggest surprise was the failure of "Dreamgirls" to get nominations for best picture and best director. A big winner at the Golden Globes earlier this month, the musical was widely considered the movie to beat.
Nevertheless, "Dreamgirls" still got eight nominations, more than any other movie. Three of those nominations are in the same category: best original song.
# "Letters From Iwo Jima," portraying the WWII battle from the Japanese perspective, was a small-budget afterthought made after Clint Eastwood already had shot "Flags of Our Fathers." It cleaned up big with nominations for picture, directing (Eastwood), sound editing and original screenplay.
# Comeback of the year: Jackie Earle Haley, who as a child actor became a household name for his work in the "Bad News Bears" movies, then dropped out of acting for two decades before coming back to movies this year with roles in "All the King's Men" and "Little Children." He received a supporting actor nomination for his performance as a pedophile in "Little Children." That movie also scored an actress nomination for Kate Winslet and a nomination for best adapted screenplay.
# To nobody's surprise, Helen Mirren is an actress nominee for "The Queen," in which she portrays Elizabeth II confronting the death of Princess Di. She is the only sure thing in this year's race.
The movie was also nominated for picture, direction (Stephen Frears), costumes, score and original screenplay.
# "The Departed" was middling Martin Scorsese, but the failure of the academy to honor America's greatest living director puts Oscar voters under renewed pressure. Scorsese has had six winless trips to the Oscars as a directing nominee. He could be this year's Al Pacino.
Comments