Let's fight about the Oscar nominations

An emotional documentary film by the director of "Hoop Dreams," quite possibly the greatest documentary feature of all time, about a man who predicted the Oscar nominations for 40 years couldn't get an Oscar nomination.

They'll have to make their own...

Neither could an actor whose performance as one of our country's greatest civil leaders sparked with electricity seemingly supplied by the ghost of the source himself.

And, 144,000 frames of images built from Legos and strung together with speed, wit and a sassy score? The Academy, it seems, was not impressed.

Those are just the most egregious omissions we're talking about as we settle in with our list of the 2015 Academy Award nominations this afternoon. And to me, personally, the omissions of "Life Itself" for Documentary Feature, David Oyelowo for his performance in "Selma," and "The Lego Movie" for Animated Feature film are the biggest WHAAAAAAAAT????s of the year.

But I'm about to upset some of you. Because for me, those are the only major crimes. And now I'm going to tell you why, with some snapshot reactions to this year's list of nominees. And you should definitely comment on this post, because if we can't talk about movies, what are we going to ever be able to talk about? Here are the things I've been thinking about:

Best Picture

There are eight nominees this year. That's the fewest in this category since 2008, which was the final year of a five-nominee category before the Academy doubled it to 10 and then decided...no, wait! It can be anywhere between five and 10 (which I call the "Dark Knight Rule"). Since that change, we've had three straight years of nine nominees.

"Girl, I thought you were gone!" Photo source: Annie Barrett

So while some of you are outraged about the absence of "Gone Girl" or "Nightcrawler" from this category, consider the possibility that one less nominee this year simply means that more people liked the same films. Given that the voting system to get into this particular race puts emphasis on first-place ballot votes, I'd say that we've ended up with a high quality slate here. In fact, I predicted these exact eight films and that there would only be eight. I had "Nightcrawler" sitting at number nine just in case, and "Gone Girl" was my #11/alternate choice.

If there's anything upsetting about this list, it's that "Foxcatcher" was good enough to be nominated for Director and Original Screenplay but not Picture. But that director nomination was a surprise, and we'll get to that. And nobody out in the real world can ever understand how a film can be nominated for Best Picture but its director is not nominated. I can understand that. Ask me about it sometime.

"Selma" is a shocker here, not because it's on this list, but because the only other place it appears is on the Original Song list. It will win that award and thus become an Oscar-winning film, but it doesn't have a chance in hell here. The other outrage seems aimed at "American Sniper," but this doesn't bother me. Every year's shortlist requires at least one blockbuster, crowd-gathering film, and among this year's boutique films and persnickety independent selections, this is it. We just don't know it yet because it opens wide this weekend. But mark my words, I'll be right.

Best Director

Lots of haterade about leaving "Selma" director Ava DuVernay off this list and thus denying us the first African-American female nominee in the category, let alone what would have been only the fifth female overall. But I didn't even have her on my final predictions list. And while the media that covers these things is pulling out its hair plugs about how white and racist and sexist the Academy is, I wonder if anyone ever considered whether or not the five nominees might not be more worthy than DuVernay is, and that her nomination might have only been because of her demographics instead of in spite of them, had she been nominated.

Hear me out.

Wes Anderson has made eight incredibly personalized, formally-composed, and consistently excellent films and has never been nominated before today. (He's been relegated to the screenplay category, Oscar purgatory where all hyphenated directors must do time before getting called up.) His nomination finally arrived for what is arguably his best film ever, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (though I might still consider "Fantastic Mr. Fox" as my favorite of his films).

Inarritu: Bringing color and diversity to the Oscar race.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a quirky genius who designed his film to appear as one continuous tracking shot, an are-you-freaking-kidding-me? idea that he actually pulled off. And, for those of you who are concerned about diversity, he's not white: bonus.

Richard Linklater made a film that is probably one of the most structurally interesting film creations of the century so far, a movie that we'll be talking about alongside "Tree of Life." And it also happens to be deeply moving, charming, and satisfyingly "normal."

I don't know anything about Morten Tyldum other than the fact that "The Imitation Game" is his first feature in English, but of all of this year's nominees, I found his film to be the most crowd pleasing in that traditional this-is-an-Oscar-film kind of way. Is that a reason to include him over DuVernay? That's worth an argument, though I liked his work better.

And so you have that last slot, which went to Bennett Miller for "Foxcatcher." Not DuVernay, and not Clint Eastwood, who owns that slot on the DGA list. I will admit that I was surprised by this. I was expecting David Fincher to be nominated for "Gone Girl." But I have no problem that he wasn't, because the truth of the matter is that "Gone Girl" (also not nominated for Best Picture) is really nothing more than a super-solid genre film that so meticulously recreated its source novel that I still can't decide which piece I like better. As far as mainstream Hollywood fare goes, it's fantastic. But those movies don't typically get the Oscar nominations. And, as I've said before, you have to decide if DuVernay's work was genuinely better than any of these nominees. I'm not sure that it was.

The Acting Categories

I'm not going to lie...I'm steaming about the Oyelowo omission. What is "Selma" without that performance? That's the real engine of the film. I think many will attack Bradley Cooper for that switch-out, some feeling that three straight years of acting nominations is a bit generous. But he's excellent in "American Sniper." Instead, I would have replaced Steve Carell, who certainly tackles a different tone in his "Foxcatcher" performance but, when compared to Oyelowo, is nominated here a la Nicole Kidman...for his prosthetic nose.

Many wanted to see Jennifer Aniston nominated for "Cake," and while I haven't seen the film yet, I wouldn't have had a big problem with it. But from what I've heard, it's just another one of those gorgeous-star-gets-frumpy-to-be-taken-seriously roles. Is acting without makeup Oscar-worthy on its  own merits? I can make this easier by eliminating four of the nominees, all expected, and focusing on the surprise: Marion Cotillard. I haven't seen "Two Days, One Night" yet, either, but generally speaking, is Cotillard a better actress than Aniston. Um...yes. Yes, she is. She's the only past Oscar winner in the lead categories, and pretty much everything she does generates Oscar buzz, even if this is only her second nomination. Why are we still talking about this?

There was only one supporting performance surprise, and it's Laura Dern, grabbing her second nomination for "Wild." Haven't seen it. Heard it was slight...a not much there role. I was pulling for Tilda Swinton's crazy "Snowpiercer" work, but I knew better. And I also know that the last slot in this category was the only genuine toss-up in the acting categories.

Source: quickmemes.com via Google Images

I should also mention that it stood out to me that three of the Best Actress nominees are their films' sole nominations. I have a theory about female performances being the strongest thing in otherwise weak or average movies that I'll save for another time. 

P.S.: Robert Duvall is now the oldest-ever acting nominee at 84 with his seventh nomination, for "The Judge." And Lady Meryl just notched number 19. Dayum!


Other Things I Found Interesting, In No Particular Order

While I was and still am upset about the omission of "Life Itself" for Documentary Feature, the snub continues two traditions. One is the continued snubbing of director Steve James, who in a less cruel world should be on his third documentary nomination by now. The other, lest we forget, is that the Documentary Feature category is by far the most volatile and unpredictable category every year. Only the foreign film category comes close! Also, if you take a closer look, you should calm down, as the category does contain documentary royalty in the finally-nominated Rory Kennedy, a member of yes...THAT Kennedy family, for "Last Days In Vietnam," and German filmmaker Wim Wenders, whose excellent feature films are constantly ignored but who picks up his third nomination today in this category.

I did not see "Song of the Sea" on anyone's prediction list for Animated Feature, but then again, it was co-directed by Tomm Moore. Don't know the name? That sneaky bastard was nominated in this same category in 2009 for "The Secret of Kells," another animated feature than nobody had heard of or had access to seeing. Deja vu.

Aside from not having seen "Unbroken" yet, (yeah...I know, I know...), I really like the choices for Cinematography. They are all truly worthy, and I was pleasantly surprised by "Ida." We should all take note that foreign films are making headway into this category in particular lately. It seems to be the one mainstream category where non-English language films have made the most headway.

No "Force Majeure" for Foreign Language Film. Sniff. I'm going to have to put it on my top 10 of 2014 list in retaliation.

Oscar nominee. No, seriously.

The end of "The Hobbit" trilogy did not go as well as the end of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, did it?

This is Diane Warren's seventh Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. No wins. No Celine Dion to sing it, either.

And while we're on Original Song, is anyone else going to talk about the fact that STEPHANIE FROM "ALL IN THE FAMILY" wrote Adam Levine's song from "Begin Again"? Find me a better random fact than that!

 The Diversity Debate

And finally, on to more serious matters.  The big uproar today has been the lack of diversity. I've read on numerous websites that this is the first time since 1998 that no actors of color were nominated. I also read that none of the Best Picture nominees feature a female main character or focus. Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast is one of many to remind us of the shameful demographics of the Academy, which is 94 percent white and 76 percent male, with an average age of 63. These are undeniable facts, and you won't get an argument from me that all of this is sad and even shameful.

But where I part ways with many is in the way we are going about analyzing the nominations as an attack on diversity. I'm frustrated that we continue to define "diversity" as pertaining only to one's gender and skin color. Perhaps I'm being naive or picking at irrelevant details, but isn't diversity more than this? It surely is those things. And clearly for many, it is the most important of things. But diversity goes deeper than these surface traits.

For a list of nominations that is quite obviously and undeniably white, those who are barking about race alone are missing the following:

• 6 of the 20 acting nominees are not Americans. Five are from England, one from France. All white, but one's home country and ethnicity is also a characteristic of diversity, is it not?
• 2 of the 5 Best Director nominees are not American. Tyldum is from Norway and Inarritu is from Mexico, so he isn't white, either, though he is the only non-white nominee in a marquee category, and I'm not so delusional as to attempt to defend that. 
•  Cinematography nominees come from Mexico and Poland in addition to the U.K. and United States.
• Not including the Foreign Language Film category, which is obviously diverse every year by default, categories like Documentary Short Subject and Animated Short Film have a decidedly international flair.
• Perhaps the most diverse category of all this year is Animated Feature. The most "American" of the lot is "Big Hero 6," which borrows heavily from Asian culture for its fictional San Fransokyo location and its hero, Hiro. "How to Train Your Dragon 2" is American, but Scottish-flavored. "The Boxtrolls" is, at least in execution, pure British quirk. And the two surprise nominees are foreign films: "Song of the Sea" is from Ireland and "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" is from Japan, a country whose long-standing tradition of excellence in animation has inched toward the mainstream in America. 

So you see, there is diversity within the nominations, if you know where to look for it. The problem is that many in the media want to use the word to describe things that are purely visual. In other words, race. Now, please, please, please don't get me wrong. Absolutely, without a doubt, YES...racial minorities are shamefully underrepresented here. They are barely represented at all. YES, this isn't a true representation of American culture. YES, the Oscars continue to reward a white male viewpoint. Trust me, I know. Trust me, I'd like to see that change, too. And if you've noticed the conspicuous absence of any attempt on my part to defend the gender imbalance in all of this, well, that's because I a have a brain and can't defend the indefensible fact that no woman is nominated this year for directing or cinematography or writing.

What I'm taking issue with is the use of the term "diversity," which I think is a little off as it's being used here. And I'm also taking issue at critics who are aiming their hostilities squarely on Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper," simply because it's directed by a man who represents every key point of the Oscar voting demographic they are having a problem with. The film attempts to honor our military, those who defend our freedom. It illustrates (and granted, other films have done so better) the irreversible sacrifices that these men and women (okay, men in this case...) make by reminding us that they can never get their old lives back in full if they are fortunate enough to return home.  It is patently unfair to target this specific film, because it flares up yet another racial fight. It feels like an attempt to turn the Oscars into Ferguson, which is a bit of a cheap and empty shot.

It makes me sad. I feel like we're pulling further apart instead of trying to heal some of the hurt. This year, the stories told by Hollywood were focused far more on men than women. There were a solid handful of films representing minorities, but really none aside from "Selma" of the quality worthy of Oscar recognition. There's your problem. I'm not sure the Oscars can recognize what doesn't exist. Nor should they nominate Tyler Perry for Best Director for a Medea movie in an act of cinematic affirmative action. I don't think anyone wants that.

Simply put, the people who finance movies have got to do better. They need to trust that we're interested in stories about women and characters who are not white. The actors getting these nominations are perfect for their parts. The aspects of diversity you don't see here today are missing because those parts, to a large degree, didn't exist this year. The Oscar nominees are not the problem. The industry is the problem.

"Selma" deserves more than two Oscar nominations, but I never really saw it getting more than four. Maybe we should focus our energies on making sure that we all get out to the theaters this MLK Day weekend to show our support with our ticket purchases. The lack of nominations in no way diminish the fact that this is one the most powerful movies of the year. And then, we can do our Oscar history research to gain the perspective that comes with context. Wait until you see what company "Selma" is in as a barely-nominated or non-nominated masterpiece.