Return of the King Leads Oscar Nominations 412
PurdueGraphicsMan writes "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, the final chapter in Peter Jackson's directoral masterpeice is leading the 76 Annual Academy Awards with 11 nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. Next in line with 10 nominations including Best Picture and Best director is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Here is a full list of the nominees in all categories."
Best director? Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Master and Commander (Score:5, Insightful)
While I gave high marks to Master and Commander for their coverage of the tiniest technical details of period naval warfare, and while I thought the foley work of the battle scenes was truly visceral, and while I enjoyed the basic setting and premise in which the characters found themselves, I was really let down by the movie.
It's a thirty minute plot, at most. It can be summed up as "whups, I guess we fucked THAT up, but let's not let that happen again..." about five times in a row. That's it. We blundered, let's move on. Oops, again. Ouch, let's try to avoid that. And oops, we didn't think of that.
It's like the premise behind Moby Dick. Have you read it? Incredible details, no plot. But a movie can't capture these details to a tenth of the degree that print can. You need story. You need arc. You need something to advance and change.
Upset (Score:3, Insightful)
On the bright side, RoTK got the Golden Globe for best picture, so maybe the oscars will take not and follow suit?
Re:all I've got to say (Score:3, Insightful)
But yeah - with no "Chicago" style frontrunner, ROTK has a better than average chance.
No cinematography? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the competition, they have a shot (Score:5, Insightful)
No ROtK nomination for Cinematography? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Roger Ebert's Preliminary Picks (Score:4, Insightful)
Samwise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Best director? Hmmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
The greatest crime here... (Score:4, Insightful)
RotK vs. Lost in Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's possible that RotK could win Best Film and Best Director. Best Director seem almost obvious, until you consider that no woman has ever won the Best Director award before. In fact, only two women have previously been nominated, Lina Wertmuller and Jane Campion.
This raise the question of whether women in the Academy will vote for Coppola, to see a woman get the award for once and set a precedent. It's not as if Coppola doesn't deserve it either, she made a delightful and semi-profiund film on a 3 million dollar budget.
Of course, Jackson's achievement with The Lord Of The Rings is amazing and probably the largest single project a director has ever taken on, so he deserves it too.
All I'm saying is don't be too surprised if there's an surprise upset, for Coppola, in these two categories. Coppola has a strong chance, especially since RotK may be considered a "boy" film by female members of the Academy.
Re:Best director? Hmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Cold Mountain (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yeah, great, nominations for the movie... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because they can't/won't nominate Gollum - there'd be too much uproar if a (even partially) CGI character won an award.
Non-Traditional Split Expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Then in 1948, they split for the first time with the Best Director Oscar going to John Huston for "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and Best Picture going to "Hamlet".
Since 1948 the two Oscars have split only 11 more times in the 75 years of Oscar's history. The past 20 years have seen only 4 splits.
This year I suspect there will again be a split with Peter Jackson being awarded the Best Director Oscar and "Lost in Translation" getting Best Picture. There's no way they will allow Jackson's achievement on his 3 fabulous LOTR movies to go unrecognized, but I think it's generally thought that "Lost in Translation" is the better film. So it would seem reasonable they'll split the awards in an effort to recognize both films.
Only time will tell.
Re:RotK vs. Lost in Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:nominated for ...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, you have to be nominated to win. No Matrix nominations at all. Not even for effects.
Re:now WHAT in the HELL!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Master and Commander (Score:4, Insightful)
Arc is not soley provided by plot; Someone missed the interplay of the 2 main characters in the film (played by Crowe and Bettany), which is central to both the books and the film.
As for the actual plot summary, it's a painfully simple excercise to cut down most any movie in this way.
For example, ROTK's plot can be summed up as "bunch of people try to get rid of an item that makes people turn bad. whoops, someone almost turned bad! whoops, someone did turn bad! whoops, someone almost turned bad! [repeat]."
Big Fish is far and above a better film than ROTK. (Score:2, Insightful)
ROTK has perhaps no more than two or three memorable scenes while Big Fish is a beautifully shot, extremely imaginative piece of art.
Perhaps it will indeed take the route of Fight Club and become a cult classic in the years to come.
Sean Astin? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RotK vs. Lost in Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's possible that RotK could win Best Film and Best Director. Best Director seem almost obvious..."
I think Peter Jackson's effort was a mixed bag of good and bad.
Technically, it was a huge achievement. This is obvious if you look at the trilogy as a series of still images: Hobbits in the Shire. The Ents gathering in the forest. Armies of orcs marching. Shelob's lair. That's great fantasy.
The battle scenes had a powerful setup, but when they actually got rolling, it was boring. It was well rendered, but the fights were blunt and obvious. Any decent martial arts film has more entertaining fights, with crazy footwork, interesting character interaction, etc.
Jackson's work is like a huge industrial skyscraper. It's a big accomplishment, but it's not pretty like a cathedral.
Lord of the Rings didn't develop relationships between characters properly. Where is the romance between Aragorn and his elf bride? Where is the friendship between Sam and Frodo? Jackson needed some better dialog to establish that friendship, and he did not deliver. Consequently, you see comments about those two hobbits being "gay". Jackson needed to give people a reason to believe that they were friends. Without that reason, they are just "gay".
What Jackson did is standard movie fare: the characters give dramatic looks, but all they say is: "Sam!" or "Gandalf!"
Contrast that to Lost in Translation or In America, two movies with dialog and human interaction that is actually worth remembering. They were emotional and enjoyable in ways that Peter Jackson was insensitive to.
MOD UP, me brothers! (Score:2, Insightful)
Alright, enough asskissing. I have work to do
fs
For your consideration... (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I thought that Sean Astin, Sir Ian McKellen, Bernard Hill and Andy Serkis all did excellent jobs. One problem is that a studio can only put one person from a film forward in each category for consideration.
Serkis got to really act in this one (so no arguments about it being only CGI). I guess McKellen wouldn't be bothered about more awards, and that Sean Astin and Andy Serkis are too early in their careers. Bernard Hill (Theoden) would have been a good nominee, he essentially played a Lear, but did so extremely well, however he is British and that is always a small minus.
Others have recognised the cast and recognised them as an esemble, which is probably the best. I don't think the time that any of the cast spent on the LOTR would be wasted career-wise.
Re:RotK vs. Lost in Translation (Score:2, Insightful)