It may not be the best film of the year, but Selma is being screwed.
Ava DuVernay’s powerhouse docudrama about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1965 march for civil rights in Alabama may be one of the eight nominees for Best Picture, but was virtually ignored otherwise: none of the film’s stars is up for an acting prize, and it was shut out of the director and screenplay categories.
DuVernay would have been the first African-American woman to be nominated for Best Director. She would also have deserved the honour Selma is very much her baby, and she’s been campaigning for it for months. Instead, the Academy went with the directors of five other Best Picture nominees: Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance)’s Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu, Boyhood’s Richard Linklater, Foxcatcher’s Bennett Miller, The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Wes Anderson and The Imitation Game’s Morten Tyldum.
American Sniper, The Theory Of Everything and Whiplash were the other nominees for Best Picture.
Iñárritu’s Birdman and Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel lead the pack with nine nominations each Birdman was nominated in three acting categories – Best Actor for Michael Keaton, Best Supporting Actor for Edward Norton and Best Supporting Actress for Emma Stone – while The Grand Budapest Hotel dominates the technical categories, Ralph Fiennes having failed to land a Best Actor nomination.
As always, Academy voters seem confused about what constitutes a leading or supporting performance. Steve Carell is up for Best Actor for his supporting role in Foxcatcher Felicity Jones is up for Best Actress in The Theory Of Everything, where she very much plays second fiddle to Eddie Redmayne’s showcase turn as Stephen Hawking. Redmayne is up for Best Actor, and the current favourite to win neither Carell nor Jones will be so lucky.
Julianne Moore’s Best Actress nomination for Still Alice was a lock, I suppose, as was Reese Witherspoon’s for Wild it’s really gratifying to see Laura Dern make the cut for Best Supporting Actress as the mother of Witherspoon’s character, however. I was sure she’d be forgotten – as were screenwriter Nick Hornby and director Jean-Marc Vallée.
Other notable omissions include Jake Gyllenhaal’s squirmy performance as a tabloid-TV journalist in Nightcrawler, which was heavily buzzed in this year’s awards conversation Tom Hardy’s one-man show in Locke was similarly overlooked. And neither The Overnighters, Jesse Moss’s moving social study of small-town America, nor Steve James’s Life Itself, about the life and death of Roger Ebert, is up for Best Documentary Feature.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice scored just two nominations, for Adapted Screenplay and Costume Design, and while Marion Cotillard is up for Best Actress for her performance in Two Days One Night, the film itself failed to land a slot on the Best Foreign-Language Feature slate.
The Lego Movie, which seemed like a no-brainer for a Best Animated Feature nomination, was brained by the combination of Big Hero 6, The Boxtrolls, How To Train Your Dragon 2, Song Of The Sea and The Tale Of Princess Kaguya. (As a critic, it’s hard to argue against any of the films that made the cut, but still: The Lego Movie is made of joy, you guys.)
A few films made unexpected inroads. Pawel Pawlikowki’s Ida is not only a Foreign-Language contender, but its lustrous black-and-white imagery scored a Best Cinematography nomination. Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner is in there too, having landed four tech nominations despite its most obvious merits – Timothy Spall’s stunning performance, and Leigh’s assured direction – being overlooked.
And it’s nice to see Robert Duvall land a Best Supporting Actor nomination – likely his last, given his age and his lack of interest in high-profile projects – for The Judge. It’s a great valedictory role, and his presence makes that category a lot more interesting, offering real contrast to J.K. Simmons’s high-intensity turn in Whiplash. The Academy’s infamously creaky membership might well find Duvall a better fit than the shouty guy in the black T-shirt. You never know, right?
See the full list of nominees here. The 2014 Academy Awards will be broadcast on CTV on Sunday, February 22.
