Two days after the Golden Globes ceremony and a week before the announcement of this year’s Oscar contenders, the Canadian film industry reminds us it exists by rolling out the nominees for the 32nd annual Genie Awards.
It’s an intriguing assortment of expected accolades and left-field choices, all mixed up together in the bucket of Canadian content. As anticipated, Jean-Marc Vallée’s terrific Café De Flore and David Cronenberg’s disappointing A Dangerous Method are the front-runners with 13 and 11 nominations, respectively, both including Best Picture and Best Direction.
The other Best Picture nominees are Monsieur Lazhar, with nine total nominations, and Starbuck and The Whistleblower, with six apiece. Lazhar’s Philippe Falardeau and Whistleblower’s Larysa Kondracki are both up for Best Direction, though The Bang Bang Club’s Steven Silver nudged out Starbuck’s Ken Scott for the fifth slot in that category.
The acting nominations shook out mostly as expected: A Dangerous Method’s Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen scored Leading and Supporting nominations, respectively, though Keira Knightley, who plays the third point of the film’s complex triangle, didn’t rate an Actress nod in either category. Rachel Weisz landed a Best Actress nomination for The Whistleblower, which is a very interesting category this year with the inclusion of Take This Waltz’s Michelle Williams and Café De Flore’s Vanessa Paradis.
In pleasant surprises, Scott Speedman is up for Leading Actor for his movie-star turn as a charismatic gangster in Edwin Boyd, with Kevin Durand and Charlotte Sullivan landing nominations in the Supporting Actor categories. (Nathan Morlando’s debut feature also scored nominations for Visual Effects and Art Direction/Production Design.)
More eccentric choices include the Best Actor nomination for Oliver Sherman’s Garrett Dillahunt in what’s clearly a supporting role – with no acknowledgment of Donal Logue, the film’s actual lead – and the near-exclusion of two films from major Canadian names.
Guy Maddin’s Keyhole rated just one nomination, for Costume Design, while Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz was almost strategically ignored. The film wasn’t completely overlooked, landing nominations for the aforementioned Williams and Best Make-Up – but the absence of Polley from both the Direction and Original Screenplay categories reads like a deliberate snubbing, particularly since the Academy was able to find room for the incoherent Son Of The Sunshine in the latter category.
The full list can be viewed at this PDF link. The awards will be presented in Toronto on March 8.
