“Button” and “Slumdog” Lead The Way
By Ty Burr
Globe Staff / January 22, 2009
...Continues from page 1. Unexpected glory shone on other films and players, though. “Frozen River,” a festival award-winner set in upstate New York, picked up nominations for lead actress Melissa Leo and best original screenplay; Leo’s competition is Winslet, Meryl Streep in “Doubt,” Angelina Jolie in “Changeling,” and Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married.” This counts as Streep’s 15th career nomination.
Richard Jenkins, the much-admired character player who had a rare leading role in the independent film “The Visitor,” made it onto the best actor list opposite Pitt, Rourke, Sean Penn in “Milk,” and Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon.” “Revolutionary Road” received only three nominations, but one of them went to Michael Shannon’s eye-catching supporting role as a mentally unstable neighbor.
The documentary and foreign language nominations also surprised for not having major surprises. Acclaimed films like Israel’s “Waltz With Bashir” and France’s “The Class” made it in (although Italy’s “Gomorrah” never made it to the short list), and the documentary nominations included such critical and audience favorites as “Man on Wire,” “Trouble the Water,” and Werner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World.”
The nominations, announced yesterday morning by Academy president Sid Ganis and actor Forest Whitaker, reflected the Hollywood film community’s mixed emotions about 2008’s slate of movies. This year’s Oscars were expected to reflect a year in which several Hollywood studio films won huge popular and critical acclaim. The failure of “Dark Knight” to be nominated for best picture or Nolan for best director will be largely perceived as a slap in the face of the film and the young audiences that have taken it to heart.
Similarly, “WALL-E,” the Pixar cartoon that landed at the top of many year-end 10-best lists, was relegated to the best animated feature children’s table with “Kung Fu Panda” and “Bolt,” although its six nominations included Andrew Stanton’s original screenplay and Peter Gabriel’s song “Down to Earth.”
Instead, the Academy chose to recognize the sort of plushly mounted serious dramas that traditionally cluster around the end of the year. “Milk” (eight nominations, including picture, actor, supporting actor Josh Brolin, and director Gus Van Sant), “Frost/Nixon” (five nominations, including picture, actor, and Ron Howard for director), “Doubt” (five nominations, including its entire cast of Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis), and “The Reader” (five nominations, including director Stephen Daldry and writer David Hare) joined “Benjamin Button” as late 2008 releases up for multiple awards.
Then there’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” which on the strength of its 10 nominations and its multiple Golden Globe wins can no longer be called “the little movie that could” but instead has to be thought of as “the little movie that did—and probably will.” That this film, set in India with an unknown cast and a third of its script in Hindi, is now positioned as the best picture front runner is the one sign that last year was an atypical one at the movies.
The Oscars will air on Feb. 22.