The Academy made its choices, and lots of people took notice. A few examples:
Guy Lodge, never a terribly big AMPAS booster, examines the nominations and finds … that he likes them. "Dogtooth," "The Illusionist" (below), "Winter's Bone," a great Best Actress category ("no coasters, no fat and no filler") – they all left him smiling, and happy enough that he can't even summon up the energy to grumble too much about guilty-pleasure "Burlesque" losing out on a Best Song nomination. (In Contention)
Sasha Stone looks at her 2010 Oscar mantra – that "The Social Network" will win because it's the best picture and that's the way Oscar voters have been going for the past four years – and wonders if she might be mistaken after the events of the last three days. After the showing of "The King's Speech" at the Producers Guild and then in Oscar nominations, she starts this way: "It’s been a while since we could say there was an 'Oscar movie,' but that old trope roared to life today, as did the Oscar Whisperer, Harvey Weinstein’s dominance with the AMPAS." Of course she knows that things could still go either way, and she seems to embrace that: "It is a cliffhanger, which makes for the best kinds of Oscar races." But, of course, she still wants to see the Facebook movie win. (Awards Daily)
"My guess is this one could be a squeaker," says Pete Hammond. His take: "The Social Network" only got eight nominations, but "they were the right ones"; "The Fighter" is still in the mix; and "Inception" and "True Grit" are both weakened by missing out in important categories: directing and editing in the case of the former, editing in the latter. He thinks it's a wide-open three-way race with any outcome possible, "even a possible spoiler coming from behind." I think the way the preferential ballot works in the final count, it makes a spoiler less likely than it would be otherwise … but at this stage, nobody really knows how it’s going to play out. (Deadline)
You want Oscar stats? Scott Feinberg's got a truckload of 'em. Jeff Bridges is now the 11th-most-nominated male actor … Bridges and Colin Firth are the 26th and 27th people to land two consecutive Best Actor nominations … Javier Bardem's is the 34th foreign-language performance to receive a nomination … Jennifer Lawrence is the fourth youngest Best Actress nominee …. And on and on and on … (ScottFeinberg.com)
Nominations leader "The King's Speech" is about to get a new marketing strategy and a push for a bigger, broader audience, according to Ben Fritz. One noteworthy part of the new strategy, he says, may be a new edit that will remove some of the film's profanity (which is used for comic effect) in an attempt to secure a PG-13 rating. But such an edit would run counter to what director Tom Hooper said he'd do when the Weinstein Company first appealed the film's R rating last year – on top of which, it wouldn't happen until after the Oscars. Before that: a Valentine's Day expansion into more than 3,000 theaters. (Company Town)
Kris Tapley runs down the results of "the REAL competition" – i.e., the battle between pundits to score the most accurate Oscar nomination predictions. Am I linking to this because he points out that I had the best score with 42 correct predictions out of 45 in the top eight categories? Of course I am. (In Contention)
