Oscar Nominations 2009

The list is out! ...and most of the world hates it. The Academy had a chance to redeem themselves with WALL-E and The Dark Knight, but did they take that chance? Absolutely not. Instead we get Brad Pitt's new Forrest Gump, a Holocaust movie, Danny Boyle's surprisingly good (but isn't it a tad overrated?) Indian slums, a POLITICAL movie, and an assassinated homosexual political something-or-other. Wonderful.
MY favorite film of the year, which also happens to be the best rated film of the year, is WALL-E. The Dark Knight was amazing visually, and I DO think Nolan should have gotten something for Best Director. Best Picture? Eh... I haven't seen 3 of the 5 nominated films, so it's not fair to say. I'm not one of the crazy fans who's only ever seen The Dark Knight and nothing else, and STILL says it deserves to win because it didn't epically fail like stereotypical summer movies. But it was good, and was much more entertaining and creative than Benjamin Button. Button most certainly did not deserve 13 nominations. Brad Pitt with awesome make-up, Cate Blanchet, and too much hype are all it should have to its long name. Slumdog deserves its nominations, but... picture? Really? THAT's the best the film industry came out with this year? That's not very encouraging. Of course, the fact that the Academy is apparently run by ancient actors and close-minded executives isn't encouraging either.
There were some nods to lesser known actors, which was nice, but to be honest, all I care about this year is WALL-E. It's very difficult to see all the films before the awards because so many are only released in limited theaters until January or February, and even then, some are never wide released. Why televise an awards show for movies no one can possibly care about?
But to the only thing I can possibly talk about, WALL-E. It earned six nominations, putting it in 4th place for total noms, and tying it for the most ever nominations for an animated film. Four were expected, Best Animated, Best Original Song, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing. I mean, the entire movie was sound; it's hard to NOT get those ones. The four others we were all hoping for but you never know when the Academy's going to screw you over were Picture and Director, which fell short, but also Original Screenplay and Score. I personally thought the score was amazing (Define Dancing, anyone?) but that's an iffy category because opinions can be so varied on it. Also very surprising with the song was that only 3 were nominated, and both of the other nominations are from Slumdog Millionaire. Clint Eastwood wrote a great song for Gran Torino, and Bruce Springsteen won both the Critic's Choice and the Golden Globe for "The Wrestler". I'm secretly very happy about this, because it means "Down to Earth" might actually WIN, but Springsteen got shafted.