Well, the nominations are out — 5:30AM in Los Angeles and nary a publicist was asleep. The (sort of) big surprise was eleven nominations for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. The somewhat bigger surprise was zero nominations for Michael Moore’s 9-11. Maybe the Academy was shamed out of it by Team America!
As a member of the Writers Branch, I was entitled to nominate five films in the categories of Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Here’s how I voted in order of preference. I don’t always make a full five nominations because I don’t have strong enough feelings about five films in that category. You can read the actual results here.
BEST PICTURE
Million Dollar Baby
The Aviator
The Incredibles
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Team America (Yes, it was erratic, but it was original!)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
The Aviator
The Incredibles
Collateral
Hotel Rwanda
(Liked Hotel Rwanda a lot, btw. In retrospect, I think I should have voted for it for Best Picture nomination)
BEST ADAPTED
Million Dollar Baby
Sideways
In all this year my votes were more in concert with the Academy than usual. Don’t know what that means except in some years they vote for movies like Chicago. To be fair, I should have voted for The Incredibles number one for Best Picture, because I am sure in future years it will be the most watched movie of 2004. [How can you be sure about that?–ed. I can’t.]
UPDATE: CommentaryPage, linked by Instapundit, has some quick and dirty analysis of why the Academy shut out Moore. It’s worth reading. Let me add one thing — Moore was never really part of Hollywood. He is sui generis, a self-taught maker of (semi) documentaries. Most who are thought of as “Hollywood” are not documentarians to begin with. They are fiction filmmakers, show people. They adopted Moore for a short while to make a point which is now fading even for them. Most people in Hollywood now see, although maybe they won’t admit it, that democracy in Iraq is extremely important. For Moore, it’s over.
UPDATE: That old cynic Gerard thinks it’s all about the money… Not in my Hollywood.
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