Oscar Nominees Announced

Oscar nominations are in and while I didn't do too great with my predictions, I didn't do nearly as badly as I was expecting, scoring 4 out of 5 in most of the major categories. I went 5 for 5 in the Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay and Cinematography categories, and my worst was Foreign Language Film where I only predicted one of the five nominees, but in my defense I'm still a little thrown by the fact that neither Persepolis nor 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days were eligible. Full list under the cut plus thoughts on the surprises, the snubs, and the way the race is shaping up.

Picture
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood

Director
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men)
Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)
Jason Reitman (Juno)
Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

Actor
George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street)
Tommy Lee Jones (In The Valley of Elah)
Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)

Actress
Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
Julie Christie (Away From Her)
Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose)
Laura Linney (The Savages)
Ellen Page (Juno)

Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
Ruby Dee (American Gangster)
Saorise Ronan (Atonement)
Amy Ryan (Gone, Baby, Gone)
Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)

Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James)
Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War)
Hal Holbrook (Into The Wild)
Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)

Original Screenplay
Brad Bird (Ratatouille)
Diablo Cody (Juno)
Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)
Tamara Jenkis (The Savages)
Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl)

Adapted Screenplay
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men)
Christopher Hampton (Atonement)
Ronald Harwood (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Sarah Polley (Away From Her)

Editing
Bourne Ultimatum
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into The Wild
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Cinematography
The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Art Direction
American Gangster
Atonement
The Golden Compass
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood

Costume
Across the Universe
Atonement
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
La Vie En Rose
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Make Up
La Vie En Rose
Norbit
Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End

Original Score
3:10 To Yuma
Atonement
Kite Runner
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille

Original Song
August Rush ("Raise It Up")
Enchanted ("Happy Working Song")
Enchanted ("So Close")
Enchanted ("That's How You Know")
Once ("Falling Slowly)

Sound Mixing
3:10 To Yuma
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country For Old Men
Ratatouille
Transformers

Sound Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Ratatouille
Transformers

Visual Effects
The Golden Compass
Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End
Transformers

Documentary
Operation Homecoming
No End In Sight
Sicko
Taxi to the Dark Side
War/Dance

Foreign Language Film
12 (Russia)
Beauford (Isreal)
The Counterfeiters (Austria)
Katyn (Poland)
Mongol (Kazakhstan)

Animated
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surk's Up

Some definite surprises in there. The biggest for me is the Director nod for Jason Reitman, followed pretty closely by the Actor nomination for Tommy Lee Jones. Very happy to see Sarah Polley in the Adapted Screenplay category, a little thrown by the almost complete shut-out of Into The Wild. Laura Linney's nomination is and isn't a surprise for me - I toyed with the idea of including her in my final predictions but figured if she got in she would take Cate Blanchett's slot, not Angelina Jolie's. Of all the snubs, I think I'm most sad about Lust, Caution not getting a nomination for it's score.

So, my thinking at the moment is that Best Picture will come down to No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Looking strictly at thematic elements, Atonement is the film that fits in best with the majority of past winners as it features two of the Academy's favorite elements: romance and war. However, it is rare for a film to win Best Picture without a director nomination (the last was Driving Miss Daisy in 1989), and rarer still for it to win without an editing nomination (you've got to go back to 1980 and Ordinary People for that). When you factor in that, over the last couple of decades the film with the most nominations usually wins, that leaves No Country and Blood, which are tied for nominations and the only Picture nominees to have both Director and Editing nominations.

Of course, given the kind of the year it's been in terms of predictions, anything is possible.