A list of those that should have gotten the nod, but from some reason didn’t

Written By Adam A. Donaldson

This year’s Oscar nominations have to be some of the most surprising and controversial in years; not so much for who made the cut, but rather for who was left out. Here’s a rundown of who should be basking in Oscar’s glory, but will instead have to watch from home – at least this year.

1) Best Actor - Michael Fassbender

Oh to know what went on in Michael Fassbender’s head on Tuesday morning. Fassbender was in no fewer than five movies in 2011; one cemented his ability as a box office leading man (X-Men: First Class), and three were critically acclaimed with two of those (Shame and A Dangerous Method) winning him serious awards consideration. Everyone thought a slot for Fassbender’s emotional and literally naked role as a sex addict in Shame was a foregone conclusion, but was the performance (not to mention the full frontal nudity) too raw for Academy voters? Who knows?

2) Best Actor – Ryan Gosling

Like Fassbender, the conventional wisdom was that Canadian Ryan Gosling would become the rave of mainstream Hollywood with an Oscar nomination. One wonders though if Gosling’s own talent did him a disservice by turning in two strong leading performances in both The Ides of March and Drive, thus dividing Academy voters and allowing a wild card candidate snake his spot. One thing’s for sure, if Gosling’s making an enemy’s list, then Demián Bichir will be joining Ryan Reynolds – who scored People’s Sexiest Man of the Year over Gosling last year – on it.

3) Best Actress – Tilda Swinton

Granted, We Need to Talk About Kevin didn’t garner a lot of pre-release buzz, and technically doesn’t even open in theatres until next month, but coming off it’s festival run, a lot of critics (including this one) were floored by the performance by Tilda Swinton. Plus, Swinton is an indie darling, and is frequently at the forefront for any awards discussion. Those two points considered, it was thought a lock for Swinton to become the dark horse candidate in the Best Actress race, but perhaps in a highly competitive year, no one was able to get to the Kevin screener in time to vote. Plausibly, that’s the only excuse we can think of.

4) Best Actress – Emma Stone

I guess there was only one spot on the Academy ballot open for a young ingénue in the Best Actress category, and Rooney Mara got it. Emma Stone, meanwhile, is the only cast member amongst The Help’s four leading ladies to not get a nomination, which is odd considering that Stone’s character drives a lot of the plot in the film. Many were of the opinion that Stone was Oscar-worthy last year for her role in Easy A, but she still has a bright future ahead of her, so maybe she’ll get her due a little bit further in the future.

5) Best Supporting Actor – Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen

Bizarrely, Hugo, as the film leading the Oscar race with 11 total nominations, didn’t receive a single acting nomination. But it really should have, and the chief candidates are Sir Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen. Kingsley does beautiful work as cinema pioneer Georges Méliès, who, thanks to the titular hero, rediscovers the power and magic of his own work despite his deep regret and misgivings. Cohen, meanwhile, does a fantastic job of portraying the Station Inspector as a human being, rather than just a kid-hating bully that stalks the platforms and concourses, and the little romantic subplot the Inspector has with Emily Mortimer’s florist was lovely.

6) Best Supporting Actor – Albert Brooks

Ordinarily, a comedic actor stepping outside his comfort zone and adapting a more dramatic persona, and doing so successfully, is cause for celebration by the Academy. Tell that to Albert Brooks, whose villainous turn in Drive was one of many snubs to that film (including aforementioned leading man, Gosling). It wasn’t just that Brooks was playing the villain, but it’s that he was genuinely menacing. The final confrontation in the restaurant between Gosling and Brooks is an absolute lightening rod of tension, but was it perhaps too intense for Academy voters?

7) Best Animated Feature – The Adventures of Tintin

The powerhouse team-up of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, both favourites of the Academy, should have secured a spot for their brilliant collaboration on this adaptation of the beloved French comic. But alas, in the highly competitive field of Animated Feature, even name value can’t help you. (See: Pixar’s lack of a nod for Cars 2, their first miss in the 11 year history of the award.) Perhaps there’s an argument that can be made for a Motion Capture Performance award considering Andy Serkis’ snub for his role as the leading rebellious ape in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the notion of which intrigued everyone, though no one really expected it to happen. Still, such work is becoming more common, although the Academy is typically slow to respond to such changes, hence an award for Motion-Capture may be still a few years off.

8) Best Art Direction – Anonymous

Say what you want about Roland Emmerich’s Shakespearacy drama, but the vividness with which he brought 16th century London to life on the screen, and on a total budget that looks like peanuts when stacked against other contenders for the Art Direction Oscar, is truly impressive. Leaving the theatre after Anonymous you feel like checking your shoes for mud, and the detailing is so impressive that you feel like they went back in time to film in London of old. When you spend $200 million on a movie, you expect the best, but to get it on what is, comparatively, a shoe-string, is something special indeed.

9) Best Visual Effects – Sucker Punch

Granted, Sucker Punch was raked over the coals but good when it was released last year, but its technical achievements helped saved it to a degree. The effects artists behind Sucker Punch crafted five different, full-realized virtual fantasy realms and several monsters there in, from dragons attacking a medieval castle to a super samurai robot with massive machine gun in feudal Japan. The fantasy in Sucker Punch is staggering for its impressiveness, and won kudos from a lot of fans for bringing it to life, even if the story it was hung on left much to be desired.

10) Best Picture – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Not only was the final Harry Potter one of the most financially successful movies of the year, but it was also one of the best reviewed. So it came as a disappointment to many people when it wasn’t given a Best Picture nod. Naturally, no one expected it to get the same odds as, say, The Artist or Hugo, but it was the learned opinion of many that one of the reasons an up-to-10 slate of Best Picture nominees was created was to honour films, like Harry Potter or The Dark Knight, which were critical and commercial successes, yet may lean more towards the commercial than the critical. It’s worth noting that the highest-rated Oscar telecast in the last 20 years was 1998, the year Titanic was up for a record-tying 14 nominations. Coincidence?

11) Best Song – Everyone

Just two nominations for Best Song out of potential slate that included music from the likes of Mary J. Blige, Elton John and Golden Globe winner Madonna? Of all the surprises coming out of the Oscar nominations, this is perhaps the most confounding. Why only two nominees out of 39 shortlisted candidates? It has to do with Academy rules where the Academy’s 236 musician members (including Eric Clapton and Bryan Adams) screen clips of each song. Each song is given a score from 6 to 10 by each member, and only songs given an overall average rating of 8.25 or more are considered nominees. At the same time, the song in question has to be “a clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition … of both lyric and melody” and must be presented either in the movie itself or as the first song of the credits.

So is it time to reconsider the rules for the Best Song Oscar? One would think so if one of the only other possible Best Song nominees include a tune that Madonna tacked onto the end of W.E. last minute, as she basically admitted at the Globes earlier this month. How about Carey Mulligan’s haunting rendition of “New York, New York” in Shame, or Karen O, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ version of “Immigrant Song,” which fired us into The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with such vigour. If the Academy wants to attract a younger audience, I can think of no better place to start then Best Song, no matter how many times they give an Oscar to Three 6 Mafia.

Written by :

Adam