The Dark Knight, not an Academy favorite this year
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The whole Best Actress category was arguable. Meryl Streep in Doubt: stern and shrill to the point of icy hysteria. Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married: an acute but grating approximation of the last person you'd want at your wedding. Kate Winslet was feted for The Reader, which is an appropriate acknowledgment of a superb performance — except that until today Winslet was deemed a cinch for a Revolutionary Road Best Actress slot, with her Reader gig being demoted to the Supporting Actress category. William Goldman's comment about Hollywood cannot be too often quoted: "Nobody knows anything."
The fifth Best Actress is Melissa Leo, for the indie drama Frozen River. The mention of Leo's name elicited a salvo of cheers from the journalists attending this morning's announcement, for Leo is one of those hard-working artists rarely considered for a lead role. She made the delicate, powerful most of her chance, and the Academy sent her a lovely thank-you. Similar presents went to other non-stars: Richard Jenkins (Actor) for The Visitor, Viola Davis (Supporting Actress) for Doubt, Tajari P. Henson (Supporting Actress) for Benjamin Button and Michael Shannon (Supporting Actor) for Revolutionary Road.
The largest craft in the Academy is the acting fraternity, and these nominations were a benison from people who know that it's easier to do a terrific acting job than to get the job in the first place. That fondness for unknowns and has-beens on the rehab rebound helped propel Mickey Rourke to a Best Actor nomination for The Wrestler, and Robert Downey, Jr., to a Supporting Actor nod for his faux-black Method madman in Tropic Thunder.
The Best Song category also contained some surprises. Less concerned than the Golden Globes were with getting Clint (possible nominee as co-writer of the Gran Torino theme) or the Boss (Springsteen's elegy for The Wrestler) to show up for their televised soiree, the members limited their nominees to three. And two were by Slumdog Millionaire's A.R. Rahman, the all-time top-selling composer who's contributed dozens of hit songs to Bollywood's musical dramas. Which is more than swell, but should guarantee, by default, that the Oscar will go to Peter Gabriel's end-song for WALL-E.
WALL-E was thought to have a chance at a Best Picture slot, but, alas, it was set in the future, not the past — so fuggedaboutit. (Beauty and the Beast remains the only animated feature to be nominated for the top Oscar.) The Israeli animation-cum-documentary Waltz With Bashir missed out in both categories, but was a finalist for Foreign-Language Film, along with the excellent French-schoolroom drama The Class. Among the documentaries, three stand out: the Hurricane Katrina home movie Trouble the Water, Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World (first Oscar nomination in the great German filmmaker's 40-plus-year career) and Man on Wire, which has swept the critics' prizes and, with its cleverly told story of the guy who in 1976 wire-walked from the top of one of the World Trade Center towers to the other, will cap its awards season with an Oscar.
These are a few of the "little" films that mean as much to movie critics as Frost/Nixon, Doubt, Milk and The Reader do to the Academy graybeards. None of these pictures has gained much traction with the Dark Knight crowd — which is to say the mass of moviegoers. To the Batman movie and its admirers, the Academy may as well have shouted, "Get off my screen!" To the young who might have been tempted to stay home on Feb. 22 and watch the Oscar show to see how their favorite big film did, the members' message is clear and cranky: "Don't watch! This is a seniors' party!"