Lincoln leads a strong field of Oscar nominees

Sally Field (left) and Daniel Day-Lewis (right) each received one of Lincoln‘s 12 nominations.

First, a caveat: The Academy Awards are terrible. The Oscars might not be as dire as, say, The Golden Globes — an awards show so doggedly ignorant of good taste it named snoozefests Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel among the ten best movies of last year — but they’re nonetheless representative of a myopic, stylistically conservative, self-congratulatory mainstream Hollywood mindset; the average Oscar voter is old, white, and probably a very big fan of Bruce Vilanch.

It’s a system where the unremarkable but tasteful (The King’s Speech, The Artist) rises to the top while anything fresh and ambitious falls by the wayside. In an environment where prestige trumps innovation, a movie like the soporific Driving Miss Daisy can take home best picture while Spike Lee’s breathtaking Do the Right Thing can be left without a nomination, as happened in 1990.

With that dire track record in mind, yesterday’s announcement of the nominees for the 85th Academy Awards arrived as a relative relief. While there were more than a few important (and infuriating) omissions, nearly every film and individual that did receive a nomination was actually deserving of recognition — a rare occurrence indeed from the organization that has previously honored the likes of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Three Six Mafia.

So, why did the Oscars have such a good year? In short, because Hollywood did, too. The awards are a Hollywood institution, focused on Hollywood films first and independent and foreign films second. The last few Oscar ceremonies were so sleepy because most Hollywood fare was too lowbrow for consideration, while the few serious, adult-oriented mainstream releases were dull affairs that played everything very safe in order to maintain as wide an appeal as possible. Anything with any real daring and originality was either too independent (Meek’s Cutoff, Margaret), too foreign (Certified Copy, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), or too violent and genre-oriented (Drive, The Dark Knight) to get noticed beyond the festival circuit.

2012, on the other hand, was full of wide-release films helmed by real auteurs. Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell all returned to theaters last year and all were rewarded with best picture nominations for films that were, in many cases, anything but safe. And, perhaps buoyed by the mainstream’s newfound adventurous spirit, the Academy expanded its range ever so slightly to make a place for a foreign film, Michael Haneke’s devastating Amour, and Sundance favorite Beasts of the Southern Wild. Still, don’t expect many surprises when the actual ceremony finally rolls around — this will be a competition dominated by familiar names.

Unsurprisingly, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln leads the pack with 12 nominations, including best picture, best director, best actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), best supporting actor (Tommy Lee Jones) and best supporting actress (Sally Field). With the combined pedigree of Spielberg, Day-Lewis and Lincoln himself, it may be the most Oscar bait-y movie ever made; it’s also, as Spielberg’s best film since Munich, deserving of the accolades. It shouldn’t inspire cringes among either cinephiles (who’ve been left in the lurch in years past) or voters (who love all things Spielberg) when it inevitably cruises to victory.

Lincoln‘s primary competition for the best picture statuette seemed to be Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker follow-up, hunt-for-Osama thriller Zero Dark Thirty, with Ben Affleck’s Argo as a dark horse. While all are still technically in the running, voters tipped their hand by snubbing both Bigelow — who may have been harmed by (largely idiotic) controversy over Zero Dark Thirty‘s depiction of torture — and Affleck — who may have been harmed by being Ben Affleck — in the best director category.

Life of Pi, which scored 11 nominations, including picture and director for Ang Lee, has the chance to make its case as the best Lincoln alternative over the next few months, but it seems more likely to clean up in the technical categories than to have a real shot at anything quote-unquote “significant.” Its literary cachet and residual voter guilt over snubbing Lee’s Brokeback Mountain in favor of Crash — seriously, Crash — for best picture in 2005 may bolster the film’s chances, but the academy has little love for CGI and 3-D and lots of love for history and Spielberg, so Life of Pi‘s actual chances remain slim at best.

The biggest loser, however, is Paul Thomas Anderson. His reward for managing the Herculean task of somehow crafting a worthy successor to There Will Be Blood (which lost, in one of the best matchups in Oscar history, to No Country for Old Men in 2008) was for The Master — named the best film of the year by this publication and many others — to be ignored in all categories but acting. The nominations for Joaquin Phoenix (actor), Philip Seymour Hoffman (supporting actor) and Amy Adams (supporting actress) are all richly deserved — Phoenix gives a performance for the ages as a wandering Navy veteran with a love of semi-toxic cocktails — but a world where The Master is ignored and Les Misérables (which was granted a best picture nomination despite Russell Crowe singing like a very confused person whose only exposure to music was an old Hootie & the Blowfish CD) is honored is a grim world indeed. Equally dispiriting: snubs for editors Leslie Jones and Peter McNulty, cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. and composer Jonny Greenwood.

At least they’re in good company: Wes Anderson’s (unrelated to Paul) excellent Moonrise Kingdom struck out in all categories except original screenplay. The failure of the academy to recognize the genius of the two Andersons is a reflection of the body’s fundamental conservatism. The Master is a deeply ambiguous film, the kind that lodges itself in your brain for weeks and months after the first viewing, turning itself over, demanding analysis and close attention but resisting easy categorization. It’s a profound experience, but has little in the way of resolution. That’s anathema to Oscar voters, who still hold dear the classical Hollywood storytelling style, which emphasizes closure and narrative unity. Moonrise Kingdom, meanwhile, with its kitschy and self-consciously artificial style, is too mannered and European in sensibility to have broad appeal among voters.

The acting categories held a handful of surprises as well. Day-Lewis and Phoenix were locks from the beginning and remain, respectively, the frontrunner and his best competition. Hugh Jackman was rewarded for being a better singer than the gladiator from Gladiator and the star of Borat with a lead actor nomination, but the second-biggest shock was that Bradley Cooper found his way into the category for Silver Linings Playbook. (The first-biggest shock is that Cooper might actually deserve it.) Denzel Washington rounds out the category with a nomination for Flight, his umpteenth. Nowhere to be found was John Hawkes, the versatile character actor previously nominated for Martha Marcy May Marlene who received buzz for his performance in the otherwise lackluster The Sessions.

On the actress side, the Amour lovefest continued with a richly deserved nomination for 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva. Also nominated: 9-year-old Beasts of the Southern Wild star Quvenzhané Wallis, giving the category one of the widest age ranges in memory. Lots of critical love wasn’t enough to earn Rachel Weisz a nomination for The Deep Blue Sea, nor was Ann Dowd’s self-run campaign to get a supporting actress nod for her role in Compliance capable of getting a talented but unrecognizable actress from a minor indie movie noticed.

The full list of nominees, courtesy of oscar.go.com:

Best Picture

Amour

Argo

Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Django Unchained

Les Miserables

Life Of Pi

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

Best Director

Michael Haneke, Amour

Ang Lee, Life Of Pi

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

Benh Zeitlin, Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Denzel Washington, Flight

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Naomi Watts, The Impossible

Best Supporting Actor

Alan Arkin, Argo

Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Master

Sally Field, Lincoln

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook

Best Original Screenplay

Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom

Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty

John Gatins, Flight

Michael Haneke, Amour

Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Adapted Screenplay

Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin, Beasts Of The Southern Wild

Tony Kushner, Lincoln

David Magee, Life Of Pi

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Chris Terrio, Argo

Best Animated Feature

Brave

Frankenweenie

ParaNorman

The Pirates! Band Of Misfits

Wreck-It Ralph

Best Cinematography

Roger Deakins, Skyfall

Janusz Kaminski, Lincoln

Seamus McGarvey, Anna Karenina

Claudio Miranda, Life Of Pi

Robert Richardson, Django Unchained

Best Costume Design

Colleen Atwood, Snow White And The Huntsman

Paco Delgado, Les Misérables

Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina

Eiko Ishioka, Mirror Mirror

Joanna Johnston, Lincoln

Best Documentary Feature

5 Broken Cameras

The Gatekeepers

How To Survive A Plague

The Invisible War

Searching For Sugar Man

Best Documentary Short

Inocente

Kings Point

Mondays At Racine

Open Heart

Redemption

Best Film Editing

Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers, Silver Linings Playbook

William Goldenberg, Argo

Michael Kahn, Lincoln

Tim Squyres, Life Of Pi

Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Foreign Language Film

Amour (Austria)

Kon-Tiki (Norway)

No (Chile)

A Royal Affair (Denmark)

War Witch (Canada)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Howard Berger, Peter Montagna and Martin Samuel, Hitchcock

Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater and Tami Lane, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell, Les Miserables

Best Original Score

Alexandre Desplat, Argo

Mychael Danna, Life Of Pi

Dario Marianelli, Anna Karenina

Thomas Newman, Skyfall

John Williams, Lincoln

Best Original Song

“Before My Time,” Chasing Ice (music and lyric by J. Ralph)

“Everybody Needs A Best Friend,” Ted (music by Walter Murphy; lyric by Seth MacFarlane)

“Pi’s Lullaby,” Life Of Pi (music by Mychael Danna; lyric by Bombay Jayashri)

“Skyfall,” Skyfall (music and lyric by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth)

“Suddenly,” Les Misérables (music by Claude-Michel Schönberg; lyric by Herbert Kretzmer and Alain Boublil)

Best Production Design

Rick Carter and Jim Erickson, Lincoln

Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, Anna Karenina

David Gropman and Anna Pinnock, Life Of Pi

Dan Hennah, Ra Vincent and Simon Bright, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Eve Stewart and Anna Lynch-Robinson, Les Miserables

Best Animated Short

Adam And Dog

Fresh Guacamole

Head Over Heels

Maggie Simpson In “The Longest Daycare”

Paperman

Best Live Action Short

Asad

Buzkashi Boys

Curfew

Death of a Shadow

Henry

Best Sound Editing

Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn, Argo

Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton, Life of Pi

Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers, Skyfall

Paul N.J. Ottosson, Zero Dark Thirty

Wylie Stateman, Django Unchained

Best Sound Mixing

Ron Bartlett, D.M. Hemphill and Drew Kunin, Life of Pi

Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell and Stuart Wilson, Skyfall

Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes, Les Misérables

Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Ronald Judkins, Lincoln

John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Jose Antonio Garcia, Argo

Best Visual Effects

Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and R. Christopher White, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould and Michael Dawson, Snow White And the Huntsman

Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams and Dan Sudick, Marvel’s The Avengers

Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill, Prometheus

Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott, Life Of Pi