‘No Country,’ ‘Blood’ up for 8 Oscars each
No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, a pair of dark dramas about life, death and avarice in the American Southwest, led the pack with eight nods apiece as the 80th Academy Awards nominations were announced this morning in Beverly Hills.
No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, a pair of dark dramas about life, death and avarice in the American Southwest, led the pack with eight nods apiece as the 80th Academy Awards nominations were announced this morning in Beverly Hills.
No Country for Old Men, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and There Will Be Blood, from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, will compete for best picture alongside Michael Clayton, Juno and Atonement.
Michael Clayton, with George Clooney in the title role as a law firm "fixer" in dire personal and professional straits, received seven nominations, including best actor for Clooney, supporting actor (Tom Wilkinson) and actress (Tilda Swinton), and director, for the Hollywood scribe Tony Gilroy, in his behind-the-camera debut. Likewise, Atonement received seven nominations.
While Michael Clayton hails from a major studio - Warner Bros. - much of the recognition meted out by Academy members went to studio-owned art house divisions and independents. Juno, the snappy indie crowd-pleaser starring Ellen Page as an unwed teen giving her baby up for adoption, received four nominations: best picture, lead actress, director and original screenplay.
Saoirse Ronan, playing the profoundly reckless child of Atonement, did receive a supporting actress nomination. She is 13. Ruby Dee, honored in the same category for American Gangster - and the only African American in this year's acting groups - is 83.
In addition to Clooney, nominees for actor in a lead role are Daniel Day-Lewis for his oilman-gone-mad performance in There Will Be Blood, Johnny Depp as a bloodthirsty coiffeur in the macabre musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tommy Lee Jones as a father investigating his son's death in In the Valley of Elah, and Viggo Mortensen as a tattooed Russian mobster in Eastern Promises.
In the lead actress category, the young Canadian Page is joined by Cate Blanchett for her regal turn in Elizabeth: The Golden Age; Julie Christie in the Alzheimer's love story, Away From Her; Marion Cotillard for her portrait of French songbird Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose; and Laura Linney as a woman who has to put her failing father in a nursing home in The Savages. Linney is the sole American in the bunch.
Blanchett pulled off a neat trick: In addition to her nomination in a lead role, she got a nod for a supporting role, as the skinny, '60s Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, respectively. This is the 11th time that an actor or actress has scored dual nominations the same year. Jamie Foxx last did so, in 2004.
In the supporting actor category, Casey Affleck was recognized for The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (he plays Ford); Javier Bardem got a much-deserved salute for his eerie turn as a grim reaper with a weird haircut in No Country for Old Men; Philip Seymour Hoffman was nominated for his scene-stealing CIA guy in Charlie Wilson's War; and British thespian Wilkinson for Michael Clayton. Hal Holbrook, the veteran stage and screen star, received his first-ever nomination, for a heartbreaking turn in Into the Wild. He will turn 83 a week before the Oscar ceremonies.
Amy Ryan, who plays a hardscrabble Bostonian with an abducted child in Gone Baby Gone, joins Blanchett, Dee, Ronan and Swinton in the supporting actress group.
In the animated feature category, Ratatouille, Brad Bird's culinary cartoon about a gourmet rodent, Surf's Up, featuring a gaggle of wave-riding penguins, and Persepolis, a black-and-white memoir about growing up in post-shah Iran, are the three nominees.
Of local note, "Freeheld," a documentary short from Cynthia Wade and Vanessa Roth chronicling the legal battle of a same-sex couple to win death benefits in New Jersey, received a nomination. And Tamara Jenkins, a former Lower Merion High student with strong ties to the area, received an original screenplay nomination for The Savages, which she also directed.
The documentary feature category includes two films dealing with the Iraq War No End In Sight and Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience; Michael Moore's health care expose, Sicko; Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, and Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine's War/Dance.
Not nominated this year are Denzel Washington, who was considered to have had a good shot in both the acting (American Gangster) and directing (The Great Debaters) categories; Josh Brolin, who's pretty darn amazing in No Country for Old Men; and Philip Seymour Hoffman for his other great 2007 turns: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and The Savages (he plays Linney's brother). Into the Wild, directed by Sean Penn, was expected by many to make a better showing. Along with Holbrook's kudo, it received but one nomination, for editing.
The telecast of the 80th Academy Awards is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 24, at 8 p.m. on ABC-TV. Gil Cates, producer of the ceremony, has said that the show will go on, even if the crippling strike by the Writers Guild is still in effect. According to Variety, Cates and company are drawing up plans for an alternate Oscar event that would depend less on scripted presentations and more on pre-taped segments that would allow stars and filmmakers to be seen by a worldwide audience without having to cross a picket line.
Jon Stewart is this year's host.