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Jedi |
Complete list of 81st annual Academy Award nominations
1. Best Picture: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "The Reader," "Slumdog Millionaire." 2. Actor: Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor"; Frank Langella, "Frost/Nixon"; Sean Penn, "Milk"; Brad Pitt, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Mickey Rourke, "The Wrestler." 3. Actress: Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"; Angelina Jolie, "Changeling"; Melissa Leo, "Frozen River"; Meryl Streep, "Doubt"; Kate Winslet, "The Reader." 4. Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, "Milk"; Robert Downey Jr., "Tropic Thunder"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Doubt"; Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"; Michael Shannon, "Revolutionary Road." 5. Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, "Doubt"; Penelope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"; Viola Davis, "Doubt"; Taraji P. Henson, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Marisa Tomei, "The Wrestler." 6. Director: David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Ron Howard, "Frost/Nixon"; Gus Van Sant, "Milk"; Stephen Daldry, "The Reader"; Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire." 7. Foreign Film: "The Baader Meinhof Complex," Germany; "The Class," France; "Departures," Japan; "Revanche," Austria; "Waltz With Bashir," Israel. 8. Adapted Screenplay: Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; John Patrick Shanley, "Doubt"; Peter Morgan, "Frost/Nixon"; David Hare, "The Reader"; Simon Beaufoy, "Slumdog Millionaire." 9. Original Screenplay: Courtney Hunt, "Frozen River"; Mike Leigh, "Happy-Go-Lucky"; Martin McDonagh, "In Bruges"; Dustin Lance Black, "Milk"; Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon and Pete Docter, "WALL-E." 10. Animated Feature Film: "Bolt"; "Kung Fu Panda"; "WALL-E." 11. Art Direction: "Changeling," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "The Duchess," "Revolutionary Road." Full Academy Awards Coverage Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009 at Noon ET: The Oscar Nominations |
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Enthusiast |
I'm sorry, but Benjamin Button does not deserve 13 nominations.
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Jedi |
Is it that important to pick the most grandiose film for this award even when the movie is a steaming pile of self-conscious garbage? I agree. What a travesty. _______________________ I deal with criticism |
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Enthusiast |
Benjamin Button most certainly deserves to win Art Direction, Special Effects, Cinematography, and Costume Design. That's all. Certainly not Best Picture, and certainly not Best Actor - I honestly can't believe that Brad Pitt even got nominated for this (especially after not getting nominated for Assassination Of Jesse James in 2007). It was an astonishingly flat performance.
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"Forum Moderator" Super Bad-Ass Jedi |
I wouldn't even go that far. Visual Effects, yes. Make up, sure. I'd say the Art Direction in The Dark Night is way better. And though the cinematography was good, I don't think it was better than Slumdog Millionaire. ----- Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste. |
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Know-It-All |
Because apparently giving Brad Pitt's character highlights makes him 30 years younger? Benjamin Button was, to me, a contrived piece of garbage that recalled the South Park episode where Rob Schneider played a stapler in an upcoming movie. |
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Jedi |
The movie mildly amused me, while kind of fucking enchanting a lot of the people I watched it with. I thought it would remain a middling affair that I could safely forget, but now I'm forced to contemplate the movie in a whole new light... and it makes me want to spread venom around -- make people miserable for supporting and sustaining whatever evolutionary booboo lead to this. Blah.
_______________________ I deal with criticism |
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Jedi |
Hopefully I'm in good company as I made the case for why this movie is among the best of 2008 (see Benjamin Thread Under the Drama Forum).
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Participant |
I can see the reasoning as to why Benjamin Button made the best movie list -- after all there is something epic about it and it's just not a silly bombastic type epic -- but I can't really understand all the acclaim for Frost/Nixon and Milk. These two seem like movies that people will forget entirely in a couple of years. Milk at least had some interesting use of technique, but Frost/Nixon seemed very, very forgettable to me. In the same vein, I think Revolutionary Road will eventually be seen as a classic of sorts. I am guessing that the two bio-pics are what people refer to as relevant- which seems to perhaps hint that they really may not have much lasting value. Are these two films really best picture caliber?
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Jedi |
I haven't seen Milk so I can't really respond to well regarding it, though its subject matter seems to resonate particularly well in Hollywood. As for Frost/Nixon, while I personally didn't have it among my top ten movies of the year, having lived through the period of time, having had President Nixon as my President, there were some fascinating proposed insights of the disgraced President that brought a human dimension never disclosed before. I never saw the Frost interview, but Watergate was among the most important of United States political events of the last Century. While the were problems with the movie, and I had some with Frank Langella's characterization of the President, the overall presentation was impressive and the revelations profound. For other critics, this movie could have easily had a powerful impact on them. |
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"Forum Moderator" Super Bad-Ass Jedi |
I saw Frost/Nixon this weekend, and while I thought it was good, it didn't blow me away. Normally, I'd say it was the type of movie that would get Frank Langella an acting nomination and not much else. It was still a million times better than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button though. ----- Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste. |
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Jedi |
I've seen both Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I really connected with the later movie a lot more - it spoke to me much more deeply about important everyday matters - about growing old and dying, enjoying life, meaningful and passing relationships. These topics are universal and speak to the heart not the mind of individuals. What I wonder is if some people are looking for the fantastic in this movie because of the unusual feature of this movie and thus overlooking the more basic and inherent nature of primary values that this movie represents. |
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Enthusiast |
I don't know if I would call Frost/Nixon Best Picture caliber but I thought it was well done and enjoyable. I would also place it above Benjamin Button.
I finally saw both Slumdog Millionaire and Milk over the weekend - both were excellent, though Milk was, in my opinion, the better film. Slumdog was most certainly exhilarating - visually stunning and carefully put together. However, I did have my gripes with it: the entire premise of the film was one that required some major suspension of belief. And while the Bollywood dance number was tastefully done, was it really necessary? Dale, why did you not care for Milk? In addition to Sean Penn's incredible performance (in an entire cast of stellar performances), I thought that it flowed well, was involving and thought-provoking, and impeccable in depicting Milk's life in two short hours. (I also feel that, at this point in time, it's also a very important film historically, but that's another discussion.) As it stands, The Reader is the only Best Picture nominee I haven't seen, and unless that blows me away, I'll be rooting for Milk. |
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Jedi |
So many complaints about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button so few actual reasons or explanations. Not very convincing commentaries so far.
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Enthusiast |
Although you and I have discussed this some in the Benjamin Button thread, I'll try to provide some deeper commentary for your benefit.
 ***SPOILERS*** I was hesitant about seeing Benjamin Button because I had seen such mixed reviews about it - some said it was a beautiful and touching film (similar to what you're saying), others said it was drawn out and dull. Regardless, I decided to give it a shot, not least because I really like David Fincher as a director and have a fair amount of respect for Brad Pitt as an actor. I really enjoyed the first hour or so - from when Benjamin was born up about until the war scene and the boat sinks. I was settling into the rhythm of the film, enjoying the art direction and the cinematography, interested in where the story was heading next. But after that, things started heading downhill. My first complaint (actually identical to the main gripe I had with Slumdog Millionaire) is that the entire driving force of the movie - Benjamin and Daisy's love - was incomprehensible to me. The pair met briefly when they were younger (well, you know what I mean), and bump into each other at sporadic intervals throughout their life. What common interests or similarities do they have that keep drawing them back to each other? What is it about Benjamin that makes Daisy want to have sex with him so badly in that one scene? I had no idea why they were "in love," and, because of that, I had no desire to hope for them to be together. So once that conflict became the main focus of the story, I lost interest. It didn't help that I felt that the film was grasping at strings: there were several scenes which I felt could have been cut easily (the scene in which Daisy shows up at Benjamin's hotel room and they have sex, for example, did absolutely nothing to advance the plot of the film - if Fincher intended to show the increasing disconnect between the pair, I'm sure he could have found a much more interesting way) and simply served to stretch the film out. The film I was looking forward to seeing - how Benjamin reacted to the places he went and the people he met - went up in a puff of smoke. Not only does the film move away from Benjamin's journeys through the weird and the wonderful, it moves away from documenting any reaction that Benjamin has to anything. The captain dies? Aw, shucks. I have to leave the woman I love because a teenager won't be a good father? Well, all right. Where the hell was the inner conflict? By the time the film got back around to showing Benjamin's development - and a 10 year old with dementia is a fascinating concept - I frankly didn't much care anymore, and it didn't help that the final years of Benjamin's life were shown in a whirlwind. The final cherry on the cake was I kept hoping that everything - the backwards clock, the lightning strikes, the anticlimactic sequence involving Daisy getting hit by the car - would come together in the end, and it never did. I honestly was bored by the time the credits started rolling, and when someone who loves 3 hour long movies (There Will Be Blood was my no. 1 for 2007 and Assassination Of Jesse James was in my top 5) starts squirming in their seat at the halfway mark, it's a bad sign. You talk of being touched by the film's massive themes of life and death, enjoying life, meaningful relationships, all of which are things I felt the film took stabs at and missed. I have no problem with quiet films or stories that document the ordinary. But even ordinary people have reactions, interact with their lives. Benjamin Button, on the other hand, simply stood still and watched life passing him by. |
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"Forum Moderator" Super Bad-Ass Jedi |
It did require suspension of disbelief, but the whole theme of the movie was the idea that destiny was Jamal's driving force. It was intended to be a sort of modern fairy tale. ----- Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste. |
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"Forum Moderator" Super Bad-Ass Jedi |
I think we've given a lot of good reasons for not liking Button. I don't have time to write a huge essay on it, but for me it mostly boils down to the fact that they took what was an interesting premise for a film (a man aging backwards) and wasted it on a very run-of-the-mill romance story. I'm not against romance, but as laughingstock noted, the romance between Benjamin and Daisy was completely unbelievable. She spends a lot of the movie aloof and treating him like crap, yet he continues to be drawn to her. To expand on laughingstock's "Aw Shucks" statement, no one in this movie seems to have any emotional reaction to anything. Benajamin is completely unaffected by everything, and no one seems the least bit shocked that this is a dude who ages backwards. The big question I had was what was the purpose of having Benjamin age backwards? It didn't seem to impact the story. We've seen this same story with normally aging people. It would've been nice if somehow his condition impacted the story in a way that a normal person wouldn't have. As it stands, all I saw was wasted potential. ----- Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste. |
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Participant |
The problem I had with Milk is that it really did not have much of a storyline. It did a wonderful job of conveying information and a message, but it had no story to hold it together very well. It was basically a string of events that often seemed unmotivated and unexplained. A person looks in Milk's window and is suddenly living with Milk. A guy passes by, goes to Spain, and is suddenly a leading activist. If the movie were not based on reality, would we accept such sloppy story telling? Even in good documentaries, there is usually more effort given to explaining how one event leads to another. I think they tried to compensate for the poor storytelling with the device of Milk recording in the tape recorder, but that just didn't even make sense. He would have been recording it long before he was ever killed. |
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Jedi |
Dear Laughingstock: Your response was very well thought out, very insightful containing some of the most meaningful explanations and justifications for why you didn't like this movie. Your descriptive prose even lends to nice basis for quality scriptwriting (in the positive sense). I completely can understand why you ended up disappointed with this movie and I can definitely respect you for your opinion. The reason I liked this movie so much may have something to do with our very different perceptions about the "love" component of this movie. I thoroughly accepted and connected with the quality and authenticity of the emotional connection between the characters in this movie. I have had these feelings, emotions, desires, fantasies, the hopes...My experience with love cannot be justified or explained in perhaps the way you were hoping to observe in this movie. The love connection here "just is." There is no tangible reason, no chemical analytical research, theory, hypothesis to be laid out on paper and explained. Such is my own experience with love and that is one of the chaotic, ying and yang curses about this emotion, that it is both a passionate, illogical, irrational bonding that can both liberate esctasy and condemn one to permanent sorrow. I understood the brief sexual encounters and in this movie I was able to see as a densely layered, qualitatively varied experience to sex, the intimate and the passing in the night versions which made for me, this movie much more rich and real for it allowed me to experience the reality of portions of my life as well as brief sequences of what might have been or could have been, thus expanding my emotional and mental scope of what life has been for me and could have been for me and most importantly what it might be for me. |
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Participant |
I bought into the love story but it bothered me also the way the film just quit following the life of Benjamin for a dozen or so years. To me those years would have been the most curious of all -- a young guy with the viewpoint of an old man with an increasing awareness of death. I kind of wonder if the reason for this was simply that Brad Pitt (or perhaps anyone - except maybe Dustin Hoffman in his prime) could not have acted this role. Special effects would not have helped so acting would really have been necessary. The abrupt cut kind of ruined the love story for me. He can come back for a little sex but can't stick around to grow old and take care of a kid! What kind of love is that? |
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