What Are We Angriest About This Oscar Nomination Morning?

The Oscar nominations have been announced. The publicists have made their phone calls. Now all that's left is the searing anger over who didn't make the cut.

In order of vehemence, here are the omissions (don't call them "snubs" or Mark Harris will yell at you) that got most people fired up on nomination morning.

Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks Not Nominated In: Best Actress in a Leading Role

It's not that everybody was very excited about awards attention for Saving Mr. Banks. It's generally been received as pleasant awards-bait fluff at best, dull Disney mythmaking at worst. But everybody could at least agree that Emma Thompson was wonderful, or at least charming, in the role of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, and moreover, that Thompson herself—not nominated since Sense & Sensibility in 1995—would be an invaluable addition to an awards season that can become a slog so easily. We've seen the GIFs. God only knows what kind of mom-dancing shenanigans Emma and Oscar host Ellen Degeneres could have gotten up to. 

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Tom Hanks, Captain Phillips Not Nominated For: Best Actor in a Leading Role

Somebody was going to get left out in the cold in Best Actor. Multiple somebodies, actually. There were just too many strong contenders. Oscar bloggers had already begun to suspect that Robert Redford—once a strong possibility to win for All Is Lost—would get the boot, after not being nominated by SAG. But Hanks felt safer, especially with a prospective Best Picture nod for Captain Phillips. That nomination came about, but Hanks, the President of Hollywood, managed to get overlooked for his best performance in years. And for Christian Bale's walking combover of a performance, too.

Inside Llewyn Davis Not Nominated For: Very nearly anything

Aside from nominations for its sound mixing and Bruno Delbonnel's cinematography, the Coen brothers' rapturously reviewed film was shut out. Which is apparently a huge surprise? Aside from a possible Screenplay nomination, I'm not sure what categories were expected to fall into the Llewyn Davis column. Oscar Isaac is brilliant in the movie, but Best Actor was clearly too crowded with bigger stars and more awarded performances. Best Picture? It seems a stretch that the Academy would go for a movie so overtly downbeat and misanthropic. Of course, they nominated A Serious Man in 2009, so maybe the hope was justified.  

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Daniel Bruhl, Rush Not Nominated In: Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Poor Chris Hemsworth, called upon to read the Oscar nominations on a morning when his film, Rush, suffered a complete shutout, including a miss in Supporting Actor for his co-star Bruhl, who had received nominations from the Golden Globes and SAG, two fairly reliable Oscar predictors. It's tempting to take comfort in the idea that Oscar voters bristled at the idea of nominating Bruhl, who was clearly a co-lead in Rush, in the supporting category, but that didn't seem to be much of a deterrent to nominating Julia Roberts for August: Osage County or Bradley Cooper in American Hustle.

Stories We Tell Not Nominated In: Best Documentary Feature

Sarah Polley's fun, warm, inventive doc was one of the best films of the year. That it missed out on a nomination is not entirely surprising, given the conservative nature of the Academy and what may have been their resistance to awarding something that broke from the form as boldly as this does. The snub (sorry) only feels galling when you see that the grating Dirty Wars got nominated in its place.

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Sean Bobbitt, Hans Zimmer, 12 Years a Slave Not Nominated In: Best Cinematography, Best Original Score

With nine total nominations, the 12 Years a Slave team doesn't really have much to be sad about. But two particular nominees in the tech categories probably have a pretty solid beef. Bobbitt's omission on its face isn't a huge outrage—the competition in that category is always pretty stiff—it's when you look at his body of work that things start to get frustrating. Just this year, Bobbitt delivered exemplary work on not only 12 Years but also The Place Beyond the Pines and Byzantium. Similarly, Zimmer had a banner year for scores, with Rush and Man of Steel accentuating his 12 Years a Slave compositions. 

American Hustle Not Nominated In: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

How did this happen? HOW? How could an Academy that saw fit to nominate American Hustle in 10 categories, that recognized its deeply uneven cast in all four acting categories, HOW could they fail to recognize its most prominent virtue: that hair. Alllllll that hair. This is an actual travesty.  

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This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/01/what-are-we-angriest-about-oscar-nomination-morning/357083/

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