The Academy mostly got it right ... so why do the noms feel so boring?

By Sean Axmaker
Special to MSN Movies

Remember when the Academy Award nominations were full of excitement and glitz and even a few surprises? Maybe the Academy wasn't always right, but the Oscars served as the heavyweight title fight after the preliminary bouts of critics groups and professional guilds as well as the gold standard next to the tinsel and brass of the Golden Globes. Pick your own metaphor — the Oscars were the beginning and ending of almost every argument because, for better or worse, they're the only award that mattered.

Somehow it's become an anticlimax, the final party in an absurdly overcrowded season of awards proms. This year the nominations are less a stamp of authority than a consensus, a summing up of everything that has come before it.

To its credit, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences spread the wealth this year, showering major and minor nominations on a couple dozen indies, sprawling international co-productions, foreign-language features, and hey, even a hit movie or two. And note the Academy's uncharacteristic restraint and generosity: Nomination leader "Dreamgirls" didn't score a Best Picture or Best Director nom while Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" — a film entirely in Japanese with English subtitles — was recognized for both.

What lacks are surprises: few obscure or overlooked triumphs bestowed with a benediction from the traditionally mainstream organization, and fewer still mediocrities crashing the party out of industry devotion to the blockbuster mentality. There's plenty over which to disagree, but little to whip up a frothy state of righteous indignation.

Given that, here is our report card on Oscar's slights and oversights. They shoulda been contenders.

Best Picture
The absence of "Dreamgirls" is the most talked about shocker, but the glaring omission is Paul Greengrass' intelligent and measured "United 93." The film was honored by multiple critics groups. Greengrass scored a director nomination as a consolation, but the film was nudged out by the crowd-pleasing Sundance favorite "Little Miss Sunshine." Perhaps the national wounds of Sept. 11 are still too fresh for us to confront, but his respectful tribute to the simple heroism of Americans in an unthinkable situation is all the more remarkable for the human portraits that emerge from the chaos.

Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" has overshadowed his earlier, more shaded and complex "Flags of Our Fathers," my choice for his best film of the year. The tense dystopian thriller "Children of Men" is perhaps too morose for Academy voters, the rich indie drama "Old Joy" too small and intimate next to the more attention-grabbing nominees, and David Lynch's "Inland Empire" too confounding.

Best Actress
Kudos to the Academy for recognizing the amazing work of Best Actor nominee Ryan Gosling in "Half Nelson," but how did they miss the equally fine work of Shareeka Epps as his smart and sensitive student slowly being sucked into the world of drug dealing? Neither naïve nor wise beyond her years, she's just a talented inner-city teen whose promise is being smothered in disillusionment and resignation. Epps gives her both the strength and the vulnerability that makes her story vital and moving.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's volatile turn as a recovering addict and emotional wreck on the verge of self-destruction in "Sherrybaby" is the kind of performance that would have secured a nomination in any other year. Gretchen Mol gave a superb, understated performance in the otherwise underwhelming "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Laura Dern's fearless performance in Lynch's thoroughly unconventional "Inland Empire" proves once again that she is one of our most underrated and underutilized actresses.

Best Actor
The old show-biz aphorism warns that dying is easy and comedy is hard but neglects to mention just how hard it is to get comedy noticed by Academy voters. They gravitate toward the "serious" and tend to relegate comedy performances to supporting categories (Meryl Streep's nom for "The Devil Wears Prada" being a notable exception). That's one reason why we don't see Sacha Baron Cohen as the unctuous, anti-Semitic, America-loving Eastern European journalist in the docu-farce "Borat." I imagine another reason is the aging membership of the Academy; the edgy, aggressive humor of Borat turned out to be quite polarizing.

Nowhere near as controversial and almost as funny is Aaron Eckhart as the unapologetically obfuscating tobacco lobbyist in the satire "Thank You for Smoking." Leonardo DiCaprio is arguably better as the desperate undercover cop in mortal panic in "The Departed" than the mercenary smuggler in "Blood Diamond" for which he was nominated, but that's splitting hairs. One worthy performance ignored by all is Matt Dillon's turn as the disaffected part-time writer and full-time drinker in "Factotum."

Supporting Actress
Last year, the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle gave Vera Farmiga incalculable buzz with a Best Actress award for "Down to the Bone," a film practically unseen by the rest of the country. This year she has made good on the attention with a scene-stealing turn as a Russian prostitute in "Breaking and Entering" and a fascinatingly off-balance and almost fragile performance as a psychiatrist with a specialty at treating traumatized cops in "The Departed." The Academy still hasn't noticed her, but at least the rest of us are finally getting a chance.

In lower key is Sandra Bullock's snug, lived-in performance as Truman Capote's assistant (and soon-to-be author) Nelle Harper Lee in "Infamous," the second film in as many years about Capote writing "In Cold Blood." Also noteworthy are Emily Blunt's droll turn as a catty fashion magazine assistant to Meryl Streep's blithely bullying boss in "The Devil Wears Prada," Diane Lane as the philandering studio wife in "Hollywoodland," and Rose Byrne as a fragile college girl looking for emotional closure in "The Dead Girl."

Supporting Actor
If someone had predicted a few years ago that I would be championing Ben Affleck as a worthy Oscar contender, I would have rolled my eyes. After "Pearl Harbor" and "Armageddon," not to mention "Gigli" and "Paycheck" and "Surviving Christmas," was there anything left of his once promising talent? In a word, yes. His portrayal of actor George Reeves in "Hollywoodland" is as poignant and authentic a performance as I've seen all year, a gently suggestive study in modest ambition and weary discouragement that he radiates in his every gesture.

Danny Huston's turn as an instinctively sadistic frontier criminal in "The Proposition" is another surprise from the former-director-turned-versatile-character actor. Robert Downey Jr. may be hidden under pulsating lines of animation in "A Scanner Darkly," but his performance is dynamic and unmistakably his own. Michael Sheen has been forgotten in the acclaim for Helen Mirren in "The Queen," and William Hurt is superb as a spiritual leader who confronts his own weakness without vanity in "The King."

Page 2