Dream Academy Award Nominations 2013! Part 2

The nominations for the 85^th Academy Awards will be released on January 10^th, just a few days from today, and will, as history has taught us, provide endless frustration for cinephiles everywhere.

But you have already read my thoughts on that. In Part 1 of this feature, published last week, I explained the purpose of this little imagination exercise. Here’s the short version: The Academy Awards annoy me, I still think it is valuable to recognize individual achievements in filmmaking, and so I have put together my Dream Academy Award Nominations – a set of artists and films I would personally nominate if I put on an awards show, or, putting it another way, the artists and films I would like to see nominated in an alternate universe where the Oscars know what they are doing.

These are not, as I explained last time, predictions for what the nominees will be. There is little value in making such prognostications, as the Oscars are habitually predictable, and habitually boring in their picks. I hope my choices are a little more eclectic, and if you find yourself dissatisfied, please feel free to offer your own Dream nominees in the comments. There are plenty of excellent choices to go around. I should note that these picks are, in part, based on my ballot for the 2012 Denver Film Critics Society awards, which I voted in last week.

Because there are a lot of categories to get through – I am doing everything except the Short Film categories, Documentary, and Foreign Language – I am presenting this feature in two parts. As noted earlier, Part 1 focused on the technical categories, while today’s second and final installment dives into the big awards, like acting, writing, directing, and best picture.

Enjoy!

Begin reading on the next page…

Faiz

Loved your list, Jonathan!!!!! There were some choices that i didn’t countenance with (i thought Jessica Chastain was marvelous in Zero Dark Thirty, Jennifer Lawrence was ok and all, but Chastain managed to convey so much with little dialogue in the picture, it was a very demanding role with tough traits and she pulled it off splendidly), and i thought Jim Broadbent’s performance in the 2012 story in Cloud Atlas was one of the best supporting performances of the year, i’d pick him over Ben Whishaw anytime if one of them gets a chance at a nod in the academy)

But yeah, we all agree Django Unchained is the movie of the year. Tarantino crafted an epic movie that managed to edge out all his movies in the last 18 years by a long shot (don’t u think the movie is somehow a refined version of IB?, i mean the dinner scene clearly was a semi-redo of the bar scene in IB {u know what i mean, given how the scene went }), all in all, it’s ranked within my top 3 in Tarantino’s repertoire, just below Pulp Fiction and Reservoir dogs, and Tarantino’s best director trophy is 18 years overdue.

And by the way, no love for Argo. I thought it was a damn solid pic filled with superb performances and precise direction which made everything come together nicely.