Avatar and The Hurt Locker each earned nine Oscar nominations as the
For the first time the number of "Best Picture" nominations was expanded from five to ten, which made for some interesting additions to the list that was expected to include Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, Precious and Inglourious Basterds. Sandra Bullock’s feel-good family/football saga, The Blind Side wasn’t much of a stretch, but the sci-fi sleeper District 9, the Coen brother’s saga of a modern Job, A Serious Man, and the coming-of-age saga, An Education probably wouldn’t have received much consideration in a smaller field—and for only the second time ever, an animated film, Pixar’s Up was nominated for “Best Picture.” Now if the academy can just see its way clear to honor something that is really difficult, like creating a great comedy film, true enlightenment will be at hand.
Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo did not receive a “Best Animated Feature” nod. The five films nominated in the category include Up plus the stop motion features Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as the 2-D hand-drawn offerings The Princess and the Frog, and The Secret of Kells.
As usual comedy films got short shrift. The Hangover, which broke all the box office records for a comedy film was shut out. Other notable omissions (aside from Ponyo) include J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek, which did well with both audiences and critics, but received only four technical nominations (“Makeup,” “Visual Effects,” “Sound Editing,” and “Sound Mixing”), and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, which received just two (“Art Direction,” and “Original Score”).
