The Oscar nominations, which were announced in Hollywood on Tuesday, pitted
The
Social Network, a drama about the founding of Facebook, against
The King’s
Speech, a look at how King George VI of Britain conquered his stammering
problem.
The King’s Speech was the all-around leader in the nominations,
with a staggering 12.
The Social Network received a more than respectable eight,
as did Inception, the drama about dream technicians.
RELATED:Like packing a suitcaseA complex journey into our pastThe other nominees
for Best Picture, a category which for the second year in a row includes 10
films, were
Black Swan,
The Fighter,
The Kids Are All Right,
Inception,
True
Grit,
127 Hours,
Winter’s Bone, and
Toy Story 3.
Although Israel has
received Best Foreign Language Film nominations for the last three years in a
row (for the films
Beaufort,
Waltz with Bashir and
Ajami), this year Israel
didn’t make the cut. Israeli director Shlomi Eldar’s documentary,
Precious Life,
was on the short list for a documentary nomination, but in the end did not
receive one.
The Best Director nominees are: Darren Aronofsky for
Black
Swan, David O. Russell for
The Fighter, Tom Hooper for
The King’s Speech, David
Fincher for
The Social Network, and Ethan Coen and Joel Coen for
True
Grit.
Jerusalem-born Natalie Portman, a critics’ and popular favorite for
her performance as a ballerina on the verge of madness in
Black Swan, received a
Best Actress nomination for that film is and the favorite to win. It is the
first Best Actress nomination for Portman, who was nominated in the Best
Supporting Actress category for
Closer in 2005.
Her main competition for
an Oscar win – she already won a Golden Globe for this film – is likely to come
from Annette Bening, who plays a lesbian mother in
The Kids Are All Right.
Bening has been nominated several times but has not won. The other nominees in
this category are Nicole Kidman as a grieving mother in
Rabbit Hole, Michelle
Williams as an unhappy wife in
Blue Valentine, and Jennifer Lawrence as a teen
with a drug-dealing father in a rural area in
Winter’s Bone.
COLIN FIRTH,
who has the title role in
The King’s Speech, is the favorite to win Best Actor.
His competitors are Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in
The
Social Network, James Franco (who will be co-hosting the Oscar telecast, with
actress Anne Hathaway) as a trapped mountaineer in
127 Hours; last year’s
winner, Jeff Bridges, in
True Grit; and Javier Bardem as a petty criminal with a
connection to the supernatural in
Biutiful.
The Best Supporting Actress
nominees are Amy Adams and Melissa Leo from the boxing drama,
The Fighter;
Hailee Steinfeld as a girl out to avenge her father’s death in
True Grit; Helena
Bonham Carter as the king’s wife in
The King’s Speech; and Jacki Weaver in
The
Animal Kingdom, about a crime family.
The Best Supporting Actor nominees
are: Geoffrey Rush as the king’s speech teacher in
The King’s Speech, Christian
Bale as a washed-up boxer who coaches his brother in
The Fighter, Mark Ruffalo
as a perplexed sperm donor in
The Kids Are All Right, and Jeremy Renner as a
bank robber in
The Town.
The many candidates for supporting actor
nominations in
The Social Network – Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer and Justin
Timberlake – apparently canceled each other out.
But the race seems to be
a battle between the two frontrunner films,
Social, which is American and very
much a young people’s film, the other,
King’s, a historical drama involving a
disability, the type of film that is traditionally considered Oscar
bait.
The Social Network, written by Aaron (West Wing) Sorkin, was the
big winner so far this awards season, winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama
and virtually every critics’ award. It seemed like the clear frontrunner, until
The King’s Speech surprisingly won the Producers Guild Award last
week.
The Foreign Language Film nominees for this year are
Biutiful, a
crime/redemption drama from Mexico;
Dogtooth, from Greece, which has been
described as an exotic horror film;
In a Better World, from Denmark, a drama of
the friendship between two families;
Incendies, from Canada, about a family
searching for its Middle Eastern heritage; and Outside the Law, from France, the
story of an Algerian crime family.
There was much controversy, as usual,
about the foreign films that didn’t get nominated.
Many in France were
outraged that
Outside the Law, which is by an Algerian director, was the French
nominee. The Foreign Language film shortlist and nominations are determined by
an executive committee and their choices have often sparked debate in the past.
But Israel’s entry, the Ophir-winning
The Human Resources Manager, was not
considered to be as strong as past candidates.