I like to recognize nominees that sound odd as Oscar-nominated each year, like Norbit. I'll get that out of the way before looking at surprises and disappointments. Without further ado, congratulations to "Academy Award Nominees"...
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Makeup & Hairstyling)
The Lone Ranger (Makeup & Hairstyling, Visual Effects)
The Book Thief (Original Score)
Prisoners (Cinematography, Roger Deakins...who will tragically probably not win, yet again)
The Great Gatsby (Costume Design, Production Design)
Lone Survivor (Sound Editing, Sound Mixing)
Karen O of the YeahYeahYeahs (Original Song, Her)
Pharrell Williams (Original Song, Despicable Me 2)
Alone Yet Not Alone (Original Song, a Christian pop song)
The most unbelievable snub: American Hustle was shut out...of Makeup & Hairstyling. If there were a single category it was made to win...
It's easy to poke fun that a Jackass movie has been Academy Award nominated, but I'm completely serious in saying Bad Grandpa is one of my favorite movies of 2013, and captures true modern America better than most documentaries or narrative features do. I have to emphasize once again that I am 100% serious, no joke.
The biggest mistake in my mind is not nominating Thelma Schoonmaker for editing The Wolf of Wall Street. Likewise, how on earth does Pacific Rim not get visual effects and technical nominations?
The Grandmaster received nominations for Cinematography and Costume Design, but not Foreign Language Feature, which genuinely surprised me, based on the money Weinstein Co put into it.
On the Documentary Feature side of things, I want The Square to win most of all. If you haven't seen director Jehane Noujaim's Control Room, you're missing out big-time. I'm sad to see Stories We Tell passed over. Sarah Polley's movie is magnificent, and different than what generally gets recognized as an "Oscar doc". Blackfish is being mourned, generally in the same breath as commentary that it being nominated would have symbolically done so much for animal rights, or that SeaWorld execs must be dancing and high-fiving. The amount of attention it's gotten thus far has done as much as Hollywood awards would likely do for it. There's no way it would've won had it been nominated. It's a very effective television-friendly documentary, but on a completely different scale than the films that did get nominated. I wish it were aired on a US broadcast network during primetime on a weeknight. That would do exponentially more for its cause than an Oscar nod.
Inside Llewyn Davis is a great movie with an outstanding central performance by Oscar Isaac. It'll get latter-day appreciation and love. Will Forte will get the same for his performance in Nebraska.
Did Sony just not submit Evil Dead for Makeup?