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Oscar nominations were just released, and there weren’t many surprises in the bunch. I was happy to see that a few of the movies I really liked got nominated for some stuff (Letters From Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, Little Miss Sunshine, The Prestige, Pan’s Labyrinth). Its a little sad that The Prestige and Pan’s Labyrinth have to go head to head for best cinematography. I would like to see them both win for that. I also really hope that Pan’s wins for best score, because the music was one of the best parts of the movie.

One thing that does surprise me is the nominations for United 93 for Achievement in Directing and Film Editing. Personally, I liked this movie, but I thought I was one of the only people who thought it was any good. I did think it got a little long with the whole, “We don’t know what’s happening with the planes!” thing, however, I thought it did a great job of keeping an intense pace and holding suspense for a movie that everyone already knew the event and the ending. Because of this, I like these nominations. That said, I don’t think it should win, but eventually I am going to have to decide who should win instead of just saying who shouldn’t (as I did in my reaction to the emmy’s).

I don’t think this year should have too many huge surprises in the envelopes, aside from a few categories where it seems to be anybody’s ball game (I really don’t know much about the actress categories, aside from who’s favored). One thing I hope is that Dreamgirls doesn’t take all the sound, costume and art direction type categories just because its a Hollywood musical. I’m really sick of that crap. Chicago is one of the worst movies of the decade and didn’t deserve any awards, but still managed to pull a bunch of them out of nowhere because “everyone” loves a musical.

One thing I find interesting is that this might finally be the year where something finally beats Disney/Pixar for the best animated film. Both of the other two had great animation also and were both considered really good movies. Plus, while I liked cars a lot, it wasn’t as good as their last 3 movies, The Incredibles (still the best movie of 2004), Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc.