With the flurry of awards and nominations coming out in recent weeks, I'm still trying to sort everything out. One thing I know: Gravity is going to be a major Academy Award contender when nominations are announced later this month. I also am sure that 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle will score multiple nominations. Today, the BAFTA Awards nominations were announced, and all three of these films did extremely well.
These so-called "British Oscars" can, and often do, mirror the Academy Awards. Last year, for example, Argo won the Best Picture BAFTA. At the time, some were surprised, but as it turned out, Ben Affleck's excellent drama also took top honors at the Oscars one month later. It doesn't always work out that way, but you can definitely see crystal clear patterns forming this year. I'd already named 12 Years and Gravity as my two favorite movies of 2013, and I'm adding American Hustle now as well. I won't be upset if any of them win, quite honestly.
Gravity, the absolute masterpiece of a movie directed by Alfonso Cuaron, received the most nominations, with 11, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actress for Sandra Bullock. Is there any doubt that Gravity is going to garner a crazy amount of Oscar nominations too? I didn't think so. By the way, if you missed out on seeing Gravity in theaters, know that the film is being re-released on January 17 (the day after Academy Awards nominations are announced). Honestly, I can't stress this enough: See Gravity on the big screen. Spend the cash for 3D. Go for broke with IMAX if you have it.
As for the other major nominations, 12 Years a Slave got 10, including Best Picture, Director, and multiple nods for the cast (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o and Michael Fassbender). All were deserved. And American Hustle did extremely well, also picking up 10 nominations, including a full house of acting awards for the film's outstanding ensemble cast of Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. I do wish Jeremy Renner had been included as well, but this is certainly impressive (and again, totally deserved).
Overall, there were very few surprises with the BAFTA nominations. Martin Scorsese got his nomination for The Wolf of Wall Street (and yes, Leo is also nominated), Cate Blanchett is in for Blue Jasmine and of course, Dame Judi Dench was nominated for Philomena, a film I'm hearing is truly outstanding and certainly worthy of Oscar consideration. And come on, these are the British Academy Film Awards - of course Judi Dench is going to get nominated for her consistently great work. Interestingly enough, Meryl Streep was not nominated for August: Osage County, though her co-star, Julia Roberts, was - what gives? I'd consider that a snub, and it will be really interesting to see if this is an indicator that perhaps Streep won't be a favorite for an Academy Award in March. It was a great year in film for outstanding actresses, after all.
For a full list of the nominees, check out BAFTA's official website. Awards will be handed out on February 16.
Stay tuned. This is just starting to heat up.
Photo courtesy of The Huffington Post
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