2013 Oscar Nominees

Here are this year’s Oscar nominees.

There are not many surprises, but there are a few. The amount of love for Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, USA 2012) was something of a surprise, though it had been quite well-reviewed and certainly looks to be an actors’ film, which always helps at Oscar time. Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, USA 2012) shouldn’t be much of a surprise given the director, but it had such a small impact on the public consciousness that it wouldn’t have been surprising to see it shut out, or at least held only to a nomination for Jamie Foxx or Christoph Waltz. The biggest surprise to me was that Anna Karenina (Joe Wright, UK 2012), an obvious piece of Oscar bait, was shut out. I was unfortunately not surprised that by far the best film I saw all year, Looper (Rian Johnson, USA 2012), was also shut out.

Most of the more popular categories are going to come down to a race Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, USA 2012) and Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, USA 2012), and by not nominating Below for Best Director, the Academy tipped its hand that it thinks Lincoln is superior.