BEVERLY HILLS: Steven Spielberg’s tale of US President Abraham Lincoln’s battle to end slavery emerged as the front-runner for Oscar glory on Thursday, after Academy Awards voters snubbed four major film-makers for the coveted best director trophy.
In an eclectic shortlist that included thrillers, a comedy, an independent film and a harrowing French-language drama, Lincoln won a leading 12 nominations, including the top prize— best picture—and nods for actors Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.
Ang Lee’s eye-catching shipwreck tale, Life of Pi, followed with 11 nominations, mostly in effects and technical categories, but including for best picture and director.
Musical Les Miserables, Iran hostage drama Argo, French-language drama Amour, Osama bin Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty, comedy Silver Linings Playbook, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, and mythological film Beasts of the Southern Wild rounded out the competition for best picture.
But the director’s category contained four big omissions — Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, Ben Affleck for Argo, Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty and Tarantino for his violent slavery-era Western Django Unchained.
The snubs threw Hollywood awards pundits into a tizzy, and were seen as boding ill for the chances of any of those four films taking home the biggest Oscar prize on February 24.
“The snubs in the race for best director change everything,” said veteran awards watcher Tom O’Neil of goldderby.com.
“Before the nominations, pundits thought the race for best picture was between Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, but the fact that Affleck and Bigelow are not nominated means they now only have a remote chance to win,” O’Neil told Reuters.
The Oscars are given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and voters only rarely split the awards for best picture and best director.
“I think this is a year when we can throw conventional wisdom out of the window,” said Pete Hammond, awards columnist for entertainment industry website deadline.com. “We are dealing in uncharted territory here, it’s crazy.”
“I think you have to look at Lincoln being the conventional favourite, because it hits all the notes, and Spielberg directed it,” Hammond told Reuters.
Fandango chief correspondent Dave Karger said Lincoln had everything going for it.
“It’s done big business, it’s done extremely well with high-brow critics, and it has done really well with the average audience. Some people will say it is too talky and too dry but others say it really brought this man to life in a fascinating way,” Karger said.
Lincoln and Les Miserables also emerged as the top pick among Americans for Oscar wins in an Ipsos/Reuters opinion poll released on Wednesday.
Day-Lewis, nominated for his towering performance as Abraham Lincoln, is widely seen as the frontrunner for what would be the British-born actor’s record third win in the best actor category.
He will compete with Hugh Jackman, who plays a reformed petty thief in Les Miserables, Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot in Flight and first time nominee Bradley Cooper as a bi-polar man in Silver Linings Playbook.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 12th, 2013.
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