Brutality and blood all the rage for the 80th Annual Academy Awards set for Feb. 24

By Jeffrey Jolson

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 5/1/07 — Violence is Golden this year as the Coen Brothers serial killer film “No Country for Old Men” and brutal oil baron epic “There Will Be Blood” garnered eight Oscar nominations each including Best Picture for the 80^th Annual Academy Awards.

Competing with those two Miramax/Paramount Vantage, both destined to be called American Film Classics, in the top category for Oscars 2008 will be Focus Features’ WWII romance “Atonement,” Fox Searchlight’s quirky underdog “Juno,” and Warner Bros.’ legal thriller “Michael Clayton.” The biggest controversy this year is of course whether the actors will be picketing in black tie, or picking up awards. There is a glimmer of hope for the Writers Strike to end before the Oscarcast (See related HT story), but the writers have announced they will have a picket line if no accord is reached and the actors have indicated they will honor it.

There’s a showdown on the horizon and “No Country” has won most all of the year-end critical Awards, with some like the Los Angeles going for “Blood,” which also had a strong showing from the various Guilds award nominations. Surprisingly, Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” did not make the Best Picture cut after getting the most SAG nominations.

Tommy Lee Jones (for “In the Valley of Elah,” not “No Country”) and “Blood’s” Daniel Day-Lewis are up for Best Actor, joined by three equally violent characters, a razor wielding Johnny Depp from Sweeney Todd, George Clooney on the run from corporate hit men and Viggo Mortensen as a Russian mafioso from “Eastern Promises.” Early money is on Day-Lewis, whose win-at-all-costs oil baron in “Blood” does not even need to say a word in the first 20 minutes, but leaves you breathless.

Kiera Knightley was left out of the Best Actress category, but it’s still the hardest to call as Julie Christie from “Away From Her” hopes to keep up her prize winning ways, Marion Cotillard can’t be counted out for brilliant turn as Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose,” Ellen Page has been delighting audiences and critics as the precocious pregnant teen in “Juno” and Laura Linney was a surprise inclusion for “The Savages.”

Cate Blanchett is up for two Oscars, in the above Best Actress field and for Best Supporting Actress for her gender-bending performance as the young Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There.” Competing with her in the supporting actress category will be Ruby Dee in “American Gangster” Amy Ryan in “Gone Baby Gone,”
Tilda Swinton in “Michael Clayton” and Saoirse Ronan in “Atonement.”

The man to beat in the supporting actor category is Javier Bardem whose portrayal as the cruel psychopath in “No Country for Old Men” made the film unforgettable. The actor with the best chance beat him may be looney lawyer Tom Wilkinson who snaps in “Michael Clayton” like Peter Finch did in 1976’s Oscar winning “Network.” Philip Seymour Hoffman has been uniformly praised as a wise-cracking CIA agent supporting Tom Hanks in “Charlie Wilson’s War.” Also in the running is Casey Affleck in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and Hal Holbrook in “Into the Wild.”

Best Director will be as hard to choose as Best Picture with Joel and Ethan Coen (whose “Fargo” won Best Picture in 1996) mixing it up with Paul Thomas Anderson, whose vision guided the original “Blood.” In the blend in Julian Schnabel whose turn behind the P.O.V. lens is brilliant in French-language “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and Jason Reitman for indie “Juno,” who has both critical and now box office power behind him. Tom Gilroy will also have his day in court for “Michael Clayton.”

Rating the indicators, the Directors Guild got its customary four out of five of the Best Picture noms, with the only difference being its nod for “Into the Wild” instead of “Atonement.” The Screen Actors Guild best ensemble nods missed four out of five, only “No Country” got the nom from SAG, who instead went with “3:10 to Yuma,” “Hairspray,” “American Gangster” and “Into the Wild.” The Golden Globes best drama was “Atonement,” though its best comedy/musical “Sweeney Todd” isn’t in the Best Picture category. The Producers Guild had four out of five with “Diving Bell” instead of “Atonement.” The Writers Guild had four out of five too, though they have 10 noms to work with, five each with Best Original Script and Best Adapted.

The only one the WGA did not include, just like all the other major guilds, is “Atonement,” which does not bode well for the film due to overlapping voting membership in the guilds and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The one picture everyone did nominate as did AMPAS is “No Country,” making it the front-runner whose race it is to lose.

Nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced today by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and Oscar winner Kathy Bates. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2007 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2008, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. PT. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.