Dan,

I'm pretty sure your "Portman" link actually points to a picture of Keira Knightley. They do look similar: Miss Knightley was fake Queen Amidala in The Phantom Menace. I think, however, that the picture is not actually Natalie Portman. I am not 100% certain, but the filename supports my hypothesis.

In the case of Collaterial, I have a feeling that any Michael Mann film is guarentee to have interesting to outstanding cinematography (the ONLY Mann film that's not up to his usual standard is one of his early effort, Manhunter, which looks too much like Miami Vice). It might be that the cinematographers got so used to his usual standard that they forgot to nominate it.

As for Paul Giamatti, agree. Is it that Oscar people doesn't want to nominate someone who isn't good looking? Sideways rest squarely on Paul Giamatti's shoulder, and he really makes a flawed human comes alive. The fact that they nominated Thomas Haden Church & Virginia Madsen and not Giamatti is kind of hard to take.

Whoops -- the Portman link has been updated.

Ummm... Collateral wasn't deserving...Mann may have intentionally desired the flat, depthless look that the digitally shot film had, but the look itself wasn't the stuff of great cinematography.

They should have nominated Kevin Bacon for The Woodsman, and Nicole Kassell as well.

And how is Jamie Foxx not the leading actor in "Collateral"?

Jamie Foxx isn't the lead because he was
intentionally put forward as supporting
actor by the studio, so as not to hurt his
chances for Ray (where he's up for
Best Actor).

As far as omissions go, I'd add Liam
Neeson for Kinsey. I think the movie
was overrated (it was ok), but he was
terrific.

What a lousy year for movies.

Nothing for Napoleon Dynamite??

Agreed all around-- Giamatti, Eternal Sunshine, and Garden State all got screwed.

Further to the action movie point: no nominations for Hero, only one for House of Flying Daggers.

I really, really thought The Incredibles would get a Best Picture nomination -- it's a strong movie in a very weak year. Shows what I know.

I am in Paris now watching Canal + and Jean Reno is on; they just gave the news about the Oscar nominations. I am just waiting for them to ask him his reactions, esp Natalie Portman (his co-start in "The Professional"/"Leon"). My take is this: NP wasn't terrible in "Closer" but I think there were far better actresses this year (Meryl Streep, Kyra Sedgwick) in the supporting role. I actually think there is this child-porn-ness quality that middle-aged males (not unlike the Paul Giamatti character in "Sideways", who bought his "Barely Legal" magazine) get off on. It's a pout; she's a siren, not an accomplished performer. Isn't this what brought us the overly enunciating Ashley Judd a few years back? This isn't skill. This is tender, slick lips. I would even push Ashlee Simpson in that category, only now she is apparently being shown for what she is --a truly untalented performer. Then again, 2005 --mediocrity is the name of the game.

What's it going to take for Peter Sarsgaard to get nominated? He was phenomenal this year in Garden State and Kinsey, he wuz robbed after Shattered Glass last year, and you could make a strong argument for him in Boys Don't Cry. Oh well.

Dan, couldn't agree more on Eternal Sunshine which Pam and I just saw recently on PPV (goodbye Blockbuster). Thought Jim Carrey was fantastic.

As for Best Song / Score, you are absolutely correct on Team America: World Police. The reason for the omission however, is that unlike South Park: The Movie which had "Blame Canada" as its proxy for "Uncle F***ker" (which we all know was the song which was really meant to be nominated), Team America didn't have an easily embraced backup to the theme song of "America, F**k Yeah." Mocking Ben Affleck ("Pearl Harbor Sucked and I Miss You"), Alec Baldwin ("You Are Worthless Alec Baldwin"), the musical Rent ("Everybody Has AIDS") and making fun of Kim Jong-Il's accent ("I'm So Ronery") aren't going to cut it for the Academy (unlike mocking Canadians).

Brief note on Hero - I think it actually came out in 2002/2003 - after all, Quentin Tarantino "presented" it to American audiences well after Asian audiences had seen it and bought in on DVD - whereas House of Flying Daggers truly came out in the past Oscar cycle.

Paul Giamatti for Best Actor in Sideways -- try to imagine any other actor in that role;

I don't think that's a good statement to back up your admiration for his acting talents. Maybe the role was tailor-made for him (I think it was), and in that case an actor who had to take more risks would be more deserving.

I was never comfortable with Dr. Haing S. Ngao's Oscar. What could you compare his performance to?

Laura Dern didn't get nominated because We Don't Live Here Anymore is a relentless downer of a pretentious WASP angst Sunday movie of the week. And I thought she was very good in it, but I'm not surprised she got overlooked.

I thought it was kind of interesting that "Old Habits Die Hard" from the "Alfie" soundtrack didn't even get nominated, even though it *won* the Golden Globe.

What I would love to see would be a survey and awards for the Best Picture, Best Actor, etc. of 1995, i.e., ten years ago. I have a sense that some movies don't age well, and others are late bloomers.

Just because the screen goes dark, doesn't make a brilliant sound sequence...in Kill Bill II. It was a bold choice, but nothing brilliant.

Collateral gets overlooked for a slew of nominations - cinematography (bias against digital in the film world), costume (what stands out more than tom cruise dressed like a grey wolf), and for my money, best picture and director. Mann has been steadily mixing the action film genre with techno-opera - creating this world of vast urban landscape pulsating with energy and the alienated male. He's a more serious, post-modern, Howard Hawks.

Friday Night Lights deserves something, as does Shaun of the Dead.

The coffin scene in KillBill2 was a terrific use of sound, but that was really a directorial decision (or more likely something QT put in the script) rather than a sound editor's decision. The artistic choices actually left to the technical post-porduction crew generally tend to be very subtle, so I disagree that the nominations are somehow obviously wrong.

Vis-a-vis cinematography, I'd say that the general public often has cheap tastes and is taken in by old/cheap tricks. The biggest offender here is color-saturated films (washing whole shots in blue tint, etc.); this is really old stuff (starting about 1993), and not to mention frees the film makers from having to make real aesthetic decisions. There are ways to give a film a 'look', some cheap, some not.

So it puzzles me that Passion of the Christ gets a nod in that category. Aside from the whole film profoundly sucking, it exmplifies that lazy school of photogrphy.

If anything, Bourne Supremacy deserves a nomination for Worst Editing. The constant two-second cuts turned it into something like a two hour music video - confusing, headache-inducing, and totally unnecessary.

Mr. Vice President, I must take issue with your nomination of Bourne Supremacy for Worst Editing. You clearly have yet to see Aliens vs. Predator, which should also win an award for "Most Appropriate Tagline" and cemented my support of the death penalty, but only for directors with multiple movies that are monumentally bad (both Resident Evil movies, killing 2 cool franchises with one swift, nonsensical blow, Mortal Kombat--you die now Mr. Andersen).

Yeah, on the subject of Braff- you also forget that he's dating songstress/actress Mandy Moore. and to further add to the "f*** him list." Don't forget about Tara Reid, Amy Smart, Elizabeth Bogush (the druggie from the first scrubs season), and on and on. Bastard.

How about Million Dollar Baby as the conservative movie of the year? The most evil character is dependent on welfare and medicare, the hero comes from small beginnings and works hard to get to the top, the religious angle wasn't overblown...if anything the film highlights the gap between conservatives who believe the (spoiler alert!) assisted-suicide angle is unacceptable and those who believe in the power of hard work and the evils of entitlements.

Perhaps the biggest praise for the movie is that it doesn't fit nicely into one point of view, it's just about some strong, caring people.

Further, on Hero -- it was in fact nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002.

Friday Night Lights was a decent rental and nothing more. The football sequences were pitiful and I really was disappointed in Billy Bob's performance.

Dan, I rented Eternal Sunshine and turned it off after twenty minutes. Probably beause I sat through all of Napoleon Dynamite and thought, "Well, there's an hour and a half I'll never get back." I didn't want to repeat my mistake.

Then I came here, and so many of you said it was a great movie I figured I'd give it another shot.

Okay. It was very good, but the ending was too long and a bit confused. But I disagree about Jim Carrey's performance: Just because he spoke in a low, quiet voice doesn't mean he did anything all that great. I thought his role in The Truman Show was a far better performance.

I think Eternal Sunshine was good, and Kate Winslet was superb, but overall, I don't think it was overlooked much.

Glaring omissions?

Here's one: Mel Gibson.