The Oscar Nominations for 2011 Are Out: Here are My Thoughts

• Is it really much of a disappointment that Ryan Gosling didn't get a Best Actor nod for Drive? The movie wasn't very good and he was the least interesting character in it. The true disappointment is the lack of love for Albert Brooks in the Supporting Actor category.
• Support Actor: Good for Jonah Hill. I think he said it right when he said people tend to associate you with your beginnings and he has spent the better part of his career thus far pegged as a comedic actor. But given his impressive dramatic abilities in both Moneyball and Cyrus this will hopefully open up a lot of new doors for him.
• I didn't even know Nick Nolte and Max von Sydow were in The Warrior and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close respectively. Who was it that noted that there was a lot of good acting in sub par movies this year?
• There's no one to win Best Supporting Actor other than Christopher Plummer.
• Actress: Viola Davis gets the nod over Emma Stone for The Help. I think that's a good thing. Either way I can't help but think this list of five, except for Michelle Williams, isn't really an accurate portrayal of the best performances by an actress this year. 
• Merly Streep once again proves that her talent is usually above the movies she's in and if they want to succeed they have to rise to her and not the other way around.
• I haven't seen Albert Nobbs but I've read the script. It wasn't very good.
• Both a white woman and a black woman from The Help have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. If one of them were to win could we have another Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain debate on our hands?
• Wouldn't it be a wonderful surprise if Melissa McCarthy won Best Supporting Actress? Could this be the year The Academy embraces comedy? Probably not.
• For the first year in I can't remember how long Pixar doesn't snag a nod in the Best Animated Feature category despite the fact that Cars 2 wasn't nearly as bad as everyone said it was and a general improvement over the original. Tintin doesn't even make the cut?
• The 3D in Hugo is probably the best I've ever seen but if  Emmanuel Lubezki doesn't win Best Cinematography for Tree of Life, I'll lose a little faith in humanity. 
• Is The Artist going to win Best Director and Picture? It seems like the front runner despite it's limited market doesn it? It instantly looked like the was between The Artist and Hugo and if Hugo had done better numbers at the box office there's no doubt it would have taken the award. However, Hugo hasn't fared as well with the awards as The Artist and Tree of Life. I think Tree of Life is too "out there" to win Best Picture and Hollywood likes to celebrate itself. This will, I therefore predict, be the year of The Artist. 
• Werner Herzog gets the shaft in the Documentary category again.
• Pedro Almodovar gets the shaft in the Foreign Film category again.
• I haven't seen A Separation so for me the best foreign film of the year is still Le Havre, which is, needless to say, not nominated either.
• Every year, since the decision to have more than 5 Best Picture nominees there's always been a trivial film that connected with a large audience and a faux-prestige picture. This year those nominations go to The Help and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
• They couldn't have just had 10 nominations and threw that extra one to Bridesmaids?
• Year after year the original song nominees are getting depressing. What a lost art this has become (a bigger post of this to come)