2012 Academy Award Nominations: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Here they are, the 2012 Academy Award noms – with a whopping 12 noms for Hugo and 11 nominations for The Artist, the two films that are love letters to cinema lead the awards race. For a full list of nominees, click here.

(While I haven't seen The Artist at the time of this writing. I will see it tonight at a press screening as the film hasn't been released here in New Zealand.)

Who will receive Hollywood's most coveted statue?

The Good
Today is a good day for fatties with Melissa McCarthy nominated for her breakthrough performance in Bridesmaids, and ex-fatties, with Jonah Hill for his turn in Moneyball, both of which are progressive and unconventional choices.

Great to see The Tree of Life receive well deserved honours in Best Director and Best Cinematography, but Best Picture too! When so many had expected it to fall out altogether, the film was cheered on by critics at last minute.

I want to give Christopher Plummer a big hug.

Wonderful to see Hugo do so well across the board. It shows formiddable strength in all the technical categories and will be "the film to beat" in Art Direction, Costume Design, Visual Effects, Sound Editing & Sound Mixing.

The name Bret McKenzie soon rose to the top as a local trending topic on Twitter when kiwis were overjoyed to see him nominated for his hilarious Man or a Muppet song. With such weak competition, this has to be a guaranteed win for him also.

Nothing for you, J. Edgar.

The gorgeous Jennifer Lawrence announces Best Picture noms.

The Bad
Disappointed to see Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy lose an Art Direction nomination when its design is the best thing about that incomprehensible mess. Talk about pissed off as those filmmakers tried to art-direct their way to a good movie.

The fans of Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton will be disappointed to see their critically acclaimed performances passed over for Demian Bichir and Rooney Mara.

When Albert Brooks and Patton Oswalt learned of their snubs, it led to this exchange. Kenneth Branagh can go suck a fuck. The honour is wasted on him.

War Horse.

The Ugly
Not only was it criminally insane to not award David Fincher or The Social Network last year, The Academy continue to insult this incredible director by snubbing him once again, even after he beat Steven Spielberg to a DGA nomination.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close for Best Picture. Many Oscar pundits are suggesting its nomination is a fault of the new voting system while others cite its stand up and cheer Academy screening as an explanation. Still, it has to be the worst-reviewed Best Picture nominee in memory.