Culture

2008 Oscar nominations

January 22, 2008
Placeholder image!

It's hard to imagine a more high-testosterone group of films than this year's shortlist for the Oscars. Big, violent films about men and madness dominate. Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will be Blood with Daniel Day-Lewis, the Coen brothers' slaughterhouse No Country for Old Men and Michael Clayton, with Michael Clooney as a top New York law firm's Mr Fix-It, have 22 nominations between them. Atonement has 7, but none for Keira Knightley or James McAvoy. Too much simpering and not enough blood and guts perhaps.

Look up There Will Be Bloodon the Internet Movie Database and it offers these "keywords" for the film: "Beaten to Death/Oil/Shot in the Head..." For No Country for Old Men you get "Hospital/Blood/River/Gun Corpse" and for Michael Clayton, "Dark/Eavesdropper/Exploding Car..." That just about says it all. Throw in best actor nominations for Viggo Mortensen as a ruthless Russian hitman and Tommy Lee Jones as a war veteran in The Valley of Elah and you get the picture. Not a year for chick-flicks, rom-coms or art films (except for Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

The big losers were the big-budget adventure films. The Pirates of the Caribbean and The Golden Compass got virtually zilch. The other striking thing about the list is that none of these films were huge box-office winners. Pirates and Ratatouille were the only nominated films to gross big (over $150m). There's no Titanic, Star Wars or ET among this lot. No Spielbergs or Scorseses either. And no Eastwood or Polanski. These directors are either young or new. Reitman, who directed Juno, Joe Wright, director of Atonement and PT Anderson were all born in the 1970s. Michael Clayton is Tony Gilroy's first film as a director and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is Schnabel's third. Only the Coen brothers are old hands, and they're barely in their 50s. It feels like the changing of the guard.

Among the actors, three performances stand out. Philip Seymour Hoffman has had an extraordinary year. Nominated for his performance as the fast-talking CIA loose cannon in Charlie Wilson's War, he could have been nominated for Savages or the desperate Andy Hanson in Sidney Lumet's dark thriller, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Tilda Swinton has hit the mainstream with her portrayal of a ruthless corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton and Javier Bardem's astonishing hitman psychopath in No Country for Old Men is unforgettable. As is his wig. And, what with Bardem and Hoffman's hairpiece in Charlie Wilson's War, there should surely be a new Oscar category: best wig.