Film

Three Big Movies That Were Completely Snubbed By The Oscar Noms!

by Michael Musto

January 11, 2013

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL has gotten SAG and Golden Globe nominations, but Oscar gave it zero! Not even "Best Old Folks Ensemble." Maybe they thought it was a little too "Slumdog Millionaire meets Cocoon" for comfort. More likely, it seemed like a nice little movie that did surprisingly well at the box office, but didn't have a whole lotta gravitas.

Yesterday, I told you about individual performers and directors who were touted as serious Oscar contenders, but who got bupkiss. But here are three films that were in a lot of people’s prognostications, but got completely shut out.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL has gotten SAG and Golden Globe nominations, but Oscar gave it zero! Not even "Best Old Folks Ensemble." Maybe they thought it was a little too "Slumdog Millionaire meets Cocoon" for comfort. More likely, it seemed like a nice little movie that did surprisingly well at the box office, but didn't have a whole lotta gravitas.

I found CLOUD ATLAS incredibly trying, in an imaginative sort of way, but it should have definitely gotten noms for its visuals and certainly its makeup! (Hitchcock got nominated for a couple of jowls, whereas Cloud Atlas pulled off a massive job of cosmetic transformations!) But apparently they hold against it that it was done with Germans, and also no one forgives a flop! Tragic.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES was too gloomy for words, but I definitely thought it would bag nods for some visual and sound stuff. But this Batman totally struck out at the bat, man. As a source says, "The murders made it toxic. Everyone's afraid to even bring it up."

More:Michael Musto Oscars

Archive Highlights

New York

Rupert Murdoch Tells All

“Why am I in papers? I just love it. The only other thing I like is politics, and I’ve never let myself get into that. I think you prostitute your newspapers once you start joining political parties.”

by Alexander Cockburn
From The Archives

Bill Barr: The “Cover-Up General”

“At the center of the criticism is the chief articulator of Bush’s imperial presidency,” we reported in 1992, “the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad.”

by Frank Snepp
Music

Rock Death in the ’70s: A Sweepstakes

"Do not the dead deserve an accounting at least as irreproachable as the survivors receive with each week’s edition of Billboard?"

by Greil Marcus
Film

Martin Scorsese Tells All: Blood and Guts Turn Me On!

"I like the idea of spurting blood. It's like a, God, it's really like a purification, you know, the fountains of blood. It's a personal thing."

by Richard Goldstein & Mark Jacobson
Ad Candy

Soundtrack to Watergate: Ziggy, Cheech, and Chong Hold Their Heads High

The music that accompanied the downfall of a president

by R.C. Baker
From The Archives

Our Nixon: Whose Life Was It Anyway?

On the silver anniversary of Tricky Dick's demise we revisit Tom Carson's barn-burning send-off to the 37th POTUS

by Tom Carson