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Okay, I’m going to get into Oscar nominations a little later, but I wanted to get into some thoughts I had that wouldn’t necessarily fit into the regular Oscar post.

My first grievance:  Original Score.

This is the second time this has happened to a soundtrack I’d followed.  The first time was in 2008, when Eddie Vedder was snubbed for his amazing Into the Wild soundtrack.  It was clearly the best—and most original—soundtrack of that year.  Okay, I will take the argument that he wrote songs, and it wasn’t score.  Fine.  But he was still ignored for best song written for a motion picture (and I mean not even nominated).  But, of course, three songs from Enchanted were nominated.  This year, there were some decent scores nominated, and four songs which I’m sure are all fantastic (the only original song I know is the one from Toy Story, which I’m not going to get into just yet).  Yet there is one big, giant, glaring hole.  There is no Daft Punk.  I’m sorry, but I think Daft Punk’s Tron score was one of the finest musical achievements in recent memory (and in cinema, as well).  I honestly don’t have much to say because I believe this disgrace speaks for itself.

My second grievance:  Toy Story.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t think Toy Story 3 was all that great.  It was the same rehash of the first two: Woody’s a dick, he alienates everyone, then they all get back together, and we all learn a little about going from one phase of life to another.  Woohoo.  Like that’s so original.  Hardly best picture material.  But, not only was it nominated for best picture, but best animated feature, as well.  Now, I don’t have a problem with an animated picture being nominated for best picture, as long as it has merit, but being nominated for both is like nominating it for best picture twice, and feels incredibly unethical and a lot like Disney is pulling some hidden strings.  Now, I will agree that, technically, as an animation, Toy Story 3 was well done, as all Pixar films are—now, I have a lot of issues with Pixar, which maybe I won’t go into entirely.  Well, maybe a bit.  Okay, so I think a lot of these latest Pixar movies are not that great (yes, Up and Wall-E included).  Basically, they start to touch on something real, then they oversaturate it with cuteness and exaggeration and all that nonsense, and whatever they were starting to touch on gets lost.  Just because it’s an animation doesn’t mean it has to be cartoony.  Maybe this is Disney’s influence, I don’t know, but it’s still there, either way.  Just because it says “Pixar” in the beginning doesn’t make it zomgtehbestmovieevarzomg.

Okay, that’s it, I’ll post my thoughts on the nominations themselves later.

On a side note, why wasn’t Tangled nominated for animated feature?