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Yesterday saw the Academy announce their nominations for this year as various films like Birdman, Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel all enjoyed great success.
However there were many great films and performances that were shockingly overlooked which is to b expected whenever the nominees are revealed each year.
Purple Revolver has put together a piece about some of the unlucky ommissions…
The LEGO Movie
The best animated film of 2014/15 was a universial hit with critics and audiences and when its popular tune “Everything is Awesome” was announced as a Best Original Song nominee, many were set to welcome its place on the Best Animated Film shortlist.
Incredibly though, it was nowhere to be seen much to the horror of its many fans who took to Twitter to voice their dissatisfaction about the omission.
Not awesome Academy, not awesome!
Jake Gyllenhall (Nightcrawler)
A decade since his only Oscar nod for Brokeback Mountain, Gyllenhaal went full-on dark for his physically-demanding role as the deranged journalist Lou Bloom in Dan Gilroy’s exquisite crime-thriller Nightcrawler.
Despite landing several key nominations at the Golden Globes, SAG and BAFTA, his performance clearly didn’t appeal to the Academy with Steve Carrell’s equally-dark turn in Foxcatcher getting nodded instead.
The film itself only managed the one mention for Gilroy’s screenplay but it certainly deserved more!
Gillian Flynn (and Gone Girl in general)
On the subject of single-nominee films, David Fincher’s chilling thriller Gone Girl was a box-office hit and did well with the critics yet could only score a Best Actress mention for star Rosamund Pike’s scary turn as Amy Dunne.
To make matters worse, author Gillian Flynn’s fantastic adaptation of her novel was harshly ignored in the Best Adapted Screenplay category while it also failed to land nominations in Best Picture, Director or Score.
Jennifer Aniston (Cake)
Like Jake Gyllenhaal, the former Friends star scored well with the guild awards but her performance as a depressed woman in Cake wasn’t quite to the Academy’s taste (excuse the pun!).
However being edged to the nom by Marion Cotillard’s solid turn in Two Days, One Night isn’t really a bad thing but at least Aniston has silenced her doubters and proved her potential as an actress to be taken seriously!
Jessica Chastain (A Most Violent Year)
Having starred in four films in the past year, there were many who were rooting for the classy Jessica Chastain to land her third nomination in five years.
Initially she was predicted to make it for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar but when that film failed to register with the critics, she opted to campaign her fiesty role in J.C Chandor’s A Most Violent Year instead.
Unfortunately it wasn’t to be enough as she was left off the Best Supporting Actress list in favour of Laura Dern’s brief role in Wild.
Hopefully the red-headed star will finally clinch Oscar glory in the future.
Lack of love for Selma
A couple of months ago, test screenings for the Martin Luther King biopic were vastly positive with critics predicting it to become the potential Oscar favourite.
However it struggled badly with the awards guilds with the Golden Globes being the only major group to recognise it.
Although it did receive a Best Picture nomination yesterday, it only scored one mention elsewhere for John Legend and Common’s song “Glory”.
Director Ava DuVernay and actor David Oyelowo’s portrayal of King were also overlooked by the Academy.
Other notable absentees
Despite receiving a surprise Best Director nod, Bennett Miller would have been disappointed to see his grim sports biopic Foxcatcher not make it into Best Picture.
Birdman’s impeccable editing was a notable absentee in the Best Editing category which suggests that the film is unlikely to win Best Picture.
The final Hobbit film The Battle of the Five Armies was the only installment of Peter Jackson’s Middle-Earth saga not to land a Best Visual Effects nomination which showed that the Academy were not impressed with its overuse of CGI.
Big Eyes, Fury and A Most Violent Year were amongst the initial Oscar contenders that were shut out completely while blockbusters like Exodus: Gods and Kings, Godzilla, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay and Transformers: Age of Extinction also failed to make the cut.