Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn is quite outspoken on social media a good bit of the time. Sharing great behind the scenes photos, rarely seen interviews, and best of all, his own take on movies and the industry. With today’s Academy Awards nominations being announced, Gunn hit up his Facebook page and gave us his thoughts on the noms from this morning.
Continue reading to see what he had to say.
First up. the question we are all wanting to know ourselves: why isn’t The Lego Movie up for Best Animated Film?
“The LEGO Movie was flat out snubbed. It was one of the best films of the year, not to mention one of the best animated films. It deserved to be nominated for Best Animated Film. Considering the average Academy voter is 63, perhaps the Tinkertoy Movie or the Erector Set Film would have fared better. Honestly, I don’t think there can be any reason it wasn’t nominated other than Academy members assumed it was a silly movie (like I did when I first heard of the movie, before seeing it) and didn’t watch the screener.”
Seems Legit. He then moves on to Bradley Cooper (who voiced Rocket for Guardians):
“Whoo hoo for Bradley Cooper being nominated for Best Actor. Even though it must be noted that Rocket is a much better shot, Bradley’s performance blew me away in American Sniper. When I first saw the film, I was afraid it wasn’t showboaty enough for the Academy. But, obviously, he came through.”
Then there are some mentions of other snubs in his opinion like Jake Gyllenhaal for Nightcrawler and Amy Adams for Big Eyes and Damien Chazelle for Whiplash, which Gunn says was “one of the greatest film accomplishments of 2014.”
Then he raised a couple of more good points:
“Foxcatcher was nominated for Best Film and not for Best Director. I don’t get it. What other department, exactly, was holding Foxcatcher back from being nominated for Best Film? The Director has creative control of a film – although there are some great films made without great directors, it is impossible to distinguish that without being on the inside. It really bothers me when awards for Best Director and Best Film go to different movies.”
Of course, Gunn is a director so that’s to be taken into consideration, but is it fair to say that what wins for best film should also come with nods for best director? Should the long list of Best Picture nominees thus dictate the long list of Best Director nominations? It’s an interesting thought.
Finally, Gunn nails it:
“The Academy has a long tradition of bad choices. After all, in 1941 How Green Was My Valley beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture. That said, some of the fury that’s directed at the Academy because of various nominations is outrageous. I saw a lot of nearly violent anger this morning on Twitter. There may be good reasons to turn over cars in the street, but that Jennifer Aniston wasn’t nominated for Cake isn’t one of them. In the end, the Academy is just a bunch of people, like you or me, doing what they think is best. And they should have the right to not vote for whomever they want… besides the Lego Movie. I mean, that’s just f**king ridiculous.”
I think the snub of The LEGO Movie just means that the musical performance at the show of “Everything is Awesome” will be all the more epic. For a full list of this year’s Oscar nominations, check out the list here.
[Source: Facebook]
Matthew Mcconaughey. The end.
Comment by jwhyrock — January 16, 2015 @ 11:02 pm