After months of speculation and intricate prediction math, the nominations for the 2011 Oscars were announced this morning. (Watch the announcement.) The King's Speech spoke loudest, scoring 12 nominations, followed by True Grit with 10, and The Social Network and Inception with eight each. (See a full list of nominees.) But critical reaction was arguably more focused on the talent that the Academy overlooked. Here, the 7 most-discussed snubs:
1. Christopher Nolan: "No offense" to the five directors who did get nominated, says Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times, "but members of the Academy must have been smoking something powerful to snub Christopher Nolan's astonishingly creative work on Inception," Sure, Tom Hooper did "fine work" directing The King's Speech, but it's not a more "impressively directed" film than Inception.
2. Ryan Gosling: Among the "glaring omissions," says Margaret Lyons in Entertainment Weekly, was Gosling, who failed to get a Best Actor nomination for his work in Blue Valentine. His "seeping misery infects the entire film; for a character who can be so awful, he's also strangely easy to love."
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3. Julianne Moore: What, no Best Actress nod for Moore's performance in The Kids Are All Right? says Christopher Rosen at Movieline. She was better than her co-star Annette Bening, who did get a nomination, but it seems that "unfortunately, fortune favors the bold [performance]." That and confusion over whether Moore was a supporting or lead actress "doomed her free-spirited work."
4. Waiting for Superman: Surprising, Waiting for Superman was "straight-up snubbed in the best documentary race," but that's "good news," says Choire Sicha at The Awl. "The propaganda vehicle for the privatization of education can now slink off to die."
5. Andrew Garfield: The Social Network's Andrew Garfield didn't get a nod, and that's because "it pays to be showy" in the Best Supporting Actor category, says Kyle Buchanan in New York. "John Hawkes — who delivered an indelible performance as an intimidating meth-head in Winter's Bone, and scored a SAG nod for it — triumphed" over Garfield's "far quieter work."
6. Mila Kunis: Despite Golden Globe, SAG, and Critic's Choice nominations, the Black Swan bad-girl didn't make the Supporting Actress cut. "Everyone is talking about Natalie Portman's emotional performance of a pressured ballerina going on a mental downward spiral, but it's Kunis' bad-girl troublemaker who ramps up Portman's character," says the Moviefone staff. She's a casualty of The Fighter "double-stuffing" the category with two actresses and Hailee Steinfeld getting a Supporting Actress nod when she's really the lead in True Grit.
7. Lesley Manville: Another Year's Manville was "completely robbed" says Laremy Legel at Film.com. It may be because she was pushed in the Lead Actress Category instead of in the "perhaps more fitting Supporting Actress category," says Jake Coyle at the Associated Press.
