86th Academy Award Nominations: Dallas Overperforms, 12 Years Underperforms and N’Oprah Strikes Again

Erik Anderson January 16, 2014

American Hustle and Gravity lead the Oscar noms with 10 apiece — *American Hustle* and *Gravity* lead the Oscar noms with 10 apiece

The nominations for the 86th Academy Awards were announced this morning to a chorus of shocks and awes with American Hustle and Gravity leading the pack with 10 nominations apiece. 12 Years a Slave was just behind with nine but is largely considered to have underperformed here, missing out on Original Score, Cinematography and Sound Mixing (which has become a Best Picture frontrunner early clue). Despite its Globe win for Best Drama last weekend, the Oscar race is shaping up to be between Gravity and American Hustle now. Among Hustle‘s 10 nominations were four acting nods, one in each acting category, a double feat for director David O. Russell who just did it last year with Silver Linings Playbook and puts himself in the record books for doing so. One of those nominations, Amy Adams, marks her first in the Lead category and, even though many thought it would be at the expense of Meryl Streep in August: Osage County (they’re clearly not done with Meryl at the Academy) it was TIFF queen Emma Thompson, for Saving Mr. Banks, who suffers the recent fates of Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard as Oscar winners with the BFCA+GG+SAG+BAFTA quartet who are then snubbed at Oscar. Saving Mr. Banks heavily underperformed outside of Thompson, also failing to get a Best Picture nomination and settling on a single nod for Original Score.

The 80s AIDS drama Dallas Buyers Club earned predicted nominations for Matthew McConaughey in Lead Actor and Jared Leto in Supporting Actor and Best Picture but also netted Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing mentions (over 3-time Oscar winner Thelma Schoonmaker for The Wolf of Wall Street), boosting its total to six. McConaughey’s Lead nomination puts him in contention with Christian Bale for American Hustle, Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street, Chiwetel Ejiofor for 12 Years a Slave and Bruce Dern for Nebraska. Who’s missing from that list? Tom Hanks, whose newcomer co-star Barkhad Abdi was nominated in Supporting, was nowhere to be found this morning. Another shocker, considering he had the same holy quartet as Emma Thompson. Like Hanks, it also left Robert Redford out to sea. Guild favorite Captain Phillips also faltered in the Best Director category with Paul Greengrass missing out.

In the Supporting categories, surprise nominations came in the form of Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine and Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street. The former had a Golden Globe and BAFTA nomination but the latter came in with no guild support at all yet was able to replace Rush‘s Daniel Brühl, an actor who, like Thompson and Hanks had secured all the right precursors and still couldn’t make it to the finish line. At 23, Jennifer Lawrence sets an Oscar record by becoming the youngest person to get three Academy Award nominations as well as the youngest to get a nomination after a win. The biggest snub in the Supporting categories today belongs to Oprah Winfrey in Lee Daniels’ The Butler. Long considered a virtual lock in the Supporting Actress category and in a film that was Harvey Weinstein’s highest grosser, she will have to be happy with her SAG and BAFTA noms and the 900 gazillion dollars in her bank account. She already has an Oscar (albeit not a competitive one) so maybe she’s not crying too much about it.

Other shocks this morning came in the form of Stories We Tell being snubbed in Documentary Feature, Her making it into Production Design and Original Score and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug missing Production Design (no Lord of the Rings/Hobbit film had been snubbed here before) yet making it into both Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. The Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis received a paltry two nominations (Cinematography and Sound Mixing), even being denied an Original Screenplay nomination. That film had done poorly with the guilds and its fate seemed set in stone but it’s still a surprise for a pair who were once Oscar favorites. That gives it the same number of Oscar nominations today as The Lone Ranger. Yeah. Chew on that for a bit.

The Oscars, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres will reveal their winners on Sunday, March 2, 2014 on ABC.

The full list of nominations:

BEST PICTURE
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Christian Bale – American Hustle
Bruce Dern – Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio – The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Amy Adams – American Hustle
Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock – Gravity
Judi Dench – Philomena
Meryl Streep – August: Osage County

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Barkhand Abdi – Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper – American Hustle
Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill – The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Sally Hawkins – Blue Jasmine
Jennifer Lawrence – American Hustle
Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts – August: Osage County
June Squibb – Nebraska

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Ernest & Celestine
Frozen
The Wind Rises

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Grandmaster
Gravity
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Prisoners

COSTUME DESIGN
American Hustle
The Grandmaster
The Great Gatsby
The Invisible Woman
12 Years a Slave

DIRECTING
American Hustle – David O. Russell
Gravity – Alfonso Cuarón
Nebraska – Alexander Payne
12 Years a Slave – Steve McQueen
The Wolf of Wall Street – Martin Scorsese

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Act Of Killing
Cutie and The Boxer
Dirty Wars
The Square
20 Feet From Stardom

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
CaveDigger
Facing Fear
Karama Has No Walls
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

FILM EDITING
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
12 Years a Slave

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
The Hunt (Denmark)
The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
Omar(Palestine)

MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
Dallas Buyers Club
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
The Lone Ranger

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
The Book Thief
Gravity
Her
Philomena
Saving Mr. Banks

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Alone Yet Not Alone,” – Alone Yet Not Alone
“Happy,” – Despicable Me 2
“Let It Go,” – Frozen
“The Moon Song,” – Her
“Ordinary Love,” – Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom

PRODUCTION DESIGN
American Hustle
Gravity
The Great Gatsby
Her
12 Years a Slave

SHORT FILM – ANIMATED
Feral
Get a Horse!
Mr. Hublot
Possessions
Room on the Broom

SHORT FILM – LIVE ACTION
Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me)
Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything)
Helium
Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?)
The Voorman Problem

SOUND EDITING
All Is Lost
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor

SOUND MIXING
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Inside Llewyn Davis
Lone Survivor

VISUAL EFFECTS
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
The Lone Ranger
Star Trek Into Darkness

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
Before Midnight
Captain Phillips
Philomena
12 Years A Slave
The Wolf Of Wall Street

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Dallas Buyers Club
Her
Nebraska

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.