Oscar Blues for Ann Dowd’s Non-Nomination…

Still reeling from the Unexpectedness and downright unfairness of many of today’s Oscar nominations. Ann Dowd’s inexplicable and totally unacceptable omission from the Best Supporting Actress category is horrendous, just horrendous. An injustice has been done. And to replace her with that Australian granny-on-steroids, Jackie Weaver, is just non-sensical in the extreme.”Silver Linings Playbook” is a spoiler.

There wasn’t even really a PART there!

AND she didn’t do it very well.

“Silver Linings Playbook” is very, VERY popular it seems with the Actor’s Branch is all I can think of. It got nominations in all four of the acting categories. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, who just won Best Comedy Actor and Actress tonight at the Broadcast Film Critics. As well as Robert DeNiro, nominated for Best Supporting Actor, who thankfully didn’t. He lost to Phillip Seymour Hoffman. If “Silver Linings Playbook” wins the SAG for Best Ensemble LOOK OUT! It also won Best Ensemble tonight and Jennifer Lawrence won AGAIN for “Best Action Heroine” a new category. With all those awards she was constantly traipsing up to the stage.

They, them, the Academy, will have a hard time finding an Oscar clip for Jackie Weaver for the Awards show itself. But Weaver already was nominated in this category two years ago for a performance that didn’t deserve to be there,in an Australia gansta film that no one saw “Animal Kingdom.” But that film company sent out screeners, and they did it REALLY early, and I guess everyone saw them and voted for her, a complete unknown at the time.

She really gives no performance to speak of in “Silver Linings Playbook.” Certainly not one that was Award Nomination worthy. As Ann Dowd did. Her performance in “Compliance” was one for the ages. And this will always be remembered as a black mark on the Academy’s conscience blotter, or escutcheon, if it has one.

This just totalled me today. The sheer injustice of it all! And the fact that Ann Dowd spent $13,000 of her own money,and got well, she did get nominated for Best Supporting Actress by the Broadcast Film Critics, which happened tonight. And she lost.

But hey, she WON the National Board of Review for Best Supporting Actress on Tuesday night and she was written about TREMENDOUSLY, and did many, many, many interviews and had many, many write ups, and was talked about and considered for the Nomination by the press in many, many forums. So she’s certainly much more well-known now than she’s ever been. You could say famous, even. And so that’s what the Awards Conversation, Otherwise known as Phase One, did for her.

And hopefully all this positive attention she got will pay off for her in bigger and better roles in higher profile movies.

Go Team Ann! I’M still on board!

And the DVD of “Compliance”? STILL hasn’t come out! Or maybe it comes out today, or tomorrow! Too late. But you can rent it or own and when you do, you will see a great unsung American actress, doing great work in an Indie.
And she’s being Honored at the Santa Barbara Film Festival as a virtuoso and she is still nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Indie Spirit Awards, right before the Oscars themselves in February. So there’s still hope.