Oscars 2013: Snubs and Surprises

SNUB: "Skyfall"
Heading into this morning, "Skyfall" looked like it might be a serious Oscar contender. After all, the movie garnered some surprise attention from the Producer and Screen Actors Guilds and it won a bunch of nominations from Britain’s BAFTAs. Sadly, it was not to be. The fact that "James Bond" and "Oscars" were getting mentioned in the same sentence at all is something of a surprise. Less than a decade ago, the franchise seemed to ... more 

SNUB: "Skyfall"
Heading into this morning, "Skyfall" looked like it might be a serious Oscar contender. After all, the movie garnered some surprise attention from the Producer and Screen Actors Guilds and it won a bunch of nominations from Britain’s BAFTAs. Sadly, it was not to be. The fact that "James Bond" and "Oscars" were getting mentioned in the same sentence at all is something of a surprise. Less than a decade ago, the franchise seemed to be on a slow death spiral to irrelevance and self-parody -- Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in "The World Is Not Enough," anyone? But starting with "Casino Royale," a reboot featuring Daniel Craig as a grimmer, blonder Bond, the world's most famous spy series shed its campiness and got darker, more interesting and more profitable. If the franchise continues in this vein, the Academy will have to eventually take note. less