Copious Notes

Sean Penn backstage after winning the Oscar for best actor for his performance in Milk. Copyrighted AP Photo by Matt Sayles.

As Oscars surprises go, Sean Penn besting Mickey Rourke in the best actor race was not Juliet Binoche jumping ahead of Lauren Bacall in 1996 or Shakespeare in Love stunning Saving Private Ryan in 1998.

Mickey Rourke on the red carpet. Copyrighted AP Photo by Amy Sancetta.

But the conventional wisdom was that Penn, nominated for Milk, was a fairly recent winner (2004 for Mystic River), and Mickey was the hot new comeback tale with The Wrestler. Rourke had already won a number of pre-Oscar acting prizes, including the Golden Globe. So, a lot of observers, including me, installed Mick as the favorite to win for a moving, harrowing  performance that included being stapled by a real-life wrestler called the Necro Butcher.

But when the envelope was opened, Penn’s name was called, and he stepped to the stage to thank, “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” Some saw it as reflexive. On Morning Joe, conservative commentator Joe Scarborough called awarding Penn for playing the trailblazing gay rights activist Harvey Milk, “Pavlovian,” saying he predicted it the moment he saw Penn was playing Milk. That’s a vast oversimplification, invoking a Pavlovian reflex by many conservatives to paint Hollywood as obsessed with boosting liberal politics.

Penn’s victory could have been predicted for a variety of reasons, and was by some media outlets including Enterainment Weekly, which I expect will probably offer up a report on how Penn won. In its annual article where it has some voters anonymously reveal their picks, two-out-of-three commentators chose Penn, and in reporting from a variety of sources, you could sense an undercurrent of support for the film and the performance. Late in the weekend, I was wondering if Louisville’s Gus Van Sant, who directed Milk, would have been a better upset pick for director than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s David Fincher, who I incorrectly guessed.

But it turned out it was Penn with the Milk upset, and really it could have been predicted by ruling in one piece of conventional wisdom and ruling out another. It would have been good to remember that actors who play real people tend to do well at the Oscars. With Penn’s win, four out of the last five best actor winners have played historical figures. And the idea he’d won too recently was overplayed. Kevin Spacey won best supporting actor for The Usual Suspects in 1995 and best actor for American Beauty in 1999. Jodie Foster’s best actress honors were 1988 for The Accused and 1991 for Silence of the Lambs, Meryl Streep’s Oscars came in in 1979 and 1982, and, of course, there were Tom Hanks’ back-to-back best actor nods in 1993 and ‘94. Clearly, Oscar does not have a problem awarding two trophies to actors who turn in strong performances in close succession.

And yes, some of the strong feeling for Milk is fueled by past and present social issues that both Penn and Dustin Lance Black, who won best original screenplay for Milk, addressed those from the stage, last night. But Penn did not win for a reflexive left-wing bias and he didn’t steal an honor from Rourke. He earned the prize for being one of the best actors of our day, and the victory was more predictable than we might have thought.

Best actress winner Kate Winslet, second from left, is congratulated by some of her predecessors in the honor, including Sophia Loren (left), Nicole Kidman (top right), Shirley MacLaine, Halle Berry (right), and Marion Cotillard (foreground). AP Photo | Mark J. Terrill.

They told us they got it.

Nothing speaks louder in television than ratings, and after years of putting on the longest, most bloated awards show out of the majors, dismal ratings (by Oscars standards) in 2008 told the Academy Awards producers they needed to shake things up. They could no longer say it was the Oscars, and people would watch no matter what they did, which is the spirit of actual quotes I’ve seen from Academy directors in the past.

So, we were told this would be a radically different, surprising Academy Awards ceremony.

It did have its moments.

Probably the best were the acting award presentations, featuring five former winners congratulating this year’s nominees. It gave every nominee something to walk away with.

Michael Shannon walks the red carpet with his girlfriend, Kate Arrington. AP Photo/Amy Sancetta.

Just take our Lexington guy, Michael Shannon. We all knew he would not be winning, up against the performance and the emotional backstory of the late Heath Ledger. But he got this heartfelt public tribute from Christopher Walken: “You were right on target. Well done.” Mickey Rourke suffered a mildly surprising defeat, but had Ben Kingsley declare him, “The returning champ.” And each winner walked into the congratulatory embrace of their predecessors. The appreciation of those moments and arrays of best actors and actresses they gave us were really great.

Also great was host Hugh Jackman’s opening number, a recession-era tribute to the best picture nominees. It even included a Dark Knight moment, acknowledging many people felt the Batman movie should have been nominated for best picture and other awards, and the mind-blowing idea of Anne Hathaway playing Richard Nixon.

The producers couched the show in an storyline of talking about how a film is made, starting with screenplay awards and moving into technical honors. Some of the categories were grouped, like all the visual art awards, and that had to help things go faster and brought the show to a close before midnight. But it was a contrived idea that forced the show to awkwardly work in the awards for films that weren’t scripted, live action features and sort of ignored that before all those technical awards, you have to have a director and stars.

The show also tried some things that didn’t work, including a production number — how 1970s! — celebrating the supposed return of the musical, and a film from Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen that was supposed to honor the comedies, but didn’t do much of anything.

This was by no means a bad show. It had some lovely moments, including the beautiful and dignified best supporting actor acceptance speech by Heath Ledger’s family and Queen Latifah’s bittersweet rendition of I’ll Be Seeing You for the film clips of people who passed away last year.

The Academy Awards producers are on the right track trying to refine this thing, and it still is a huge night. But this year’s edition didn’t offer anything to attract people who wouldn’t be tuning in anyway. And in truth, there really is little the producers can do to attract people that aren’t interested in the contenders. It’s not like the Grammy Awards, where you can turn the ceremony into a big concert, and so what if you’re giving all the awards to an album most of America hasn’t heard.

Oscar can’t do that. It needs blockbuster contenders for blockbuster Oscars audiences, and right now, Oscar-worthy and box-office-champ seem to be mutually exclusive terms.

• One thing this year’s Oscars did have over last year’s ratings bomb was a sense of joy. Last year, you could honor the artistry of No Country for Old Men, but it was like cheering on a funeral, the film was so dark and violent, and the Coen brothers seemed to barely register any pleasure in their victory. Slumdog Millionaire, on the other hand, was this uplifting film that brought along an exuberant cast and crew, including a bunch of cute kids.
• Several post-mortems raise the provocative question, should Oscar dump behind-the-scenes and other “minor” categories from the broadcast? I’ve always liked that Oscar gives people like sound designers and short-subject filmmakers a moment in the global spotlight. But can the show ever truly gain momentum unless it relegates some of these honors to pre-gala ceremonies, like other awards shows do?
• Thanks to Hollywood.com for including Copious Notes in its TwitterNation roundup.

If you’re on twitter, come join the chat.

• Click the play button to hear our interview with Michael Shannon talking about his career and his Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

• Click here for our story and interview with Shannon about Revolutionary Road and his upcoming projects.

• Check the LexGo version of the story for more photos and Shannon’s filmography.

Michael Shannon’s journey to the Academy Awards started at Tates Creek Junior High School in Lexington.
“I was in eighth grade, and I was not athletic at all,” Shannon says, recalling the years at Tates Creek. “But I wanted some sort of after-school activity.”

Michael Shannon. Copyrighted Associated Press Photo | Matt Sayles.

He tried the speech team.

“They gave me a little monologue to work on,” Shannon, 34, says. “It just captivated me. It wasn’t anything I fantasized about. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be an architect. So, it kind of surprised me.”

That surprise has translated into a serious stage and film career that has resulted in Shannon’s Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in Revolutionary Road.

He will learn whether he won Sunday night, when the Academy Awards are handed out in Los Angeles.

Revolutionary Road, about a couple who try to flee 1950s suburbia, is loaded with Oscar-caliber talent, including stars and previous nominees Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes. But, on Jan. 22, when the nominations were announced, Shannon’s best supporting actor nod was one of only three for the film, in which he plays a mentally disturbed man who makes powerful observations.

The movie’s other two nods are for art direction and costume design.

Shannon slept through the nominations.

He was at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where two of his films were premiering: The Missing Person, in which he plays a noir detective, and The Greatest, in which he plays another brief-but-memorable role as the driver who killed Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon’s son.

Michael Shannon (standing) and Dallas Roberts in Adam Rapp's "Finer Noble Gases," part of the Humana Festival of American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

“I had gone to see a midnight movie the night before … so, unfortunately, I didn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m.,” Shannon says.

The nominations were announced at 6:30 a.m. Utah time. That’s when his phone started ringing.
“I was pretty shell-shocked,” he says. “It just kept ringing all day long.

“That’s the special thing about it is realizing how many people are rooting for you.”

Including people back home.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dev Patel, left, and Anil Kapoor in Slumdog Millionaire. Copyrighted AP/Fox Searchlight photo by Ishika Mohan.

Who wouldn’t like a feel-good story right about now: a tale of redemption, an artist getting her due, last respects for a fallen star. Oscar might give us those warm fuzzies Sunday night when the envelopes start opening. Here are my predictions:

Best actor

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

His Golden Globe win was a sign that people really liked this fearless performance and liked Rourke. Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk in Milk and Frank Langella’s President Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon have their adherents. But Mick has been the comeback story of the year in film, and isn’t it about time for a good comeback story?

Best actress

Kate Winslet, The Reader

Who’s more due: Winslet, nominated five times with no win, or Meryl Streep, ­nominated 10 times without a win since 1983 (for Sophie’s Choice)? Bet on ­Winslet, who could have been nominated for The Reader or Revolutionary Road. She’s truly the best actress of 2008.

Supporting actor

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

We would love to tell you that Lexington ­native Michael Shannon will win Sunday night, but would you even want to beat the late Ledger, with all the emotion behind this nomination? Ledger will win a well-earned ­posthumous award for a film that should get more recognition. Shannon will be back.

Supporting actress

Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

This is the biggest coin toss of the major categories, and there is some fun in the idea of “two-time Oscar winner Marisa Tomei.” But immensely talented and drop-dead gorgeous have always worked in this category, and it should work for Cruz, who also is due for her brilliant career.

Best director

David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Slumdog Millionaire’s Danny Boyle might very well saw off the limb I’m out on here, but 13 nominations connotes some respect for Ben Button, and a lot of that achievement is in the cat-herding task of directing this thing. It’s also hard to imagine a flick going 0-13, which some bet Ben will do.

Best picture

Slumdog Millionaire

Right after the nominations came out, there was some drama: Would accusations that Slumdog exploits Indians derail it? Would Harvey Weinstein bully The Reader to a win? But Slumdog has continued to roll - nearing $100 million at the box office - and Weinstein has lost his ability to surprise people.

~ Watch Sunday here and in the Herald-Leader for our profile of Michael Shannon.

~ I’ll be Twittering the Academy Awards Sunday night, using the hashtag #oscars. Come and  get in on the conversation, and stay with LexGo.com for continuing coverage from L.A.

Michael Shannon as John Givings in Revolutionary Road. Photo by Francois Duhamel | Paramount Vantage.

Lexington native Michael Shannon was nominated for an Academy Award Thursday for best supporting actor for his performance in Revolutionary Road.

Shannon’s competition is stiff, including Josh Brolin for Milk, Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder, 2005 best actor winner Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt and the late Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight. Ledger posthumously won the Golden Globe Award for his performance on Jan. 11, and Shannon was a bit of a surprise pick since he had not been a Globe nominee.

Louisville native Gus Van Sant was also received an Oscar nomination for directing Milk, a best picture nominee too.

Despite a strong showing in the Globes’ field, Shannon’s nomination was one of only three Oscar nods for the film, and the only major category pick. Revolutionary Road’s other nominations were for art direction and costume design. Kate Winslet won a Globe for her performance in the film, but in the Oscar race, her lone nomination is for best actress in The Reader.

Revolutionary Road opens in Lexington Friday at the Fayette Mall and Hamburg Pavilion cinemas.

On the Today show, Entrertainment Weekly writer Dave Karger cheered the nomination for Shannon, calling his turn as a mentally disturbed man, “a fantastic performance.”

We talked to Shannon Monday, and asked him about the possibility of being an Oscar nominee:

“I’ve spent a lot of time the last few months having people tell me I did a nice job and they think I’m pretty good at acting and stuff,” Shannon says. Reflecting on three days he spent last week in Peru filming with acclaimed director Werner Herzog, he said, “Then I went down and got back to actually trying to make something work, and I felt a little rusty.

“It’s nice to have a performance recognized, but you’re only as good as your last thing, and you’ve gotta keep pushing yourself. You can’t get lazy, because then it can all disappear.”

That hardly seems to be a danger at this point in Shannon’s career. Right now, he has two films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, Missing Person and The Greatest, and he is currently filming an Orestian drama, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, with Herzog.

Shannon attended Henry Clay High School and started his acting career on the stage, including stops at Actors Theatre of Louisville and the legendary Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. His film career has been marked by small but memorable roles such as Dave Karnes, an ex-Marine who spontaneously put on his uniform and walked into the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. Revolutionary Road’s John Givings, the only character to cheer Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s plan to chuck their 1950s suburban lifestyle and move to Paris, falls in line with that resume. But Shannon has also turned in lead performances, including playing opposite fellow Kentuckian Ashley Judd in last year’s Bug. Missing Person and My Son are lead performances.

This is his first major award nomination.

Read more about Shannon here. (Includes audio of interview with Michael Shannon.)

Check out the rest of our Oscar coverage at LexGo.

The New York Times’ Davis Carr got in touch with Shannon who is at Sundance.

Clockwise from left: Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Wheeler, Michael Shannon as John Givings, Richard Easton as Mr. Givings, Kate Winslet as “April Wheeler” and Kathy Bates as Mrs. Givings in "Revolutionary Road." Copyrighted photo by Francois Duhamel.

Click the play button to hear our podcast with Michael Shannon, including the childhood experience that helped inform his performance in Revolutionary Road.

“There were no movie stars on that set,” actor and Lexington native Michael Shannon says of his latest film, Revolutionary Road.

Celebrity chroniclers and film fans may beg to differ: The Sam Mendes picture features the reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who sailed into cinematic history as the doomed lovers in 1997’s Titanic, the all-time box office champ.

That might be a story line helping to sell the film. But when he was there to film, Shannon says, “it was a group of people united by a passion for the material and wanting to honor the book.”

The book is Richard Yates’ 1961 novel about a Connecticut couple who try to break the bonds of mid-20th-century suburbia. Frank Wheeler is a cookie-cutter office worker in New York and his wife, April, cares for their home and two children. She hatches a plan to break their boring routine by moving to Paris, where she will support the family through a high-paying government secretarial job and he can figure out what his passion is and pursue it.

Friends and coworkers politely congratulate them, but privately scoff at Frank and April’s plan as childish.

All except John.

Played by Shannon, John is the son of Frank and April’s real estate agent, played by Kathy Bates.

He was once a gifted mathematician, teaching at a university, but he has since been committed to a sanitarium, where he has undergone dozens of electroshock treatments. When he meets the couple, John seems to have a distinct disdain for suburban life.

“Plenty of people are on to the emptiness,” John says to Frank and April during a walk in the woods, “but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”

The question is implied: Is the fact that the crazy guy seems to be the only one supporting the plan good or bad?

Read the rest of this entry »

Members of the cast and crew of Slumdog Millionaire arrive at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards. From left are, Producer Christian Colson, actor Dev Patel, actor Anil Kapoor, actress Freida Pinto, director Danny Boyle, composer A.R. Rahman and writer Simon Beaufoy. Photo by Matt Sayles | AP.

That clanging you hear from Hollywood could be the bellwether ringing for Slumdog Millionaire.

Things in this year’s awards season were not terribly clear until Sunday night, when Danny Boyle’s story of an unlikely game show winner won four Golden Globes, including best motion picture drama, best director for Boyle and best screenplay for Simon Beaufoy. It seems like everyone who’s seen this movie has tremendous enthusiasm for it, and that is translating to award voters.

It would be an interesting contrast to last year if Slumdog continued its run into the Academy Awards. While the awards, so far, have not seen the return of blockbusters, which we thought we might see, Slumdog is a much more hopeful film than last year’s pitch black winner, No Country for Old Men.

Kate Winslet poses with her two Golden Globe Awards, which she won on Sunday. Photo by Mark J. Terrill | AP.

While last night’s honors seemed to put Slumdog into a solid frontrunner position, they also raised some interesting possibilities for the Academy Awards, which announces its nominations Jan. 22. Like, is Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the winner for best motion picture comedy or musical, now a best picture contender? What about Kate Winslet? Does her dual win, as best actress in a drama for Revolutionary Road and supporting actress for The Reader, indicate this is the year the five-time Oscar nominee might win one of the guys? And will she have to contend with Sally Hawkins, who beat out award perennials Meryl, Emma and Frances for best actress in a comedy or musical for her performance in the little seen Happy-Go-Lucky?

Will everything be a huge disappointment if we don’t get to hear Mickey Rourke give another acceptance speech? After he won for The Wrestler, the star, who looked like he thought he was at the Grammys, gave an oddly-touching and  funny address in which he thanked his dogs and had to have had somebody’s nervous finger ready to hit the censor button.

It was actually a night to push FCC boundaries and reminded us why this cocktail party is so much better than having Billy Bush read the winners’ names, which is what happened last year, due to the writers strike. Winning best actress in a TV show musical or comedy, Tina Fey invited her Internet tormentors to do something I don’t think I’m allowed to say on a newspaper-affiliated blog. At the end of the night, Slumdog producer Christian Colson said a word I know I’m not allowed to repeat here after being told to wrap up his best drama acceptance speech.

That’s OK. He’ll probably have more chances to get it right.

Check out my Twitter for my random thoughts while watching last night.

For the day-after-New Year’s Weekender, Scott the editor asked me and the other Herald-Leader critics to weigh in on what we are looking forward to in 2009. Here’s my list of local arts events.

Gil Shaham performs Valentines Day at the Singletary Center.

Violin virtuosos: Early in the year, we will receive visits from two of the hottest ­violinists on the planet: Joshua Bell in recital with pianist Jeremy Denk on Jan. 26 at the Norton Center for the Arts in Danville; and Gil Shaham performing with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, on Feb. 14 at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Either one of the guys coming to town would be a big deal. To get both violin ­virtuosos less than a month from each other is huge.

Silas House’s new play: In 2005, the Kentucky author made his debut as a playwright with The Hurting Part, a play with the familiarity of characters close to our homes, sketched with great drama and wonderful language. In April, Actors Guild of Lexington is scheduled to present House’s second stage effort, and it will be interesting to see whether a new Kentucky playwright is indeed emerging.

TBA’s first season: In April, we will learn who is going to take the baton for the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra and lead the orchestra into the future. After 37 years of George Zack on the podium and two years of a search for a music director, it will be fascinating to see how this person settles in, what he or she will program, and what sort of public face he or she will bring to the Philharmonic.

River of Time: In 1999, University of Kentucky music composition professor Joseph Baber wrote An American Requiem, a powerful choral and orchestral work that seemed a bit like putting Ken Burns’ The Civil War into a classical composition. River of Time, Baber’s opera set to be premiered by UK Opera Theatre in the fall, will mine the same period, telling the tale of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood in Kentucky and the impact of his presidency.

The economy: Do I look ahead to this with anticipation or dread? It all depends on whether the country’s financial status continues to deteriorate or starts to turn around. Either way, it will dictate what arts groups do in 2009-10, and a severe financial downturn could irrevocably alter the arts landscape in Central Kentucky and across the nation.

Here are a few other things I’m looking forward to on the national stage:

New movies from Kentucky’s A-listers: Johnny Depp and George Clooney are notably absent from the awards race this year, but 2009 sees both with fresh, intriguing projects. Depp’s highest profile film has him playing gangster John Dilinger in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, due in July. Clooney is starring in Men Who Stare at Goats, the feature film directoral debut for his Good Night, and Good Luck co-writer Grant Heslov, a film about a U.S. military unit that uses the paranormal against its enemies. Depp and Clooney have other projects coming as well.

Other movies: We’re back with that old saw that Hollywood can’t make anything but sequels these days, and there are plenty this year, including a new Transformers and Harry Potter. A few reach farther into the past, and I am intrigued to see how Star Trek (sans Shatner) and Terminator (sans the Governator) fare with new visions.

Alan Gilbert taking over the New York Philharmonic: Like here in Lexington, New York’s leading band will get a new conductor starting in the fall. Unlike the recent line of venerable old conductors that have conducted the NY Phil, Gilbert promises to bring a new profile to what should be, but often is not, one of America’s leading orchestras. BTW, the NY Phil comes to Danville with outgoing conductor Lorin Maazel March 5.

Sean Watkins and Jon Foreman are Fiction Family.

Jon Foreman’s new project: The Switchfoot frontman’s solo EP’s were some of last year’s best music. He starts 2009 in collaboration with Nickle Creek’s Sean Watkins for Fiction Family. Speaking of Christian rock, I am also looking forward to new music — finally! — from Rebecca St. James.

The Obama administration: We haven’t heard a Presidential candidate or President-elect talk about the arts nearly as much as Barack Obama. His campaign included an arts platform, and both his campaign and transition team featured arts policy advisors, so it will be very interesting to see what kind of action this translates into. We’re talking about this more this weekend at le blog and in Sunday’s Herald-Leader Arts+Life section.

Frank Langella portrays Richard Nixon, left, and Michael Sheen portrays David Frost in "Frost/Nixon," which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best motion picture drama. AP/Universal Pictures photo by Ralph Nelson.

All the talk that blockbusters may make a charge back onto the Oscar ballots has to be somewhat muted by the 2009 Golden Globe Award nominations.

Box office champs that seemed poised to muscle their way into contention this year were largely left off the Hollywood Foreign Press Associations list of finalists, that was once again dominated by arthouse fare from prestige studios such as Paramount Vantage and Fox Searchlight. They’re all probably fine films — we haven’t seen most of them in Central Kentucky, yet — but it is a safe, predictable and unimaginative list.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon and Doubt topped the movie nominations with five nods each, while efforts such as Batman: The Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder just received one and two nominations respectively, all in the best supporting actor category: Tom Crusie and Robert Downey Jr. for Thunder and the late Heath Ledger for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Cruise’s self-effacing turn in the Ben Stiller comedy is a pleasant surprise.

Critically acclaimed "Wall-E" is a nominee for best animated feature. AP/Walt Disney photo.

Pixar’s Wall-E, which is winding up atop numerous critics’ Top 10 lists, did get a nod for best animated feature. There has been speculation that the environmentally conscious film about a dutiful robot left to clean up a trashed and vacant Earth may transcend the animated category come Oscar time and get a best picture nomination.

On TV, cable once again was dominant, claiming all but one of the shows in the drama category, Fox’s House being the lone broadcast representative. NBC’s 30 Rock and The Office were the two broadcast comedy representatives.

Last year’s Academy Awards were followed by widespread kvetching that a lack of box office draws contributed to some of Oscar’s lowest ratings ever. As 2008 progressed, hints started emanating from Hollywood that maybe this year’s Oscars would have a little more box office and star power — with films such as The Dark Knight receiving strong critical notices.

Dual best actress Golden Globe nominee Meryl Streep in "Mama Mia!." AP/Universal Pictures photo by Peter Mountain.

But the Golden Globes, often viewed as a harbinger of Oscar nominees, don’t seem to be interested in taking a populist route, electing to stay with the kind of films that have dominated awards seasons for the past decade.There is a little more star power in the acting awards with tabloid darlings Brad Pitt (Benjamin Button) and Angelina Jolie (Changeling) nominated for best acting performances in the drama category along with other marquee stars such as Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road), Sean Penn (Milk) and Meryl Streep, a dual nominee for best actress in a drama (Doubt) and comedy or musical (Mamma Mia!).

Absent from contention this year are Kentuckians George Clooney and Johnny Depp, who had become awards season mainstays the last few years. Clooney starred in Burn After Reading, which was nominated for best comedy or musical, but Frances McDormand was the only acting nominee from that film.

Absent from Central Kentucky, so far, are any of the best drama nominees. Slumdog Millionaire is currently slated to open Dec. 19 at the Kentucky Theatre, Benjamin Button is set for a Dec. 25 opening, and Revolutionary Road (with a supporting performance from Lexington’s own Michael Shannon) is Jan. 16, though all of those dates are subject to change. The other nominees, Frost/Nixon and The Reader, are currently in limited release. We’ll let you know here at Copious Notes blog and Twitter when opening dates for those and other nominees are announced for Lexington.

So, what do you think of the nominations? Does this look like a good field, or were you hoping for a few of those more populist films to get in the race? Are you OK with the migration of quality scripted drama and comedy series away from broadcast? Hit the comment tab and discuss.

Note: Movable Feast is having a benefit screening of Milk tonight at the Kentucky. It opens tomorrow.