OSCARS NOMINATION NOMINATIONS

WORST NOMINATION NOMINATIONS:

• Best Original Screenplay - Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack - Dallas Buyers Club
• Best Cinematography - The Grandmaster
• Best Original Song - Alone Yet Not Alone
• Best Animated Feature - Having This Category
• Best Documentary - Dirty Wars
• Best Supporting Actress - Julia Roberts - August: Osage County
• Best Actress - Dame Judy Dench - Philomena
• Best Film - Captain Phillips

WINNER: Best Original Song - Alone Yet Not Alone

It's only fitting that the nomination so bad it was disqualified wins...by disqualification. 

• The Dallas Buyers Club screenplay was disqualified for being good to the first 50 pages. 
• The Best Cinematography nomination was removed from consideration for being foreign (and martial arts!), and therefore probably pretty good if anyone actually watched it. 
• The Best Animated Feature nomination was mired in accusations that it was a category, not a film. 
• Best Documentary was nixed for not being a documentary - as an example - as one Netflix reviewer points out, Mr. Scahill's "scoop" on the existence of JSOC in 2006 loses steam when one realizes that JSOC had a pretty extensive Wikipedia page at the time. It's not a scoop if you're only dispelling your own ignorance. 
• Best Supporting Actress was axed because Julia Roberts is always the star.
• Best Actress was disallowed because, if she's nominated for Dame, she's nominated for actress
• Captain Phillips got mired up in the Best Documentary scandal after it was pointed out that, despite accusations from survivors that its subject had lied about events, it was probably more accurate than Dirty Wars.

MOST AWKWARD CATEGORY

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING. Check out these nominees

• Dallas Buyers Club
• Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
• The Lone Ranger

How great would it be to have 3 minutes of supercilious nonsense from a self-important presenter, let's call her Barbara Streisand, about the integrity of the makeup and hairstyling arts, followed by, "And he winner is: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa." Almost as great as the awkwardness of a Woody Allen win...that's how great.

BIGGEST SNUB:

• Best Director - Spike Jonze - Her
• Best Supporting Actress - Margot Robbie - The Wolf of Wall Street
• Best Supporting Actress - Scarlett Johanssen - Don Jon
• Best Supporting Actor - Tom Hiddleston - Thor: The Dark World
• Best Actress - Adele Exarchopolous - Blue is the Warmest Color
• Best Actor - Joaquin Phoenix - Her
• Best Actor - Leonardo DiCaprio - The Great Gatsby
• Best Original Song - Lana Del Ray Young and Beautiful - The Great Gatsby

WINNER: Joaquin Phoenix - Her

Margot Robbie and Scarlett Johanssen are kind of playing the same character. Strangely, so is Leo in both Wolf and Gatsby; call me old-fashioned but I prefer the 20's vision of the con man to our own. And Lana Del Ray's song is so obvious an injustice that it's best to let it be. Joaquin Phoenix, however, is not a tolerable miss. He is in every scene of Her, in fact nearly every single second of screentime is him. And, for the most part, it's him talking to no one. The thing about this role to emphasize is how easily Her could have been a laughingstock. The premise - in love with an AI - is silly, so much so that most people would rightfully not even bother. It's worth taking serious because Phoenix can capture the silliness of it and the seriousness of it at the same time. And he does sort of look like a certain dashing blogger.