Roeper: Academy snub of ‘Inception’s’ Nolan off-base

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

No offense to the five immensely talented individuals nominated for “Best Director” on Tuesday morning, but members of the Academy must have been smoking something powerful to snub Christopher Nolan’s astonishingly creative work on “Inception.”

Really? No insult to Tom Hooper’s fine work, but “The King’s Speech” is a more impressively directed film than “Inception?”

I don’t see it.

With the exception of the slight to Nolan and a surprisingly strong (and well-deserved) showing for “Winter’s Bone,” it pretty much went as expected at the Oscar nomination announcements, with “The King’s Speech” leading the way with 12 nominations, odds-on favorite Colin Firth heading the “Best Actor” field — and hey, a confirmed Mo’Nique sighting.

As usual, the Motion Picture Academy made the announcement in the predawn hours in Hollywood so they’d get that all-important live coverage on the morning chat shows, as last year’s “Best Supporting Actress” Mo’Nique and Academy president Tom Sherak rattled off the names of the nominees in rapid-fire fashion and then invited us to watch the Oscars on Feb. 27.

Cue the overwrought music, and cut to the interviews with nominees such as Firth (the “Today” show) and Melissa Leo (“Good Morning America”).

“Best Actor” nominee James Franco (“127 Hours”) appeared on “Today” via satellite from New Haven, where he’s attending Yale.

“I’ve got my pre-class makeup on,” Franco cracked to Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira.

Franco also gave Vieira a hard time for the previous interview with Firth, in which she promised to polish Firth’s statue.

Ba-dum-bum.

If co-hosting the Oscars isn’t nerve-wracking enough, Franco will have to perform the chores for a full three hours before the Best Actor trophy is handed out — knowing full well it’ll be a huge upset if Firth’s name isn’t called.

The “Best Actress” race seems to be shaping up as a two-woman competition between critical darling Natalie Portman for “Black Swan” and old-school Hollywood favorite Annette Bening for “The Kids Are All Right.” My early hunch is Bening will win, partially as a make-good for her “American Beauty” disappointment and also because the Academy will figure the talented and popular Portman will have plenty more chances in the years to come.

This much we know for sure: when the 83rd Annual Academy Awards are awarded on Feb. 27, new generation co-hosts Anne Hathaway and Franco might wow us with a cheeky musical number, but they ain’t gonna call Bruce Willis “Ashton Kutcher’s father,” and they’re not going to make light of Robert Downey Jr.’s substance-abusing past.

And the nominees are . . .

The fact that I went 9-for-10 in my “Best Picture” forecast (I said “The Town” would get a nod, but the Academy went with “Winter’s Bone”) speaks more to the predictable nature of the Academy than my psychic abilities. Any Googling movie fan probably could have gotten seven or eight of the nominees right. It’s not as if “Hot Tub Time Machine” or “Burlesque” was going to spring the upset.

“The Social Network” is the slight favorite to win “Best Picture,” with “The King’s Speech,” “The Fighter” and “Inception” rounding out the field of contenders. Nominees such as “Toy Story 3” and “127 Hours,” while fine films, have no chance.

It’s a tight race for “Best Supporting Actor” between Christian Bale for “The Fighter” and Geoffrey Rush for “The King’s Speech.” Rush was great, but Bale was transcendent. But the Academy just loves those theatrical performances, whether it’s a Brit playing a Brit, or an Aussie playing an Aussie in a very British story.

I’ll have predictions in all categories when we get closer to Oscar night, but for now it’s a safe bet to assume the telecast will be far too long, at least one actress will wear a dress she’ll regret forever, and once again the ratings will dip because they insist on including categories that result in people we’ve never heard of winning awards we don’t care about and thanking a bunch of other people we’ve never heard of — and you just can’t make compelling TV out of that.