The race is ON! Chris “Thor” Hemsworth helped hammer home the 86th Oscar nominations  with Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs and the results are pretty much as I expected: AMERICAN HUSTLE and GRAVITY tied for most nominations–10 each, followed by 12 YEARS A SLAVE with 9!

What I’m delighted about? Matthew McConaughey. It’s his year all right, all right, all right!! He’s in the running for Best Actor as an AIDS-riddled rodeo cowboy in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB. But he also might have easily been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his few indelible minutes of screen time in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.  And let’s not forget his superlative work in MUD!

I am also delighted that the lion scored with the wolf: Leo DiCaprio– Scorsese’s muse– devoured the screen as a rapacious stock trader in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, while Meryl devoured another nomination (this makes 18 nominations for Streep) as the drug addled/cancer ridden matriarch in AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY.

I was disappointed that Joaquin Phoenix was not nominated for his tender restraint as a man who falls in love with HER, voiced by Scarlett Johansson in an utterly compelling vocal performance as the disembodied operating system he covets.

Many people were disappointed that Tom Hanks was not nominated for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS.  I wasn’t– bad Mass accent. Some were disappointed that Oprah wasn’t nominated for THE BUTLER. It was a good/not a great performance noticed only because it was OPRAH. Still others complained that Emma Thompson was overlooked in SAVING MR. BANKS. I never banked on this one note performance. However, the Coen brothers’ INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS might have been noticed for screenplay (it’s most salient feature), and perhaps one of those dreary songs.

But I was truly horrified that the French film about a coming of age lesbian love affair that took the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, both for its stars and director– was not nominated for best foreign language film. This is an absurdity. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is easily the best foreign language film of the year, and is one of my TOP TEN! Here are the rest of my TOP TEN in no particular order:

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
AMERICAN HUSTLE
20 FEET FROM STARDOM
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR
WADJDA
GRAVITY
HER
NEBRASKA
12 YEARS A SLAVE
ENOUGH SAID