On Sunday, March 7th, 2010, the best picture winner at the Academy Awards will be announced. Although there are ten nominees in that category this year (up from the usual five), they will likely not include the following: “Twilight,” “The Hangover,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” “The Proposal,” or “Star Trek.” Undoubtedly, none of the “Twilight” pictures will ever be recognized by the Academy, though one of them was named best movie of the year at the People’s Choice Awards (PCA) last week. Looking at the list of acting nominees and winners from that award show, it seems unlikely that many of those nominees will receive Oscar nods, but one person who might be able to get nominated for both is Sandra Bullock.
This year, Bullock won “Best Movie Actress” at the PCA. On the PCA website it does not clarify if she won for a specific movie or for her total work last year as a whole (where she appeared in movies like “The Proposal” and “The Blind Side”), but her performance in the latter has garnered her both commercial and critical success. In fact, “The Blind Side” may actually help to win Bullock an Oscar nomination.
Bullock has already had an exciting awards season. She was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for “The Blind Side” for “Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Drama.” (For the record, she was also nominated for “The Proposal” as the best actress in a comedy.) Bullock was also nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for “The Blind Side.” And now Dave Karger from Entertainment Weekly has predicted that she’s likely to garner her first Academy Award nomination this year for that movie.
However, as the Chicago Tribune points out, Sandra Bullock has a major problem to overcome. Susan King writes:
If Sandra Bullock is going to win a best actress Oscar for her role in “The Blind Side“ she may have one major obstacle to overcome: She’s too popular.
In that piece, King makes the solid argument that mainstream actors are frequently snubbed at the Academy Awards. That fact is discouraging because it would be nice to see Bullock recognized for a popular role that she absolutely excelled in.
Although I haven’t seen all the performances receiving Oscar buzz for best actress this year, I am still pulling for Bullock to land her first nomination. In the past, she made some bad mainstream movies. However, in “The Blind Side,” she made a great one and broke an industry record to boot. As Entertainment Weekly reported:
Bullock is now the only actress ever to have a film marketed with her name solely above the title (i.e. based on her star power alone, and not a franchise or tentpole picture) pass the $200 million mark in domestic gross.
Best of luck, Sandra.
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