To reference a Coen Brothers' movie, American Sniper seems to be "The Film That Wasn't There" of this year's Oscar season. Premiering at the AFI Fest in November, American Sniper received decent reviews upon its debut but hardly anything that declared it an automatic Best Picture contender. In fact, among Oscar contenders, the film was overshadowed at the festival by its awards season rival Selma, which received the bulk of the Oscar buzz coming out of the Hollywood-based film festival. However, Clint Eastwood's film chronicling the military service of Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) was far from defeated in its awards season aspirations. After receiving early mentions from both the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review as one of the best films of the year, American Sniper went dark in terms of awards season nominations. Without yet releasing wide to the public, American Sniper miraculously seemed to gain steam, securing an all important Best Picture nomination from the Producers Guild of America. While the PGA nomination does not guarantee American Sniper of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, since the Oscars switched to a lineup of ten nominees in 2010, the nominees for Best Picture between the PGA and the Academy have only differed by one or two movies. It may sit on the fringe of films that have a real shot of a Best Picture nomination, but American Sniper is absolutely a legitimate contender in the race.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
