Per usual, not too much for genre fans to get excited about. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I suppose could classify as fantasy, sort of, had the most nods this year, including Best Picture and Actor. Heath Ledger is up for Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight, but the movie failed to get any other major nominations. It is up for the usual throw-them-a-bone categories of Cinematography, Film Editing, Makeup, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing.
Wall-E did pretty good – it failed to get a Best Picture nod as many were hoping for, but it is up for Animated Film (duh,) Original Screenplay, Original Song, and several technical awards.
The Visual Effects category puts Benjamin Button up against The Dark Knight and ILM’s Iron Man.
UPDATE: StarWars.com has a full listing of all ILM and Skywalker Sound Oscar nominations, as well as BAFTA and VES nods.
http://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/oscarpreferences.jpg – I thought this explained the AMPAS preferences pretty well.
Carson, I noticed that list left of the Academy’s favorite go-to: disabilities! The TCM blog breaks it down pretty well:
http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/01/22/oscars-favorite-parts/#more-6761