John Hawkes didn't even receive a nomination?

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Missed the opening credits of The Sessions as I was adjusting the DVD-TV connection of a DVD with no package/liner notes. Did not recognize the lead actor. It was a shock to me that the actor playing the 39-year-old (Hawkes is 53) was the same actor who looked 60-ish and like a relative of John Carradine in Hawke's Winter Bone role.

A wonderful performance in that role.

A great performance in The Sessions.

You do understand that they were nominated in DIFFERENT CATEGORIES, right?

Helen Hunt was nominated for BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - a category that is perennially weak, even more so this year. For Helen Hunt to have missed out they would have needed to nominate all the following actresses: Nicole Kidman for The Paperboy, Judi Dench for Skyfall, and Maggie Smith for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or Emma Watson for The Perks of Being a Wallflower. A) The Paperboy was underseen and ridiculously divisive. Most people didn't want to see the movie and those that did were torn between thinking she was great and thinking she was really terrible. B) The Academy is unlikely to go for 2-3 older, non-American actresses - 1 yes, but not three. C) The Academy would prefer to go for a "Hollywood" indie like The Sessions than a Hollywood/British blockbuster action movie like Skyfall. C)The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel really didn't deserve to be at the Oscars, and especially not over Helen Hunt. D)The Academy has never gone for something like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and especially not to recognize a young, inexperienced actress of one popular series.
In what universe did you expect Helen Hunt to not get nominated? She was one of three sure-fire bets this year.

Every single person nominated in Best Supporting Actress starred in a movie where "the engine was dependent on" the male star. That doesn't automatically mean they don't deserve the nomination and the male lead does.

Whereas John Hawkes was up for BEST LEAD ACTOR - a category that is perennially really strong, and even more so this year. Many actors gave career-best performances in Academy-friendly films. Besides Day-Lewis, Cooper, Jackman, Phoenix and Washington, there are at least a dozen other lead actors that gave the best peformance of their career and easily could have been nominated. In another year, John Hawkes would have won. He just went up against really, really tough competition.
But we can pretty much guarantee he was 6th in the voting, and that's pretty damn good.

You should take your beef up with BAFTA instead of the Oscars. They nominated Ben Affleck instead of John Hawkes and that's a much more questionable choice.


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I can understand the nominations for Bradley Cooper and Daniel Day-Lewis. But Hawkes should have had the third nomination over Denzel, Joaquin and Hugh.

As shallow as it may sound, he may have been penalized for 2 reasons:

1. Other than Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, has anyone that had severly limited movement been rewarded with a ton of nominations?

2. The movie was dramatic, but it was also a comedy. It wasn't dark and there weren't many deep philosophical "blue' periods that the characters struggled through. It's seeing "internal struggle" on screen that gets the Oscar people all worked up.

Very surprising, isn't it? When I remember this film in years to come, it will be John Hawkes' performance that will first come to mind.