LATimes.com have published an interesting article with films and performances they think were overlooked in this years Academy Award nominations. Maria’s moving turn in Beautiful Boy was included:
Many small-budget features and their actors were overlooked by the Oscars. That includes ‘The Music Never Stopped,’ Maria Bello, Ashley Rickards and Anson Mount.
In a perfect world, every theatrically released movie would have the exact same chance to compete each year for the Academy Award in its worthiest categories. But just like with the lottery, you have to play to win, and when it comes to the Oscars, many smaller, independently made films just can’t afford to play.
Fortunately, as a Times film reviewer, Netflix devotee and overall movie junkie, I see a number of strong features each year that fly so far under Hollywood’s radar as to barely exist. But they do exist, often as memorably — if not more so — than the many higher profile, more pedigreed selections that fill the lists of Oscar hopefuls.
So, with this year’s Academy Award nominations just announced, it seemed like an appropriate time to recall some of 2011′s best “unconsidered” films and, in that aforementioned perfect world, where they might have landed in the race for Oscar gold.
On the lead actress front, another highly respected performer, Maria Bello, was robbed of consideration for her stunning portrayal of a mother devastated by her teenage son’s murder-suicide shooting rampage in the difficult, under-seen “Beautiful Boy.” Bello’s brave interpretation of Shawn Ku and Michael Armbruster’s sensitive script (Ku also directed) was, in many ways, superior to Screen Actors Guild Award nominee Tilda Swinton’s widely noted but arguably less accessible performance in the similarly themed “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”
Had “Beautiful Boy” been sufficiently exposed to academy members and other voting blocs by its distributor, Anchor Bay, Bello may have very well found herself among the many fine lead actress contenders. But, according to the film’s producer, Lee Clay, it was “less an Anchor Bay-specific thing and more a small, independent movie-specific thing.” He explained, “To really mount a serious Oscar campaign, you’re talking about a spend of between half a million and a million dollars, which was more than the film’s entire [prints and advertising] budget to begin with.”
– LATimes.com