was nominated for an Academy Award for visual effects, but shut out of all other categories when the Academy Award nominations were announced this morning. Other major genre films were ignored as well, although the latest James Bond film fared pretty well.The biggest surprise is arguably that The Dark Knight Rises didn’t garner a single nomination, even in the technical categories that tend to favor big-budget tentpole films. Many observers had expected Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film to get at least a couple of nominations, possibly even for Best Picture, especially after the omission of The Dark Knight in 2008 led to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reforming the nomination process.The Hunger Games was also completely shut out of the nomination process; while the film wasn’t widely expected to score in the “big” categories, it’s surprising to see that a film that relied so heavily on archery didn’t at least earn a visual effects or sound mixing nomination.
