A few surprises up Oscar’s sleeve

The underdogs had bite after all.

Although many of the major Oscar categories unfolded much as experts predicted, several surprises nosed their way onto the list of nominees when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its choices Tuesday. Most face long odds to win a statuette, but their inclusion shows a voting body willing, at least in some cases, to defy conventional wisdom.

Two mainstream hits that were on the pre-season ballots of few awards experts, “The Blind Side” and “District 9,” snagged spots on the best picture list. A pair of low-budget, independently made films, “In the Loop” and “The Messenger,” nabbed major nominations (both in screenplay categories; the latter in supporting actor too). And a long shot who had never before been nominated for an Oscar, Maggie Gyllenhaal (“Crazy Heart”), edged out a four-time nominee, Julianne Moore (“A Single Man”), for supporting actress.

“It’s an acknowledgment that you don’t need to do a multimillion-dollar movie with singing or dancing. You just need to make sure you worked really hard,” said Armando Iannucci, the director and co-writer of “In the Loop,” who was nominated for adapted screenplay.

The academy has often taken heat from both flanks of the film world. The independent wing has chastised it for neglecting low-budget films that get limited theatrical play; the studio world has criticized it for ignoring broad commercial successes.

But the nomination for “In the Loop” would seem to contradict the first argument. It was the first time, as representatives for the film have pointed out, that a movie that premiered on video-on-demand concurrent with its theatrical release had been nominated for a major Oscar. And “The Messenger,” an Iraq-themed Sundance movie distributed by upstart outfit Oscilloscope -- the film has earned less than $1 million at the box office -- implicitly made a similar case with the nomination of Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon for original screenplay and Woody Harrelson for supporting actor.

Meanwhile, the best picture and lead actress nominations for “The Blind Side” -- a $238-million hit at the multiplex whose filmmakers came with no Oscar pedigree -- seemed to rebut claims of an anti-mainstream bias.

Broderick Johnson, who produced “Blind Side” with partner Andrew Kosove, acknowledged that he thought the movie’s Middle American flavor and success might work against it. “Your mind does wander to [Oscars], because you believe the movie is so wonderful,” he said. “But then you have to step back and think, ‘Even though audiences enjoy it, it’s not necessarily the movie people think about for awards.’ ”

The underdog choices also negate the trope that the season’s most anointed performances -- as Moore’s was when “A Single Man” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in the fall -- are Oscar shoo-ins. Gyllenhaal, who had been on the awards roller coaster before with indie projects, said that because others were getting more buzz, she took a back seat.

“At first, I was more invested in the awards stuff this year. And when none of it happened, I thought it was a good lesson to let go,” she said. Although she did a raft of events at the beginning of awards season, “I’m not tired, because I haven’t really been running around campaigning.”

In the process of choosing the underdogs, though, the academy left out a few favorites. The inclusion of “The Blind Side” and “District 9” for best picture coincided with the exclusion of a fashionable pre-season choice, Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus.”

In the animation category, the critically lauded “Ponyo” and the campaigned-for “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” did not receive nominations, while the small, hand-drawn Irish film “The Secret of Kells” got one. “They’re all going, what the hell is this film that got nominated?” director Tomm Moore joked via telephone from Ireland.

And as the Iraq picture “The Messenger” joined the similarly themed “The Hurt Locker” on the original screenplay shortlist, the writers of the breakup dramedy “(500) Days of Summer” -- Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber -- did not continue their nomination streak. “Next year,” Neustadter deadpanned, “I’m totally writing a war movie.”

steve.zeitchik @latimes.com

Times staff writer Amy Kaufman contributed to this report.