Josh Brolin knocks Oscars for “unbelievable” Dune snub

Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s heady sci-fi novel, was a hit at the box office, a hit with critics, and a hit with Academy voters, who awarded it 10 Oscar nominations at this year’s ceremony, including one for Best Picture.

But weirdly, Villeneuve himself didn’t get a nomination for Best Director, even though the movie’s success depended on his ability wrangle material that has flummoxed many a director before him. Josh Brolin, who played House Atreides retainer Gurney Halleck in the movie, made his displeasure known in a Twitter video.

“Hey, I just want to say congratulations to Legendary, Warner Bros., everybody who got nominated for ‘Dune’: editing, cinematography, score, music, writing, pretty much everything,” Brolin began. “And the unbelievable, almost numbing, flummoxing, I feel, for Denis Villeneuve not being nominated for Best Director. It’s just one of those things where you go, ‘Huh? What?!’”

"I don’t know how you get 10 nominations and then the guy who has done the impossible with that book doesn’t get nominated. It makes you realize that it’s all amazing and then it’s all f***ing totally dumb. So congratulations for the amazing accomplishments that these incredibly talented people have been acknowledged for, because it’s all really, really dumb."

Spoken like a poet.

Denis Villeneuve snubbed by the Oscars for Dune

As for Villeneuve himself, he shared how helpful it can be to make pancakes during stressful moments like waiting for the Oscar nominations to be announced. We all process things in different ways, I suppose.

For the record, the nominees in the Best Director category are Steven Spielberg (West Side Story), Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), Kenneth Branagh (Belfast), Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog) and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car). Personally, I would have put Villeneuve on the list, but then again, I haven’t seen all of the rest of those movies.

The Oscars air on ABC on March 27.

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