Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Award Season is Crazy Season. If you follow these things at all, you have been bombarded by information about the superiority of one film above another for months now. If you blissfully ignore all that stuff, you might even not have heard that a producer on The Hurt Locker is in trouble for trying to convince Academy voters to vote for his film instead of Avatar. His crime: sending an e-mail to his friends. Yes, things are crazy. So it is a good thing that with the Oscar telecast on Sunday, Award Season will be over. Until May or so, when the first discussions for next year’s favourites and winners will begin once more.
But before the Oscars, the most important of all the meaningless awards, are handed out on Sunday, it is time for my annual Oscar predictions. Last year, I picked 19 of the 24 winners. This year, let’s try to improve on that. But unlike last year, this year I actually feel like I am entitled to my own opinion, having seen 20 of the 58 animated films, 18 of the 38 feature films, and actually having seen all nominated films in three categories. So not only will I now predict the Oscar winners as promised, I will also tell you who should win. (Yes, my opinion constitutes objective truth in these matters.) The following list is ordered rather randomly and incomplete, an alphabetical and complete breakdown of all categories and predictions follows at the end.
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Tags: 2009, 2010, A Matter of Loaf and Death, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Aardman Animations, Ajami, Alessandro Camon, An Education, Anastasia Masaro, Anna Kendrick, Armando Iannucci, Avatar, award season, Bob Peterson, Carey Mulligan, Caroline Smith, Christoph Waltz, Christopher Plummer, Coen Brothers, Colin Firth, Coraline, Crazy Heart, Das Weisse Band, Dave Warren, Disney, District 9, El Secreto de Sus Ojos, english, Ethan Coen, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Faubourg 36, Gabourey Sidibe, Geoffrey Fletcher, George Clooney, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Helen Mirren, Henry Selick, In the Loop, Inglourious Basterds, Instead of Abracadabra, Invictus, James Cameron, Jason Reitman, Jeff Bridges, Jeremy Renner, Jesse Armstrong, Joel Coen, Kathry Bigelow, La teta asustade, Lee Daniels, Logorama, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Marion Cotillard, Mark Boal, Matt Damon, Mauro Fiore, Meryl Streep, Mo'Nique, Morgan Freeman, Movies, Neill Blomkamp, Nick Hornby, Nine, Oren Moverman, Oscar, Paris 36, Penélope Cruz, Pete Doctor, Pixar, Precious, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, Quentin Tarantino, Randy Newman, Sandra Bullock, Sheldon Turner, Sherlock Holmes, Simon Blackwell, Stanley Tucci, Star Trek, T-Bone Burnett, Terri Tatchell, The Blind Side, The Door, The Hurt Locker, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Messenger, The Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells, The White Ribbon, Tom McCarthy, Tony Roche, Un Prophète, Up, Up in the Air, Vera Farmiga, Wallace & Gromit, Wes Anderson, Woody Harrelson
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Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Review:
An alcoholic former Country star, now reduced to living in squalor and playing in bowling alleys, reconsiders his life when he meets a young journalist and falls for her. The story of the film is fairly trite and unoriginal, and the direction by débutante Scott Cooper is lacking in many ways, but the film is nevertheless made bearable by decent actors who take their caricatured characters to a better place than they belong, and some truly great Country music.
Random Observations:
Crazy Heart at the IMDb
The film is nominated for three Oscars. Best Actor for Jeff Bridges (okay, par for the course for him), Best Supporting Actress for Maggie Gyllenhaal (not okay, she is far below her usual standards here) and Best Original Song, The Weary Kind, which is all kinds of awesome.
This concludes my pre-Oscar Oscar-nominated film-watching. I have now seen 20 of 58 nominated films or 18 of 38 if you don’t count the shorts and documentaries, which nobody does any way. Tomorrow: my big Oscar piece with winner predictions, including the ever popular “Who should win” aspect, and Sunday the Awards show.
I actually really like Colin Farrell’s performance as the young pretty-boy country music superstar.
In sharp contrast to the cast of Nine, the actors in this film can actually sing.
Tags: 2009, American Film, Beth Grant, book adaptation, Colin Farrell, Crazy Heart, Drama, english, Jack Nation, Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, minute movie review, movie review, Movies, music film, Nine, Paul Herman, Rick Dial, Robert Duvall, romance, Ryan Bingham, Scott Cooper, T-Bone Burnett, Thomas Cobb, Tom Bower
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Friday, February 5th, 2010
By now, it has been three days since the Nominations for the 2009 Academy Awards, more commonly known as Oscars, have been announced, and everybody has had plenty of time to comment on them, despair over the obvious oversights and dreadful inclusions, and ultimately come to accept them as the meaningless bullshit they are. So now I thought it would be a good idea to voice my opinions on (some of) the nominations, a complete list of which can be found here. My predictions as to who will win will be up in this very space in early March, in time for the, glorious, gloriously ridiculous and ridiculously overlong ceremony on March 7th.
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Tags: A Serious Man, Academy, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, AMPAS, An Education, Avatar, award season, Brokeback Mountain, Carey Mulligan, Christian Berger, Christoph Waltz, Coraline, Crazy Heart, Das Weisse Band, District 9, english, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Helen Mirren, Inglourious Basterds, James Cameron, Jason Reitman, Jeff Bridges, Kathryn Bigelow, Meryl Streep, Mo'Nique, Movies, No Country for Old Men, Oscar, Precious, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side, The Hurt Locker, Up, Up in the Air
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