My Annual Oscar Rant

OK, so it wasn't that bad this year. Grudgingly I'll admit that the Academy achieved at least pass marks this year and there wasn't anything to really jump up and down about in absolute disbelief. They could hardly go wrong with the actor and actress prizes and Christian Bale was a deserving winner in Supporting Actor. It was also good to see Aaron Sorkin winning Best Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network - deserved recognition for one of the best in the business. As to Best Picture, well it was a fairly even field and if The King's Speech just pipped The Social Network nobody's going to complain.

But its no fun to just congratulate, so here's where I think they got it wrong:

Best Supporting Actress Melissa Leo is a fine actress - she was superb in Frozen River (for which she was deservingly nominated) but her performance in The Fighter (hampered by a dreadful caricature of a character) was not the best in the field. Heck, it wasn't even the best in The Fighter. In fact, she was probably the poorest of the five nominees.

Best Director The King's Speech is a fine film, brilliantly acted, well written, but I can't help feeling that Tom Hooper has got the Oscar based on the other elements of the film. In terms of direction you would be hard pressed to argue that he did a better job than Fincher (The Social Network), Aronofsky (Black Swan) or The Coen Brothers (True Grit). An example a film getting a bit of a bandwagon momentum and sweeping awards it maybe didn't deserve.

Cinematography - OK - both Inception  and True Grit  would have been worthy winners, but this means that Roger Deakins (one of the very best in the business ever - look at the man's CV for a list of some of the most beautifully shot films of the last two decades) has now been nominated 9 times and never won! It also meant that whilst Inception and The King's Speech got 4 statues a piece, The Fighter  and Toy Story 3 got 2 each and Black Swan got one, the really good True Grit left empty-handed. Heck, Alice in Wonderland got 2 Oscars and Wolfman 1, but nothing for True Grit???????????

Some thoughts on the Oscar nominations - part 2

Ok - continuing the earlier post we move onto to consder Best Picture and Best Director. The nominees are:

Best Picture
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids are Alright
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network 
Toy Story 3
True Grit 
Winter's Bone

Best Director
Darren Aronofsky Black Swan
David O Russell The Fighter
Tom Hooper The King's Speech
David Fincher The Social Network
Joel and Ethan Coen True Grit.

There has been a tendancy to see this year's Oscar as The King's Speech  vs True Grit just as last year was Avatar  vs The Hurt Locker, but I have a feeling that neither will walk away with either of the biggest prizes. It has been a long, long time since the winning Best Picture wasn't also nominated for Best Editing, which would count True Grit out. Similarly, you would expect the Best Film to also be nominated for best director, which would count out Winters Bone (which is too small a film to win anyway), The Kids are Alright (too lightweight), Toy Story 3 (too animated); 127 Hours (not quite good enough this time by Boyle) and Inception (too much of a Blockbuster, although Christopher Nolan really should at least be nominated for Director!). Of the remaining ones, The Fighter is probably the outsider, although don't rule it out for Best Picture and I don't fancy The King's Speech to get either award, which leaves us with Black Swan vs The Social Network. I wouldn't be surprised to see them split the awards this year with The Social Network getting Best Picture and Aronofsky getting Best Director.

Screenplays:
Best Adapted Screenplay
127 Hours
Toy Story 3
The Social Network
True Grit 
Winter's Bone

Best Original Screenplay
Another Year
The Fighter
Inception
The Kings Speech
The Kids are Alright

The inclusion of 127 Hours and Toy Story 3 is really quite mystifying here. Its nice to see Another Year getting a nod as it really is a very good film. The Adapted Screenplay will almost certainly be between True Grit  and The Social Network. As a fan of The West Wing, it would be nice to see Aaron Sorkin win for the latter, but if True Grit does miss out on the other big awards I could see it picking this up as a consolation. Original Screenplay is more open, but if I had to guess I would think it might be one for The King's Speech.

Other Categories.

Elsewhere, I'd expect Inception  to do well in effects and other technical categories and Biutiful to win Best Foreign Language film, although that's often a hard one to predict.

Some thoughts on the Oscar Nominations - part 1

So the nominations for the Oscars were announced at the beginning of the week and here are some thoughts on who's on the list, who should have been on the list and who's likely to win in the main categories:

Best Actor
Javier Baardem (Biutiful)
Jeff Bridges (True Grit)
Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)
Colin Firth (The King's Speech)
James Franco (127 Hours)
The only real surprise on the list is Franco, whilst Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine) and Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter) are by all accounts unlucky to miss out. Maybe Franco gets a complementary nod for being the host (but then why no nod for his perhaps more deserving co-host, Anne Hathaway). I've not seen Biutiful or True Grit yet, but Baardem is one of the best in the business at the moment and will undountedly deserve the nod. However, as last year the contest is seen as being Bridges vs Firth and as Oscar likes to even things up, Firth is probably a fairly good bet. If there was to be an upset, Eisenberg would be the dark horse in the pack and more recognition would not be undeserved.

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale (The Fighter)
John Hawkes (Winter's Bone)
Jeremy Renner (The Town)
Mark Ruffalo (The Kids are Alright)
Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech)
The selections here seem about right. The most notable absentee is probably Andrew Garfield for The Social Network who I would probably have picked ahead of Ruffalo (who is a fine actor, but hardly stretching himself in this particular role). Given that the academy sometimes use the supporting categories to recognise films that otherwise don't quite get the praise they should, Hawkes shouldn't be ruled out, but in all probability this will come down to Bale vs Rush. I'd like to see Rush make it a double with Firth for The Kings Speech, but have a feeling the academy might go with Bale in what is, rather incredibly, his first nomination.

Best Actress
Annete Benning (The Kids are Alright)
Nicole Kidman (The Rabbit Hole)
Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)
Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)
A much stronger field than it is some years. Julianne Moore can feel a bit unlucky to miss out as she was every bit as good as Benning in The Kids are Alright. Williams is already starting to get the sense that she must win one sometime soon, but this won't be her year. Lawrence is deservedly recognised and Kidman can never be discounted, but favourite has got to be Portman who does seem that little bit ahead of the field.

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams (The Fighter)
Helena Bonham Carter (The Kings Speech)
Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)
Difficult to comment much as The Kings Speech is the only one of these films that I've seen yet. Techinically speaking Steinfeld shouldn't be in this category as hers is clearly a leading role, but that's studio politics pushing into the wrong categories in order to get a nomination. Given that its Adams' third nomination in five years, I have this feeling that she might get the prize this time.

Best Animated Film
Toy Story 3
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Interesting side-fact - the Academy were limited to three nominees as only 15 eligible films were out forward, if there had been an extra one, there would have been 5 nominees, with probably Tangled and Despicable Me added to the list. As it is, I think they've got the right three.  Toy Story 3 will almost certainly win for two reasons - 1, its also nominated for Best Film (take the hint); 2, its's made by Pixar and you have to go back to 2006 for a year when Pixar failed to win (the Academy inexplicably gave the statue to Happy Feet). However, The Illusionist would be a worthy winner should they decide to stick up for hand-drawn illustrations.
 

Oscar Nomination initial reaction

Ok - no real big surprises - except Michael Clayton - a distinctly ordinary movie leading the nominations - Tom Wilkinson deserves the nomination, Clooney possibly, but the film no way should be rubbing shoulders with the others in the best picture category. Should win zero!

Disappointing, but not surprised to see to no mention of Streep or Cruise for Lions for Lambs or James MacAvoy for Atonement. Both Tommy Lee Jones and Philip Seymour Hoffman could have had second nominations (for No Country For Old Men and The Savages) respectively, but only having one might play in their favour. No such problems for Cate Blanchett with two nominations - her supporting turn in I'm not there is by far stronger. Nice to see Juno getting nods, even though I've not seen it yet, but always nice to see the indie comedies getting a bit of praise.

Oh, and Norbit got a nomination (for makeup) - thats just too laughable to comment on.