If I Picked the Winners: Best Adapted Screenplay 2009

     For this week's edition of "If I Picked the Winners", I will be peering into the recent past: 2009. Being so close to our current time in this never ending story (with no flying dragon-dogs mind you) that we call History, it's hard to say anything profound about the year in cinema that was 2009. The "does it stand the test of time" trial is inapplicable in this case, with at least another two or three years to go before we can even begin to get proper distance for objective judgement, but at this early stage of the game, my own opinion is that history will treat 2009 kindly. It wasn't the stellar year that 2007 was, but still very solid nonetheless. What I especially appreciated about 2009 was the wide variety of high-quality art and entertainment that was offered. Whether you were into sci-fi ("Avatar", "Star Trek"), comedy ("Up in the Air", "Fantastic Mr. Fox", "Funny People", "In the Loop", "The Informant", and for people who like dark meat, "A Serious Man"), family ("Fantastic Mr. Fox", "Up"), drama ("A Serious Man", "The White Ribbon", "The Secrets in Their Eyes", "Precious"),  action ("Inglorious Basterds", "The Hurt Locker", "Public Enemies"), or like myself, a mix of all of the above, then there was some really well-crafted options for you the choose from. Of course, a lot of this is due to some extremely well written scripts (the birth place of all good movies), which will be looking at today.

     Now for most years, it is more likely than not that the stronger batch of screenplays will come from the "adapted" side (movies based on previously published material, which usually means books), but 2009 actually had a stronger year for original material, a rare feet indeed (especially given Hollywood's recent total lack of originality). That doesn't mean the year's adapted screenplays were anything to scoff at. As the year was strong all-around, this meant there were a fair many high merit adaptations, including most of the nominees. Unfortunately, as is par for the Academy, they left off some very worthy contenders in favor of one or two questionable choices. The most egregious error on the Academy's part was their failure to nominate the brilliant Wes Anderson-Noah Baumbach translation of the Ronald Dahl  book, "Fantastic Mr. Fox". Given the Academy's history of under-appreciating the outstanding films of Mr. Anderson, I guess the snub wasn't all that surprising, but seeing as how the film managed a Best Animated Feature nominee, you would of thought the writers might have given the film some consideration. Another film that would have have made my cut, was the Argentine film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, "The Secrets in Their Eyes". Based on the novel, "La Pregunta de sus ojos" (which I believe roughly translates into "The Question in Their Eyes", by Eduardo Sacheri, the film is one of the best modern day crime/noir films I have seen in quite some time (very reminiscent of the excellent Kurosawa film, "Stray Dog"). Finally, as a replacement for the one science fiction film that managed to get a nomination in the category, I would have preferred to have seen Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's reboot of "Star Trek" among the nominees. I'm no Trekkie, but the film was a superb rendering of Gene Roddenberry television series. So much so in fact that the film's sequel is one of the only (out of numerous) continuations of a film series that I am actually looking forward to, but now let's get down to the actual nominees.

News: Oscar 2012

     I know it's a bit early to be discussing the 2012 (or really 2011) Oscars yet, we did get our first morsel of news yesterday regarding this year's Academy Award show. There had been speculation that the Academy would try to move the show up another month (yet again), to try to add some spice to the show by quickening the pace of the awards season, but this turned out not to be the case. Academy president Tom Sherak confirmed the following Oscar schedule:


Dec. 1, 2011   Official screen credits forms due
Dec. 27, 2011 Nomination ballots mailed
Jan. 13, 2012 Nominations ballots due by 5 p.m. PT
Jan. 24, 2012 Nominations announced at 5:40 a.m. PT
Feb. 1, 2012 Final ballots mailed
Feb. 6, 2012 Nominees luncheon
Feb. 11, 2012 Scientific and technical awards
Feb. 21, 2012 Final ballots due by 5 p.m. PT
Feb. 26, 2012 Academy Awards at 5:30 p.m. PT

In other words, we'll be having a show in late February again. While I personally would like to see some more surprises in the awards show (at least in the major categories, the winners having been painfully predictable), the only way this would be possible is if the Academy was able to circumvent the multitude of preceding award shows, many of which have a heavy crossover with the body of the Academy. Had the Academy moved everything up a month, no doubt all the other award shows would have followed suit (they become absolutely meaningless if their not precursors to the Big Rodeo), so unless the Academy can think of some way to banish all other movie award ceremonies (save the Golden Globes maybe, which do differ from the Academy quite often), it doesn't really matter when the awards are held. They won't get anymore exciting.