News: The 2010 Oscar Nominees

     The day has finally come, and we have our 2010 Oscar nominees (check out the full list of nominees here). In terms of most nominations, "The King's Speech" leads the way with 12 nominations, while "True Grit" came in second with 10 nominations, and "The Social Network" and "Inception" coming in tied for third with 8 nominations. So what are the big stories of the day?

     For me personally, I was most excited about two things. First, I was extremely happy to see John Hawkes get nominated for Best Supporting Actor for "Winter's Bone". Hawkes gives the best performance out of anyone I have seen in the category (and outside of Jessie Eisenberg in "The Social Network", he gave the best performance of any actor in any category in my opinion). The second thing, which is a little stupid and prideful (but what the hey), is how well I did on my predictions (click here to take a look and compare them to the actual nominees). In the "big 8" categories, I was 41 for 45 (only if I had went with my gut and picked Javier Bardem and John Hawkes), including nailing Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and got 85 0f 105 overall, including correctly guessing Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography.

     The biggest news you are going to hear on the web though, is about Christopher Nolan's absence in the Best Director category, who was likely replaced by the Coens who received their third Best Director nomination. Most people had Nolan in, and were predicting David O. Russell to be kicked out by the someone if there was going to be a surprise, but I correctly picked Nolan's absence because for some stupid reason, the directors branch of the Academy seems to have something against him. If they weren't going to nominate him for "The Dark Knight", one of the greatest films of all-time (it made #25 on my list), I didn't think they would nominate him for the lesser "Inception", which is too bad, because out of the directors who had a realistic shot at a nomination, he definitely deserved to be on there.

     The biggest news after that is probably the 11th competing Best Picture film that did not get in, "The Town". If you read my review (and if you haven't click here), you'll know I wasn't a very big fan of the stereo-typical action/drama pic, so I was happy to see it not get in. Especially at the cost of "127 Hours" (check out my review), which, after "The Social Network", was my favorite film this year.

     To sum up my feelings on the nominations, click the read more button below and see my bullet point dissection of the nominees into "Good" and "Bad".

Predicting the Nominees: Everything in its Right Place

     Back in late October when I first started this blog, I took a stab at predicting this year's Oscar nominations (click here to check them out). Now that the nominations are finally going to be upon us tomorrow, I thought I would give a more informed (but not necessarily more accurate) guess at what the Academy will deem award worthy this year. Last time I only predicted the "big 8" (Picture, Director, the four acting awards, and the two writing awards), but this time, despite my utter lack of expertise in some categories, I will be attempting to predict every single category. First, I will give brief analysis on the bigger categories and then, if your just interested in taking a quick look through the predictions, at the bottom of the article I will list my complete 2010 Academy Award predictions. Also note, the film or person ranked number one on my predictions will be the person that I am expecting to win the category as of now, but after the nominations come out and before Oscar night, I will make official winner predictions. Here goes nothing!

News: And We Have a Race. The Producers Guild of America Names "The King's Speech" Best Picture

     At this point, it seemed like an inevitability. "The Social Network" has won almost every single solitary "Best Picture" award given out this year, but last night, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) put the brakes on the unstoppable train that was "The Social Network" by giving "The King's Speech" its Best Picture award. The reason why the PGA awards are so important as an Oscar precursor is for two reasons. First, the producers branch of the Academy is fairly large and the cross-over between the two branches is significant. Secondly, and more importantly, when the Oscars switched over their Best Picture award to ten nominees where the winner is decided by a confusing preferential ballot system (click here to read the details if you're interested), the PGA followed and adopted the same process. This means the more bland, milquetoasty "The King's Speech" may upset "The Social Network" because, even though "The Social Network" has a more passionate fanbase, "The King's Speech" may be more generally agreeable to everyone. I'm guessing especially for the Academy's older voters, who may be turned off by the fast-paced dialogue, and younger characters and subject matter (that new fangled Facebook), the great achievement that is "The Social Network" may pass them by (and if this happens, yet another reason the Academy should consider an upper age-limit in my half-joking opinion). Let me go on record now, if "The King's Speech" beats "The Social Network" come Oscar night, in the years to come, it will be another "the Oscars did what?!" moment that will only help to reinforce the view of the Oscars as a stuffy awards body with the inability to award influential films over generic prestige films. Until that time though, there will sure be a lot of heated discussion about what will win, and for anyone who puts money down on Oscar ballots, filling out your ballot just got that more stressful.

Top 100: 20-11

     We're quickly approaching the finish line, as we get down to the cream of the crop in my personal view of cinema history (check out the previous weeks: 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51, 50-41, 40-31 , 30-21). All these movies have had a great impact on me and my life, and I vividly remember the first (and in many cases multiple) time(s) I watched them. In short, I really love these films. The films are all over the map genre-wise this week (although there are my four favorite foreign films on the list, if you count that as a genre), with some of the darkest films in cinema history sitting beside some of the most feel-good inspirational movies ever made. I guess it illustrates my somewhat schizophrenic view of life, but regardless of the drastic differences in tone between the films, they are all made by expert auteurs with unique visions. And this week does have an amazing laundry list of some of the greatest directors to ever step foot behind a camera. I will let you read on to discover the great directors on this week's list, but I do have to mention the two appearances from the great Martin Scorsese, who is the only director with more than one film appearing on the list this week. No decade is represented by more than two movies this week, but I do reach my favorite films of 1930's, the 1980's, and the 2000's this week. Now on to the countdown!

News: Speilberg and Lucas. Two Friends, Two Very Different People

     I stumbled across this interesting article at "Sound On Sight"'s website and I thought I would pass it along to anyone interested (click here to read the story). The two part article compares and contrasts the two defining auteurs of their generation, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, in style, effect on cinema history, and personality. The article paints a much more flattering view of Mr. Spielberg than it does Mr. Lucas (or at least in my opinion), which isn't too surprising from the things I have heard before (or just watching the two speak). If your a fan of either of the two directors, and really even if your not (as long as you find different personality types interesting), it is definitely worth a read.

News: "The Dark Knight Rises" Gets Its Villains

     Today, the cat was let out of the bag (sorry for the pun, I couldn't help myself) when the people in charge of the Christopher Nolan Batman series announced that Catwoman and Bane are going to be the villains in the series final chapter. Ann Hathaway is set to play Selina Kyle (Catwoman) and Tom Hardy, who just worked with Nolan on "Inception", is going to play Bane. Now if you read my Top 100 article last week (and if you haven't, click here), you'll know I am a huge fan of the last Nolan Batman film, "The Dark Knight" (it ranked number 25 on my all-time list), so while I am looking forward to the conclusion of the series, I can't help but express some disappointment over the choice of villains. For one, I was hoping Nolan might explore characters from the Batman universe that hadn't already been put to the silver screen in the Tim Burton Batman films. While the Michelle Pfeiffer version of Catwoman in "Batman Returns" was decent, the "character" Bane in the Joel Schumacher directed "Batman and Robin" was hideous. Now while I haven't read any of the Batman comic books, I am assured by people who have that Bane is a much more interesting character than the one portrayed in the terrible excuse for a film that was "Batman and Robin", and I did get a small glimpse of this side of the character Bane in the excellent video game, "Batman: Arkham Asylum" (for any of you that play video games, I highly recommend this fun and well written game). I am also not too hot on the casting of Anne Hathaway, who I am not a fan of in general, but I was surprised at how great a performance Heath Ledger gave as the Joker, so who knows. I guess will just have to wait and trust in Christopher Nolan.

News: And the Train Kept A-Rolling. Globes Keep Things As They Are.

     The Golden Globes were held last night, and every single winner matched up with the odds-on-favorite winners come Oscar night. "The Social Network" winning Best Picture (Drama), Best Director, and Best Screenplay, Colin Firth winning Best Actor (Drama), Natalie Portman winning Best Actress (Drama), Melissa Leo winning Best Supporting Actress, and Christian Bale winning Best Supporting Actor are all to be expected at the 2010 Oscar ceremonies. In the television department, while I haven't seen too many of the shows, I was glad to see Steve Buscemi win an award. Buscemi is one of my favorite character actors (even going back to his work on the Nickelodeon show "The Adventures of Pete and Pete), and it was about time someone gave him an award for his great work (although I have not seen "Boardwalk Empire" yet). I also must mention what a great job Ricky Gervais did as the show's emcee. Gervais is my favorite comedian in the business today (if you haven't seen the original "The Office" or the show "Extras", do what ever you have to to watch these shows), and I was glad to see he did not use kid gloves on the self-adoring Hollywood types. Any actors, such as Tom Hanks and especially Robert Downey Jr., who can handle being poked fun at, need to learn to let their narcissism go, and how to take themselves (and their egos) less seriously. Anyway, if you want to check out at list of the winners click here. Also, the night before was the critics choice awards, who also put their patented stamp on this years inevitable winners, so if you want to check that out, click here.