News: Oscar Postmortem

     Where should I begin? I think I will start with my own predictions. After doing a decent job of forecasting the Oscar nominations, I was a bit disappointed with my prognosticating powers to pick the winners. I was 16/24 (or 2/3, 0.67777777777) which isn't terrible, but I felt like I could have done better. There were a lot of tough categories this year, especially some of the tech categories, but I still think I should have seen some things coming. In particular, in the Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction categories, I knew "Alice in Wonderland" was the most obvious choice, but my hatred for the movie, as well as getting caught up in the whole "The King's Speech" sweep talk, led me astray from two choices that would have bumped me up to a healthy 18 correct predictions. Hopefully it is a lesson learned for next year.

     Then there was the show itself, which is not going to win any "Best Awards Show" award any time soon. In someways, it was a much cleaner production than previous years, and I did love some of the production design of the stage, but the main problem was the show's hosts, in particular James Franco. While Anne Hathaway wasn't very funny, at least she was giving it her all and did the show with a pleasant smile, which is much more than I can say for James Franco. I don't know if it was stage fright, some subversive "too cool for school" act, or if he was just stoned out of his mind, but whatever it was, he would have done the Academy a better service if he hadn't shown up at all. He easily takes the cake as the worst host in Oscar history, and it just proved why they should let comedians handle the job. Contrasted with the hilarious Ricky Gervais hosted Golden Globe awards, the Oscars were pathetic, but the delicate sensibilities of the Hollywood elite (whose thin skin made sure that Gervais will never host a significant awards ceremony again), guarantee that we will never see a comedic host who is deemed "subversive". A good compromise I think though would be to have Ben Stiller host the Oscars. Whenever he has presented an award at the Oscars, he has been one of its highlights, and since he is "one of them", his jabs at other actors come off playful to the elites, but our still funny to the rest of us non-insiders.

     Finally there were the awards themselves. There were a few nice victories. In the night's biggest surprise (which still wasn't that big a shock), I was happy to see long-time Christopher Nolan collaborator Wally Pfister receive his well deserved Best Cinematography award for the camera work of "Inception". I was also quite pleased to see the hilarious live-action short "God of Love" win the Best Live Action Short category (if you haven't seen it, make the effort to find it, it is definitely worth the hassle). Despite what some may say about her f-bomb layered speech, I was glad to see that merit won the day over Victorian rules of behavior and class with Melissa Leo's Best Supporting Actress win. "The Social Network"'s win for Best Film Editing was a nice nod of recognition, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' victory for their haunting soul-searching score to the film was my favorite victory of the night, and saved the show from being a total disgrace.

     Even though I knew it was coming, I am still having a hard time swallowing the fact that Tom Hooper won Best Director and "The King's Speech" won Best Picture. Luckily the film did not get the massive sweep that many were predicting (winning only four Oscars, compared to the 7/8 some were expecting), showing the Academy did take time to consider the merits of each category, but it is still disappointing to see something so trite beat a film as well executed, and as insightful as "The Social Network". Hell, even if say something like "Black Swan" or "Inception" had won instead, while not my first choice, at least I could understand the thinking behind it, but "The King's Speech"? And Tom Hooper? Hooper, who made an extremely paint-by-numbers film, beat out not only the great David Fincher, but Darren Aronofsky, the Coen Brothers, and David O. Russell (not to mention non-nominees Christopher Nolan and Danny Boyle). These are some of the best auteurs of their generation, and they lost to this stereo-typical (even if well meaning) puff film. It's really a shame and another entry in the Academy's long list of goofs. Especially after a few years of some decent choices ("The Departed", "No Country for Old Men", and "The Hurt Locker"), to see them slide back to awarded typical prestige-fare is disheartening. As always, time will be the ultimate judge, and in 20 years, people are still going to be watching and analyzing "The Social Network", while the only thing "The King's Speech" will be remembered for is that it won Best Picture. Of course it is the Academy's right to make crappy decisions, just as it is mine to complain about them, and so it appears the typical cycle starts again until hopefully next year, when they might actually award something worthwhile.

(For a complete list of last night's winners, click here).

    

Predicting the Winners: 2010 Oscar Preview

     It's now time to put up or shut up and predict this year's Academy Award winners. Now if you are just looking for a quick handicap for your own Oscar ballot, at the bottom of this article I have provided my predictions for every category, but if your interested in a more detailed breakdown, I will give brief analysis for each of the major eight categories.

     If your an avid follower of Oscar blogs, about this time each year you begin to hear from the bloggers about how fatigued they are, and how this year has been so much nastier than the previous years in terms of level of discourse. I guess it is just human nature to always see a perpetually worsening (or sometimes improving) situation, even when it is really just staying the same. The key in any competitive situation that divides people into warring camps, such as the Oscar race, is to just ignore the extremists and exaggerators and just try to have a little fun with it. After all, the Academy Awards are ultimately a very trivial event that is far from a life and death situation. That being said, putting on my film enthusiast cap, I have been pretty disappointed with the turn of events in this awards season. As many of you know, I count myself as one of the leading members of "The Social Network" fanclub, so to see the early frontrunner fall from grace in favor of the mediocre "The King's Speech" has been a let down to say the least. Especially given the Academy's surprising good taste over the last few years, to see it slip back into its pattern of rewarding typical "Oscar bait" prestige fare is disheartening, but I guess that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.  

If I Picked the Winners: Best Picture 2010

     A few days before the 83rd annual Academy Awards, I thought it would be appropriate to rank the big kahuna of the Oscars: Best Picture. In the second year of the ten nominees experiment, I would still say it is a success, with a wide range of movies, although the diversity of films in this year's nominees isn't as great as last year. In this year's group, we have the expected dramatic fare ("The Social Network", "Black Swan", "127 Hours", "The Fighter") and period pieces ("The King's Speech", "True Grit"), but we also have an independent film ("Winter's Bone"), an animated film ("Toy Story 3"), a comedy ("The Kid's Are All Right"), and an action/fantasy film ("Inception").  It's a pretty good batch, without any obvious stinkers such as "The Blind Side" was last year, but there is also a lot of mediocrity on display. Many of the film's would be on my own personal ballot, but there were some key snubs that I would have liked to see on the list. First and foremost,  I would have loved to see the British "Another Year" make the cut. At the beginning of the Oscar season, it was commonly on the Best Picture list of many Oscar prognosticators, but as time went on, unfortunately the film was pushed aside for the buzz of bigger Hollywood fare. Had the film managed a more fully funded Oscar campaign, I wonder if it could have managed a nomination, but alas it was not to be. I would have also included the misunderstood and underappreciated "Shutter Island". It had an outside chance of getting in, but it just had too many critics to be a Best Picture nominee. Had it captured the nomination, it would have made Scorsese/DiCaprio 4 for 4 in terms of Best Picture nominations, but all good streaks must come to an end. Finally, if I had a ballot I would have also included "The American" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World", but they never really had a realistic shot at a nomination. It's time now to deal with the group we have, and rank this year's Best Picture nominees.

News: Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio Team Up Again

     I thought I would just pass on the news that both Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have officially signed on to turn Jordan Belfort's autobiographical book "The Wolf of Wall Street" into a film. The book apparently chronicles Belfort's highly illegal rise to the top of the financial business world during the 1980's and 1990's, as well as his lavish lifestyle, before it came to a halting crash when the con-man was discovered for who he was, becoming banned from the securities business. If the film is completed, it will be the fifth collaboration between the actor and director who have brought us some of the best film's of the last decade (although it would still be three films short of the eight collaborations between Scorsese and De Niro). It sounds like interesting enough subject matter, and with Scorsese and DiCaprio involved, it is a film that will definitely be on my radar.

If I Picked the Winners: Best Supporting Actor 2010

     Quite often the Best Supporting Actor category is the most competitive race in the Oscars. Not only between the nominees, but even just to get nominated, it takes a lot of talent and buzz, as the deserving list of possible nominees quite often goes into double digits. I'm not sure why this is, maybe it has something to do with the fact that protagonists are more often straight-and-narrow characters that the audience can sympathize, while the supporting characters are allowed to be more colorful and grandiose, but whatever the reason, quite often the most memorable performance of the year is given by a supporting actor. Just looking at the last three years anecdotally, the winners (Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men", Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight", and Chistophe Waltz in "Inglorious Bastards") have all been some of the top performances of the decade. While maybe not quite as impressive as some of the previous years, this year's lineup is nothing to scoff at, featuring a fine field of wide-ranging characters and performances. Particularly, it was nice to see Christian Bale and Mark Ruffalo receive their overdue first Oscar nominations. There is one big absence though that should have made this category, performances from "The Social Network". In fact, I may have been inclined to include three different male performances from the film in the Best Supporting Actor category: Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker, and Armie Hammer as the Winklevoss twins. My personal favorite of the three performances is actually Justin Timberlake, who either by his own nature or acting talents perfectly captures the arrogant yet cowardly nature of the geek-chic Sean Parker. The one performance that had the best chance at getting nominated, but unfortunately slipped through the cracks was Andrew Garfield's wonderfully distraught performance as the betrayed friend of Mark Zuckerberg. And it was probably Armie Hammer's spectacular effects-assisted performance as not one, but two human beings, the Harvard gentlemen Winklevi (as Zuckerberg referred to them), that was actually generating the most buzz in the online community. I would have settled for anyone of them, but unfortunately as the  awards season tide began to turn against "The Social Network", these three fine performances were left in the dust. The one other performance that may have made my own personal ballot is Vincent Cassel as the Balanchine-inspired Thomas Leroy, head of protagonist Nina Sayers' ballet company. It's a captivating role and the pressure and tension he puts on Nina is the catalyst for her journey into the dark recesses of her mind. All in all, while I would have left out one or two of the nominees, it is a decent group that the Academy can hold it's head-up for. Now to the rankings.

Review: Blue Valentine

     Relationships can be a tough battle. As much as one person may truly love another, it's impossible to get around the fact that we are all ultimately just using each other. When one human being begins to count on and derive pleasure from another human being, it becomes impossible not to build expectations for one another, as we begin to see the other person as who we think and want them to be instead of who they truly are. I think Nirvana's "Come As You Are" sums it up best in the opening lines of the song: "Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be". As crude and cold as that may sound to some, I think it is the unavoidable truth, and for the most part, it works to everyone's benefit. Enjoying the presence of the ones you love is one of things that make life great, but when an individual becomes too dependent on another for their happiness, not able to enjoy life on its own terms, many serious problems can result, including pushing away the one you love the most. This unfortunate circumstance is what is painfully chronicled in Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine".

News: Christopher Nolan's Post-Batman Project

     We're still about a year and a half outside of the last Batman film in the Nolan trilogy, but even before "The Dark Knight Rises" begins shooting, speculation about Nolan's next project is all over the world wide web. This weekend, rumors began to surface that Nolan might return to his script about Howard Hughes. Sometime in the early 2000's, before "Batman Begins", Christopher Nolan had written a script based on the life of the eccentric mogul, but when the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio Howard Hughs bio-pic "The Aviator" made its way into movie theaters, Nolan shelved the idea. Nolan has called the script the best work he has ever done, and now that some years have passed since the Scorsese/DiCaprio collaboration, apparently Nolan wants to go back to it. From what is known, the two films will actually be quite different, for while "The Aviator" covered the early years of Hughes life and ended as he was losing his marbles, Nolan's film apparently will be almost exclusively covering Hughes later years when he was a shut-in at some Vegas hotel, paranoid that the FBI was after him. Back when Nolan was originally planning to shoot the film, he was planning to have Jim Carrey star in the role, but there is no word if that is still the case. Whoever he gets to star as Hughes, I glad he has decided to go back to the project. By the time the film is released, it will likely have been over a decade since "The Aviator", and if the two films really do cover different periods of the man's life, it wouldn't matter anyway. Nolan has proven himself to be a great shaman when it comes to dealing with aspects of the mind, and his perspective on the insanity of Howard Hughes is almost certain to be another classic in his already great filmography.