Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Well, the Golden Globe Award nominees were announced today, and is pretty much what has been keeping the cinematic blogsphere buzzing for the past fourteen hours or so. The biggest, and most welcome, surprise to me was that Todd Phillips' raunchy comedy win, The Hangover took a nod for Best Motion Picture- Musical or Comedy. The flick basically doesn't stand a chance against the upcoming musical Nine, directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and a host of other Oscar darlings, along with Black Eyed Peas' Fergie oddly enough, and is loosely based upon Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. The quirky (500) Days of Summer, It's Complicated and Julie and Julia round out the category.

On the drama side of the major award, James Cameron's mega-blockbuster to release this Friday, Avatar, takes a nod that many are speculating will be in contention for the win, facing off against the one time Oscar favorite, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, Quentin Tarantino's ingenious, and my pick, Inglourious Basterds, the sleeper success Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire and a film that most sites have been raving about for most of the year, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker.

Sandra Bullock got a nod for The Blind Side, and from what I can tell of the trailer, may be the most overrated performance of the year. Hopefully she will fall to what looks like a powerful performance from the almost unknown Gabourey Sadibe in Precious. I would say Morgan Freeman's turn as Nelson Mandela in Invictus is all but locked for the award for Best Actor. I will also stretch out and predict that Marion Cotillard is a lock for Best Comedy Actress for her showing in Nine despite Meryl Streep's double appearance in the category, or Bullock showing up again for The Proposal (Note: If you have taste, you probably just said something along the lines of "Say whaaaaaat?" or "Fucking Hell!", and that is why the Golden Globes' validity is slipping dramatically). Comedy Actor is a solid category however, harnessing the likes of Matt Damon, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert Downey, Jr., Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Stuhlberg, and I can't say I'd be shocked by any of the five walking away with the award. Director is the only other category I could really see going all five ways. Bigelow gets a rare female nod in the directorial category for The Hurt Locker, being accompanied by James Cameron, Clint Eastwood, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino.

Further predictions from my behalf. Keep in mind that since I live in a small area, I have yet to see many of the films that I would like to, so I am merely predicting who I think will take home the award, via buzz, awards favorites and so and so forth...:
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique for Precious
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds
Animated Feature: Up
Foreign Language Film: Broken Embraces
Screenplay: Jason Reitman for Up in the Air
Score: James Horner for Avatar, although my heart lies with Karen O and Carter Burwell's work on Where the Wild Things Are full throttle.
Original Song: "Cinema Italiano" from Nine

Finally, to get out of the pre-Oscar garbage that must be talked about by cineastes the world over, to much chagrin usually, here is a very bitchin' clip from Kick-Ass. I posted this sometime back when a grainy, bootlegged version made its way to the Interwebs during the San Diego Comic Con. All the same, enjoy one of the few great clips of Nicolas Cage floating around the world wide web.