Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The initial happiness of District 9 and Inglourious Basterds making the cut of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards Best Picture nominees almost makes it easy to overlook the fact that the mediocre-at-best film The Blind Side also ranked among the other nine films. Accompanying the aforementioned films include An Education, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air. Of course, James Cameron's widely praised and crazy popular Avatar also took home a nom, and from the reviews and buzz I've read, what I project as the winner of the major category, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker grabbed the tenth spot. Most of the nominees were to be expected, but I feel the big story is how many great films were passed up for The Blind Side. 2009 saw such great flicks as Coraline, Moon, Observe and Report, Star Trek, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Brothers Bloom, The Hangover, Watchmen, Ponyo, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Zombieland, Where the Wild Things Are, Invictus, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, (500) Days of Summer, Paranormal Activity, Bronson, Crazy Heart, The Road and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Given, the Academy wouldn't even consider half of the films I just listed, but all are way more deserving than the ode to forgettable Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Michael Oher, not to mention the alleged racism of John Lee Hancock's drama. There was many other overlooked performances in this past year of film, some of which are covered in a decent article by Cinematical's Erik Childress.

I would list my predictions of who I think should win, but I am still playing catch up with a few films I have yet to see, including the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air and a few more. However, reading so much over this past award season, I will relinquish who I think doesn't necessarily deserve the award, but will take it home.

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Best Actress: Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire (I know I am going out on a limb here, as most sites will pick either Sandra Bullock or Meryl Streep, but I stand by the choice as a lock.)

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air (this may be the most difficult category to predict, as all five has their supporters, and have won awards thus far into the season.)

Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds

Best Adapted Screenplay: Nick Hornby for An Education

Best Animated Feature: Up

Best Art Direction: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Best Cinematography: The Hurt Locker

Best Costume Design: The Young Victoria

Best Documentary: The Cove

Best Editing: The Hurt Locker

Best Foreign Film: The White Ribbon

Best Makeup: Star Trek

Best Original Score: James Horner for Avatar

Best Original Song: "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" for Crazy Heart

Best Sound: Avatar

Best Sound Effects Editing: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Best Visual Effects: Avatar

Finally, if you do crave something other than this entire Oscar business, Kevin Smith gave a great interview on Bizarre Magazine's web site on the topics of golden showers, his first sex with his wife, and providing the tidbit that the much-talked about Hit Somebody, Smith's newest project that he hopes to start next year, is actually based on a Warren Zevon song.

Sunday, January 10th, 2010 (Short Film Sunday: Partly Cloudy)

The Oscar season draws ever closer, and during a time where the only bit of sparse cinematic news has came at the hands of the huge financial successes of James Cameron's Avatar, there has not been much more to talk about than what could be the underdog and surprise picks for the Academy Awards. Of course, being my Short Film Sunday segment, I thought we would take a look at a very underrated category, the Best Short Film-Animated. I would like to say that I'm going to throw out an obscure short that nobody has ever seen, as that is my main goal while doing this segment within the blog, yet after finding that Partly Cloudy, the lovable short film that accompanied Up was on In Contention's short list, I had to pass along the flick.

The film comes from the masters of CGI animation, Pixar. It tells the story of the friendship of, what I suppose you may call co-workers, a cloud whom makes babies, and a stork that delivers them. It is directed and written by Peter Sohn in his directorial debut, formerly known as an animator/storyboard artist on films such as The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and WALL-E. Enjoy, and do it quickly before Disney pulls it.

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Empire Magazine is turning twenty, and in response they have released this incredible gallery of pictures on their web site, featuring stars in photographs reminiscent of some of their more popular roles since the magazine's release. Pictured is one of the more dapper pictures of Mel Gibson post-Passion of the Christ and anti-Semitism, with the iconic Braveheart paint. Also included in the star-studded pictorial are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Christian Bale, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Sam Neill, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Michael Sheen, Ben Stiller, Laurence Fishburne, Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Woody and Buzz Lightyear, Gerard Butler, Kevin Spacey and Tom Cruise. Quite a list, check it out.

A lot of award talk the past few weeks on here, and yet another ceremony has released its nominations. This time, the International Animated Film Society's Annie Awards, via Cinematical, announced that Henry Selick's underrated 3-D stop motion flick Coraline led the pack with ten nominations, with the much more lauded, and equally good film, Pixar's Up coming in second place with nine.

Variety reported today that two 3-D sequels are in the works. First, from Paramount, Zombieland will return to the big screen in a new chapter with the 3-D treatment. Is this a good idea? Zombieland was great, but I'm not sure how a sequel can be made without diluting what the original had. Not to mention that I'm still not really on board with the entire 3-D fad going on in the movie industry at the moment. The second sequel mentioned in the article is even more shocking, and uncalled for within the medium... a third Jackass film. I am willing to place my entire year's wages in a bet that the first thing filmed will be Chris Pontius' penis in 3-D.

Despite not being film news per say, due to Marvel Comics close link to cinema I feel it relevant to post a link to the bitchin' concept art of a Marvel themed amusement park being built in the United Arab Emirates, courtesy of Gamma Squad. It looks absolutely incredible, and furthers the notion that we should probably be packing up and moving to Dubai pretty soon.

Monday, November 30th, 2009

The accompanying image for today's blog comes from Racked New York and is pictures of Bergdorf Goodman Men's Store's holiday window in New York City. A nice tie-in to Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Kind of sad to realize that a claymation fox is more exquisitely dressed than I ever will be.

The Satellite Awards nominees were announced today, with Rob Marshall's upcoming musical Nine picking up the most nominations. You can check out the entire nominee list at the International Press' official statement here.

The Satellite Awards are, for all purposes, just a preliminary match for the Golden Globe Awards, itself just a stepping stone to the Academy Awards. The nominee list led me to the Oscar prediction site, In Contention. The big category to look for is Best Picture, as it will contain ten nominees this year. The top nine contenders the site lists includes Nine, the Coens' latest A Serious Man, Pixar's Up and James Cameron's highly anticipated Avatar. Then, if that wasn't good enough for most film nerds, the dark horses and rest of the field mentioned for contention include J.J. Abrams' chapter in the Star Trek franchise, Neill Blomkamp's District 9 and Quentin Tarantino's brilliant Inglourious Basterds. I do have to admit that I'm a bit upset that Watchmen didn't even make the cut for consideration, but all the same, I can't be all that upset about the picks the site has thus far. Also worth a mention is the incredibly low key success Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, which shockingly is also boasting Best Supporting Actress nod at the Satellite Awards, as well as being top contender for the Oscar in comedienne Mo'Nique. We also have Clint Eastwood's sports biopic that will probably be the most overrated flick this award season, Invictus.