Oscars 2010: Predictions

Here’s our list of predictions for this year’s Academy Award nominations. The ceremony will take place on Sunday March 7, at the Kodak Theatre (where else).

italics – News Hour pick

bold – winner

Best Picture
Avatar

The Blind Side 

District 9

An Education

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Precious

A Serious Man

Up

Up In The Air

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)

George Clooney (Up In The Air)

Colin Firth (A Single Man)

Morgan Freeman (Invictus)

Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

Best Actress
Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)

Helen Mirren (The Last Station)

Carey Mulligan (An Education)

Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)

Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

Best Supporting Actor
Matt Damon (Invictus)

Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)

Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)

Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)

Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

Best Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz (Nine)

Vera Farmiga (Up In The Air)

Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)

Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air)

Mo’Nique (Precious)

Best Animated Feature Film
Coraline

Fantastic Mr Fox

The Princess and the Frog

The Secret of Kells

Up

Best Director
James Cameron (Avatar)

Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)

Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)

Lee Daniels (Precious)

Jason Reitman (Up In The Air)

Best Art Direction
Avatar

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Nine 

Sherlock Holmes

The Young Victoria

Best Cinematography
Avatar

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

The White Ribbon

Best Costume Design
Bright Star

Coco Before Chanel 

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Nine

The Young Victoria

Best Documentary Feature
Burma VJ

The Cove

Food Inc

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

Which Way Home

Best Film Editing
Avatar

District 9

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire

Best Foreign Language Film
Ajami (Israel)

El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina)

The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)

Un Prophete (France)

The White Ribbon (Germany)

Best Make-Up
Il Divo

Star Trek

The Young Victoria

Best Music (Original Score)
Avatar

Fantastic Mr Fox

The Hurt Locker

Sherlock Holmes

Up

Best Visual Effects
Avatar

District 9

Star Trek

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
District 9

An Education

In The Loop

Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire

Up In The Air

Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

The Messenger

A Serious Man

Up

Oscars 2010: The Hurt Locker vs Avatar

The internet buzz on Avatar ultimately had it right – bad story, impressive visuals – and athough the naysayers figured that its faults would turn it into a box office turkey, obviously this wasn’t the case. It’s even nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, going head to head with a film that it could barely be more different from – The Hurt Locker. Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq drama seeks to presents things as they are for a bomb disposal team, and, despite starting out with a
 feeling not a million miles from an episode of Star Trek (is Guy Pearce playing the man in the red top or not?), goes on to be just that. It’s utterly gripping. There’s no good and bad, there’s just is, lashed together into a taut narrative based on embedded reporting, punctuated by flashes of kinetic cinematics that remind you it’s not a documentary. It’s only taken $16 million, presumably not including DVD sales off the back of the Oscar buzz – but then it cost 11.

Avatar has taken $2 billion and counting, on a budget of $237 million. It’s putting Fox way in profit, and re-draws what were narrowing lines between the cinema and home viewing experience. The movie’s a fairground ride, an uninteractive video game on top of a B-story written either with a misguided social conscience or tech-hippie laziness. That’s not to say it doesn’t create a believable alternate world, but the visuals are the most persuasive part of that argument, not the writing.

What you end up with, though is a transformative piece of cinema, at least so far as the industry is concerned. This is where the cash is at, folks – this is the future of blockbusters. The worth of the Hurt Locker is more social. There are other Iraq war dramas – Redacted, which Bigelow’s film makes look cheesy (which it isn’t) springs to mind – indeed, there are other and better war films, but were you to choose worth over commercialism, The Hurt Locker would seem to be king. (Or would it?)

District 9 nomination: A sop to ‘intelligent sci-fi’, or a worthy Best Picture contender?

Does District 9 really deserve a Best Picture nomination in the Oscars? Undoubtedly it’s a fine technical piece of film-making, and the South African setting, used to dissect apartheid at one remove, was interesting at the very least. It became the story of one man’s troubled journey between human and alien, but his was a character ultimately reminiscent of the hero in
Bad Taste (‘Dereks don’t run!’). Blame the vowel similarity of the Kiwi and South African accent if you like, or the presence of Peter Jackson (producer on District 9, writer-director on Bad Taste), but that gross out movie had a lot of influence on District 9 – especially in the action sequences. And for your correspondent, this sensibility eventually showed itself as the true heart of the film, rather than the premise-based documentary dissection it purported to be.

It does, of course, have more brains than hippy tech-tubthumper Avatar – but then that was a seismic piece of cinema, whatever the quality of the story, and deserves the nod for its sheer scope. It’s nice that people recognise sci-fi, but you get the impression that District 9’s nomination was made by people who only just cottoned on to the fact that the TV Battlestar Galactica remake was pretty good, and wanted to get ‘down with the kids’. Just a thought.