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.

OSCARS 2009: It begins, with a song-and-a-dance

The ceremony has begun! With the music of Bonanza and a set straight out of Tron. We open with a series of backslaps and an opening number from Hugh Jackman, who has put together ‘his own tribute’, which involves him mingling and singing to members of the audience in an incredible series of film linked song-and-dance numbers.

At one point, Anne Hathaway is scooped up onto the set to play Richard Nixon – it’s audience participation! Jackman unexpectedly perches on Frank Langella’s lap, says something about him being overweight, and gives the dancing his all. It could so easily be a disaster, but it’s amazing to watch. The man will be a physical wreck by the end if he keeps up this pace. (The standing ovation is fuel to his artistic fire.) It all brings a smile to the face of Angelina Jolie (very different to her appearance at the Baftas).

The neat conceit of this year’s award-giving is that five of the previous winners of an Oscar emerge to give tribute to each nominee, rather than having one person read them all. It works rather well – snappier and more flexible, while adding historical heft (and explains the relative absence of stars on the red carpet). Much more fun for the writers, too: ‘It’s not easy being a nun’, deadpans Whoopi Goldberg on Amy Adams’s role in Doubt. Penelope Cruz is the first victor, for Best Supporting Actress – there are tears and standing ovations everywhere, and look set to be a lot more.

As Slumdog Millionaire picks up an early Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, is this a sign of things to come?

OSCARS 2009: Seacrest does irony

More Seacrest confusions, as when interviewing Mickey Rourke he remarks upon the ‘incredible irony’ of Rourke having lost his beloved dog and then being up for an Oscar for The Wrestler. Hmm?

Rourke himself seems completely on top of matters, Jean Paul-Gaultier having ‘done him a solid’ by putting together an offbeat version of a tuxedo for the star at the last minute.

On the list of stars not interviewed by Seacrest: Anne Hathaway, Sean Penn, Angelina Jolie (although there was a heroic last gasp chat with Brad Pitt, now offsetting that moustache with a neat beard).

OSCARS 2009: Ron Howard is ‘dolphinesque’

News Hour has always thought of Ron Howard as a thoroughly good egg. At the red carpet for the Baftas, he was one of the few big shots who was seriously friendly to Claudia Winkleman (Penelope Cruz just ran off). Now, Frost/Nixon’s Michael Sheen likens working with the former Happy Days star to ‘swimming with dolphins’. It’s an experience that’s ‘good for the soul’, apparently. Sound rather lovely…

When interviewing him, Seacrest attempts to darken the image: introducing him as a man who can ‘make or break careers’.

Will someone ask Howard if it will be ‘Happy Days’ if Frost/Nixon runs off with a gong? (Queue stern face, pretend phone call and backing away.) The stuff of interviewer’s nightmares…

OSCARS 2009: Seacrest and the language confusion

Ryan Seacrest neatly sidesteps another potential disaster (he once tried to high five a blind contestant on American Idol, but styled it out well) as he chats to the children from Slumdog Millionaire, hitting issues when it emerges that some of them can’t speak English. Uh-oh. When later chatting to Slumdog director Danny Boyle, Seacrest gleefully asks him how the ‘folks from the slum’ are doing on the red carpet. Hmm.

Dev Patel, meanwhile, is starstruck by John Legend (who Seacrest calls ‘my brother’), and Anil Kapoor delivers a fearsome hello to the Indian film industry, completely sideswiping Freida Pinto in the process (curiously, her and Patel refuse to deny that they’re in some kind of relationship).

Will Gary Busey return this year? His free-wheeling incident in 2008 was quite something. Mickey Rourke is smoking on the red carpet – this looks ominous. What in heaven is brewing in his fevered brain? Is he this year’s Gary Busey?

OSCARS 2009: Jackman prepares for ‘night of nights’

And so the red carpet coverage begins, with Sky’s plucky Fearne Cotton camped out next to E!’s Ryan Seacrest, a clutch of Union Jacks marking her spot. Seacrest is an incredible machine at these events – he lives and breathes the red carpet, handling celebrities with consummate ease. Backstopping him on the fashion front is Jay Manuel, clad in the most dazzling white tuxedo this correspondent has ever seen. (It’s all the more compelling for appearing to be a size too small. He also has an excellent grasp of colour, describing one dress as a ‘dark black’.)

Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman prepares for his big presenting role, and admits to a nerve-easing three drinks, ‘paced across the day’ (bear in mind that it’s late afternoon in the US at this point) to prepare himself for a ceremony he calls ‘the Tonies on steroids’. (Hugh hosted the Tonies, and is rumoured to be dancing with Zac Efron during the ceremony.) Apparently he’ll be giving a hand on heart signal to his wife in row six – the normal way he acknowledges her while ‘doing the work’.

Watch out for E!’s star tracker – it labels the celebrities around the screen on the wide shot and gives you a sense of the scale of the event. The queues of limos, the endless parade of interviewers all talking within earshot of each other, the hugely expensive dresses. Madness. Utter madness. But so fabulous…

FILM: Jazz voice, paracetamol and repression in The Reader

Dosed up on a heady cocktail of paracetamol, Polar Krush and sugar-strong Pepsi, a beleaguered News Hour correspondent was dispatched to watch The Reader, Kate Winslet’s successful scoop for a Golden Globe. The situation at the cinema was confused, with our ticket server, the emo bastard child of Matt Lucas and Barbra Streisand, being called away mid-pour from the Polar Krush machine by an important personal phone call.

Perhaps it was about the confusing state of Ms Winslet’s deserved award nominations; quite why she got the Globe for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ is unclear – she is the only woman really in The Reader and, although the story is not told through her eyes, she doesn’t ‘support’ anyone in an acting sense (the Bafta and Oscar nominations rectify this), although you could argue the case from a narrative point of view. Her character, an older woman who seduces a much younger boy in post-war Germany, stands very much alone.

I say this, and only this about the plot, as much of the publicity and reviews (with some honourable exceptions) give away too much and while this doesn’t spoil the film entirely, the film’s structure is loose enough to make you wish you’d had more time to spend reeling with surprise. Presumably the marketeers’ idea was that they needed to give away the premise to get people through the door to a film that screams arty Oscar magnet, but is more ordinary than it appears. Certainly, compared to last year’s big Oscar films – No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood – it’s very linear. The Reader shares a cinematographer, Roger Deakins (although there’s no credit on imdb), with No Country, and some of the later shots, mindblowing in their powerful simplicity (notably in the New York apartment) remind you of this. Elsewhere in the film’s 124 minutes, Ralph Fiennes, as the older, wrecked version of that seduced boy (brilliantly played by David Kross) has the occasional spark of comedy; his voice has the odd moment of rebellion, turning against him with vaudeville pizazz during the dinner with his daughter.

Effective in short jolts, The Reader isn’t quite more than the sum of its parts – but leaves you thinking, if only to figure out what most of the characters are repressing.

OSCARS 2008: Busey stalks the red carpet, leaves Garner ‘terrified’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me about being kissed on the neck on the red carpet?’

Were the words uttered by a stunned Jennifer Garner after Gary Busey swooped into her interview with Ryan Seacrest. The wild-eyed actor had initially lunged across the Alias star at Laura Linney, before Seacrest pointed out that Garner was standing nearby. Busey rounded on her with what seemed like animal intent, seizing her in a bear hug and planting a big kiss on her neck. Words were uttered, but not in the way or of the form that anybody expected. As both parties reeled from the experience, the atmosphere was akin to that of an unhinged relative crashing the birthday party of posh aunt Cecilia.

Suddenly, Garner turned on a dime and was all elegant professionalism, leaning forward and signalling to Seacrest to continue the interview in the hopes that the Busey would roam on to pastures new. One can only hope that the diminutive producer for the Sky coverage, sandwiched between Seacrest and British presenter Kate Thornton, was not scooped up by Busey in a moment of powerful whimsy.

Later on Seacrest, every bit the professional, reported that it had been a ‘compelling exchange’, and that Busey had appeared ‘animated’. His co-anchor was less charitable, remarking that the incident left Jennifer Garner looking ‘terrified’. We can only hope that worse did not happen to the little fella from Sky.

UPDATE:

Busey’s phoned-in apology to Ryan Seacrest’s radio show the next day will leave many readers in an even deeper state of confusion:

“I didn’t know you were in the middle of an interview and I was just moving through there. Your eyes looked like a deer in the headlights. You are to me, when you’re working, an innocent champion of honesty… Your heart has a way of embracing the truth and honesty without looking like you’re reading from a script.”

We can understand where he’s coming from. See the incident here.

OSCARS 2008: Bourne again, with statues

Elsewhere in movie news, after a clutch of technical Oscars for the Bourne Ultimatum – and despite Matt Damon’s previous statement to the contrary, we’ll put it down to the weariness of publicity tours – it was announced by Universal that the actor will be returning as Jason Bourne for a fourth time. Critics began to wonder whether the film would follow the easy-to-remember alphabetical formula established for the trilogy:

Bourne (I)dentity
Bourne (S)upremacy
Boure (U)ltimatum

What could the next movie be called?

The Bourne Zoetrope? (Jason Bourne’s brain explodes, he enters a mental asylum and can only speak while walking a zoetrope rotate.)

The Bourne Xenophobe? (A redundant ‘extreme patriotism’ chip is tripped in the assassin’s brain, causing him to regard all non-Americans as ruthless aggressors.)

The Bourne Violin? (Jason Bourne retreats to Mexico to build boats by himself, and spend evenings alone playing the violin, until a group of Christian missionaries arrive beset by concern for the terrible situation in Burma. Will he put on his bandana one last time and kill people for the good of man?)

Answers on a postcard, please.

OSCARS 2008: One for the outsiders

The first thing one notes about this year’s Oscar results is that it feels very much like a year for outsiders – or not for the establishment, at the very least. The big winner, No Country For Old Men, is not big box office – while the award for best original screenplay goes to a stripper turned screenwriter for the sparky comedy Juno, one of the few films to deal with teen pregnancy in the round, so to speak. Actor’s best actor Daniel Day-Lewis, whose performance in There Will Be Blood divides opinion (some feel he is simply impersonating John Huston), is famous for shunning the Hollywood machine, while Tilda Swinton (best supporting actress, Michael Clayton) could scarcely be considered establishment, if only by virtue of being open about her open marriage. Much of her recent televisual tribute to the artist Derek Jarman was spent lamenting the state of modern cinema and its sacrifice at the altar of Mammon.

Rather like the Japanese absorbed its car business, Hollywood has learnt to embrace and make (or imitate) ‘indie’ cinema – 20th century Fox has its own imprint for dealing with the genre (Searchlight), as do others. One can harmly blame them. By its nature low-budget and credible with the hallowed younger audience, ‘indie’ is a bright prospect, even if to absorb it into the modern studio system undermines what it is in the long term.

Add to this that no American won any of the four major acting gongs for the first time in 40 years, and it seems like a fairly remarkable year. To add insult to injury, one of the winners was a ‘cheese-eating surrender monkey’. She even wore Jean Paul Gaultier on the red carpet, and failed to produce a perfect American accent on cue. The cheek!