Blue Will Get Gold- 2010 Oscar Predictions

The nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards have been announced.

Not very many surprises in there, but here goes with my thoughts.


Avatar is a good blockbuster. It was the most enjoyable blockbuster of last year in my estimation, but is it an Oscar calibre film? No! I suspect the Academy disagrees, nominating it as they have for nine awards. It's tied only with The Hurt Locker for the most nominated film at this year's ceremony. The thing is, with its $2bn box office receipts and the massive hype surrounding it pre-release, people are determined to be polarised on the matter.

Internet message boards are full of fanboys who declare it to be the best film ever, and if you don't agree with that to the letter, you must hate it, and thus be blind in some way or other. And vice versa- if you don't despise the film, that makes you its biggest fan in certain quarters. It's an OK film, everyone! And it's OK that it's OK! Story-wise, it's certainly not perfect, and it does suffer from Cameron's seeming inability to cut the flab from the running time of his films. Hell, you can find my original review here. Most of what I said still holds true for me, except for one sentence in the last paragraph.

"It's probably not going to win an Oscar for Best Picture"

Sorry, past Mark, but you were wrong. That was a key case of me underestimating James Cameron's ability to dress Dances with Wolves up as a Direhorse and convince everyone that it the best film of the year. So sadly, with the voters blinded by the 3D-abetted box-office receipts instead of remembering they gave Best Picture to this very film 20 years ago, I predict that Avatar will win Best Picture on March 7th. Not because it's the best film nominated, but because that's what the Academy's like.


The only two films I haven't seen out of the other nine nominees are The Blind Side and Precious, both of which are yet to be released in the UK. Five of my top ten favourite films of last year made the shortlist, but I was most pleased to see A Serious Man, Up and District 9 in there. However, I can't see any of those films beating the sheer hype juggernaut of that blue-cat-people film. Let's just hope Kathryn Bigelow beats her ex-husband to Best Director for her excellent work on The Hurt Locker, which Kevin Smith says would be "a victory for ex-wives everywhere".

To the acting categories, I can't say an awful lot, because I haven't seen The Blind Side, Precious, The Last Station, Crazy Heart, A Single Man, Invictus, The Lovely Bones or The Messenger yet. The momentum seems to be in favour of Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, Carey Mulligan for An Education, Mo'Nique for Precious and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, in their respective categories. A further Avatar related annoyance is in the fact that they didn't nominate the film in one of the categories they actually should have- Zoe Saldana for Best Actress, seemingly opting for old favourite Meryl Streep holding her nose and gurning through Julie & Julia.


As an aspiring writer, I was very interested in the screenplay categories, and was delighted to see In The Loop and A Serious Man get noticed. Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds are both awards darlings this year, but both will likely be overshadowed in the other major categories by the Battle of the Exes. Expect them to win their respective screenplay categories, though I'd personally have said In The Loop for Best Adapted and A Serious Man for Best Original. But then I don't get to pick- there's probably a good reason for that.

To wrap up then- some of the overlooked films...


(500) Days of Summer
Should have been nominated: For Best Original Screenplay
Why for? It's the most original entry to its genre in years. Besides which, in amongst the bluster (blue-ster?) of Avatar, there wasn't another film this year like Juno or Little Miss Sunshine. Up in the Air was seemingly a de facto entry to that role, but I preferred this film. Good screenplay, well acted- shamefully overlooked.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Should have been nominated: For Best Animated Picture
Why for? Because Fantastic Mr. Fox was rubbish! I know it probably appeals massively to middle-aged voters, but it also excluded Roald Dahl's target audience completely. Also, Cloudy should be up there because it's a lot better than you'd think- a genuinely funny script with some great voice acting and no pretension about itself. It's a film by "a lot of people", not a vanity project for Wes Anderson.

Moon
Should have been nominated: For Best Actor (Sam Rockwell), Best Visual Effects and Best Picture
Why for? Sam Rockwell is amazing in Moon and this really should have been the role that got his consistently great work in supporting roles some kudos from the industry. It also used visual effects to less showy effect than Avatar and on a smaller budget. The Best Picture thing is probably a stretch, but in an enlarged category, it's a real shame this didn't make it into the top ten, in a year where the stigma against sci-fi has been dulled by the likes of District 9.

Me and Orson Welles
Should have been nominated: For Best Supporting Actor (Christian McKay) and Best Cinematography
Why for? Christian McKay is Welles in that film. Maybe they satisfied their real life figure quotient with Matt Damon in Invictus, but I think McKay brought to the screen all of what made Welles the imposing and legendary figure he is. More than that, this is one of the few films that makes you feel like you're in the theatre for reasons that aren't to do with poor pacing- it's down to the excellent cinematography.

A Serious Man
Should have been nominated: For Best Actor (Michael Stuhlbarg)
Why for? OK, so two nominations, one of those for Best Picture, is hardly a snub. On the other hand, Stuhlbarg hasn't been getting the love he very richly deserves for his breakout role as Larry Gopnik. The Coen brothers have enough gold on their mantle and won't lose too much sleep over losing to the prestige pictures. Stuhlbarg will hopefully go on to do more great things, but I'd really have liked to see him get nominated here.

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With that dirty business over for another year, the next bit of Oscars coverage will probably be on March 8th, the day after the ceremony. Maybe I'll don a tux and do my own bloggy awards. As far as reviews go, the next post will probably cover The Princess and the Frog and/or Youth in Revolt.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't give an Oscar to an anti-corporate film if it makes more money than Jesus feasibly could.

Broad Palate

In an entry that's titled with a food theme, you could be forgiven for thinking that Julie and Julia would be getting a look. Alas no, my constitution isn't quite strong enough for me to sit and watch a film where Amy Adams is apparently kooky and "crazy" for cooking meals and doing a blog. Maybe on DVD. For now however, we have Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a film in which the relevance of food should really be obvious, and District 9, in which aliens on Earth are derogatorily referred to as prawns.

For good measure, I've also tacked on The Firm, which probably compares to a chewed up vol-au-vent on a paper plate that someone's left in amongst the chicken wings and pizza in this week's cinematic buffet. I should've omitted it to preserve that food thing, but never mind, I want it out of the way. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.


Ostensibly, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs seems to be another of the more soulless variety of CGI animated films that have come out in the last ten years. And worse, the major marketing point of the film has been the fact that it's in 3D. I can say upfront once again (I really need some manner of 3D disclaimer to refer you all to at any given point) that the 3D really adds nothing to it, and that it would be just as enjoyable in 2D. Unfortunately, most cinemas are keen to show the technology off, and thus 2D screenings are sometimes difficult to attend. Gimmicks aside, this is a film set on an island that chiefly exports and consumes sardines, where budding inventor Flint Lockwood resides. When an experiment that turns water into food goes awry and causes food to rain from the sky three times a day, he inadvertently heaps renown and fame upon the island, but with potentially disastrous consequences. So the premise is a smaller-scale The Day After Tomorrow, but with gravy.

From this premise, and indeed from having watched the finished product, I could imagine this being heralded as a surrealist masterpiece if it had been produced as a live-action feature. It would be directed by Terry Gilliam or David Lynch, or someone like those directors, and would probably be held up as a cult classic like Brazil or Blue Velvet. If we reviewed everything based on my imaginings, you'd all be very confused, so I'll stick to saying how enjoyable an animated film this is. The script is funny, the visuals are rather dazzling and the voice work is both competent and enjoyable. There's no Dreamworks syndrome going on here, with the recognisable voices of Bruce Campbell, Bill Hader and Mr. T putting words to the pictures, as opposed to just recognisable names. And as I say, the script is very funny, so they have a lot to work with.

I'm as surprised as you are that I'm giving a film called Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as positive a review as is usually reserved for the very best of Dreamworks' output or any Pixar film that falls even slightly short of amazing, but I do feel the need to sell this film to you. Next week, Toy Story is re-released in 3D, and the week after that, Pixar's latest effort Up follows it, so while the film is a moderate box office hit, the odds are that this will be overlooked by most. Even though it'll have healthy eating enthusiasts up in arms with the downpour of cheeseburgers and pizza that happens on-screen to fill up the island's all-too-hungry citizens, the fact is that this is a film that is qualified by its modesty alone as one that deserves to do well- the opening title card proclaims it to be "A film by lots of people" as opposed to the autonomous leanings of most credits. And beyond that, those people have made this a film that really is enjoyable for the whole family, and not in a "they said so in the advert" kind of way. Take the kids or the parents or a friend, and just enjoy it. You'll probably be hungry afterwards.

It's certainly a great deal better than the "grown-up" film that was released on the same day- Nick Love's latest effort The Firm. Based on the much-acclaimed BBC teleplay starring Gary Oldman, Nick Love has created yet another film for which the target audience is the viewership of "Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men". Granted, this is the first of Love's films that hasn't employed that sterling young thespian Mr. Dyer, but that small mercy doesn't make this any less rubbish. As with the original, this focuses on the dangerous lifestyle of Bex- estate agent by day, football hooligan by night and er... weekend- and the "firm" of violent football fans he heads up. He draws hero worship from an impressionable young teen called Dom as he plans an attack on his nemeses in the other firms. Dom apparently doesn't feature in the original, which focuses more on Gary Oldman's character. I haven't seen the original, so please don't expect a rant reminiscent of the Pelham 123/One Two Three episode, but I think this one lost points before it started by the fault of not having Gary Oldman in it.

And worse, the film starts exactly as it goes on throughout. A pink neon variant of the Warner Brothers logo appears as the synth intro to Soft Cell's Tainted Love booms from the soundtrack, apropos of nothing whatsoever when preceding a film about football hooliganism. In fact, for all the 80s music on the soundtrack, it doesn't inform the film at all. The setting is totally irrelevant- not in a Brokeback Mountain way, whereby the passage of time is only really noteworthy by news reports and calendars in the background of more important scenes, but because everything is more or less irrelevant. After this film concluded, I thought back over it and realised there was only one scene in the whole thing that couldn't be removed without confusing the rest of the plot, and that was one of the final scenes. This utter lack of narrative drive makes for a very boring viewing experience, as you can imagine.

It's not totally irredeemable, as it is elevated by a few good performances. Eddie Webber and Camille Coduri are notable for their supporting roles as Dom's parents, and Paul Anderson might not be Gary Oldman, but he's certainly charismatic as Bex. As with Dorian Gray, the film might be better if the better performer were the central character, but instead Calum McNab is central as Dom. McNab is the star of no less than three other Nick Love-esque films, two of which are also about hooliganism, and I wouldn't predict a bright future for him if it weren't for the fact that he's clearly due to star alongside Danny Dyer in a film called The Manor. I presume this will be an enormous departure from type for both young men, and that this couldn't possibly be another film about "geezers" being "geezers", but then I've been wrong before. What we have in The Firm is a film about a pointless facet of football culture that says absolutely nothing about its subject whatsoever. Even the actual violence is shot with a camera so shaky, it's impossible to tell what's happening or what point Love's trying to make- and those last thirteen words sum the entire exercise up. Those performances aside, absolutely worthless.


The final course for today has arrived slightly late. Indeed, District 9 has been out for the best part of a month and I don't doubt that most of you have seen or otherwise heard all about it. See if you come here again, eh? The fact is, I was very run down the first time I saw it, and thus I saw it through streaming eyes and coughing fits. A second viewing was needed, and I've only just managed to fit that in yesterday. So the titular slum is the film's location- the home to a million inter-planetary immigrants and an area rife with litter, crime and general unpleasantness. Their crippled mothership hovers over Johannesburg as protests break out amongst the city's human population. The decision is made by District 9's regulators MNU (Multi-National United) to rehouse the hated and feared aliens 200km away from the city, and their agent Wikus van der Merwe is put in charge. In the course of his duties, Wikus finds his life irrevocably changed as he overcomes his prejudices and tries to help an alien called Christopher Johnson to return home. It's a film about an alien incursion on Earth where humans are decidedly unsympathetic.

Of course anyone interested in recent world history will recognise the parallels with apartheid in South Africa, and that's something that's very personal to director Neill Blomkamp. District 9 is the product of producer Peter Jackson giving Blomkamp $30 million to make whatever kind of film he wanted to, after the pair's mooted adaptation of the Halo games fell through. And what Blomkamp came up with isn't a political drama- it's the most intelligent action movie of the summer. In a way, it's a shame we had to wait until September for it, given how rubbish this summer was on the whole, but now that it's here, it's very very good. One trap I'm not going to fall into is to say that it's original- it starts with a Cloverfield style mockumentary way of story-telling and continues to homage or reference The Fly, Alien Nation and even The Quatermass Experiment. It does handle all of its elements in a very refreshing and innovative way, and that's what makes it so entertaining to watch. The only thing I would say is really jarring about its execution is the transition between the rigid fourth wall narrative and that mockumentary style, which goes backwards and forwards throughout.

While mockumentary can sometimes lend a film credibility and realism, it took me out of the film at times and I honestly feel the film would be better if it had a consistent way of storytelling. What does make the film realistic is the phenomenal use of visual effects. McG and Michael Bay have shits that cost more than $30 million, but the CGI here is terrific- the aliens and their spaceship look photo-real and are very well-designed too. The design of the "prawns" as everyone calls them derogatorily throughout also ties into a now-universal truth of bipeds that have squid faces- along with the Ood and Dr. Zoidberg, you are going to be marginalised if you're in sci-fi. Also adding an extra dimension to the film is the terrific debut performance by Sharlto Copley, a convincing everyman who swears and shrieks his way through Wikus' trials and tribulations and gives one of the most enjoyable and well-rounded performances of the year so far. All of this makes District 9 a very entertaining film on multiple levels- it's got political commentary on apartheid AND guns that explode people into bloody mulch with a single blast. It's not perfect, but it's a very interesting debut feature indeed, and it's certainly worth watching if you haven't seen it yet.

So to conclude, I thought Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is good for kids and their parents but not for obesity levels, and District 9 is enjoyable and thought-provoking for everyone else. If you see The Firm walking down the street towards you, cross over to the other side to avoid having your head kicked in with utter pointlessness for 90 minutes. If you've seen any of these films, please comment on this post and let me know if you agree or disagree.

Um, up next? I've still got to see Away We Go, and tomorrow brings in a raft of new releases including Creation and Surrogates. I'm unlikely to see the re-envisioned and re-RnB'd version of Fame, so let's say Away We Go and Creation will be reviewed next.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, make sure you don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.