Helena Bonham Carter Wins- 2011 Oscars Postmortem

Another night of eating Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes and chicken burgers until 4.30am was topped off with a clean sweep for Helena Bonham Carter. Sure, she didn't win in the category she was specifically nominated for, and The King's Speech only won a trifling four Academy Awards, which was just as many as Inception, but let's not forget that Alice in Wonderland won two as well, which places the entire ceremony as a celebration of Tim Burton's missus and occasional psychotic Death Eater.

The film won Best Picture and, predictably, Colin Firth got a deserved Best Actor nod. The award for Best Director was also hoovered up, and surely Helena's Fight Club director David Fincher hasn't been fucked like that since grade school. I can't say that Tom Hooper was undeserving though, even if Christopher Nolan clearly deserved it for Inception and wasn't nominated at all, bizarrely. Nolan also lost out to The King's Speech in the Best Original Screenplay category, which did give David Seidler a chance to take the stage and give a fantastic speech.

The Social Network stands, as I have said before, as an important film, and one that is of more significance in the 21st century than the film that eventually won Best Picture today. Films like that have a habit of being underestimated in their day, like Network in the 1970s and Fincher's own Fight Club in the 1990s. The film still picked up a predictable gong for Aaron Sorkin's script, as well as winning Best Original Score and Best Editing.

The Fighter also made a decent showing, picking up both of the Supporting awards for acting. Christian Bale did a great rendition of a chimney sweep, and I'm looking forward to whatever accent he settles on next- I'm hoping for Geordie. Melissa Leo went and dropped an F bomb as part of what was inarguably the most interesting sequence of the three hour ceremony. This year's outing was more of a boring affair than last year, but here are some things I learned on my all-nighter.

Christopher Nolan always looks the same.

It had never occurred to me until I had to sit through the drudgery of the red carpet coverage and I was looking for something, anything to latch onto, but Nolan always seems to dress the same. He has the same hairstyle, he wears that same suit. Not that I hold it against him, because he's a stylish motherfucker. But better yet, he is the anti-red carpet man- permatanned fashion Orcs quail in terror at the sight of this modern master! Now someone actually give him a fucking Oscar!

Christian Bale should keep his beard for The Dark Knight Rises

The story for some was the accent, but come on, what else could possibly ramp up the stakes after The Dark Knight? It might be that the "BLADDY 'ELL" inflection was a test run of the replacement Bat-voice, but what the Caped Crusader could really use is A GREAT BIG BUSHY BEARD, as Frank Butterman might term it. Get the Bat-beard in. If anybody makes a joke about Batman and Robin, and Catwoman being Batman's beard, then you're dead to me.

Kirk Douglas and Melissa Leo must surely host next year's Oscars.

I didn't outright hate James Franco and Anne Hathaway's efforts, but it was very much the Academy's attempt to be hip and relevant to young Americans, as lampshaded throughout. You can't quite carry it off when you give the Best Picture award to a period piece about British royalty, so why not go back to basics? It would be lovely to see Billy Crystal have a go next year, because his brief appearance this year was a highlight, but for proper intriguing television, they should reunite Douglas and Leo, who enlivened proceedings and made the ceremony as unsafe as it could possibly get for two or three minutes.

True Grit is appealing even when nobody loves it.

10 nominations and no wins for the Coen brothers' latest Western, after previously doing well at the Kodak Theatre with No Country for Old Men in 2008. Saddest of all is that a well deserved win for Inception cinematographer Wally Pfister was marred by the fact that it meant Roger Deakins still didn't win, on his ninth nomination. It still appeals though, because the coverage reminded me that I really need to see the film a second time, and so I'll do that this week. You won't catch me doing that for The King's Speech this week!

For three hours, it's still padded out!

The whole she-bang opened with Tom Hanks giving a tribute to Gone with the Wind and Titanic, which seemed random. Then the randomness continued all through the night, in much the same way as last year brought us sporadic asides about genre and the year before was musical-tastic. Sometimes, the asides were amusing, as with the Autotuned dialogue scenes from Harry Potter and Twilight. And other times, they involved James Franco in drag. At the point where a choir of kids from New York's PS22 were brought out to sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow at the end of the show, the mob from The King's Speech could be seen leaving quickly, to angered shouts of "HEY, WE STAYED FOR YOUR KIDS!"

There's not really a lot else to say- there were few surprises, Toy Story 3 didn't win Best Picture like it should have done, and the Academy invalidated themselves by failing to notice Never Let Me Go. But if you want to follow the excitement of the night as it happened, with excitement ('Once again, I will shit myself and die if Aaron Sorkin doesn't win this.') and resignation ('"The sky has become the limit"- I know there's something grammatically wrong with that'), you can look through my tweets from the night.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and I for one welcome our new Bonham Carter overlord/lady...

Depend On The Dream- INCEPTION Review

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Christopher Nolan's latest Inception is an odyssey for Dom Cobb, a kind of dream-thieving fugitive who embarks on one last job in order to have his record wiped clean and return home to his two children. It's not as simple as one last job though- the assignment is to enter the subconscious of a business heir and create an idea in his dream, the inception of the title, rather than stealing it. Moreover, Cobb's own subconscious is so fractured and traumatised that he could put his mission and his team in jeopardy himself.

If there's an unusual film coming out in the summer blockbuster season of 2010, it's this one. Put simply, it's the film that probably wouldn't exist if The Dark Knight hadn't done as well as it did at the box office. This is the film you're allowed to make after you've directed a billion dollar Batman movie, with Nolan given the free rein that so few studios allow directors to take.

You've heard the critics try to describe it. This is what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would have been if it were directed by James Cameron. This is what Stanley Kubrick's James Bond movie would have been like. The reason for all those bits of critical rhetoric? Most critics are simply finding it hard to admit that this is something really brand new. It's not Hitchcock's The Matrix or Kaufman's Avatar. It's Christopher Nolan's Inception.

And put simply, it's dazzling. In The Dark Knight, Nolan was praised for doing things with the character of Batman and the superhero genre that had never been seen before in a cinema. No matter what you think of that film, it's hard to deny that with Inception, he's done things we have never seen before in a cinema, full stop. I'm not sure how he does it, but you'll leave this one with the same feeling his last film gave many audiences- that it's an event, and more or less an instant classic. The kind of film that will bear up in years to come and continue to provoke discussion and philosophical debate.

It's difficult to know where to begin. Alright, the best part for me, personally? That corridor fight scene. Everyone will be talking about it, but as someone who's been telling his friends for yonks that a strong practical effect trumps a strong CG effect, that scene was nearly enough to make my little film geek heart burst. And what's great is that the necessity for CG effects in a dreamscape as imaginative as Nolan's doesn't lead to any remotely unconvincing effects. Major kudos to the effects teams and to Wally Pfister, Nolan's long-time cinematographer.

Its performers are as consummate and dedicated as those behind the scenes, with another fine ensemble cast brought together. After the relative sausage-fest that was The Dark Knight, it's refreshing to see an excellent pair of actresses shining so brightly in this one. Ellen Page is Ariadne, who could so easily have become our Harry Potter for the film with questions like "What's inception?" to more knowledgeable characters, but instead she becomes Cobb's frankly gorgeous conscience, and a powerful character in her own right. Marion Cotillard is the other stand-out performer, subverting expectations as a subconscious antagonist to Cobb.

Elsewhere, Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt continuously threaten to steal the film with their virtuoso turns while Cillian Murphy plays his industrial heir as a surprisingly tragic mark for the team. In the centre of it all is Leonardo Dicaprio as Cobb, and if you're lucky, you won't notice the similarities with his work in Shutter Island until after the closing credits. For the rest of the film, he's as assured in his leading man status as he's always been, convincing entirely as the rallying point for this motley bunch of subconscious mercenaries.

Since the film was released, I've seen it twice, and have utterly changed my mind about my first impressions that this film would go over many people's heads. Then again, it is one where everyone has to pay the film their full attention. The mind-bending plot is heavily but neatly exposited via Ariadne, and to go to the toilet or go and buy some popcorn is to lose track of the plot. A film this cerebral rewards repeat viewings anyway, but don't ever doubt that every minute is driving the plot forwards.

The sad thing about Inception is that we won't see many like this again. It's not that it won't be a hit- I believe it's had a great opening weekend in the States- or that people won't like it, but it's just difficult to imagine anyone with the same balance of vision and studio clout as Nolan coming along to match it. I can certainly imagine knock-offs of this plot coming along, but I doubt anything will match the way this one utterly engrosses its audience, transporting them into its world and shaking their brains up, down and all over.

But when a frankly ingenius bit of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey storytelling is set up before the breathtaking final hour, Ariadne asks who would ever want to spend a decade in a dream. She's told it depends on the dream, and from the opening frame to the maddening stimulus of the final shot, Inception is a dream I was more than happy to spend two and a half hours with. It's a rare, precious and purely magnificent blockbuster.

Inception is now showing in cinemas natiowide.
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If and when you see Inception, why not share your comments on the film and/or my review below? If you're stuck on any points, I'll explain them for you for a mere five pounds sterling. "Inception Explainer" is going to be my summer job.

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