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.

The More Things Change...

The year is 1996, and I'm experiencing the first of many absolute obsessions in my life, and it's with a film I haven't even seen yet. The (almost) six years of my life so far have largely centred around watching Winnie the Pooh, Mr Bean and repeats of the 1960s Batman series on Channel 4. Nothing before or since captivated me like the marketing for Toy Story, the first ever completely computer animated feature film. It was colourful, interesting and quite frankly, it looked like the most amazing thing ever to me. This was the start of mine and everyone else's dalliances with Pixar.

Of course, the year now is 2009, and I've gained about three feet in height, a few GCSEs and A-Levels a cynical outlook on life, the universe and everything. But Toy Story is still brilliant, as are the vast majority of Pixar's other nine films. Even their only misfire thus far, 2006's Cars wasn't awful- the world just probably wasn't ready for a "toyetic" animated remake of Doc Hollywood. Their latest effort, Up, is the story of a retired balloon salesman called Carl Frederickson being evicted from his house by distinctly Agent Smith-like property developers. So because it's a Pixar film, his natural response is to lash up a quarter of a million balloons to his house and fly it to South America. Accidentally picking up a naive boy scout called Russell, Carl discovers a lost world and ends up embroiled in a feud with his childhood hero. It can never be said that Pixar is anything but original in its storytelling, and I toddled along to see Up on Saturday in much the way I go to see any other films they make, and here's what I thought, with the usual considerate lack of spoilers.


That said, I'll try to warn people in advance not only that Up crosses that threshold that few other Disney films cross, but that it does it in the first ten minutes. Yes, you know what I mean. Mufasa, Bambi's mam, and now... well, you'll see. It's utterly galling and more mature in places than anything in any family film I can think of. But nevertheless, those first ten minutes are just absolutely perfect. Literally, probably the best scenes in any film released this year. Beautifully animated and acting as a preface to the lighter antics to come. It's not jarring that the tone shifts back once the film crosses that threshold, because the balancing act that director Pete Docter creates means that the sad bits are absolutely heart-wrenching, but not so much that you can't laugh at the really funny bits that follow once the narrative really gets going.

It's not a mark against the film that it never quite lives up to that perfect opening, because it is still very good and very enjoyable, which goes without saying when it comes to this company. You know you're in safe hands, but ten films in, it takes something really exceptional for people to sit up and take notice. Up is being critically acclaimed by all and sundry, but I'm wondering if a day will come when Pixar is constantly expected to up the ante and make films better and better than what has gone before, purely because they're so good at this. This is an outstanding film, but it's not their best. The trouble is that besides the physics-related implications of the central premise, the film is more rooted in the real world than Docter's directorial debut, Monsters Inc. And now his sophomore effort loses steam a little once the house arrives in South America, giving way to a slight mish-mash of ideas. I had similar issues with WALL·E last year, but I loved that too. And the last paragraph comprises everything that detracted from Up as far as I'm concerned- the rest of the film is marvellous.

More than anything else, you have to applaud any film where the protagonist is a good 70 years older than the target audience, especially when that film makes the audience care about the character so quickly. But on top of that, the supporting characters are rather terrific- Jordan Nagai is funny and charming in his film debut, voicing Carl's de facto sidekick Russell, and Pixar voice-regular Bob Peterson as a talking dog called Dug is arguably one of the best part of a film where there are lots of things to praise. Up is one of those films that's just delightful. It's certainly not lacking in substance, by any stretch of the imagination, but all the same you're going to leave the cinema with a great big smile on your face. I saw the film in 2D by the way, and it's just as good, so it's safe to avoid shelling out extra to see it in 3D. It's pointless to go on any further when most people are already persuaded of Pixar's general genius, not to mention the fact that I've already given my epitaph for this review- just delightful.


Apologies for going all over the place again, but let's take another look at 1996. You've probably all seen Toy Story by now, but for the uninitiated, it's the story of a group of toys who come to life when their owner leaves them unwatched in his bedroom. The first film begins with hand-me-down cowboy doll Woody ruling the roost, a role which is usurped in the wake of their owner's birthday. His favourite gift is a brand-new spaceman action figure, Buzz Lightyear, who quickly becomes more popular than Woody. The pair's bickering sends them hurtling into the big bad world outside the bedroom, as Woody struggles to get home and Buzz, who believes he really is a spaceman rather than a child's action figure, trying to launch into outer space to fight for Star Command.

Similarly to Up, it's a buddy movie. You might say not much has changed, and in some respects you'd be right, because Toy Story was recently released again on the big screen, with the sequel to follow in January, and I absolutely adored it. Just as I was 13 years ago, I was absolutely transfixed. The jokes are still funny, the story is still brilliant and literally every time I see it, I notice something new- who noticed that the fireworks company supplying young boys with massive explosives was called Ill Eagle (illegal), with a sniffy bald eagle as its logo? And it's in things like this that the film's enduring appeal is guaranteed- the friends I saw it with all said they noticed more of the adult oriented jokes they didn't pick up on when they were younger. This is a film with cross-generational appeal that goes beyond nostalgia value- it continues to appeal because it is so damn good.

Everything is just pitch perfect. To try and get a bit of coherence to my gushing, I could point out that this is the only Pixar effort where studio interference from Disney could be inferred. It's the only one that fits that Disney musical sort of template, with numbers by Randy "Sings What He Sees" Newman appearing throughout, and maybe it's only me who thinks about these things enough to wonder whether or not it's a matter of Disney values that Woody seems to have lost the gun that should go in his holster. Sorry, this doesn't have any coherence does it? No, it sounds like a film nut rambling about studio politics because he watched the DVD and found out Disney were going to pull the plug on the film at one point. You can always tell I like it when I can't articulate how good it is. What I'm getting at is the fact that this is one of my all-time favourite films for a reason- it never, ever gets old.

At the film's climax, the rocket blasts into the sky and Woody and Buzz are carried what seems like miles into the air, above the moving van. This is the part where they blow up, Woody tells us, but Buzz has other ideas, and suddenly I'm six years old again, getting goosebumps as that music comes on and they fly after the car. I'm now 19, and should really be gushing about more mature fare, but screw that. Toy Story is one of the few completely perfect films ever made, and I defy anyone to say otherwise.

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Ahem, after that almost embarrassing gushfest, I still have a few other films to look into. Already seen Zombieland, and I promise a review of that will be coming up, and this week sees the release of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Couples' Retreat and Fantastic Mr. Fox too, so you can expect those to be incoming as and when I see them. In the meantime, if anyone else fancies sharing the Pixar love, feel free to comment. :)

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, watch Toy Story over and over again, on loop, forever. You've got to love it.