The Oscars! Once a year, a bunch of hopeless weirdos get together and nominate the year’s worst movies to receive a foot-tall piece of plastic that’s been sprayed gold and give gushing three hour speeches. In the past few years the list of categories has grown so huge that the ceremony lasts approximately 6 weeks – just long enough for Steve Martin’s hourly rate to cover the HP on his Ferrari.
Anyway, because we are the best film site ever, we reckon we’ve ingested enough peyote to see into the future and predict who’s going to win, and because those fine purveyors of discount lovefilm memberships over at vouchercodes.co.uk are running a sweepstakes, we’re going to lay it on the line and go head to head with a few other sites that seem to think they know something about movies – even though not a single one of them has published a Jason Statham retrospective this year!
To make things simple, we’ve decided to ignore dorky categories like ‘Best Window Dressing’ and go with the big hitters –don’t agree? Why not you feckless dog? Well go on then, if you think you know better, tell us!
And the winners are…
Actress in a supporting role
Mo’Nique in Precious
Why? Well, she manages to outshine Maria Carey for one, and let’s face it, Penelope Cruz screeching and throwing her legs up in the air in Nine may have been more fun to watch, but hardly typified the method approach did it?
Actor in a supporting role
Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds
Why? We almost went with Matt Damon and his comedy Transvall accent in Invictus, but what kind of list would this be without at least one bingo playing, pipe-and-scenery chomping Nazi on it? Waltz is the best thing in a movie that features Brad Pitt ordering someone’s head to be stoved in with a bat -that has to be worth celebrating right?
Actress in a leading role
Carey Mulligan in An Education
Why? Frankly, we’d much rather see the lovely Miss Mulligan on stage in a sparkly dress than celebrate Meryl Streep’s bloody awful efforts this year, and although British films never, ever win anything we live in hope…
Actor in a leading role
Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart
After menacing Iron Man on a segway, The Dude got serious for once this year, leaving his lightcycle at the door and churning out a powerful character study that actually made us appreciate country music – for about 5 minutes, then it was back to the Pantera albums – Jeff’s often been overlooked by the Academy so he deserves to shine this year. And hey, would you really want to see George Clooney up there again?
Animated feature film
Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)
Why? Where The Wild Things Are doesn’t count, and to be honest we were a bit unsettled by Fantastic Mr.Fox, so let’s grasp the obvious and go with the latest and probably greatest from Pixar – if only for the talking dog.
Directing
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
Why? Tarantino is slowly disappearing up his own mixed metaphors with Inglourious, and Avatar may look great, but it’s as much about typing HTML as it is about directing – Bigelow meanwhile continues to make great, traditionally crafted movies -and fill them with massive kick-ass explosions, meaning she’s the girl for us!
Writing (original screenplay)
A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Why? Again, Quentin was a little too obvious this year, while the Brothers Coen crafted a witty, dark and engaging movie that reigned in the trademark obtuse dialogue from their earlier work and came out smelling of roses.
Best picture
A Serious Man (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, producers)
This won’t win. We actually think that honour will pass into the off-world paws of a certain biggest movie ever, but frankly – effects aside – Avatar just isn’t that great a film. A Serious Man on the other hand is a textbook example of tight plotting and storytelling, full of fantastic red herrings and fun wordplay that really counts. Sure there aren’t as many exploding helicopters, but if it’s a genuine film you want to see win here then this is your baby.
Art direction
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (art direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; set decoration: Caroline Smith)
You’d forgotten about this one hadn’t you? Yep, so had we -we were all distracted by the acres of lingerie on display in Nine, but for sumptuous indulgence Imaginarium wins hands down -and it’s a choice bound to be bouyed up by sentiment for a certain ex-Joker so don’t write this off…
Cinematography
The Hurt Locker (Barry Ackroyd)
Why? Ka-Boom!!! That’s why! Desert vistas, bullets singing as they whizz past your face and constant adrenalin being payed off in spades with some massive rumbling explosions. The Hurt Locker took the ‘red wire or blue wire’ moment, stretched it over 2 hours and added in the sweeping desert vistas of Laurence of Arabia – gorgeous and scary as hell.
Music (original score)
Avatar (James Horner)
Make no mistake, Avatar is going to win big this year. Unfortunately for Cameron, it isn’t a character study of one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the death of her missing pony, set against the backdrop of the Hindenberg disaster, so the often snooty Academy probably won’t go the whole hog and award a cartoon Best Picture -leaving music and tech categories. In this case it outdoes the weird indie of Mr.Fox and presents a masterclass in rumbling strings and cat in closet jumpy orchestration – not since Terminator has Cameron had a soundtrack as ruthless and unstoppably stirring. Which just leaves…
Visual effects
Avatar (Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R Jones)
To be honest, we’d rather Star Trek won this, but there’s simply no arguing with a helicopter taking on a six-legged giant lizard is there? Not to mention the vaguely-arousing thought of Sigourney Weaver with a tail. Avatar beats the competition hands down.
So, that’s our two-penneth worth, but we know we have the most educated, erudite and discerning – not to mention good looking – readership in blogsville, so we want your predictions as well, let us know if we’re right or if we’re wrong –this is important; if we’re wrong on this, we’ll never win that voucher for a half price Sloppy Giuseppe!
