Oscars 2012: One Big Yawn of Agreement

The Oscars are clearly, and arbitrarily, the most important of all the award ceremonies yet coming as they do after a dozen of similar awards are given out to the same winners, by the time the Oscars finally arrive we are suffering from award season fatigue. This is where the desire for surprising winners comes in, despite The Artist, Meryl Streep, Christopher Plummer and Octavia Spencer all being worthy winners writing about them winning the awards they were tipped to win isn’t all that exciting.

But is that the point? The Artist really was the best film of the past year and deserves to win all the awards it won, the list of winners is not surprising but for the first time in years it is hard to disagree with any of the choices. Let’s not gripe about predictability and just be happy that worthy winners won awards and that Eddie Murphy wasn’t the host.

I am happy that The Artist won five Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Costume Design and Best Score) leaving Hugo to pick up all the technical awards. I am happy that A Separation won Best Foreign Language Film for being an amazing drama and that Rango won Best Animated Film despite being semi-grown-up. I’m happy that Woody Allen won an Oscar for the screenplay for Midnight in Paris and showed that he remains a relevant film-maker. I’m happy that Jim Rash co-won an award for co-writing The Descendants leaving amazing-but-almost-cancelled-sitcom Community with an Oscar winner amongst its cast. I’m happy that The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore won Best Animated Short Film because, as we all know, it is damned adorable.

What I am most happy about is Bret McKenzie won the Oscar for Best Original Song for “Man or Muppet”. There has never been a more obvious (there was only one other nominee for a start) yet deserving win.

So there you have it, the 2012 Oscar awards have made me happy but weren’t very exciting. It was the award ceremony equivalent of eating a trifle (for me at least).

Get Ready for the 2012 Oscars – Foreign Language Films

Hopefully by now you’re further along in your preparation for this year’s Oscars, there’s only two weeks to go. Assuming you’ve dutifully watched the animated short films I gathered together for you, it’s time to swat up on the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Luckily for anyone living in London, the Tricycle cinema in Kilburn is running a ten-day run of screenings covering a wide range of the films submitted for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, though sadly not all of the final five nominees. The screenings include one UK premiere, two advance preview screenings and some special guests; plenty to get excited about.

Tickets only go as high as £8.50 and can be bought online at www.tricycle.co.uk or by phoning the Tricycle box office on
020 7328 1000. The Tricycle is a lovely cinema and only down the road from me (hence the plug), so pop in for a cup of tea while you’re in the area.

The full screening schedule is below:

A Few Obligatory Thoughts on the 2012 Oscar Nominations

In case you haven’t been lucky enough to have me mumble at you about the 2012 Oscar nominations in person, I thought I’d share with you some of my gut reactions to this year’s list of films of actor types that may win a fancy gold statue. For the full list of nominees have a look on IMDb, it’ll save me a lot of copying, pasting, and messing around with italics.

Extremely Lame & Poorly Reviewed
Somewhere amongst the nine nominees for Best Motion Picture of the Year is Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, the family drama about a young boy searching for the lock to match a key left to him by his father, a victim of 9/11. What makes this film stand out, beyond its terrifying poster, is that it is the worst reviewed film to get nominated for this award for the past 10 years. At the time of writing this potential Oscar winner has just 47% positive reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes with a pretty damning consensus; “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has a story worth telling, but it deserves better than the treacly and pretentious treatment director Stephen Daldry gives it.”

Albert Who?
Noticing that a film called Albert Nobbs had gathered three nominations I decided to look into it. Turns out that Albert Nobbs is a woman in 19th century Ireland pretending to be a man in order to survive, and is played by Glenn Close. Curious to see what Glenn Close would look like as a man I bravely Googled on.

Thanks Glenn, I didn’t need to sleep tonight anyway.

Gary!
With Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy sadly missing out on a Best Picture nod it’s great to see Gary Oldman getting his first ever Best Actor nomination, and not for his role in Kung Fu Panda 2. In Tinker Oldman ably held together a weighty bit of British cinema and showed hipsters that some people actually wear oversized glasses for medical reasons. What a guy.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Mediocre Biopic
With Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams both getting nominated for Best Actress, it seems that it really doesn’t matter how lukewarm the reaction is to your film so long as you give a scarily accurate portrayal of an icon. In a way it’s reassuring to know that no matter how mediocre the film you’re in, there’s still a chance to act your way above the rest of the film.

Plummer!
It’s exciting enough that the little seen film Beginners might get some free press thanks to Christopher Plummer’s nomination, but the fact that Captain Von Trapp has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor twice out of the last three years is almost too much too handle. Excuse the hyperbole, I’m tired.

Woody’s Back
Woody Allen has another hit on his hands as Midnight in Paris garnered four nominations, and three of them are the kind that people actually care about. Shame I have 45 Woody Allen films to get through before I’m allowed to watch this one.

How Could They Leave Out ________?
For every nomination which warms the cockles of your heart there will be dozens of omissions which are completely outrageous and terribly short-sighted of the academy, only in your humble opinion of course. For me there’s not enough love for Drive and Olivia Colman has been robbed, robbed blind I say! I’m sure you have your own opinions, but how can they be as important as mine?

A Few Surprising Screenplays
The fact that fantastic Iranian film A Separation and delightful silent film The Artist are both nominated for Best Original Screenplay, a category normally filled with English scripts filled with dialogue, shows a fun bit of diverse nominating from the academy. It brings to mind the fact that the only time Buffy was nominated for a Golden Globe for writing was for the almost silent episode Hush. For anyone not sure why I’m rambling about Buffy, why not have a look at what the script for The Artist looks like, you can download it here.

The Difference Between Sound Mixing and Sound Editing is…
The same as the difference between Drive and Moneyball, apparently. These two categories, for Sound Mixing/Editing, have always baffled me and no more so than this year where they share a four–film–nominee–crossover.

Is the Animated Feature Oscar Just for Kids?
I had a theory that Best Animated Feature only goes to the most accessible end of the animated film genre. With a few “proper” animated films on the shortlist, Chico & Rita and A Cat in Paris among them, I look forward to being proven wrong. The absence of Cars 2 from the list gives me hope.

If nothing else, at least we’ll get to see this fella again (I hope):

2012 Golden Globes Nominations

With awards season truly hotting up we are treated with the nominations for the 2012 Golden Globe Awards. They’re an interesting bunch, a lot of the more challenging and/or smaller films have been passed by. The Los Angles Times has it spot on when they say that the nominations seem to recognise those works featuring the A-list actors, more accessible films and less dark dramas. No Tyrannosaur or Like Crazy to be found below.

What you will find is my gut reaction and my opinions for each category (apart from Best Original Song and Best Original Score as that is not my strong suit) whether you want it or not.

Nader and Simin, a Separation – Review

On the surface is the story of a couple in crisis. The wife wants to leave Iran and take their daughter to a better life, but the husband refuses to leave as his father has Alzheimer’s and needs constant care. Far from the film focusing on their collapsing marriage as expected, it instead soon transitions into a court room drama as they battle with a couple hired to care for the sick father.

All the acting is top-notch and the handheld camera work lends a realistic aesthetic to the film. While the drama was engrossing and did inspire a healthy debate on the walk home afterwards, at two hours runtime this film is far too long. At one point the rather put upon judge asks the characters to stop repeating themselves and I couldn’t agree with him more.

Good but could be improved massively with some fine tuning in the editing room.

Out Now – 1st July 2011

Larry Crowne
Tom Hanks stars, writes and directs this blatant rip-off of Community (not really, Universal lawyers!) as a middle-aged man returns to community college. Bryan Cranston co-stars (exciting) along with Julia Roberts (boring).

The Conspirator
The brilliant James McAvoy stars as a reluctant lawyer defending a woman accused of conspiring to kill Abraham Lincoln. You shouldn’t be surprised to hear this is a period film. Other exciting cast members include Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline, Robin Wright, Alexis Bledel, Johnny Simmons, Jonathan Groff and “the guy with the stapler from Office Space“, Stephen Root. Oh, and it’s directed by Robert Redford. Someone take me, please?

Delhi Belly
Hindi comedy about three flatmates on the hit list of one of the world’s deadliest crime syndicates. For a while I thought this was a zombie film, Delhi Belly is the perfect title for a Bollywood zombie film. I’m copyrighting the idea as soon as I finish this.

A Separation (limited release)
In this Iranian drama a divorcing couple argue about moving their only child abroad. I can guess how the Daily Mail hopes this film ends.

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (limited release)
Sadly not a giant monster attacking Japan. Instead a documentary exploring Japan’s love for insects.

As If I Am Not There (limited release)
Harsh drama about a young woman in a Serbian War Camp during the Bosnian War. I won’t cheapen this reportedly brilliant and harrowing film by mentioning that the lead actress is the spitting image of Felicity Jones. Oh no, I won’t.