The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the nominees for its awards this Thursday, so I wanted to get my predictions in. Too many pots bubbling over to bother with any kind of discussion, but do pipe up in comments if you just have to hear my logic about any of these things in particular. Best Picture The Big Short Bridge of Spies Carol Mad Max: Fury Road […]
The Online Film Critics Society, of which I am a proud member has announced our nominees for the best in filmmaking in 2015. I’ll skip past the press release to get to the good stuff: here are the nominees in all categories. Best Picture: Brooklyn Carol Ex Machina Inside Out Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Room Sicario Spotlight Best Animated Feature: Anomalisa The Good Dinosaur Inside Out […]
If we absolutely must have Biopics of Great Men™, the least we can hope for is that they all try as hard as Steve Jobs. It is a film that is not-great in many ways and actively broken in at least a couple, but as whipped together by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (and oh my word, this is the most tangibly screenwriter-as-auteur film in a very long time – more on […]
In one week’s time, the most famous of the world’s many arbitrary film awards will be given out: I refer of course to the Oscars, and I will not be getting into a whole thing about the Oscars being or failing to be meaningful on any level, other than to say that I’m having an uncharacteristically on-consensus year. I am only going to toss out my predictions, because that is […]
So, now we know what the bizarre new rules end up doing, and all the other things that were such big question marks for so long. And now the only stage of the three-month Awards Season that actually matters can begin in earnest. Below, my thoughts on these categories, so far as I can have them at an hour before I am accustomed to being away or in any other […]
Updated 1/18 in light of Best Foreign Film bake-off list One week from today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the nominees for its 84th annual awards. I try not to admit it in public too often, but being a huge Oscar junkie, it’s hard not to want to try my hand at predicting the bastards, though I also take the cheater’s route of waiting till […]
In 2002, the Oakland Athletics did not win the World Series. You might think that this is a sufficiently common event that it wouldn’t be worth making a movie about it, but then there’s Moneyball, which is happy to prove you wrong. You see, the A’s didn’t just fail to win the World Series – or make it very close to the World Series in the first place – they […]
I meant to do these up yesterday, but then… life what happens to you while you’re busy something something, as the fella said. At any rate, following upon my nominations last month for the best movie things of the year – the U.S. release year, anyway – here are my winners in all categories. Congrats to all, and some day when I’m actually important you’ll all retroactively be given a […]
Best PictureThe King’s Speech Best DirectorTom Hooper, The King’s Speech Best ActorColin Firth, The King’s Speech Best ActressNatalie Portman, Black Swan Best Supporting ActorChristian Bale, The Fighter Best Supporting Actress Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit Won: Melissa Leo, The Fighter Best Adapted ScreenplayThe Social Network, by Aaron Sorkin Best Original ScreenplayThe King’s Speech, by David Seidler Best Cinematography True Grit (Roger Deakins) Won: Inception (Wally Pfister) Best EditingThe Social Network (Angus […]
It’s that time of year again: Oscar weekend! If I were a brave man, I’d have gotten these published more than three days before the ceremony, but I wanted, among other things, to see as many nominated films as possible, and only just wrapped up the documentary films yesterday. Thinking about using my predictions to win your party pool? I wouldn’t – last year I had a fairly excellent 20/24 […]
Rather than lard up the front page with redundant posts, I’m going to add my thoughts about today’s announcement – available here – to my now completely useless predictions post. New thoughts are in red. I went 82/105 with my predictions (39/45 in the Big Eight), plus another 11 (4) where my first alternate got nominated. This is by a huge margin my best year ever, and proof, I think, […]
It is now become a tradition that on the night before the Oscar nominations, I present my own nominees for what I once called “If I Ran the Oscars” and now call “The Antagonists”, which name I prefer because it gets at the real point of these: which is to be contrary for the sake of it. Anyway, below the jump, all the films & performances & works of craft […]
