Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to reviewing all of this year’s Oscar picks even though Maria and I were able to get through watching most of them. Still, since we’ve seen lots, I can at least make some predictions and ruminations about this year’s awards. I’ll skip categories that I haven’t seen enough of the films to weigh in on.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Colin Firth for The King’s Speech

Maria and I were never able to see Bitiful, which the always brilliant Javier Bardem is nominated for, but we’ve heard that he was really good. Still, I’d find it very hard to believe that his performance was better than Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. Firth absolutely lived his role as the stammering reluctant King of England. Firth became the awkward, nervous, bleary-eyed King George using his entire body, in scenes that made me cringe. I loved even the way he carried himself, so unsure, so scared of everything. Throughout the film too, I thought his transformation was subtle and believable.

Compared to Jeff Bridges in True Grit—who was hilarious but fairly run-of-the-mill—and Jesse Eisenberg—who was pretty one-dimensional—Firth is the clear stand-out choice. His character was complex, incredibly complex, and his interpretation is absolutely brilliant.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

I admit I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in this category having only seen Black Swan and Winter’s Bone. I’ll tell you what though, if Portman doesn’t win I would be incredibly surprised. Portman’s otherworldly transformation as the lead dancer in her company’s production of Swan Lake has to be the best performance by an actress for 2010. Her madness was subtle. Her take on the character was very simple, but I think that just lent to an even more frightening performance: she appeared, on the surface, to be a simple character but then layer upon layer begin to, literally, peel away. I think this will be Portman’s year when she takes the stage and when her career moves up to that next level.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech

If Geoffrey Rush doesn’t win for Best Supporting Actor then it better be John Hawkes for his role in Winter’s Bone.

Let’s start with Hawkes. In his role Teardrop, the emotionally unpredictable Uncle to a girl searching for her father, Hawkes is pretty stellar. He’s scary, but believable. He’s complicated but like all of the actors in Winter’s Bone, he makes it seem real like he isn’t acting at all, like you’re almost watching a documentary—a very good one.

However, absolutely hands down, Geoffrey Rush needs to take this award. If Colin Firth’s stuttering King is an unforgettable performance then so is Rush’s pull-no-punches speech therapist Lionel Logel. Rush is nothing short of hilarious through virtue of being so confident in himself and so clever. It’s a brilliant juxtaposition: Rush playing a headstrong, self-assured common man against Firth’s nervous, stammering monarch.

Best Cinematography

Black Swan

In my opinion, this is perhaps the hardest category to call this year because there are three pretty predominant front-runners.

First is Inception. For all those naysayers, Inception was, visually, a pretty stunning film. There were lots of interesting things done with the camera to create a cohesive, yet absolutely mind-bending movie. Think of the action scenes, that whole upside-down segment, etc. It’s definitely in the running.

The King’s Speech is also nominated and if you weren’t paying pretty close attention you might’ve missed it but this film has some stellar camera work. Framing Colin Firth in a super wide angle against the crumbling wall of Geoffrey Rush’s office. Or filming Rush, rising from his chair, his face taking up the whole frame, looming over Firth with an absolutely palpable sense of authority and confidence.

Finally, there’s Black Swan, and this is the film I’m going to pick as the winner. When I reviewed this film I made a bit about how great I thought the camera was, following Natalie Portman around so closely and so controlled it only added to the sense that Portman’s life was constricted, constrained, and enhanced her madness. I loved it, and I think it worked well enough to deserve an Oscar.

Best Editing

The Social Network

I don’t think editing needs to be wildly impressive to win an award, I think it needs to be good and in the case of The Social Network, it was really well done. The movie was edited to keep the pace as a good clip, to unwind the story with perfect timing and the multiple storylines told around the different lawsuits, if you’ve seen the film, were done really well. The way it was written, this was a film that could’ve easily fallen apart without a good editor but obviously it had one and I think it’ll easily win in this category.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Social Network

The only other contender in this category, in my opinion, is Winter’s Bone which could also easily win. In both cases, the dialogue is pretty outstanding but I think The Social Network is the more likely to take the prize. Aaron Sorkin is simply the dialogue master and his screenplay was so fast and furious, so clever and complicated, that it made the film that much more enjoyable to watch.

Best Original Screenplay

Inception

Easily, folks, easily. It’s a pretty brilliant concept for a film even if it was robbed from Total Recall. No other contenders.

Best Picture

The Social Network

In my mind, in this heavyweight category, the one that matters the most, there are two contenders: The King’s Speech and The Social Network. Both films are about really interesting, niche subjects: the inventor of Facebook and the stammering King of England. Both are character-driven dramas with really interesting lead characters, really snappy dialogue, and both are really well acted.

In my opinion, The King’s Speech has far more compelling characters. Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth stand heads and shoulders above The Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg. But The Social Network has a quicker pace to it, it feels slightly better put together. While The King’s Speech feels a bit weighty and dragging, at times, The Social Network never slowed down. I liked that about The Social Network, and I think, despite the better character performances in The King’s Speech, it’s overall feel and pacing might see it lose to The Social Network.

Still,  it’s a very tough call… and we’ll have to see.

I haven’t seen one of the new 3D movies. We didn’t go watch Avatar when it was in theatres, and personally I think the technology seems pretty hokey. But what about choose your own adventure?

The clip below, from a company called 13th Street is advertising a new kind of cinema, one in which the viewer can interact with the film and change the outcome. In this case, it’s done by phoning different viewers in the audience and changing the outcome of the film based on recognized voice commands. Is this the new step in immersive horror films or just another hokey Hollywood breakthrough?

What do you think? Leave a comment.

Well, the Oscars have come and gone again. I wouldn’t say the results were unexpected, but they were, I would say, good. I’m glad, first and foremost, to see that Avatar, the gazillion-dollar blockbuster, didn’t sweep the podium. It had the potential to, and the rumour mill was buzzing like nobody’s business leading up to Sunday. But thankfully, common sense prevailed and the Academy decided that just because a movie was twenty years in the making, costs the GDP of a small nation, and brought it ten times that amount means that it deserves an award. Avatar, after all, is a movie about Indians and the White Man and of all the Best Picture nominees this year, this genre has definitely been done to death.

So instead, the good guys prevailed: The Hurt Locker, taking almost every award possible away from Avatar. It was interesting. James Cameron just sat there, nearly the whole time, with that smug look on his face: a look of arrogant confidence. It was with that expression, that smugness in mind, that it felt so good when Kathryn Bigelow took both Best Director and Best Picture. When she won, she was beside herself and it showed, she could barely stand up to receive her first and then second award. A sharp contrast to Cameron’s demeanor. One would say, just from looking at them, that she deserved it more.

But unfortunately, the movie I would’ve picked for the best out of these three didn’t really have a chance. Precious, in my opinion, was the best film out of the front-runners. I think it was far more impactful and a much more complete film than The Hurt Locker, ditto Avatar. Why it didn’t win is anyone’s guess, but I imagine it got lost in the shuffle. This year’s Academy Awards, wrongfully so, were billed as a battle between former husband and wife. While there was some mention of an African American filmmaker, possibly for the first time, taking home Best Picture, it wasn’t the headline like the Cameron-Bigelow affair was. Sadly, I think the best picture became a casualty of war—a victim of collateral damage.

It was a pretty solid night, though. Some unexpected things, one of which was Avatar winning almost nothing but another was the severe lack of banjo. Before the show, I took a vote with the friends at our Oscar Party, the question was: when do you think Steve Martin’s banjo will make an appearance. If Avatar losing everything was a big shocker, it’s only supplanted by the shock that Martin never had a chance to play us  Camptown Races. I don’t know, but if Hugh Jackman gets to put on his dancing shoes, why doesn’t Steve Martin get to display his musical chops? After all, he does have a Grammy to his name. I would’ve bet good money on a Baldwin-Martin musical duet but instead we get, what, an opening musical number by Neil Patrick Harris? My apologies to N.P.H. fans, but I would’ve preferred to see the hosts perform.

Although the Oscars are over, I’m still getting through reviewing a few more nominated films. While we watched most of them, I couldn’t keep up with writing the reviews too—after all, I do have a day job, and it’s report card season right now. We just watched Up in the Air, The Lovely Bones, and Crazy Heart, so there are still lots more Oscar nominees coming up, stay tuned.