*Currently tallying*… doing this way too fast, alert me if I’ve made an error with any of my red/green right/wrong indicators

53/96 … almost exactly the same as last year!

Okay, I think I’m done. Nominations are tomorrow. As always, my final list is a complex combination of actual informed expectations, personal preferences, and the odd wild card, with the final deciding factor always being “does it sit well with me?” 2010 has been that rare year where I can truly say all of the following sit pretty darn well with me, and that happens to match up nicely with the prevailing trends on predicting sites. As I’ve said already, once I saw Up in the Air and loved it so darn much, I knew everything was gonna be okay.

Edit: lol and I already made a swap – Michael Gambon is the only thing I think Half-Blood Prince should be up for. It’s almost less likely even than Isabelle Fuhrman but I’ll probably get less WTFs for it

Best Picture

• Up in the Air [WIN]
• Inglourious Basterds
• Avatar
• The Hurt Locker
• An Education
• Up
• Precious
• District 9
• Star Trek
• The Lovely Bones

Best Director

• Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
• Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker [WIN]
• Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
• James Cameron, Avatar
• Lee Daniels, Precious

Best Actor

• Sam Rockwell, Moon
• Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
• George Clooney, Up in the Air
• Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
• Michael Sheen, The Damned United

Best Actress

• Zoe Saldana, Avatar
• Saoirse Ronan, The Lovely Bones
• Carey Mulligan, An Education
• Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
• Gabby Sidibe, Precious

Best Supporting Actor

• Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds [WIN]
• Alfred Molina, An Education
• Christan McKay, Me and Orson Welles
• Michael Gambon, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Matt Damon, Invictus

Best Supporting Actress

• Isabelle Fuhrman, Orphan
• Sigourney Weaver, Avatar
• Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
• Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
• Mo’Nique, Precious

Best Original Screenplay

• Moon, Nathan Parker
• The Hurt Locker, Mark Boal
• Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino
• Up
• (500) Days of Summer

Best Adapted Screenplay

• Up in the Air
• The Road
• An Education
• The Lovely Bones
• The Damned United

Best Editing

• Dana E. Glauberman, Up in the Air
• Chris Innis, Bob Murawski, The Hurt Locker
• Sally Menke, Inglourious Basterds
• Maryann Brandon & Mary Jo Markey, Star Trek
• Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron, Avatar

Best Cinematography

• Robert Richardson, Inglourious Basterds
• Mauro Fiore, Avatar
• Tom Stern, Invictus
• Roger Deakins, A Serious Man
• Barry Ackroyd, The Hurt Locker

Best Score

• Coraline – Bruno Coulais
• The Princess and the Frog – Randy Newman
• Up – Michael Giacchino
• Public Enemies – Eliot Goldenthal
• Up in the Air – Rolfe Kent

Best Original Song

• “Dreaming” – Bruno Coulais, Coraline
• “Butterfly Fly Away” – Alan Silvestri, Glen Ballard, Hannah Montana: the Movie
• “Almost There” – Randy Newman, The Princess and the Frog
• “I See You” – Avatar
• “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” – Crazy Heart

Best Sound Editing

• The Hurt Locker
• Star Trek
• Avatar
• Up
• Inglourious Basterds

Best Sound Mixing

• The Hurt Locker
• Avatar
• Star Trek
• Up
• Public Enemies

Best Animated Feature

• The Princess and the Frog
• Coraline
• Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Up

Best Visual Effects

• Avatar
• 2012
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Best Art Direction

• Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, Avatar
• Inglourious Basterds
• Hideki Arichi, Josh Fifarek, Moon
• Coraline
• Star Trek

Best Costume Design

• Coraline
• Inglourious Basterds
• Public Enemies
• Cheri
• The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Best Make-Up

• Star Trek
• District 9
• The Road

I had a gut feeling I wouldn’t be as crazy for this as I was for Paris, je t’aime as I simply don’t feel the same connection to this city (which I haven’t visited) as I do for Paris (which I have, multiple times). In addition to this, the directors list for this one – Jiang Wen, Mira Nair, Shunji Iwai, Yvan Attal, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, Shekhar Kapur, Natalie Portman, Fatih Akin and Joshua Marston – does not really wow as much as the list for “Paris…” – which included segments by the Coens, Wes Craven, Gus Van Sant, Alfonso Cuarón, Tom Tykwer, Alexander Payne and Isabel Coixet.

Overall I was surprised how tonally it felt so similar to the Paris movie – which certainly makes a case for an argument of producer as author, they being the only solid connection between the two movies – and some of the shorts work really well. I made something of a point of not looking up the credits of this movie before watching so I can assure you when I tell you that, it has nothing to do with names when I say my favourite of all was easily the one directed by Shekhar Kapur and written by the late Anthony Minghella. It’s a poetic musing with the stunning Julie Christie, John Hurt and Shia LeBeouf that’s hard to describe as anything but beautiful and worth watching the whole movie for on its lonesome.

The problem with the movie – and I guess I have to admit I can’t really qualify this since, like I said, I haven’t been to NYC yet – is that it really doesn’t ever feel like it’s necessarily about New York at all, as much as the Paris movie felt it was about Paris. It could be about multicultural Anywhere. Maybe that was partly the point, but it seems a kind of senseless waste of the location and title to me.

You might have spotted from my last review that I tend to not really like when sweeping statements like “return to form!” are embraced on a massive scale. I’d heard from many quarters that this was Guy Ritchie’s best film, if not “ever!” than at least in a long long time. I was one of the few who actually thought “his worst”, Revolver, was actually slightly fascinating and I still look forward to seeing that one again, in addition to his other universally despised effort, Swept Away.

All I can say is, if this is one of Guy Ritchie’s best, then it’s only because people have grown or been conditioned to detest his true style (which I believe shows best in Revolver) so much, and that this is as far from a true Guy Ritchie movie as it’s possible to get. It’s a studio production all the way, sacrificing risk and innovation for nuts and bolts tech specs and star power. Yes, the movie is slick and gorgeous, the action sequences first rate, and Downey Jr. / Law / McAdams all have their moments. At best I had hoped from this something approaching the joy of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie had; unfortunately, storywise it’s closer to the later installments of that franchise – so if you were okay with those, you’ll probably be okay with this too. I was just bored witless by the movie’s last half hour, and the chance of me even thinking of watching it again are approximately zero.

This is not a movie I expected to wind up liking anywhere near as much as I did as the end credits rolled… those who know me will know I have been a pretty huge fan of Disney in my time and even in those times when I mightn’t have liked the product, I always found them to be a fascinating company, in the way they’re perceived both positive/negatively, in the way they change (or try to change) with the times, and yet the way they seem to (most of the time) retain the spirit of Uncle Walt all the way.

I was one of those who never quite understood the decision to quit 2D animation. Yes: Home on the Range was a disappointment that seemed to confirm whatever reasoning lay behind it, but I was never one of those who considered the likes of Atlantis, Treasure Planet, and most of all Lilo & Stitch (which gets better every year, I swear), to be so much worse than the most average of their earlier output (Robin Hood, *The Great Mouse Detective*… they haven’t always been classics, is what I’m saying); and while it’s true they weren’t living up to the heights of Pixar’s CGI work, or constantly doing their best, they were for the most part easily still better than the output of Dreamworks etc.

That long intro is a way of saying, I was never going to be saying in this review, as so many have, “at last, Disney return to form!” because I honestly don’t think they ever lost it. Mis-steps, yes; total betrayal of their roots? No. The only time I feared they had lost it, as a matter of fact, was much more recently than their closing of the 2D department. If you’ve read my reviews before, you might have seen my semi-rant about Enchanted… another movie which people embraced with strangely deluded arms which seemed to think Disney hadn’t been doing 2D Princess stories for half a century let alone half a decade. I thought the animated sequences in that movie were honestly just embarrassing – and I thought its message, its way of taking the whole “love at first sight and happily ever after” thing of old and treating it “responsibly”, was plain depressing and couldn’t be further removed from what I (and I’m sure many others) turn to Disney for.

I mention that because (finally we can get to the movie!) this was what I really worried for a while would be repeated here. I’ve been following this movie (and the next big 2D from Disney, Rapunzel, about which I at least had the same reservations) since it was announced and especially after Enchanted I really thought my time for loving Disney was coming to an end with the changes I kept hearing. I won’t get started on the other embracing comments about this being Disney “finally” having a black Princess (wow, it only took ‘em 80 years, amazing), despite that princess turning into a bright green amphibian 30 minutes in…

There’s a moment very early here when the heroine’s father informs her, “you can wish on a star but the star can only take you part o’ the way…” The heroine in this scene is still a very young girl. It brought me right back to that scene in Enchanted when the little girl’s father says something similar to her, to which she replies astutely, “I’m only six!” to which he retaliates, “You won’t always be.”

Luckily, The Princess and the Frog has this moment for a better reason.

What this movie does for much of its first hour is similar to what Disney tried to do with Enchanted, this new “responsible” approach, telling kids you can’t just dream your life away or rely on daddy’s credit card to get you out of trouble or, indeed, just wish upon a star which (among many things) are all things Disney have been criticised for doing for decades now. I understand these criticisms and the well-meaning behind them, but I can’t agree with them. Disney is dreaming. In any case: here it isn’t, as was the case in Enchanted, the whole message. The responsible approach to magical thinking – the “having a fall-back plan in case your dreams don’t come true” thing – here is a starting point from which the film makers then work towards delivering the old Disney message in a way that works better than ever in a world where that former message is all too hopelessly prevalent.

I cannot find the words to express the relief I felt and how astonished I was when the final act of this movie came out of nowhere to make all my pent-up frustrations with the run-up to it completely blow away. Like I said, I’m not gonna go all out and say it’s their best since Beauty and the Beast or Lady and the Tramp or god forbid further back (really would you believe there are people on this earth who completely dismiss the 90s resurgence stuff as “not really Disney”?), but it is certainly for me their best since Lilo & Stitch, and there are elements, particularly in the last half hour, that really did take my breath away like nothing from the studio has since Tarzan. I haven’t even talked about the quality of the animation itself or Randy Newman’s songs etc, but it’s probably been covered plenty elsewhere. I really cannot wait to see it again without all the fears I came to it with this time around, and my hopes for Rapunzel are beginning to crawl their way back too a pretty frenzied peak.

Of this, The Road and Invictus, all of which left me with very little to say, this I’m sure is the one I’m most likely to see again some time and get much more out than I did here on a first viewing. I realised only recently that the reason I probably grew a little tired of this one is because I’ve been spending a lot of my time so far this year catching up on the whole of Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” series. I’ve watched the whole 7 seasons in a little over 2 weeks. And the basic flow of this movie really feels a lot like an episode of that show, only not nearly as funny and provocative. In place of what’s missing is an introspective look at what might be the reason such things happen to the seemingly nicest of people. On a first watch, like I said, I just didn’t see the appeal it seems to have had for others. It’s a remarkably uneventful movie, the implications of its message being equally remarkable in their lack of consequence. But it’s far more watchable than those other movies that left me cold, and I look forward to seeing if a second viewing is more rewarding.

Another movie I really have very little to say about and of which I had relatively high expectations. I haven’t read the book on which this is based yet and (especially now I’ve seen the movie) I’m pretty sure it will be a more fulfilling experience. I felt this, more than any other problems you might find with it, was just far too long for what it ultimately shows and tells us. It could have been done a a 30- or even 15- minute short, and better. I wasn’t overawed by either Viggo Mortensen’s or the kid’s performance, I just got the idea within 15 minutes and it doesn’t develop anything new beyond that point. It’s not that I dislike a depressing filmgoing experience (I’m sure those who love the movie think this is the only reason anybody would not like it), because heaven knows I do; but I dislike movies that repeat themselves so flatly as this one does. It’s ironic that when this movie leaked on the internet initial copies had 30 minutes of footage missing. I feel like anybody who mistakenly viewed that version might’ve been the lucky ones.

Hmm… I’ve been holding onto this and a couple of other movies to write about for a week now until I had something that gave me a larger body of words to bury them under, lol, because I just really didn’t have a lot to say about them. There was no reason I would necessarily have my attention seized by a story about football uniting people over race in apartheid Africa, but I had more hope for this one than I might have otherwise because Clint Eastwood is frankly on a roll lately. I mightn’t have been personally wowed by Flags of Our Fathers and Iwo Jima but the achievement was immeasurable, and last year’s Changeling and Gran Torino both remain among my top 10 of the year.

This is as solidly built as anything Eastwood has done in the last 10 years, for sure. I just was never going to be interested in this story. I was excited for Morgan Freeman’s performance as Mandela, but if I’m absolutely honest, I even found disappointment here. Freeman is an amazing actor but he really felt lost to me here. He can do a lot of things but this movie shows he is not up to portraying real people of such magnitude. The fact that I was more impressed by Matt Damon’s performance (which is the best he’s been since The Talented Mr. Ripley) really says it all.

I have a feeling I will do better than my 6/14 of last year here. What I am noticing about this year’s awards season is (especially with the Oscars having 10 Best Picture slots now) how surprisingly predictable it is and yet how even if the wildest outcome occurs, most people are gonna be pretty satisfied. With that said, the following is not exclusively the ones I “really” think will win, rather a combination of that and a few that I really deep down personally want to win. I shall be live tweeting my thoughts from red carpet time onwards

7/14

Best Motion Picture – Drama: Up in the Air (really want this, here and at the Oscars)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama: Gabourey Sidibe – Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire (haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard enough)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama: Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart (haven’t seen it, but by all accounts… plus he’s overdue: here and the Oscars, please)

Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical: (500) Days of Summer (unlikely, but it’s the one I like best)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical: Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia (not a lot to pick from here)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical: Joseph Gordon-Levitt – (500) Days of Summer (again, just the one I liked best)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture: Mo’Nique – Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (same as Sidibe in the lead: haven’t seen, but heard plenty)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture: Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds (the surest of my predix)

Best Animated Feature Film: Up (hmm, maybe even surer)

Best Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon (though the HFP really like Almodovar, right?)

Best Director – Motion Picture: Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker (here and the Oscars please, but less of the big deal about her being OMG Roger Moore voice a woman!)

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture: Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds (this is so the best of the five nominated it’s ridiculous)

Best Original Score – Motion Picture: Karen O and Carter Burwell – Where the Wild Things Are (I didn’t like the movie much, but the music was some of the most original of last year, shame Bruno Coulais isn’t nominated for Coraline)

Best Original Song – Motion Picture: “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart) (getting Wrestler vibes from this and Bridges)

(I don’t do the TV ones but Drew Barrymore deserves anything)