Best Motion Picture – Drama – Moneyball – anything but Snore Horse will do me here, though I’ve seen nothing but that. I just have a gut feeling they’ll go with Moneyball here.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama – Tilda Swinton – We Need To Talk About Kevin – I don’t like the obvious so no Meryl Streep for me. I like seeing Tilda Swinton winning anything.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama – Brad Pitt – Moneyball – Again, just a feeling I have about the Globes and Brad Pitt here.

Best Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical – Midnight In Paris – The only one I’ve seen. I know, The Artist, The Artist – but I freakin’ loved this movie and have a feeling it has an attitude to nostalgia that, even once I’ve seen The Artist, I’ll favour.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical – Charlize Theron – Young Adult – Seen none of these, I love Jodie Foster, but Young Adult looks fantastic.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical – Owen Wilson – Midnight In Paris – Again, I just loved this movie, and Owen Wilson was particularly impressive.

Best Animated Feature Film – Rango – Just caught this the other day and loved it. Stunning animation and genuinely moving in places.

Best Foreign Language Film – The Skin I Live In – Oh, I was gonna go with the Angelina Jolie one for the same reasons as my Moneyball ones above, but I just saw this one this week, too, and, OMG… hope this one wins, the Oscar too (though it’ll probably somehow not even be on the shortlist there or something).

Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture – Janet McTeer – Albert Nobbs – I have absolutely no clue here… but I’ve liked Janet McTeer in other things…

Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture – Albert Brooks – Drive – hmm, torn between him and Plummer, but this is the only one I’ve seen and he was one of the best things in it.

Best Director – Motion Picture – Woody Allen – Midnight In Paris – I may as well stick with Midnight as my one to root for. It really is his best in years (though I haven’t seen a bunch of ‘em lol). As I think I usually say at the Globes (I hope I’ll be more up to speed, as I said, this time next year, though) – I know I’ll be wrong.

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture – Woody Allen – Midnight In Paris – Well, I hope he wins one or the other, directing/writing, hehe…

Best Original Score – Motion Picture – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Again anything but Snore Horse here for me… haven’t seen any except that. Loved the Reznor/Ross Social Network music tho.

Best Original Song – Motion Picture – “Masterpiece” – W.E. – Hmm, sad there’s no Rango here… but I’ll go with Madonna for the same reason stated above for Brangelina. It’s the HFPA.

And now the interesting stuff I don’t normally do! TV! lol… genuinely, more excited about this portion than the cinema side this year.

Best Television Series – Drama – Game Of Thrones – I don’t know if Boardwalk is up for season 1 or 2? I preferred season 1, anyway. In any case, Game of Thrones held my interest more consistently.

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series – Drama – Claire Danes – Homeland – yikes, haven’t seen any of these… but I love Claire Danes.

Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series – Drama – Steve Buscemi – Boardwalk Empire – duh of the night?

Best Television Series – Comedy Or Musical – Enlightened – haven’t started watching this yet but I believe this is what I would pick if I had.

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series – Comedy Or Musical – Laura Dern – Enlightened – ditto.

Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series – Comedy Or Musical – Matt LeBlanc – Episodes – something tells me “they” won’t be able to resist this, as explained for other things above… plus it’s the only one I’ve seen. And I liked.

Best Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made for Television – Mildred Pierce – Just please not f-ing Downton… but I absolutely LOVED this series, this is my favourite thing up for anything tonight.

Best Performance by an Actress In A Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television – Kate Winslet – Mildred Pierce

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television – William Hurt – Too Big To Fail – oy… no clue in this category lol.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television – Evan Rachel Wood – Mildred Pierce – my MEGA root for the night. Have loved Evan Rachel Wood for years and not only was she brilliant overall in this, she was so brilliant she made me not regret her being swapped in for the equally amazing Morgan Turner who played the young Veda.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television – Peter Dinklage – Game Of Thrones – tough category but Dinklage was easily the best thing in Game of Thrones next to Maisie Williams

If my reviews are ever helpful to anyone but myself, I can guarantee this won’t be one of them, as it’s one of the kind I pretty much already had written in my head the minute I heard about the film, and it’s only developed as the past year or so has gone onwards. From the spark of “Kevin Smith is gonna do a horror movie” to the whole rush of the SModcast network and his radio station – even a whole podcast series of Q&As about this very film – it’s sort of a miracle that I still came to this movie not really knowing exactly what to expect.

As high as my expectations were, they were matched a massive fear of disappointment, in which case I would have written much here about the fact that after listening to Smith, his family and friends for the last 6 months (I still haven’t missed a single episode of Per Diem or Get Jobs, and I listen to all but a couple of the podcasts as avidly), the movie feels something like a home movie, with Ralph Garman as a mute bad guy, Smith’s wife Jen in a small role, and the likes of Michael Parks, John Goodman, and Kevin Pollak, whose performances Smith has barely been able to contain himself over (they’re the reason behind the recent Academy qualifying theatrical run of the movie in LA).

So the main part of this review is this: I’m overjoyed to say that with my frankly unfair expectations for this project after Cop Out and Zack and Miri failed to turn me on (tho, again, having listened to Smith I understand the part those films played in his grand scheme), it didn’t disappoint me at all. This film isn’t just a gargantuan leap over Smith’s last two films, it’s a complete departure from anything he’s ever done.

I reserve one heart in my rating this first viewing because quite honestly, by the time the credits rolled, I still didn’t know what to think. I sat through the whole of this movie with my mouth slightly agape, simply a slave to the wonderful fact that despite having been exposed to so much talk about it over the past year, I had no f-ing clue where it was headed next. John Goodman and Michael Parks’ performances steal the show completely, it’d be a great film if was just theirs, but Smith handles his action sequences with a confidence I don’t think anybody would’ve seen previously in his abilities as a film maker. The gore is minimal but thrillingly inventive, with even the stuff you may see coming a mile away coming from just enough of another angle to tickle the senses. This is a movie I look forward to seeing again and again, and if Kevin Smith fulfils his promise that his final movie, the 2-part Hit Somebody, will be even better, than I’m honestly frightened about how much that one will blow me away. I’ll be honest, I don’t care how silly it sounds: I feel oddly proud of the dude about this one… he pulled off what he set out to do beyond anyone’s doubts or expectations… that’s literally all there is to say…

There’s very little of social or historical commentary as you find in other horror docs here – at only 80 minutes with the list of films it shows clips from (let’s just say too many to list here; and just about any horror movie you can name that had been made before the film came out in 1984). What you get is Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen sitting in a movie theatre talking solemnly about how horror movies (or terror movies, as they’re called here; a great move allowing the inclusion of such nightmarish movies as Marathon Man and Midnight Express) make us feel.

What strikes one most about this one is not just the array of movies included but the slickness of the whole thing. The editing is top notch – cutting together, say, door slams or something, a dozen or more at once from different movies. The whole opening sequence is a relentless montage of “alone in the house” scenes. We see this kind of thing all the time now but it’s strangely impressive to see it in a production so old.

Suddenly, after describing the movie, I realise it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s one of very few of these horror documentaries that I’ll likely watch again and again, just for the sheer assault of content it provides. It’d be something great to have on in the background on a scary movie night, or on an iPod to watch a little of on a long journey, etc when you want that atmospheric je ne sais quoi that all these movies provide but you either haven’t the time for a full movie or can’t decide what movie to watch. If you love horror, chances are you don’t need me to tell you all this; but if you love horror, really, drop everything if you haven’t seen this yet.

I never know how vague or full I’m going to be about plot details when I start writing a review so I should warn now, there may be spoilers. I was lucky enough to avoid just about any details about this movie before seeing it and I’m glad I did, so I’d strongly advise not reading any reviews, mine included, until you’ve seen it. If you need a short review: trust me, it’s worth seeing.

At its heart, as already mentioned, this movie exists as a nostalgic trip. As such, its biggest star is arguably its production design, which to my eye seemed flawless, even dizzying in places as I grew up in the time (if not the place) the story takes place. I always used to say when it came to period movies that I preferred the older ones, in particular those of the 1970s, as they always seemed to have a hazy look to them that added to the experience; as time moved on film production techniques got too clean and slick leading to inappropriately clean and slick historical visions. We’re fortunate today to have moved past this hurdle and – as seems to have been done here – digital technology in addition to increased access to reference materials (and, in this case of course, a more recent past) can be used to give the film the appropriate look …to the degree where really only prior knowledge of the actors and the quality of the visual effects give any hint at all that the movie wasn’t made in the late 70s or early 1980s. I spent at least the first half hour just smiling at how much it truly felt like a movie from my childhood that I’d somehow missed – the kids, of whom only Elle Fanning was I sure I’d enjoy watching, are without exception wonderful.

If I recall correctly, one of the massive things related to this movie I successfully avoided prior to seeing it was the train crash scene, most of which I believe was released on the internet a while ago. This might seem like a great triumph of the will for a self-professed movie fan but consider that I still rarely listen to singles, even from my most favourite artists, preferring to wait to hear them in the context of the full album they appear on. I’m strange that way.

Anyway, the train crash is as phenomenal as I’d heard. It’s a long time since an action sequence has made me physically gasp the way this one did.

There was, I won’t deny, a short period somewhere in the middle act where the movie slightly lost my rapt attention – perhaps, now I think about it, when the modern visual effects broke the otherwise authentic feel of the movie (notwithstanding the crash, I guess) – and I feared the movie would struggle to pull me back to the transfixed state it got me in initially. Luckily, the movie has two enormous, connected emotionally punches up its sleeve – one scene featuring Elle Fanning (who, I’ll say again, continues to completely walk all over her older sister making far more interesting choices than any Dakota has made in years) and a revelation about the tension between her father and the father of the young protagonist in front of a super-8 projection of his home movies; and the climax, so beautifully resolving this tension, which is threaded throughout and reflected in the overarching universal plot (“Bad things happen: but you can still live…”), it simply knocked me down emotionally. Truly, that moment – the “letting go” is all I’ll say – is as simple and powerful as anything in Spielberg’s old classics. This movie utterly achieves what it sets out to do, and then some.

Stick around in the end credits for a wonderful treat, by the way; I hope there’s more of that when the movie hits blu-ray.

From Jerry Maguire’s breakdown-turned-success through the double whammy of American Beauty and Fight Club in 1999 – both of which made almost irresistible the notion of self-destruction as a way to truly live – to the wonderful scene in The Hours where Julianne Moore’s character explains away the seemingly inhuman decision to desert her family with the line, “It was death. I chose life,” and the most recent cut-throat, “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook,” of The Social Network, something of an attitude has been rising in the most daring of 90s/00s Hollywood output which I’ll admit I was quite taken with at first as a young 20-something but am not too stupid to have been slightly wary of for quite a long time.

There’s a clue in the opening titles of The Beaver that hints slightly at where it will ultimately side on the profoundly pertinent ideas it sets out through the course of its overwhelmingly unique story. The letters of the production companies and the title (I don’t think any of the cast or crew’s names are shown in these opening credits) fade in on the screen and then fade out, leaving one or two letters behind that appear in the subsequent title. I mightn’t have noticed and mightn’t even be writing about it here were it not repeated during the end credits where its connection to the overarching message here really leapt at me.

I admit however with great pleasure, midway through The Beaver, I was blissfully unaware of where it was headed; of what, indeed, it was “really” trying to say – because it says everything that it says (and it says a lot) so overpoweringly well. I have heard about this movie it seems for years initially as a screenplay that everyone in Hollywood thought was brilliant but that nobody in Hollywood would ever make. With Jodie Foster’s involvement, my interest was truly hooked, especially with her not only starring but directing. On the strength of Home for the Holidays alone she became one of my favourite film makers and I’ve been desperate for her to return behind the camera ever since. I saw one of the more “serious” clips from the movie recently when Foster was on a chat show, and that was when I realised I didn’t just want to see this movie, I had to. Let me just say, I still didn’t know how badly I needed it.

You’ll know the story from the trailer – Mel Gibson plays (brilliantly) Walter, a man at the end of his rope (“His depression is an ink that stains all who touch him. A black hole that swallows all who get near,”) who is “rescued” by a personality he creates in the form of a beaver hand puppet (“You want things to change – really change… forget about home improvement… you have to blow up the whole goddamned building.”).

Even if you sense the darkness inherent in this set-up, I suspect nothing will prepare you for just how seriously screenwriter Kyle Killen and director Foster take this story. There are a few laughs along the way, but they’re either the plain uncomfortable kind or just fleetingly inevitable touches. No farting aunt Gladys here (see Home for the Holidays). Actually, Killen himself puts it best in a sliver of action in an early draft of his screenplay I read before finishing this review, in a late scene as Walter actually fights his own hand:

“If this plays with any humor at the start it very quickly disappears. This isn’t Liar Liar. Walter is truly self destructive and the damage he does is real.”

This could easily apply to the whole tone of the movie, which Foster (I might say this more than once) handles impeccably.

The Beaver himself (called, simply, The Beaver) is the most difficult character here. He is ultimately that perfect villain to me. I like to talk about two particular villains of the past 10 years when I encounter characters as unsettling as this – Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith and Agent Smith in The Matrix Revolutions. Both these movies left me with a very strange feeling – that these manifestations of evil kinda made too good of a point. You’ll either know what I mean or not there (I might explain it better in those reviews so click on through and come back, I’ll be waiting). The Beaver is such a character. “Eventually, what seemed strange becomes common. What seemed impossible becomes real,” he explains in voiceover at one stage, as, against all odds, for a short time at least, people really kind of accept The Beaver. He’s very persuasive. But he goes too far.

(Yes, I am talking about a hand puppet who you can clearly see Gibson providing the voice for as if he’s a separate entity – believe me, if this movie touches you like it did me… it’s really hard not to…)

I read an interview with Jodie Foster recently in Total Film which, again, should maybe have tipped me off about just how off the wall this movie was gonna be. In one answer, she talked about the “revolution” that’s going on in cinema with digital distribution in such a way that frankly reminded me of Kevin Smith‘s recent bridge-burning attitude with Red State, “Indie Film 2.0” as he calls it. There’s a sequence here where The Beaver takes over Walter’s toy company and leads it seemingly to massive success by risking everything on a single new product. In a voiceover, he makes the kind of point many such as Smith have been making recently:

“Do we want to continue [doing whatever it takes to survive], or do we break with the past and embrace something new, something different, something better?”

It was at this stage when I realised I truly had no idea where the movie was headed. It’s followed by a heartbreakingly complex scene in which the newly successful Walter is interviewed on The Today Show and delivers a monologue with all his family watching. This single scene simultaneously makes the notion that Walter embraces – that notion of those other movies I mentioned at the beginning here… to dump your baggage if it’s what it takes to survive and pursue that higher dream – seem like a perfectly admirable goal (“We start to see who we are as a box that we’re trapped inside, and however we try to escape; resolutions, therapy, drugs, classes, it simply reels us back in. And I believe the only way to truly break out is to get rid of that box all together.”); yet also asks the question this movie really wants to ask… how does this approach to life affect our humanity? How can we abandon those who we’ve invested so much love, time, energy in… our family, our friends… no matter what they’ve done? It’s this, I think, that makes The Beaver so arrestingly timely, in such a hollow, emotionless age as this, despite its interminable development time. It’s what the style of those credits is saying: we are all connected to someone, perhaps more than one someone, somehow; whether we like it or not.

The screenplay is every bit as flawless as its reputation – as I said I’ve read an early draft before polishing this review just to remember some lines (so, incidentally, some of them might be slightly off the way the ended up on screen) and it really is just astonishingly tight – there’s a whole subplot involving Walter’s son that reflects and enforces the main story with its ideas of identity (Walter’s son fears he’s becoming like his father – he makes lists of the similarities – his only skill in life seems to be pretending to be other people, a skill he harnesses at school charging fellow students to write their papers for them), chasing a self-annihilating dream (he gets to know a school cheerleader in order to write her graduation speech for her – only to find the “real her” that she’s buried under the veneer of academic popularity and success), and the ultimate need to put a stop to the bullshit (in an even further level of connection: the way in which his son intends to shake the similarities? Visiting the places where “things really changed” – the assassination spot of Martin Luther King, eg… I damn near lost it when he explained this, so closely does it echo recent thoughts I’ve had of such instances of, as I call it, “Futricide”). It ties together so beautifully I can’t wait to see how well this movie stands up to multiple repeat viewings.

I’ve talked about Jodie Foster’s film making skill but not her acting yet. Do I even need to say how great she is? I think I do. I’m a huge Jodie Foster fan, and I truly thought I’d seen the best of her by now. But I can think of just one moment here where she killed me all over again, in the kitchen when she and Walter’s eldest son comes home and sees The Beaver for the first time. “Have you completely lost your mind? …It takes you years to finally get rid of him and you let him come back the next night with a talking puppet?” he yells at her. Her face is a work of art in response, the depth so indescribable. That’s just one moment of a performance that is as consistently gripping as the whole movie. Jennifer Lawrence and the rest of the cast are just as worthy of praise. (If you haven’t noticed yet… god, did I love this movie…)

I agree for the most part with those whose only criticism of the movie is its disjointedness, or at least see where they’re coming from – in that subplot, sure, if you don’t immediately recognise the connections, but most jarringly perhaps with Walter’s final solution to his problem. But I’d argue I guess that the flaws (if they’re flaws) only serve to make the whole thing even more human. I can honestly say that no other movie this year (nor indeed, in a long time) has made me feel so emotionally alive as The Beaver did for every single one of its admirably short 90 minutes, and that’s why I love movies in the first place.

On a side note I’d like to add a somewhat random note on another way I connected to this movie. I’ve had a Second Life avatar for 5 years, and though it’s hard to explain in brief, I recognised a lot here as pertains to creating a kind of alter-ego that is in some ways the best of oneself but kind of takes on a life of its own… mostly for the better but I’ll admit, even in my case, I’ve had my share of the worst – and I’ve even had to come to that dilemma of coming 100% clean or “blowing up the goddamned building”. As I explained above, this movie goes to a dark place in the end, but I think it’s interesting that anybody watching it will find a different place at which they feel Walter’s self-therapy goes “too far” and I won’t say where that is for me (hopefully you can make a good guess) but I will say it’s something we should all think about. There is a good to Walter’s madness and The Beaver’s idea here… it’s just a question of how far they lose themselves in it. Or, to go back to the movie that inspired the name of this site, and yet another that came to mind while watching this one, as is said in Girl, Interrupted and echoes the quote I opened with:

“Quis hic locus?, quae regio?, quae mundi plaga? What world is this?… What kingdom?… What shores of what world? It’s a very big question you’re faced with, Susanna. The choice of your life. How much will you indulge in your flaws? What are your flaws? Are they flaws?… If you embrace them, will you commit yourself to hospital?… for life?”

I first heard about this very shortly after I first saw the infamous redband trailer for Kick-Ass featuring Hit Girl’s most notorious line. I was already excited about the prospect of this tiny terror upsetting the morally self-righteous and couldn’t believe when I read some small snippet of text about Saoirse Ronan also working on a movie which at the time was titled “Hanna the Hitgirl”.

The important thing to note about Hanna is… the movies people are still mentioning as it being similar to – mostly the aforementioned Kick-Ass and Leon: The Professional (that one actually in one of the TV spots – Hanna described as a “modern” take on Luc Besson’s movie… way to make me feel old!) – are really false comparison points, as she’s neither a hit girl nor is this a love story or comic book. Even within Luc Besson’s filmography, actually the movie Hanna most resembles of his (and I didn’t make this connection till it was mentioned on the Slashfilm podcast) is The Fifth Element.

I don’t like the way the word “fairytale” has been thrown around to describe this movie either. It turns out it was director Joe Wright who started it, so who am I to argue I guess… but really aside from the “girl in the woods” opening and the set design of the finale all other comparisons (Cate Blanchett as a “wicked stepmother”, eg) seem really shoehorned in by the beholders who insist on “fairytale” as some kind of key to what the movie’s “about”.

The way I saw this story in the end is as a Frankenstein story. Hanna, it transpires, is essentially an engineered human being who deeply resents her inability to connect to the real world once she’s let loose upon it… and she ends up destroying her creators. On the way, she meets a travelling family which has been talked about a lot in other reviews. Mark Millar, creator of Kick-Ass, seems to have mistaken this family as the real heart of the movie as he tweeted it seemed to have been written by Guardian readers – but what they offer is a view of what Hanna will never really have even after the credits roll. It’s scattered through the script in (occasionally forced) exposition… she’s essentially afflicted with a kind of autism that “aids” her supersoldier body, she’s virtually incapable of the fundamental flaws that make the rest of us human. There’s a hollow sadness to this realisation that was only amplified for me by the fairly empty ending Wright gives us. (incidentally, isn’t it curious that this movie questions the morality of this engineered being’s upbringing more than those other two movies? I just stick that massive thought here ‘cos I couldn’t fit it anywhere else…)

Of Joe Wright’s previous work I’ve only seen the other that featured Saoirse Ronan, Atonement, which I hated on first seeing it but has grown on me to the point where, put simply, it blew me away when I saw it again I think some time last year. I imagine Hanna may grow on me in the same way, so considering how much I got out of it on this first viewing, I can’t wait to see how it reveals itself as time goes on. It’s so different from what I’d been led to expect that I wasn’t sure I’d post this review so soon – and even having written this much, I feel compelled to say it’s just the tip of the iceberg of the interpretations I’ll have of it in years to come. “Frankenstein with a Moroccan travelogue in the middle,” is just the closest I can come for now (I won’t even say “Girl Frankenstein”, by the way, because I really don’t think Hanna’s sex or gender is significant here due to her nature…). I haven’t even touched on the superb action set-pieces – the long-take subway fight and chase amidst the freight cars stand out – and the perfect Chemical Brothers score, slicker even than Daft Punk’s TRON score last year. I hope to see this again before the year is out, because it’s sure to deserve high ranking among this year’s movies once the dust has settled and I’ve made up my mind about it more.

As I unfairly stated to Sarah just before putting this on, “It’s an evil child movie, looks rubbish, but I have to see every evil child movie…” I forget exactly how this originally drifted into my field of view, perhaps an Amazon or IMDb recommendation when looking up other films in that subgenre, but I don’t think you can deny that this is how it’s being sold. Its Irish setting led me to expect perhaps something between The Daisy Chain and Orphan …this is all just to explain how I came to this movie… it might be a little unfair but I don’t think I can be blamed…

All I can really say of this movie is that it’s unfortunate how convoluted the film makers felt it necessary to make the story. Anyone coming to this expecting anything like the movies it seems to be inspired by will spend at least the first half hour and possibly longer wondering if they got the right movie. Midway the girl starts flailing around on a bed and cursing in another voice and you think, “OK, here we go,” but moments later the movie seems to turn into Sybil, with this voice and several others turning out to be other personalities. The strange island community has a definite Wicker Man vibe to it… the list of classics it seems to aspire to is endless…

In the end, Dorothy turns out to be none of them. The concept underneath this storytelling disaster is actually fairly interesting – spirits of the dead possessing a girl to expose the truth about their deaths (honestly, not a spoiler – it might actually help you enjoy the movie, and I’ve still hidden the real twist…) – but the film makers choose to treat the whole damn thing as a twist. They basically have so little faith in the originality of their story that they’ve dolled it up as all these other things – and the marketing department has followed, dressing it up as a contemporary Exorcist (I’ve even seen it titled “The Exorcism of Dorothy Mills” in some places…) – and it’s a real shame. I’d go so far as to say that the movie cries out to be remade… the concept, now I’ve got it, will haunt me… but I can’t say it enough, there’s a total lack of clarity in the storytelling…

Anyway, it gets points for interestingness, and the performances are pretty interesting too (though, great as Jenn Murray is, I’d suggest casting someone far younger would improve the whole thing; slight lookalike Evanna Lynch might’ve been good…). As a fan of the “evil child” subgenre, I don’t regret watching it… though it really doesn’t belong in there at all…

I feel a little guilty for not watching this sooner… if you know me at all you should know by now I’m a devout Vanessa Paradis fan and will always watch anything she’s in eventually, but the marketing for this that I saw didn’t really make out her role to be much at all; made the movie out to be a romantic comedy of the likes that I frankly feared could even turn me off her; and the Facebook page was the worst offender, reaching out to Vanessa Paradis fans (who hadn’t yet “liked” the film’s page) with competitions aimed directly at (I can’t think of a better way of saying this; either you know me and it won’t matter or you don’t, in which case, trust me, I mean well) tragically girly girls… y’know, the kind that think no men are capable of liking a movie like this so don’t even give them a chance? (I point to one of the more recent posts on that page: “This movie comes out on DVD in the US, on my birthday!!! I have already alerted my husband…”) (ugh… and since I first drafted this review months ago, the wall is now full of promo for the William and Kate movie… who the f**k is running that sh*t?)

Then there was Mark Kermode’s review… he somehow between watching the movie and talking about it managed to turn it in his memory into a typically xenophobic “French man: romantic; Englishman: evil” tale which it simply isn’t. Andrew Lincoln is in no way made out here to be a bad guy… an infuriatingly good guy, sure, and simply not the right guy in the end. He plays Vanessa Paradis’ fiancé. Romain Duris plays a guy who splits couples up for a living. Don’t let that concept put you off though – like Léon in The Professional, this guy has rules. He only goes to work if the woman is truly unhappy. We can tell when we meet Paradis and Lincoln that she’s not necessarily unhappy, and he’s certainly not the monster we’ve seen Duris work on in the prologue (looking for cracks, at one point Duris is disguised as a homeless man, staking out the couple at a restaurant – Lincoln gets a doggie bag to take his food home in – “Aha! a Cheapskate!” Duris happily proclaims, before Lincoln brings the doggie bag out to give the homeless people…). He usually wouldn’t take this job. But it turns out he likes the girl and he needs the money.

This movie made me laugh tons more than I expected, in fact I feel pretty safe saying it’s the most unashamedly enjoyable movie of 2010. With the Vanessa and the story and the comedy, this movie was already good enough even before the Dirty Dancing stuff came in. At first it’s little nods (Vanessa’s character is a big fan of the movie, Duris tries to acquaint himself with it to win her over)… but it builds to a sequence where they really do the full “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” dance. This would’ve thrilled me any time, but I’ve been really quite particularly into that movie lately and I’m not ashamed to say that this moment I damn near wet my pants with glee. Of course, not everyone will have this response to the movie… but sometimes a movie just comes along where that kind of thing just doesn’t matter, and for me this was that movie.

There have been many movies made about relationships between older men and younger girls – going way back to the French Sundays & Cybele (and I’m sure even further back), through Digging to China, The Professional, to Lawn Dogs and of course the two adaptations of Lolita – and they’ve rarely been unworthy of note, so I’ve been meaning to watch this one – ostensibly about an elderly British man who befriends a little girl, ultimately to the suspicion of the neighbourhood – ever since I first heard about it. This is a subject that’s never not worth revisiting – because it’s a problem that not only won’t go away but seems to get ever worse. As far as I’m aware this is the first of these kinds of movies to be set in modern Britain, with positive intentions toward the subject matter – and that in itself for now actually makes it more pressing than any of the other titles previously mentioned.

The movie doesn’t rush into its story at all, feeling more like Gran Torino or, closer to home, Harry Brown, as it starts than any of those more romantic, poetic movies. Bob Hoskins plays what initially amounts to a grumpy old man who, as the movie opens, sees his wife die as an ambulance is too busy dealing with drunks in the city. Hoodies and youths seem to be on every corner and Hoskins doesn’t hold back from telling them what he thinks of their loitering, littering, etc. He keeps racing pigeons and it’s while he’s tending to them that 8 year old Florrie runs into his back garden.

It’s impressive how the movie builds to its drama from here. Nobody bats an eye at first at this old man looking after a little girl who only recently moved into the neighbourhood for an hour or two. Her mother actually directly invokes the P-word on their first meeting, joking, after he objects to being left with her (“I don’t know what to do with kids!” etc), “Oh come on, you’re not a peedie, are ya?” In this way the movie sort of serves as a microcosm of a much longer timescale, with this initial phase going back to the early 90s or even late 80s when people did trust more this way. I hope this doesn’t make me sound like I have a bleak view of the world – I’m sure there are still communities where every stranger (particularly of the male persuasion) isn’t regarded with suspicion, but they’re certainly few and far between… the picture painted later in the movie, something resembling Salem in the 1600s, feels much more familiar…

As Hoskins’ character lets himself go hygienically, devoid of wife (I won’t go off on one about this typically male portrayal; it’s believable in this case), another new neighbour, a French woman, begins to insinuate herself into his life, bringing him home-cooked food and company but really just desperate for the company herself. Hoskins befriends one of the neighbourhood teenagers, too, seeing a spark of humanity in the boy that he can nurture if only he can keep him away from his drunken friends. Soon his whole house and garden is buzzing with these disparate characters, a picture of community in action, prompting bewilderment from Hoskins estranged son – who knows him only as the grumpy recluse we first saw – when he pops home to collect the last of his things (wanting nothing more to do with his grumpy dad since mother died).

You can probably guess what happens from here – such happiness never holding up when strangers and children are involved. The P word begins to be uttered less jokingly and people start to believe what even characters on the sidelines imply. It’s finally when Florrie herself asks her mother what that word means, having heard it all over the shop, that even this rare, smart, parent – suddenly stricken with that awful fear face we see wherever there are mothers, children, and strange men – says, “I think I’ve been a very silly mummy…” I don’t think I’ve seen the power that word has in today’s society represented so perfectly as it is here. I didn’t mention Salem before to be funny – it does seem that once the P word is used to describe an already even slightly suspicious person it has as little chance of being taken back today as an accusation of witchcraft back then. Once the word is spray-painted on the front of Hoskins’ house, once the pack mentality of the neighbourhood sees it, it’s just so many dominoes waiting to fall…

The final act of the movie is as admirable as it is awkward. It impressively doesn’t go down some of the more obvious paths, say, a TV movie with the same subject matter might go. One of the friends of the boy Hoskins befriends plants what we can only assume is child pornography on his computer and tips the police off about it. I don’t know how accurate the scene of his arrest is as far as what would actually happen in the same situation in real life, but they actually let him go to the pub while they search the house… they take the computer away, and, seeing when the material was downloaded combined with the information that Hoskins was in France with his pigeons at that time, don’t even make the slightest suggestion that he had anything to do with it. Another scene has them interview the rowdy mother of Florrie’s best friend. She has that dramatic way with language implying all manner of untruths about Hoskins but using those words that one usually sees have the police arrest the first creepy looking man they see, but they flatly tell her, “sorry, but that doesn’t give us anything to go on…”

There is one moment towards the end which is (if you’ll pardon the spoiler-ish pun) so ballsy and frankly absurd that it almost threatens to take down the movie entirely. It relates to the French neighbour who Hoskins ultimately falls in love with, and I’ll say no more than that. It is startling how an initially wtf reveal in this storyline actually turns into something quite wonderful (not to mention garnering one of the movie’s biggest laughs – yes, bizarrely, there are laughs in this movie… an awkward, yet again admirable, number and variety of them…) as it resolves itself. As I said, the bare bones of this story – the man/little girl relationship – has been done many times and it’s to this movie’s credit how much flavour it adds, with bursts of French music, the pigeon keeping, and this random little storyline.

I was surprised to find mostly positive reviews among the few I could find when I searched after the credits rolled on this one. It’s a subject matter most people have firmly made up their minds about and the approach here is frequently so awkward it’s easy to label as plain ridiculous – most particularly in that wtf reveal of the French neighbour’s subplot. There are many lovely good characters with great actors behind them but the bad characters tend to be sort of embarrassingly two dimensional – hoodies and chavs plain and true. But the movie has some seriously good intentions that I can’t ignore because they’re something I care deeply about. There is a massive problem when it comes to friendships between adults and children that is not talked about nearly enough and it ruins lives constantly and increasingly. This movie like so many doesn’t really offer a solution but it does show perfectly exactly how and where the misunderstandings happen… I recommend it completely.

It perhaps goes without saying that I didn’t expect much from this… but I’m not going to deny, I still really wanted to see it, even after the worst of the reviews came in. I don’t know what made certain moviegoers expect anything else from this than what it delivers. One of my favourites, Mark Kermode, went so far as to suggest that director Zack Snyder might think he’s made another Inception, which is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard him say. Yes, y’know what, I think I’ll invoke that most awful of recent phrases that get flung around at times like this – some people I’m afraid don’t “get” this movie at all. Not because it’s smart, clever, “game-changing”, but because it’s so insanely simple that people are looking for something that was never meant to be there.

If I described The Ward as “Girl, Interrupted with a bodycount” (which I didn’t – not here at least, not yet lol, one of the reviews that got away – but I would’ve…) then Sucker Punch is The Ward plus The Fall with all the visual insanity Snyder is known for (with the difference being here that I dug it). I can’t stress that enough – this movie is perhaps the most insane I’ve seen – I won’t even try to describe it – and I loved it.

There’s an objection to the movie that concerns itself with the exploitation of women surpassing any message of empowerment the movie purports to – or something to that effect. I’m loathe to get involved with an argument like this because to me it just seems so warped and depressing a way to approach a movie like this that I think it’s best ignored, but I’ll just say that surely such an argument is suggesting that women need some kind of special protection against being portrayed in a ridiculous popcorn movie that is not afforded men, and is hence a little patronising itself? In an equal and reasonable world, surely, violence against women in cinema would be just as unsurprising and unworthy of note (other than how awesomely it’s executed cinematically) as that against men? And given the fact that its director, Zack Snyder, gave us men dressed just as scantily ridiculous in his last two movies (Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen and, err, everyone in 300) doesn’t that even shoot down the “zomg they’re dressed like strippers!” argument?

Anyway that’s pretty much all I have to say on that – to use that as your sole reason to dismiss the movie wholesale (as many have – clearly trying to impress someone) is about as dumb as Mark Kermode’s calling Inception the best film of last year purely because “it proves that blockbusters don’t have to be dumb” (for the record: there are actually reasons I’ll accept for Inception being the best film of last year – they include “I just loved it…” – but not that one… sorry but, to cite just one example, Pixar have been making intelligent blockbusters for _years_…)

That out of the way, I’ll just say this – I don’t know where some reviewers get off comparing this to Inception because they’re clearly entirely different movies, but since you mentioned it, I’d rather watch this than that any day because it knows it’s not trying for greatness and succeeds completely at what it does where Inception (in my opinion) falls far short of its lofty goals (or the ones that fans have assigned it). The movie’s frenetic nature reminded me a little of Scott Pilgrim, not that I’d really normally make that comparison either – but I’d rather watch this than that, even, because it doesn’t have a constant tone of hatred masked with false irony. It has beautiful young girls in awesome costumes which, yeh, I’ll call sexy – nothing I can do about that, it’s ludicrous to apologise for what turns you on. The action sequences are fantastically overblown. And at the end of the day, much to my surprise, it actually has something to say – something akin to Tideland‘s message, it just occurred to me: that we have inside our brains the capacity to deal with anything outside it. It’s vague and perhaps a bit cheesy, but true – certainly no less powerful than Inception‘s (yes I’ll go there again – I didn’t start it) “this sentence is false, but you gotta believe something” joyless, hollow perfection.

Bottom line is, it’s just a movie. I recently linked to this, far better, explanation of (at least) why the movie isn’t the end of the world with the comment, despite still recommending people read it, that I’m not sure if it deserves that much thought but since the naysayers were overthinking it so much it seemed only fair for somebody to do likewise in its favour. Maybe it’s because I watched it just an hour or so after Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams which so perfectly, simultaneously, made our individual artistic cries into the abyss of time seem both important as a whole yet worthless in their isolation. Sucker Punch is just one movie, and one that mainly sets out to simply be eye candy at that. If you think such a movie has the ability, in just 2 hours, to destroy 50 years of progress for women and society, I’m sorry but it’s you who are underestimating women. It’s a movie that clearly has more interest in having fun than saying anything important. I make no apologies for loving it.

Two years ago I went to Paris for three days and on one of those days I went first to the lowest point of the city – its catacombs – and, as the sun set, to its highest point – the top of Montparnasse tower. It was a glorious experience, and it was only as I lay in my bed at the end of the day, full of champagne, that I made the poetic (or pathetic, depending on your outlook) observation that it was as if I’d been to heaven and hell in one 24 hour period, so harsh was the contrast between the two realms.

Werner Herzog makes no apologies for seeing this kind of epic, spiritual, poetic (or pathetic, see above) drama at every turn of this new documentary that takes us to a remote network of caves in France where the oldest known paintings in the world – over 30,000 years (take that, Creationists – sorry, but I’ve been listening to Richard Dawkins this weekend, lol) old – were discovered. The caves are so delicately preserved that his time is limited – his crew is limited – the freedom of his camera is restricted – even the amount of light they are allowed to use to illuminate their subject is rationed.

The limitations show. The resolution varies vastly, and at times the 3D frankly looks worryingly, badly post-converted. I have to say, it’s almost always forgivable due to the fact that the images – for example, one of the worst-looking pieces of footage, of the “dark side” of a hanging rock pendant, where one of the earliest depictions of the human form is to be found – are either going to be seen like this or not at all. And when the 3D and resolution conspire to do their best, the effect is that of total immersion… only the smell is really missing (at one stage it’s suggested they may recreate the caves as a “theme park” in the near future, complete with a replication of the smell… maybe they can pump that smell, once created, into future screenings of the movie, or provide a small vial of essence with the blu-ray package? lol)

Towards the end, I have to say, it kind of takes on a truly peculiar trajectory, with a bizarre host of characters miles away in Germany finding not paintings but sculptures and musical instruments believed to be from the same time and place (well, they were closer to being in the same place at the time, that is…). There’s an experimental archeologist dressed as an Inuit, playing the Star-Spangled banner on a primitive flute, and a fascinating perfumer sniffing around the rocks. There’s a certain urge to laugh like a schoolboy at some of these people, contrasted as they are to Herzog’s super-reverent approach – but mostly, this urge for me was completely trumped by the infectious enthusiasm for their subject they radiate.

Herzog tags on an epilogue which is so further disconnected from the initial subject matter that it’s equally easy to dismiss, but it fits Herzog’s flighty (albehe so sinister in tone) personality. At one stage he’s interviewing a French scientist about the history of the caves, etc, and he’s talking about how overwhelmed he was on seeing the paintings. “I am a scientist, but I’m also a human,” he says, prompting Herzog to inquire about the man’s personal life. He used to work in the circus, it transpires. This leap embodies Herzog’s approach – humanising the sublime by placing it in the context of the ridiculous. His epilogue is just an idea that occurred to him that he felt might be important, and he simply leaves it with us… and it haunted me all the way home and still… Some alligators in a tropical biosphere 20 miles from the caves, heated by the cooling waters discharged from a nearby nuclear power plant. It’s all connected. We’re all connected. He imagines the alligators looking at the paintings we’ve been looking at and wondering if they have any better chance of truly understanding the human truth behind them, so distant and different were the artists. One of the scientists on the journey with him latches onto a detail of a man with a crooked finger, this detail enabling us to “follow” him through the cave where he left his unmistakable mark. But does that detail really tell us anything about him?

At only 90 minutes, it must be said that to me it felt much, much, longer. To many people, me included, it will test the patience. On the big screen, the variable quality of the footage can be trying, and there’s much repetition of some of the paintings. But I still want to say, this is the best 3D experience I have ever had. This movie (or the footage it contains) is undeniably important and, whether you like it or not while watching it, I’m convinced anyone would feel glad that they watched it. As Herzog has said in interviews, he barely considers it a movie really, and rightly so. It really is more an experience – as thorough a documentation as currently possible of what it is like to be privileged enough to enter these caves. Herzog’s narration and his interviewees touch on questions of art, history, science, time, cinema, and the nature of human existence itself. It’d be a sorry soul indeed whose mind wasn’t left buzzing by all this. I didn’t just mention my trip to the Catacombs in my opening to show off or segue into my review… what this movie left me with was a huge desire to go back there, armed with the thoughts Herzog left me. I knew what I felt when I was down in that darkness, but I couldn’t even wordlessly articulate it in my own mind to myself at the time. It was exactly what this movie is all about, and my second visit (or indeed, my first visit to any historical place from now on) will be completely touched by the beautiful mess of thoughts and feelings it delivers.

The moment I saw a short clip of this movie featuring the main character Oliver – a self-absorbed outsider teen (and aren’t they all) played by Craig Roberts looking uncannily like Bud Cort in Harold and Maude in a setting that looked equally similar in almost every way to that masterpiece and personal favourite – I knew I just had to see it. The first thing to say about Submarine is… it’s absolutely not *Harold and Maude*… Yet though its clear visual references are almost unfortunate because of this otherwise total unsimilarity of the two movies, they remain the aspect I’m most eager to praise.

I’d read plenty before finally dragging myself to the arthouse to see this that had worried me plenty that it might, afterall, not be my cup of tea. That there were no unlikable characters in it. That it was wannabe-(and, in some people’s minds, nottabe-) Wes Anderson (bad enough if you’re a fan of his; worse if, like me, you’ve never really been impressed with that guy). Just a general implication that if this was remotely like its clear influences, it might only be in a far too clever, possibly ironic, insular, showy – let’s just say it, hipster – way.

The accusations aren’t far off. These characters – all of them – aren’t what you’d call likeable. But I found myself mostly flitting between not quite wanting to call them “unlikeable” and, more, feeling like the movie was doing a fine job of portraying them as no more or less than simply as flawed, helpless, and ridiculous in their behaviours as any of us, particularly as teenagers. Richard Ayoade takes a leaf out of Sofia Coppola’s book in this respect – it’s not hard to argue that if the movie feels difficult to get along with at times, it’s only because it’s reflecting entirely the mores of its protagonists. I include, by the way, in those protagonists the adult characters – the teachers at school, Oliver’s parents (played heartbreakingly well by Noah Taylor – an ex-Open University presenter – and Sally Hawkins, whose billowy attire most fully betrays any sense of when the movie is set), and Paddy Considine’s psychic entertainer – all of whom are, if anything, so much “worse” than the kids that they, too, reduce any irritation the kids might cause.

The movie is well-made enough that it’s able to get away with teetering on this line between honestly presenting its undesirable world and simply becoming just as undesirable for almost its whole duration, and the feeling I left the cinema most filled with for Submarine is admiration – the same admiration I found when listening to recent interviews Ayoade has done, particularly on Mark Kermode’s radio show, where he spoke of his early rejection of extreme emotion in a way that was both comic and slightly inspiring. If there’s a problem for me it’s really an unfair thing to have a problem with, given Ayaode’s clear intention to never go there – I personally like a good rush of extreme sweeping emotion in the cinema; and in a movie such as this, so otherwise devoid of such a thing, it would – even if fleetingly – have been all the more effective. But the movie never lets itself tip over into any hint of sentimentality… if it even comes close it quickly checks itself and comments on the fact. Some people will cite this as the reason it’s so good. Like I say, I’m more inclined to simply admire its consistency. What’s clear is that Ayaode is a director whose future work we should look forward to – if he can do so much good with a story as difficult as this, I think with different material he might one day blow me away completely.

Final Score: 11/24 (oh well, the usual 50/50… my usual 50%-ish, especially cool as I included the shorts, etc., and was more brutally hopeful than ever… till next year!)

Best Picture: Toy Story 3 (The King’s Speech)
Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network (Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech)
Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Best Original Screenplay: Inception, Christopher Nolan (The King’s Speech)
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin
Best Editing: Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall, The Social Network
Best Cinematography: Danny Cohen, The King’s Speech (Inception)
Best Original Score: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, The Social Network
Best Original Song: Alan Menken, Glenn Slater, “I See the Light”, Tangled (“We Belong Together”, Toy Story 3)
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
Best Art Direction: Netty Chapman, The King’s Speech (Alice in Wonderland)
Best Costume Design: Jenny Beavan, The King’s Speech (Alice in Wonderland)
Best Make-Up: Barney’s Version (The Wolfman)
Best Sound Editing: Inception
Best Sound Mixing: The Social Network (Inception)
Best Visual Effects: Inception
Best Documentary Feature: Exit Through the Gift Shop (Inside Job)
Best Documentary Short: Strangers No More
Best Live Action Short: Wish 143 (God of Love)
Best Animated Short: Day and Night (The Lost Thing)
Best Foreign Language Film: Biutiful

(those last 5, I don’t normally do, ‘cos I’ve hardly seen any of the nominees lol… but what the hell, like I said, it’s all fun, and with so many predictable categories this year, the more fun we can add the better…)

Tally: The Social Network: 5, The King’s Speech: 4, Inception: 3, Toy Story 3: 2, The Fighter: 2, Everything Else: 1

The rest of this post is just my old nomination predictions.

As the comments attest, I haven’t updated this nearly as much as I’d‘ve liked to this year… hopefully I’ll do a better job of keeping track for next year’s. At this point, a lot of these seem fairly obvious, with the real fun coming when it comes to the winners. So with that in mind, I’m gonna go ahead and pick my winners before the nominations for all categories… y’know, just for fun. [NB. I’m bumping this to the front page ‘cos I haven’t done so in a while and I’ve changed a lot, but I might still change a few, especially the technical ones further down the page, some of which have me really stumped lol…]

63/97 … slightly squiffy ‘cos I put 5 down for Animated (they picked 3) and only 3 for Original Song (there were 4) … but way up on my usual 50%-ish, and all my win hopes are still in there, so all-in-all, very nice…

Best Picture

• Toy Story 3 [WIN]
• The Social Network
• Black Swan
• The King’s Speech
• 127 Hours
• Winter’s Bone
• Another Year
• The Fighter
• True Grit
• Inception

Best Director

• David Fincher, The Social Network [WIN]
• Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
• Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
• Debra Granik, Winter’s Bone
• Mike Leigh, Another Year

Best Actor

• Colin Firth, The King’s Speech [WIN]
• James Franco, 127 Hours
• Jake Gyllenhaal, Love and Other Drugs
• Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
• Jeff Bridges, True Grit

Best Actress

• Natalie Portman, Black Swan [WIN]
• Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
• Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
• Anne Hathaway, Love and Other Drugs
• Leslie Manville, Another Year

Best Supporting Actor

• Christian Bale, The Fighter [WIN]
• Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech
• Matt Damon, True Grit
• Justin Timberlake, The Social Network
• Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right

Best Supporting Actress (NB. I am fully prepared to fall down on this category just for the sake of mentioning 3 of my favourite performances of the year, one of which isn’t even eligible LOL)

• Melissa Leo, The Fighter [WIN]
• Amy Adams, The Fighter
• Elle Fanning, Somewhere
• Chloe Moretz, Kick-Ass
• Emily Watson, Cemetery Junction

Best Original Screenplay

• Inception, Christopher Nolan [WIN]
• The King’s Speech, David Seidler
• Somewhere, Sofia Coppola
• The Fighter, Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson
• Black Swan, Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John J. McLaughlin

Best Adapted Screenplay

• The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin [WIN]
• Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik, Anne Rosselini
• Toy Story 3, Michael Arndt
• How to Train Your Dragon, William Davies, Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders
• Never Let Me Go, Alex Garland

Best Editing

• The Social Network, Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall [WIN]
• Black Swan, Andrew Weisblum
• Inception, Lee Smith
• The King’s Speech, Tariq Anwar
• 127 Hours, Jon Harris

Best Cinematography

• Danny Cohen, The King’s Speech [WIN]
• Matthew Libatique, Black Swan
• Jeff Cronenweth, The Social Network
• Roger Deakins, True Grit
• Wally Pfister, Inception

Best Original Score

• Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, The Social Network [WIN]
• Randy Newman, Toy Story 3
• A.R. Rahman, 127 Hours
• Alexandre Desplat, The King’s Speech
• Hans Zimmer, Inception

Best Original Song

• “I See the Light” – Alan Menken, Tangled [WIN]
• “We Belong Together” – Randy Newman, Toy Story 3
• “If I Rise” – AR Rahman, 127 Hours
• 

Best Animated Feature

• Toy Story 3 [WIN]
• Tangled
• How to Train Your Dragon
• The Illusionist
• Despicable Me

Best Art Direction

• The King’s Speech [WIN]
• The Social Network
• Inception
• Shutter Island
• Alice in Wonderland

Best Costume Design

• Jenny Beaven, The King’s Speech [WIN]
• Amy Westcott, Black Swan
• Lori DeLapp, True Grit
• Sandy Powell, Shutter Island
• Colleen Atwood, Alice in Wonderland

Best Make Up

• Barney’s Version
• The Fighter
• True Grit

Best Sound Mixing

• The Social Network [WIN]
• Inception
• 127 Hours
• Toy Story 3
• True Grit

Best Sound Effects Editing

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
• Inception
• 127 Hours
• How to Train Your Dragon
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Best Visual Effects

• Inception
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
• Alice in Wonderland
• Scott Pilgrim vs The World
• Tron: Legacy

1. Varieté – Marc Almond
     By far my favourite of this year, this is a real album with seriously deep and important things to say on almost every track.
2. Evelyn Evelyn – Evelyn Evelyn
     I think it was only last year that I finally got into the Dresden Dolls, a band I really should have been into at the time they were most active but just unfortunately passed me by completely. I’d been following Amanda Palmer via Neil Gaiman on Twitter and loved her personality, and when this ultra-high-concept project was announced, I pretty much knew it would be ranking high on my 2010 list… so no surprises here. It’s even more extraordinary than expected, such a haunting, hilarious, sad, strange story, the kind that leads me to genuinely believe it ought to be Henry Selick’s next stop-motion project (seriously, it would work; but it would not be for kids…). This one just pushed all the right buttons for me.
3. Lustre – Ed Harcourt
     Probably wouldn’t have listened to this were it not for having seen him at the McGarrigle/Wainwright Christmas show at the end of ’09, but this is seriously great intelligent pop, and it grew on me even more on a second listen.
4. Withershins – Smoosh
     The thing to write about this at the time of writing is, click on the link above and download it for free! I think they’re crazy to do this but, hey, it’s their decision I knew this would be one of my faves of the year, and I haven’t yet listened to it a second time but from the way it made me feel that first time I think it might turn out to be my favourite Smoosh album ever.
5. Volume 2 – She & Him
     I loved She & Him’s first album but not as much as I really wanted to. This one has the same basic thing going for it as that one did, of course – it’s Zooey Deschanel singing, what further excuse do you need? – but also strips away just about everything that made the first record even close to lacking. This one’s an absolute joy.
6. Write About Love – Belle and Sebastian
     I wasn’t sure the first time, but “I Didn’t See It Coming” sure wedged itself in. I’ve listened to it 3 times now, and boy is it growing on me. Will definitely be in the rotation for years to come.
7. Pacific 231 – Raphael
     Like Smoosh, I guess, I’m really quite the sucker for Raphael and I just knew I would not only like but love this. I say this every time but it bears repeating, Raphael is a musical god, and if you haven’t listened to me in the past, listen to me this time… you have to hear this guy’s music. You don’t need to understand French to understand how incredible this guy is at putting an album together.
8. I’m the Rain – Sophie Zelmani
     I knew I would love this one before I even listened to it and wasn’t let down. Zelmani is just one of those people who I will always be eager to hear from, and I recommend to anyone that you seek out her work. It’s not quite up there with her last, 2008’s “The Ocean and Me”, but it’s pretty darn close.
9. Praise and Blame – Tom Jones
     I haven’t listened to a lot of Tom Jones other than the obvious, the overplayed likes of It’s Not Unusual, What’s New Pussycat, Delilah, etc. It’s always been evident that he has a killer voice, that’s actually if anything improved with age, but aside from the regurgitating the old hits it never seemed anyone, least of all him, knew what to do with it. This album belongs in that special category like Neil Diamond’s 12 Songs, Johnny Cash’s American series, and to bring it closer to home I’d say Shirley Bassey’s The Performance from last year. It’s a real album, and showcases his vocals superbly.
10. Dream Attic – Richard Thompson
      There are albums below this right now that I’m sure in the long run I’ll listen to more and end up higher up, but I just had an immediate visceral reaction to this similar to the one I had to Tim Finn’s Imaginary World in 2006. I usually frown on “live albums” a little but this is all new work and it sounds terrific.
11. Recovery – Eminem
    
12. Sweet & Wild – Jewel
      I said last year of her album Lullaby that after a series of albums that really only had one good song each, it felt like Jewel was starting over. This one continues the trend. There is one song that I loved infinitely more than the others on this, and that’s “What You Are“… but as a whole it is absolutely wonderful too.
13. National Ransom – Elvis Costello
    
14. The Family Jewels – Marina & the Diamonds
      Like I said at the start, don’t get me wrong about this being down at the bottom. I actually kinda liked this one more than I expected, and for some reason I kinda like the idea of Marina & the Diamonds too. It’s incredibly samey but that’s unlikely to bother the target current mainstream audience, and I’d wish success on Marina much more readily than similar, dumber, uglier (in ideas, not appearance) outfits.
15. Laws of Illusion – Sarah Mclachlan
16. Christmas with the Puppini Sisters – The Puppini Sisters
17. Nobody’s Daughter – Hole
      I’ve been a strange fan of Courtney Love and Hole for, seems like, a while now. I remember reading her biography by Poppy Z. Brite (more for Brite’s input than anything, it must be said) and listening to the earlier Hole stuff in tandem with my first time listening to Nirvana stuff, in the late nineties when I was finally starting to listen to non-movie/musical stuff lol. And I always kinda liked her for some reason. I didn’t know what to expect from this, but it seemed to me to be all the good stuff. I feel like this is one of my “weird” statements but I’m gonna say it: I feel like Courtney has one of those voices like Bob Dylan’s, that has always been in a state of becoming what its owner wants it to be… and I think, like Dylan’s, it’s only now on her most recent record that it might finally be getting there (I didn’t like Dylan’s latest, but damn did he sound gloriously rough). Some people will hate the sound of this girl’s voice, but I somehow can’t resist the real human quality to it. That and some of the songs are pretty darn good too.
18. My Best Friend is You – Kate Nash
      I’ll admit, I really loved Kate Nash’s debut. To me at the time it was honestly better than what everyone was calling the all-too-similar Lily Allen’s first. Now they’ve both got their second out, I will say Lily just marginally beats Kate, but this album certainly came as a surprise. There are some really odd tracks on here, almost Yoko Ono-ish in places, and some spectacularly hilarious lyrics. I really got a kick out of it.
19. All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu – Rufus Wainwright
      I’ve said many times, I’m not a great Rufus Wainwright fan… I hate most of his other fans far too much. There are vast corners of the world where you can spit and hit a hundred people who have no idea who the guy is still, and that, I agree, is wrong; but when it comes to those who love him… they just tend to love him far too much for my taste. Lately he has been doing the opera thing, which hasn’t helped at all because the thing that turned me on to him is how incredible he is in the dying pop genre. This being a pure piano album, I didn’t let myself get too excited about it. All I can say is, there is a lot here that blew my mind… this guy is clearly a genius and I will listen to it more than a few more times and enjoy the shear complexity of some of his compositions. But it’s not my kind of thing at all. I really hope his next will be just some serious pop to show the Gagas, Biebers and talent show products exactly how it’s done.
20. Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree – Diana Vickers
    
21. The Suburbs – Arcade Fire
      I intend to listen to this one again after watching their live Youtube concert and this immense interactive music video because I think this album will grow on me. I felt the first time it wasn’t anywhere close to Neon Bible (but what is?) but catchier than Funeral. The more I’ve heard of it in snippets in the meantime, the more I really want to listen to the whole thing again.
22. Hawk – Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
    
23. Fight or Flight – Emily Osment
    
24. The Union – Elton John & Leon Russell
    
25. Funstyle – Liz Phair
    I read a lot about people’s adverse reactions to this one and it turned out to be almost exactly what I expected – Katy Rose’s “Candy Eyed” but even wilder. I’ve only listened to some of Liz Phair’s earlier work so I guess the shift wasn’t so jarring for me. I really kinda loved this one.
26. Back to Scratch – Charlotte Church
    
27. Speak Now – Taylor Swift
    
28. Progress – Take That
    
29. No Space for Air – Julie Atherton
    
30. Joy to the World – Pink Martini
    
31. Endlessly – Duffy
    
32. Dreams – Neil Diamond
      My first thought on this one was just that the idea of a covers album from Neil Diamond was disappointing. 12 Songs was such a come back for him, though he really seemed to get a huge audience again with the followup, Home Before Dark, which for me seemed just a pale clone of 12…, and the next thing we knew he was just back to performing his old hits again, and now back to singing other people’s songs? But I can’t argue with the song selections here – they’re many of them faves of mine, and his versions are very pleasant to listen to. But I would really prefer more original work.
33. Hang Cool Teddy Bear – Meat Loaf
      Let’s face it Bat Out of Hell III, at the very least, should not have had that title. It had some great moments on it, for sure, but was too full of songs which other artists have made their own since they were first written (even the MTV Wuthering Heights movie versions of the two that appear on that album are frankly better…). This is something else though. It’s huge, original, fun, and towards the end pretty damn emotional too. I look forward to listening to it again.
34. Have One On Me – Joanna Newsom
       I wasn’t keen on Newsom’s last celebrated effort “Ys” though I tried my best with it. I only really got excited to listen to this one when Peter Serafinowicz of all people tweeted that the first (of three, count ‘em) CDs sounded like early Kate Bush. He wasn’t wrong. I kind of got tired of it by the end of the exhaustive 2 and a half hours, Newsom has certainly done a Tori Amos here, dumping far too much into the package that could have been excised to make something much closer to perfection, but I know I’m fairly alone in having that sort of objection. What I liked here is great.
35. Plastic Beach – Gorillaz
      This is one of those albums that comes along every so often and I simply can’t not put it at the top of the list, even though I know I’m gonna need to listen to it many more times to make that powerful a judgment. I think this album may be genius… I started out almost hating it but I held out because Damon Albarn tends to know what he’s doing… somewhere something clicked, and by the end, my mind was a little blown. I can’t wait to listen to this one again and forego that initial “WTF is this?”-ness, lol. (update: OK, I don’t know how this album got all the way down here… I’m hoping I can rekindle the feeling that precedes these parentheses… but honestly, second and third listens did nowhere near as much for me… don’t know what to say…)
36. Y Not – Ringo Starr
      With respect to George Harrison and John Lennon, who have their reasons for not releasing music anymore, I found myself as I listened to this album thinking Ringo might just be becoming my favourite Beatle. He most emphatically does not produce songs with profound meaning and import, but he does with startlingly increased regularity, pop out these near irresistible bursts of fun. And I don’t listen to a lot of “fun” music, but for what I need, I would take Ringo’s cheese over the more popular sleaze any day. Having said that, the duet with Paul McCartney on this one is an unexpected beauty.
37. American VI: Ain’t No Grave – Johnny Cash
      My one problem with this one is its length: barely breaking 30 minutes, they could really have combined this with the previous volume on one CD and it’s not like the tracks weren’t there. It is great, however, to still have “new” tracks from this man, and all of these live up to the rest in the “American” series.
38. Sparks Fly – Miranda Cosgrove
      I love that there’s not only a new Miley album out this year but also from her Hannah Montana co-star Emily Osment, this from iCarly and, it seems even her onscreen sidekick Jennette McCurdy is getting in on the music thing too. I love the teen pop albums… when they work. And yeh, they haven’t had a great success rate in a while. Miranda’s effort is fun though, it matches her onscreen personae well with tracks like “Disgusting” (“It’s disgusting that I love you…”) … like, even though it’s the usual teenage heartache or romance stuff it has this slightly off and strange attitude that adds just a little something. Not great, but why would you expect great from the one School of Rock kid who didn’t play any music in the movie lol?
39. Lights – Ellie Goulding
      There’s always a couple of albums like this on my list by the end of the year which I frankly can’t think of much to say about except that I liked. I just read that Rachel Stevens has a new album due out this year, as does Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and those two are much more my kind of this kind of pop, but this was better than expected from an artist who made all those hollow “sound of 2010” lists before anybody had even heard a peep out of the new material etc. I really like Starry-Eyed.
40. The Shadow of an Empire – Fionn Regan
      Another I have little to say about. I bought Regan’s last after his Mercury nomination (I think I sought out all the nominees that year because I was stuck for something to listen to) and quite liked it. And I quite liked this one. Nothing to really shout about though.
41. Can’t Be Tamed – Miley Cyrus
      
42. Le Noise – Neil Young
    
43. A Year Without Rain – Selena Gomez and The Scene
    
44. Red Velvet Car – Heart
    
45. Scream – Ozzy Osbourne
      I kinda love Ozzy’s solo stuff, it’s as close to really loving hard rock/metal as I’ll ever get because like some of Meat Loaf’s stuff it actually retains a sense of melody and structure etc. This isn’t terrific but I liked it enough.
46. Close-Up Vol. 2 – Suzanne Vega
    
47. Close-Up Vol. 1 – Suzanne Vega
      The Close-Up volumes by Suzanne Vega for me are a lot like Neil Diamond’s covers… they’re lovely, but I’d much prefer more original material. They don’t really add to the originals or do much different either, like for example Carly Simon’s “Never Been Gone” covers did last year.
48. Talking to You Talking to Me – The Watson Twins
      Here’s another group I’ll likely never have a bad word for, though they’re yet to create anything outside of the Jenny Lewis project “Rabbit Fur Coat” that really bears multiple listenage. I think I liked this album much more than their last, “Fire Songs”, something kinda clicks almost exactly halfway and it becomes very interesting indeed, so I’ll probably give it at least a second chance to see if I was merely warming up to them again for that first half.
49. Head First – Goldfrapp
      Yikes, I thought I’d written my mini-review of this one already here lol, and I really don’t remember much of it at all. As I recall, I’d been led to expect Goldfrapp’s purest pop album to date, and I wasn’t impressed. My fave of theirs so far I think (and they’re not exactly a group I follow) was Seventh Tree, and nothing on this made me as happy as, say, Happiness or anything. It didn’t piss me off or anything though, which is something.
50. Swanlights – Antony and the Johnsons
      All I can really say of this one is, even on a second listen Antony’s voice didn’t break my heart as it usually does. It’s still lovely to listen to, but I just couldn’t find anything to really hang on to.
51. The House – Katie Melua
      This was way down the bottom of the list at the last update and I said it was awful apart from “The Flood”. I’ve gotta say, a second listen really changed that opinion. This is still very noodly and forgettable but it’s definitely growing on me. I don’t think it’ll ever live up as a whole to the sheer genius of “The Flood” though.
52. Almost Alice – Various Artists
      I’ve still not seen the Tim Burton Alice movie, I will soon though just for completism. I really have next to no interest in his “vision”. But for some reason I convinced myself that if anything good came out of that movie, it might be this soundtrack album. Last year’s “Nightmare Revisited” – a rerecording/revisiting of songs from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” by a similarly eclectic bunch of artists – was one of my faves of the year. This one seems to start well, but pretty quickly I got tired of the same references to the text repeated over and over.
53. Hannah Montana Forever – Miley Cyrus
      I still haven’t watched the episodes that these songs come from but I look forward to them. There’s even less good on this than previous releases but I can listen to Hannah Montana for hours. “Wherever I Go” is certainly the highlight here, I can see myself in tears wherever they use that in the end.
54. Michael – Michael Jackson
      The apprenhension/excitement divide darn near tore me apart over this one. It’s almost beyond ranking really, because though none of the tracks on this really slayed me (on a second listen some came close though), I’m glad these posthumous releases are happening. I’m certain that at some point there’ll be something to really treasure comes up.
55. Christmas in New York – Various Artists
      Julie Atherton promoted this up the wazoo on Twitter and I really thought I’d enjoy it, being as I love her, I love Christmas, I love showtunes, and I think I love New York. I’d heard some of the songs on it before too. But of the songs I’d heard, I can certainly think of versions I dig a hundred times more, and just overall this just didn’t work for me. It’s pleasant enough though.
56. Songs for the New Depression – Loudon Wainwright III
    
57. Born Free – Kid Rock
      Listened ‘cos of the song he sang at “Rally for Sanity”, “Care”, and I was disappointed to find that it’s a very different arrangement on the album. The rest is decent enough but just not for me, and not as good as I remember Rock n Roll Jesus being.
58. Anthems – Kerry Ellis
      A good third of this is pretty much her “Wicked in Rock” collaboration with Brian May which I think I may have shared my feelings on elsewhere (just ghastly). I was kind of okay with this as an easy listen until I heard Julie Atherton’s album (above) later in the year. The contrast speaks for itself.
59. A Curious Thing – Amy MacDonald
      This one had an uphill struggle with me to even hope to exceed the glory that was MacDonald’s debut and almost immediately I fell into disappointment as I listened. There are moments on this where it’s cringingly evident they are trying to recreate the flow of “This is the Life” but they fail every time. By the time it gets to her solemnly strumming Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” on the hidden track at the end I was done. She has a nice voice and energy that makes this still worth a listen over many worse things that won’t even get a look-in on this list, but I hope the next will be something actually new like the first.
60. Aphrodite – Kylie Minogue
      Listened to ‘cos I adored her last, X… but I kinda knew this wasn’t for me the moment she started instructing her audiences how to behave during her TV performances of “All the Lovers” etc. This is for people who value the screamy, shouty fan experience more than the music.
61. Strip Me – Natasha Bedingfield
    
62. A Christmas Cornucopia – Annie Lennox
      Just hilariously earnest.
63. Small Craft on a Milk Sea – Brian Eno
      I’m not really sure why I decided to listen to this one… I don’t really like abstract anything. Parts of this literally sound like they were made using Eno’s iPhone app Bloom, though, which is why I place it this low. There’s barely anything there.
64. Merry Christmas II You – Mariah Carey
      If there are as many, I generally try to listen to at least 4 new Christmas albums each year, and this one seemed like the lesser evil over the Glee (which I hate about as equally) Christmas album as my 4th choice… I really should have reconsidered. This is the worst example of Mariahohiahiaaah’s vocal noodling ever and frequently sounds like it’s been on a shelf since the early 90s. The new version of “All I Want for Christmas” is almost passable… but really why bother? The original is the only thing of this lady’s that you need in your Christmas library.

In stark contrast to Hitchcock’s previous movie Strangers on a Train there’s nothing remotely lighthearted to be found in this story. I’d like to say this is less to do with an overly stuffy approach than the fact that at 90 minutes, there’s simply no room for laughs. Hitchcock almost flatly states this is to be so by getting his trademark cameo out of the way within minutes while he’s still setting up the location of the action in his opening montage.

Sadly, while he might not have room for a giggle or two, Hitchcock does find time for a rather cumbersome backstory, dealt with in flashbacks, that doesn’t really have much bearing on this otherwise effectively simple setup other than putting the priest ever so slightly more in doubt and giving the lead Montgomery Clift a love interest (cleverly, without giving a priest a love interest – amusingly, this didn’t stop the film being banned in Ireland at the time) . This middle section and the lengthy courtroom scene that follows leads to the movie feeling almost painfully longer than 90 minutes. I can’t help but feel like this story could’ve been made so much more exciting.