RIP: Sally Menke

They say that when you make a film, you really make it three times: when you write it, when you actually shoot it, and then when you edit it. Significant editor collaborations have been crucial to specific directors and the effectiveness of their films, and when you think of the most important collaborators the two that would come immediately to my mind are Martin Scorsese/Thelma Schoonmaker, and Quentin Tarantino/Sally Menke.

Considered an unsung co-author of sorts by the mainstream of Tarantino's films, it's hard to imagine his films' pop culture impacts without the expert editorial work his unique vision required. How are you gonna keep the tension of Reservoir Dogs largely in a single warehouse in between all the Tarantinoan dialogue? How do you jump so unconfusingly between the three chronologically separate storylines of the enormously influential postmodern technique of Pulp Fiction? One scene they show in most of my film classes is the climactic exchange of money in Jackie Brown, which is a scene Tarantino needed desperately to work and is nearly all the work of Menke. Then we move on to the Kill Bills, where the first volume's rapid fast cuts including the iconic scene of the blood-racing fight between The Bride and the Crazy 88s lent to the proper tone Tarantino needed for that montage. You compare that with the slower, meditative long takes Menke cuts for the second volume, more necessary for that spaghetti western tone Tarantino had in mind. In Death Proof, Tarantino entrusted her editing skills for what turned out to be possibly the greatest car chase sequence in film history. Her most recent Oscar nomination came from Inglourious Basterds, where her work was endlessly impressive and nearly invisible. Think of the opening shot where she contrasts the long takes so effortlessly with the short ones that cut closer and closer into the two characters' faces as the tension builds. Think of the bar scene where you didn't realize the other guy in the room until half way through.

The sudden end of this collaboration is an enormous loss to the film world. One of the best editors there ever was, and who knows how much more she could have done at just 56. RIP Sally Menke.

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NYFF Diaries: Poetry, and first weekend report card

At the risk of giving too much away about this wonderful flick, I've decided upon a tablet format for this review as well.

Poetry is a fascinating and often heartbreaking story focusing around an older woman desperate for fulfillment, vision, and control over her thoughts and memories. At the center of it is a behemoth of a performance by Jeong-he Yoon, displaying a brave vulnerability throughout with sensitivity and delicacy. Points of the film will have you feeling as light as a feather from its sheer loveliness, other points will have your jaw to the floor in disturbing disbelief. With a runtime of approximately two and a half hours, it did tend to cinematically ramble a bit in its last half hour where it got slightly distracted from the beautiful simplicity of the central and most interesting storyline, but it compensates with a final scene of pure visual poetry that rivals any film sequence since the new millennium.

Grade: A-

Which leaves us with these results after this first weekend of the New York Film Festival.

Of Gods and Men: C
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: A+
Poetry: A-

Next up: Inside Job this Friday! Read more!

NYFF Diaries: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which enchanted Tim Burton's jury to a Palme D'Or win at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a mystifying and exquisite crowning jewel on Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's young career so far. From the opening long take of a water buffalo immersed in the luscious Thai forests, you get the sense that Weerasethakul's whole world is very much alive. Each leaf in his frame has a liveliness and spirit all its own.

When describing her experience viewing director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's first festival sensation, Tropical Malady, Tilda Swinton once said: "I actually remember rubbing my eyes with my fists...convinced, for one split second, that I fallen asleep, that only my unconscious could have come up with such a texture of sensation." Certainly dreamlike, Weerasethakul's sensory cinema is a very pure and transportative one; you feel very much apart of the Thai jungles. You feel yourself in its waters. Trapped in its caves.

We follow Uncle Boonmee in his twilight days with the utmost passion. His wife returns to him and her sister he lives with in the form of a ghost at the dinner table. The way he had missed his beloved wife for so long is heartbreaking to see play out on the screen. His son walks up in the form of some sort of monkey-ghost. Weerasethakul modeled him after the almost campy Thai television of his childhood where these sorts of figures were clearly men in monkey costumes, but it doesn't play nearly as cheaply in appearance or theme. We follow one of Boonmee's recollections as a catfish who had once made love to a human princess. I guarantee you that you will never see such a sequence in film made so naturally, made to seem so ordinary, and so believable. Weerasethakul's ode to Thai folklore never comes across as the least bit absurd or hard to take seriously.

We see Uncle Boonmee predicting a future life in Thailand, shot very reminiscently of La Jetée's nightmarish account of a similar future, ruled by a thought-controlling military and the more fashionable people turning away from the natural life of peace in the forests we have lived with the character throughout the film in favor of a crueler life of modernity in fashion and technology. Once Uncle Boonmee passes, we see a life without him where people are glued to their TV sets and obsessed with counting money.

The film is a floating world of fleeting beauty. A quiet meditation of a land past, present and future. Alive with the sounds of insects, of night, of rustling leaves. The beautiful cinematography can capture the richness of tress, the pristine water or the monotony of manmade walls at any given moment. It's a stunning achievement.

Grade: A+ Read more!

NYFF Diaries: Of Gods and Men

Left to Right: Jacques Herlin as Amédée and Michael Lonsdale as Luc
© Marie-Julie Maille / Why Not Productions, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Technically, SPC asked me to hold off publishing any proper reviews until the film's US release in February, so here's just a little tablet.

Of Gods and Men offers some interesting looks into a group of very Christian monks at the onset of Islamic fundamentalism beginning to take hold in the Middle East in 90s Algeria. A true story, director Beauvois offers thought pondering parallels to how the West should probably interact with the region through such turbulent times, offering messages of tolerance and education of Islam's more peaceful teachings. There were fascinating sequences that played out in the film, but they were put very few and far between tedious scenes of the monks' average everyday activities and the repetition of their standard protocol. Long stretches of largely uninteresting dialogue tried desperately to inject the screenplay's themes after the film had wasted much precious time with recounting very mundane daily lives of these monks, and ultimately made the film play out at an excruciating pace that made the two hours feel more like four to five.

Grade: C Read more!

MOB: The King's Speech confirms its' frontrunner status by winning Toronto Film Festival Audience Award

Past winners of the Cadillac People’s Choice Award prize include BP nominees Precious, Slumdog Millionaire, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and American Beauty. Read more!

MOB: Ranking the chances for the big win.

It's near impossible to tell at this point what film will wind up winning Best Picture, just like with any year, though this year seems particularly challenging. So much goes into play, from the politics to the timing (that can change per week) to the surprise wins and omissions. Steve Poland was able to do it last year with The Hurt Locker, and this year he's saying The King's Speech. I'm inclined to agree with him.

But first, let's start with the various cons.
I would love to say The Way Back, but with a release in itself this year being uncertain and, if it is, being handled by a less than capable distributor I think the film would get recognition in nominations but definitely not really be in play for the win (besides, its grim as hell). Harvey will pimp the hell out of The King's Speech, it will certainly have actor support, it will have tech support, and it should garner a fair share of the BAFTA block. But it just seems...too obvious. The Social Network suffers from being so anticipated so early, just think of the last Sorkin screenplay helmed by a loved director — Charlie Wilson's War was definitely slated to be the '07 frontrunner before any of the '07 movies came out. 127 Hours has legitimate buzz coming out of Toronto but, though not impossible, it seems way too soon to reward Boyle again (though, if he deserves it again he deserves it again [obvious statement is obvious]). Another Year should make a splash in the critics' arena, and I think it will be appreciated, but a bit too quiet next to this year's epics. Black Swan has the buzz and will have the devoted fanbase, and will have tech appreciation, and will have actor support, but it's said to likely to alienate the crucial older demographic of Academy voters desperately needed to stand out in a field of ten. I think Toy Story 3, The Kids Are All Right and Inception have been out long enough to solidify themselves as contenders for the nomination but perhaps too long to sustain enough buzz for the top win. Besides, Nolan couldn't even get nominated for The Dark Knight. What makes anyone think he'll actually win for Inception?

In the end, the Oscar race is a numbers game. And as such, I think The King's Speech has got the numbers it needs. I guess I'd rank the contenders as such, and this time offer up some pros and less cons.
Here are my rankings (this will also count as my updated Best Picture prediction):

1. The King's Speech - I think Richard Corliss broke it down pretty well in his underwhelming review of the movie:
"...whereas almost no recent box-office hits have been set in the historical past, nearly 60% of the films nominated for best picture from 2000 to 2009 were — at least two of the five nominees every year, and sometimes four or all five (in 2009: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader and most of Slumdog Millionaire). Fifteen of the 50 films nominated in that decade had historical figures as their subjects, from Howard Hughes to Ray Charles, Edward R. Murrow to Harvey Milk. Six of the 50 were set in Britain, and seven took place during World War II or the years leading up to it, with Hitler's shadow looming menacingly and conveniently. (The Academy voters still love to hate the Nazis.) It also helps to focus on a British monarch, as in The Queen, or on a character with a severe physical or emotional disability A Beautiful Mind, Ray, Benjamin Button) that he learns to live with or conquer through the help of those who love him.
...The King's Speech adheres to every rule in the Oscar playbook. It's a fact-based drama about a British monarch with a crippling vocal handicap, set in the years 1925 to 1939 and climaxing with Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany."

And as I said, numbers numbers numbers. A likely contender in 3 out of 4 acting categories — all the major characters of the film, really — and one actually really good shot of winning (the only major one, too, in Lead Actor), it'll clearly have significant support in the most significant of demographics (the Acting branch). Check. Harvey Weinstein pimping the hell out of it. Not guaranteed, but never hurts. Check. Baity techs in costume, set direction, makeup, etc. More and more votes pouring in. Check. Critical success. Excellent reviews, for the most part. Check. BAFTA support. With these kinds of actors? Please. Check. A weighed ballot system that will give more weight to "consensus" films than fringe fanbase ones? I think that will help this out a lot, since it can only inspire so much "passion" out of cinephiles. So...yeah.

2. 127 Hours - Anyone who thinks that the Academy regrets their decision to reward Slumdog Millionaire are just plain wrong. They are wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Slumdog was beloved and is still beloved in Hollywood and the general mainstream of American audiences, and most of the factors making Slumdog the winningest film in awards season history are only put to more boldly audacious and artistic use in 127 Hours. The other major film to get MAJOR awards traction out of Toronto after The King's Speech, Boyle seems to pull the concept off magnificently which will impress most who see it. It will work for those tech branches that also fell in love with Slumdog's techs — it looks like the general tactic of cinematography, editing, music, etc. will largely stay the same. Those are some major fucking voting bodies. Seems a one man show of sorts of James Franco, who the acting community in Hollywood (for some reason) seems eager to start rewarding. Seems like lightning can only strike so many times for one director, but it looks like the mainstream is finally getting a glimpse at Danny Boyle's largely impressive range and capability to come out consistently with something daring, fresh, innovative and different every time. Looks to be Fox Searchlight's most prized possession this year, and this past decade have seemed to learn enough awards savvy to outshine Harvey himself in Hollywood influence. Sasha Stone says it best: "Danny Boyle’s second slam dunk is causing tears, standing ovations and, on occasion, seizures." That should be good enough to keep it in the press conversation, too.

3. Blue Valentine - Total wildcard, but I think it will come out to really strong reviews. Too small to be considered too obvious or boring a choice, two superstar lead roles anchoring the film, will surely have more exposure than Another Year to American audiences, and will come out too late for any particular backlash to have really settled in around prime voting time. I think if AMPAS has trouble picking a film to latch onto by New Year's Eve, this could be a darkhorse contender. Who knows what Harvey has up his sleeve for this one.

4. Black Swan - Already pretty widely seen as good. Damn good. Will make money. Damn good money. Natalie Portman is just the right age in just the right role at just the right time for this to be her shot at finding herself on the Kodak Theater stage that night. Will have devoted fans, but will likely also have devoted backlashers. The tone's said to be gritty enough to join the club of the last four Best Picture winners.

5. Another Year - Anyone whose seen it seems to love it. Anyone who hates it hasn't seemed to have seen it, because frankly I haven't heard a negative word. Desperately needs to be seen, desperately needs hometown support before it gets eaten up by the BAFTA voters who think Colin Firth deserved an Oscar already. Definitely has the numbers to garner a nomination — wide enough array of underappreciated veteran British character actors, and Mike Leigh's uncanny ability to be nomination in writing and/or direction for his major festival pieces. Yet no wins yet (overdue alert!). Looks bleak enough that it will capture some attention from Oscar voters (unlike Happy-Go-Lucky which I guess just didn't look appealing to people to want to watch) but still with a light hearted edge to it. Brenda Blethyn and Sally Hawkins managed to win Golden Globes for their performances, perhaps more love for Another Year as a whole will keep it in the public consciousness. It's all a lot of maybes, though.

6. The Social Network - I know I just paralleled it to Charlie Wilson's War, but this isn't quite so much "been there done that." I think it will probably be difficult for it to live up to quite the level of expectation there is, and I don't think the public will really be too sold on it either. The actors aren't all that well known, or aren't actors at all, and it doesn't show much in the way of tech promise. But I mean, hey, Aaron Sorkin still seems in the lead (probably mano a mano against Michael Arndt) for his first Screenplay win. David Fincher, we learned last time he went up against Danny Boyle, has more than a fair share of love these days in the Academy as long as he makes something baity. Critics seem to like it enough. The more I type out the lower I'm deciding to rank it.

7. Toy Story 3 - if they really can't find a better live-action movie this year (which isn't too far-fetched of an option, but a summer blockbuster threequel will always find a hard time with Oscar success).

8. The Kids Are All Right - Small scale, from the summer, will be remembered but with nominations at best.

9. True Grit - The Coens are loved, but they're only actually bestowed a few statues every decade it seems. Things that hurt it here are that its not quite their own screenplay and it's been made before. I'm sure they'll prove everyone wrong and come out with a really great interpretation, and their only Best Picture winner was itself an adapted screenplay, but...I don't know, I guess I just don't see it. A rough and tumble Western, featuring actors we've more or less have seen enough of last year? Just doesn't seem the right year.

10. Inception - DVD release around this time will echo concerns of how ~overdue~ Chris Nolan is and how this would be payback for The Dark Knight. Maybe if it actually had come out in theaters in December a la Avatar, we'd be having a different discussion on its chances to win. Right now, enough time has passed that it's not considered a great contender.
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I'm Still Here

I know I've been a bit delayed in wording my response to I'm Still Here, the Casey Affleck-directed documentary on his pal Joaquin Phoenix's journey announcing his retirement from acting and instead pursuing a hip hop career. I've been taking some many days to mull it over, especially considering that it's likely one of the most thematically dense movies you'll see all year. It's as comparable to the low-brow gross out comedy of Borat as it is as ponderous of a study into contemporary stardom that blurs the line of truth and fiction as Abbas Kiarostami's masterpiece Close-Up. It at once satirizes the conventions of documentary filmmaking, public scrutiny of celebrities on all fronts of contemporary media, and the reality of these actors' lives themselves. Some of the crudest scenes of comedy offer some of the ultimate visual metaphors (in one scene, in particular, Phoenix literally gets defecated upon).

Watching it with a full audience in a theater was a fascinating thought exercise in itself. People were never sure when to laugh, and then they started to laugh at every single piece, and then the film took a turn to the point where it seemed like the audience never wanted to laugh ever again. The film opens with stock footage of Phoenix in his childhood, taking a swim in a Panamanian river by a small waterfall with his father. I seemed to be the only one who found humor in how absurdly self-serious the movie made itself right off the bat, but I certainly thought the tone was meant to be ironically funny. The film goes on for a less interesting stretch of time in the beginning that sets up the premise of the film with Phoenix announcing his retirement to the press, but I suppose Affleck compensates for that in interest by showing some rarely seen extended clips of full frontal male nudity and various other shenanigans of debauchery from Phoenix's aides to hold the audience's full focus.

The one question I always get after telling people I'd seen the film was whether or not it was a hoax. The film did itself a favor around the beginning by addressing the hoax accusations reported in places from the start head-on; not only insisting that it wasn't, but incorporating the accusation as another struggle Phoenix goes through during the film in his quest to be taken seriously. In doing so, Affleck pulled off the enormous challenge of leaving a lingering possibility in the audience's mind that it could, quite possibly, be true. And in the more likely event that the scenario was largely set up, it further blurs the lines between which sequences of the film are actuality and which ones were not. This giant question mark lingering over your head throughout your viewing of the movies is further obscured and complicated leading up to Phoenix's climactic breakdown around the time of his Letterman interview, which seems all too devastatingly real in Phoenix's realizations of what he's become (namely, a joke).

No matter what your opinion on Joaquin Phoenix at this point, I think it must be acknowledged that he's nothing if not devoted. Rolling with this ostentatious characterization of himself through unimaginable odds and public scrutiny, he bravely improvised a public portrait of the pitfalls of fame and a man, mirroring himself, at his breaking point. It's a brilliant exercise and achievement in performance that's likely to remain one of my favorite male performances by year end, and just as likely to go unacknowledged by mainstream rewarding bodies.

Casey Affleck incorporates a few interesting touches to the already mind bending concepts already at play in the premise of the film — Kubrickian shots of deep focus, and a sped up encounter with groupies similar to A Clockwork Orange. A final Malickian long take of Phoenix returning to the Panamanian jungle from his childhood captured on the video footage shown at the start of the film, looking like it was lifted straight out of The Thin Red Line (personally, to me, one of the funniest scenes of the film; though the audience I was with did not seem to get the humor). An odd companion piece to another documentary from earlier in the year, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, also analyzing the show business lifestyle with a sense of humor. I'm Still Here clocking in at about two hours is probably too long to sustain the interest and novelty of the story, but in the end its a fascinating exercise in filmmaking and the results are a wonder to behold.

Grade: B+ Read more!

NYFF Diaries

Bought the tickets today. Got to the box office way late though, so I have terrible seats but whatev. Also, the lady deprived me of seeing many more movies by insisting (falsely) that box seats aren't half off.

Saturday, September 25: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Sunday, September 26: Poetry (Chang-dong Lee)
Friday, October 1: Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)
Sunday, October 3: Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami) and Aurora (Cristi Puiu)
Wednesday, October 6: Another Year (Mike Leigh)

The wait and anticipation for the last one is gonna be torturous. Read more!

The American

Celebrity portrait artist Anton Corbijn started off his film career with dynamite by directing the 2007 film Control. Posing as a generic rock star biopic depicting the life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, the film truly plays best as a heartbreaking kitchen sink drama and the tragic character study of a young victim to stardom. Like Control, audiences might be deceived by what The American appears to be; it's not your regular high-budget Hollywood assassin thriller, but rather a slowly simmering portrait of a man living in a cold and isolated hell he has made for himself with his career. What he does requires much quiet concentration and very little visibility of himself, though the consequences of his line of work end up being both loud and noticed. Despite its title, it is born out of a clear influence of the distinctly European thrillers of the 60s (like the French Le Samouraï). Despite him posing as a photographer named Edward to Italian pedestrians, George Clooney's character is really a trained long-time assassin named Jack. Despite being a priest, Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli) had fathered a bastard child in his past. The film is very dependent on the notion of things not being what you first perceive them to be, and of how deceitful perceptions (long-term or short) can really be.

The film opens with a long wide shot of the cold Swedish landscape. We hear nothing but the whistling wind to complement the piercing white of the snow highlighted with cloud-veiled sunlight. Here we find a burly bearded Jack with a woman he later describes as "a friend," vacationing in a small wooden cabin. They walk out into the snow to discover a mysterious set of footprints, those probably not of hunters because they usually travel in twos. Suddenly, the serenity is disturbed by a shootout that Jack survives. However, in the fallout, he's forced to shoot his lady friend out of fear of a setup. He's ordered to stay low for in the discreet Italian countryside while higher authorities sort out who's after him.

The opening demonstrates the tonal approach to the film, in which the quiet patience that slowly unfolds the story actually intensifies the gripping tensions in the few action scenes there are. Every shot fired leaves you breathless, working to scare you away from the violence portrayed as opposed to the stereotypical "American" film that glorifies it and appeals to you through your adrenaline level. The camerawork throughout the film, like the opening, generally tries to show you everything. Uninterrupted shots of the beautiful European locales in which the film was shot dominate some scenes, like the Swedish snow or the lusciously warm greens of the Italian countryside. Cinematographer Martin Ruhe's work here is much less flashy than his last Corbijn collaboration in the black and white Control, featuring tons of light and shadow play. Here, Ruhe trusts the natural lighting of these unbelievably beautiful places which will be tarred by the ugliness of human action set forth by the story — the concept played symbolically when the beautiful prostitute Clara (played by Violante Placido) takes a nude swim in the sparkling stream until she painfully steps on a bullet left in the water.

The few scenes of actions do actually move rather quickly and the camera and editing work is more expectedly flashier, like the nighttime shootout between Jack, another hitman, and an unexpected motorcyclist caught in the crossfire. In the end, to its credit, these scenes are less noticed and remembered than the more mannered and disciplined method applied to the rest of the film. However, at its worst, the general scheme of editing and camerawork keep the film static; going through very long stretches at a slug-like pace with little to no development. For example, we are let in pretty early on of Jack's longing for an emotional and physical connection with someone, a privilege not offered to someone of his line of work, but perhaps the film spends a superfluous amount of time exploring that aspect to his character while adding little else in substance. The screenplay attempts to compensate for these long stretches with sometimes thought pondering and philosophical dialogue exploring various themes of the film, but oftentimes the dialogue is very heavy handed and unfortunately less subtle in communicating its ideas like the rest of the film's execution. We see this most clearly in the priest's musings on men living closely to hell and thirsty for redemption.

Much like the Hollywood icons before him who defined their era, George Clooney stays close to his acting comfort zone playing a charmer with a difficult occupation undergoing an existential crisis. He does the shtick as well here as he has in films like Syriana, Michael Clayton, and Up in the Air. I think it may be that time in his career to stray from his established film and public persona a bit the way James Stewart did in Rear Window or Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West (alluded to in The American) before being considered as great as those actors symbolic of their time. The actresses in the film (Placido, Reuten, Björklund) do a good job of maintaining a steaming allure to them in the vein of Hitchcock's best femme fatales.

The film is not very mainstream friendly, and most audiences who made it surprisingly number one at the box office last week probably left very angry. It's not the glossy fast paced thrill ride we've come to expect out of Hollywood — it's a much slower meditation of this man and his career. A filmgoer who enjoys taking the time to ponder a film as it unfolds should be engrossed for most of the duration of this film. It may not be entertaining in the sum of its parts, but The American works as a thoughtful and meticulously crafted study of a character himself meticulous to his craft.

Grade: B Read more!

MOB: Labor Day Predictions

Not posting much; just waiting to slug through all the festival screenings and whatnot (Venice and Telluride now, NY and Toronto later). Here's a rundown of that basic buzz: Black Swan and 127 Hours are a hit, The King's Speech is perfect for awards, The Way Back might be too good for awards, Never Let Me Go is pretty solid (especially Mulligan), and...that looks to be about it so far. So who makes it and who doesn't? Only time will tell, but here are my first published predictions of the year.

I'll keep this in alphabetical order, to avoid contradictions and generally making a fool out of myself.

Best Picture:
127 Hours
Another Year
Black Swan
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
The Way Back

The weakest bet here so far is Inception, but playing the numbers game I think it'll end up having too much tech support to lose — plus, we'll be reminded of his buzz and how ~overdue~ Nolan is by the time the DVD release comes out in Januaryish. The Tree of Life is a huge question mark, here.

Best Director:
Danny Boyle - 127 Hours
Mike Leigh - Another Year
Tom Hooper - The King's Speech
David Fincher - The Social Network
Peter Weir - The Way Back

I know I said The Way Back might not be the Academy's cup of tea, but it might not have to matter considering how beloved Weir is. If it does get in, I'm predicting it gets in on the strength of his name, alone, and the championing of loyal blogger fans with some sway in these kinds of races. The most unsure one, to me, is probably Mike Leigh. Though nominated quite a bit, Another Year is starting to look a bit quiet compared to the contenders coming out of these film festivals. I'm saying he gets the British support this year he didn't quite get for Happy-Go-Lucky, even if buzz on his film is waning.

Best Actor in a Leading Role
James Franco - 127 Hours
Ryan Gosling - Blue Valentine
Robert Duvall - Get Low
Colin Firth - The King's Speech
Michael Douglas - Solitary Man

Hopefully Blue Valentine could regain some of its buzz again after its Toronto and Venice screenings, but until then (like Another Year), it's looking a bit quiet for what the Oscar Buzz machine seems to be eager to feed on this year. Get Low is a smaller scale summer release but voters can be expected to be inundated with screeners once the DVD (should) come around prime voting time with constant reminders of Robert Duvall's status in town. Michael Douglas has a well reviewed Wall Street sequel under his belt along with surprising news of throat cancer. That, combined with the few people who saw and loved his intense Solitary Man could well get him a surprise nomination. Colin Firth is the frontrunner here, though.

Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Lesley Manville for Another Year
Natalie Portman for Black Swan
Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine
Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right
Carey Mulligan for Never Let Me Go

I'm a bit uneasy about having three starlets in this category, but I'm going by specific predictions and can't think of that kind of larger trend. People keep speculating that Lesley Manville could open it up a bit by going to the much weaker Supporting category, but as far as I see no one whose seen the film seems to be considering her anything less than lead. Annette Bening...is pretty safe here. The three starlets are the biggest question mark, but with Mulligan and Williams each having another performance of faint praise under their belt this year (Wall Street 2 and Meek's Cutoff, respectively), I think they could both make it in. And then I think Portman can get in on a wave of enthusiasm for her film. Plus, she's kind of getting into vet territory, right? I mean, she came on the scene at least a good 16 years ago.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
Sam Rockwell for Conviction
Christian Bale for The Fighter
Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech
Ed Harris for The Way Back

This would be a great opportunity for the Academy to recognize the young up and comers from this generation. Rockwell, Bale, and Ruffalo all have strong fanbases in the more meatheady film fan universe (who will further demand recognition for David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, etc.). But those three are just starting their journey to be of Ed Harris level of overdue, who should be able to win this one if the film gains some semblance of popular traction.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Barbara Hershey - Black Swan
Helen Mirren - Brighton Rock
Whoopi Goldberg - For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
Helena Bonham Carter - The King's Speech
Dianne Wiest - Rabbit Hole

This category is so damn weak that I'm reduced to predicting a performance from a Tyler Perry film. But with Lionsgate moving up the release date to qualify this year, it seems like they have some confidence for the film, and I think this is the best category to throw that film a bone in the form of filler. So this category's filled with veteran character actresses of yesteryear (Hershey, Wiest) and veterans (Mirren, Goldberg, kind of Carter). I think the safest bet here is Helena Bonham Carter, showing us a performance we haven't really seen in lieu of her Burton collaborations lately.

Best Original Screenplay:
Another Year
Black Swan
Blue Valentine
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech

Eh.

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Rabbit Hole
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
The Way Back

Tony/Pulitzer Prize winner, Aaron Sorkin (overdue), Pixar (overdue for a win), Coens, and philosophical wartime epic — the reasoning in order of the alphabetically listed nominees. Read more!