The academy are potty mouths

And now it's gong

There was singing and dancing, tom-foolery, whistling parents and one great chance to scream about someone being robbed.

Yep, there was no final peak on the Mickey Rourke comeback trail as he lost out on the Best Actor award to Sean Penn with a suspicion of a wee bit of political voting going on with the final outcome of the award. That of the impending WWE bout for Mickey made people think twice about ticking against his name.

Elsewhere at the sixth time of asking Kate Winslet finally picked up a Best Actress Award. In a rather more contained speech than some of her previous the girl from Reading came out as she hollered at her father in the audience. And Danny Boyle did a Tigger impression at the behest of his children (although they'll probably claim differently).

Overall it was a Slumdog Millionaire's year (but I still think Benjamin Button is better) sweeping up eight awards. So cue much jingoism from the press about the British success and what this will mean for the British film industry for the next few days until everything goes back to normal.

So the giant shiny statues go back into storage and the executives start planning their campaigns for next year whilst the rest of us debate the rights and wrongs of who won what until it starts all over again.






And In Bruges should have taken the Screenplay prize

Going, going, Gong!

The gaudy gong season for films is nearing it's big bang finish and it's time to make some predictions;

Best picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon Milk
The Reader Slumdog
Millionaire

This is probably between Slumdog and Benjamin Button and it seems Slumdog has the momentum picking plenty of other shiny things on the way here so I expect it to pick up the prize here too. Still think Button is better though.

Best director
Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry - The Reader
David Fincher - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard - Frost/Nixon Gus Van Sant - Milk

This I do think will end up going elsewhere than the Best Picture so I'm going to plump for David Fincher on the basis he manages to tell a coherent 60 year long story, piece together ground breaking effects, stop for interludes on fate and make you care about what is going on. Danny on the other hand just did a solid job bringing a good story to the screen, no boundaries really pushed there.

Best actor
Richard Jenkins - The Visitor
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler

I'll be choke slammed if this isn't Mickey's. Hollywood loves a rise and fall and rise story and that is Mr Rourke all over. It also helps that the performance was excellent too, rising an average film up to something more

Best actress
Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Melissa Leo - Frozen River
Meryl Streep - Doubt
Kate Winslet - The Reader

This seems to be Kate's, but her performance in Revolutionary Road is probably the better (thought the souring of the American dream nature of that film might well be why it isn't the performance they choose!) Anne Hathaway is probably a decent outside bet but I'd go for Kate.

Best supporting actress
Amy Adams - Doubt
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis - Doubt
Taraji P Henson - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei - The Wrestler

Something tells me it's going to be Penelope Cruz as she finds her form of a few years ago. The girl is good if the script is good (and that accent is adorable)

Best supporting actor
Josh Brolin - Milk
Robert Downey Jr - Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

In any other year I'd say it had to be Downey Jr's outrageous turn in Tropic Thunder but with the events of the year it will be Heath Ledger's turn as Joker that takes the prize. Who will accept the award for him though is the question?

Best foreign language film
Revanche - Austria
The Class - France
The Baader Meinhof Complex - Germany
Departures - Japan
Waltz With Bashir - Israel

It's either The Class or Waltz With Bashir, I'm going to plump for The Class as it's more recent release will probably give it the push to get over the line first.

Best animated feature film
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
Wall-E

Wall-E in all probability unless Pixar have put enough noses out of joint, in which case it will be Kung Fu Panda.

Best adapted screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Hard to call, if one of the big boys aren't sweeping all before them than Frost/Nixon has a good shout. Will probably be Slumdog though.

Best original screenplay
Happy-Go-Lucky
Milk
Wall-E
In Bruges
Frozen River

Between Wall-E and In Bruges for me, and I'll pluck for the hitmen based dark comedy which manages to slow change into something more affecting than you expect without you really noticing.

Well them's my picks for the big categories and all that remains is too see just how wrong I've got it. People may complain about back slapping and certain types of films always winning but I'll still take the Academy Awards over any witless Audience Awards anyday, since it's the audience that means those painful 'Movie' movies kept getting made.

Directorly; American Nightmares

The first in hopefully a series were I'm going to take a look at various directors and offer up brief thoughts and their film and themes. Starting with British former theatre director Sam Mendes

Kicking off back in 1999 with American Beauty Sam Mendes has now brought to the screen four films that explore American society or more accurately the abyss that exists just under the surface. Four times now Mendes has peeled of the sheen and peered into what lines beneath.

American Beauty was an examination of the sense of being lost in suburbia. The family man who longs for excitement once again in his life, the daughter striving to establish her identity, the mother consumed by her career and trying to hide the frantic stress of her life from the eyes of the world. And the neighbours; the broken woman, the wayward son looking to finally break free and the repressed father unable to understand his son's world.

Allied with the incisive script of Allan Ball Mendes' shaped a film that a struck a cord, somewhere deep down everyone is trying to recapture the excitement of youth and the joys of the dream they had when they were young. Everyone remembers what is to be a confused teenager trying to work it all out. The calm surface of the white break fences is broken when Lester kicks against the flow and the end it's only a tragedy that makes realise the what he was looking for was always there.



Mendes followed up with Road To Perdition. It was nominally about gangsters in prohibition era America but had more to say about fathers and sons; the way such relationships forge people into they are. This was a land of violence and fear. Once again it lay just beneath the surface of what initially looks like a 'traditional' American small town. It does however have a positive ending as did American Beauty but this wasn't going to last.



For Jarhead sees the main character left a broken and empty man, forever scarred by his experiences. Looking at what it is to go to war and fight for your country the film follows a young Marine through boot camp and the first Gulf war. Despite not once seeing action Swofford is left shell shocked after being conditioned to kill and being prevented from ever having the chance. Modern warfare has left the individual man behind to try and comprehend the devastation it brings without the release granted by the violence itself.

Swofford is returned unloved to his homeland, no longer of use in the call to arms but unable to ever break free from his days in the service. He is molded by his country and then simply thrown aside, left to try and remake himself.



Things get darker still in Revolutionary Road as a young couple (Frank & Rose) feel trapped by their 'normal' suburban lives. Still young enough to dream of starting again they dream of moving overseas and taking time to find their vocation in life rather than toiling away at unstimulating jobs to maintain that veneer of success.

At first their friends and colleagues laugh at the notion of escape before slowly revealing the same malaise eats away at them before events conspire against them and the dream slips away. Here Mendes has captured that bridge in life where the dreams of youth finally have to be put aside however Rose finds herself adrift having let go and finds hard to reconcile both her future and her marriage with the crushing disappointment. Once again the American suburban dream tours sour and once again tragedy strikes and leaves behind broken and empty people.



And despite all this Mendes says he does not hold a grudge against America, simply that he is drawn to turning a magnifying glass on the darker corners where people are caught between going with the flow and risking going under if they go against the tide.

Mendes work in many was is similar to the likes of Cathy Come Home and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and others in the groundswell of films emerging in the 60's and 70's that looked for the struggles hidden in plane sight and those that stirred just behind the surface of the twentieth century family ideal.

Coming next for Mendes is Away We Go and once more it seems he's itching to scratch away to find what lies under those dreams again.

Lost Watch

Again spoiler warning;

Ok, I've not been covering this week to week but this show is on top form right now with time running all over the place.

On the island our plucky gang of Sawyer, Juliet, Locke, Dan, Miles and the apparently purposeless other woman our basically wondering around trying to work out just how totally screwed they are. Progress is slowed down by occasionally being randomly attacked by various groups of 'Others' with everything from rifles to flaming arrows. The dinosaurs have not yet appeared.

The gang to manage to come across a camp of 'Others' min the 50's finding a A-bomb, quite possibly Dan's mother, Charles Whidmore and Richard (who is seemingly perma-aged. But crucially before anything can really be explained it's all time flashed away and people start getting nose bleeds all over the shop.

Meanwhile Desmond is heading back to LA as the only chance of the Island's gangs saviour due to his special time warping head of memories. But is he putting Penny in danger?

The Oceanic Six have been getting into hi-jinks in the meantime. Sayid seems to be permanently followed by hapless hitmen who he can kill, Hurley is kinda of crazy, Kate is shell shocked by mysterious attempts to claim Aaron, Sun is up to something, Ben is always up to something and Jack just seems to be trying to get it together (with the aid of self prescriptions it seems)

So generally everyone is in a mess, six people are trying to get back to the island and six are trying to get the hell off. Hmm, is that a co-incidence?

Magic Makes You Lazy

You know what I hate? Narnia.

Narnia is shit, and I will tell you why. Progress. Namely, where the fuck is it? Everyone who goes to Narnia is all like "Tralalala, I'm not getting any older back home even though I've spent two decades here laughing and skipping and arguing with that stupid mouse because of that time I ed his mother a bitch". You know what that means? It means Narnia has far more time in which to get shit done.

Where are the lasers? Where are the flying cars? For that matter, where's the fucking microwaves, bitches? You people suck.

And not only have they had more time, they've had more resources. Think about it. If Albert Einstein had lived in Narnia, and he'd gotten a bit confused as to where he should put the squared into "E=MC", he could have asked his dog to check his working. Or at least go get the groceries in.

It's pathetic, is what it is. You think the White Witch would have dominated the land if the Narnians had slapped together a couple of Centurion Tanks? "You wanna shroud the realm in eternal winter, lady? I've got thirty talking squirrels with assault rifles who say you're full of shit."

And what is it with a feudal society? Never heard of the Magna Carta? You should at least be up to the level of proportional representation, thus ensuring that the talking mole rats still have a voice even as a minority party.

The Dawn Treader could have been a helicopter, and the search would only have taken a couple of days. Prince Caspian could have avoided bloodshed by calling a vote of no confidence. A Horse and His Boy would still be a bit boring, probably, but at least there could be some robots or something in it to spice things up.

Actually, I bet I know who's to blame: the unions. All those whining talking horses bitching in thick accents about how the ponies can't work down't pit for more than three hours a week else the fields won't get ploughed and King Obooloobo can draw his gilded carriage around his bloody self.

Clearly what Narnia needs is its very own Margaret Thatcher. Where's a White Witch when you need her, eh?

Our Front Room Endorses...

Gone Baby Gone



Don't be deceived or told otherwise, Ben Affleck is a talented man. He's always been solid when cast in interesting roles and now with his directorial debut it seems he more than has the potential to move on and up.

Gone, Baby, Gone on the surface is straightforward police thriller about a kidnapped girl but working from Dennis Lehane's novel Affleck and writing partner Aaron Stockard have crafted something much smarter with shades of grey uncommon to the genre. And Affleck brings a steady hand to the direction nudge bringing a natural feel to the film that lets the unfolding drama breath at just the right level

The films centres on the efforts of P.I Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) to help with the investigation of missing young girl, brought in by the child's Uncle and Aunt as the mother's (an excellent Amy Ryan as Helene) seems disinterested and almost uncaring for her daughter.

Patrick reluctantly takes the job and begins making progress with the local resident who won't speak to the police (Ed Harris' Remy Bressant leading the investigation under Morgan Freeman's department chief, Jack Doyle). Things begin to complicate as Patrick begins to piece together the involvement of a local drug lord, the lies of Helene, the burden of Doyle's past and the secrets that begin to almost seep out of the woodwork. Before he is forced to choose between his moral conscience and the woman he loves.

No-one here is a one dimensional cypher and the film constantly presents moments of depth of character that you rarely see elsewhere. One outstanding example is when Helene who up until one point seems totally unconcerned about her daughter wonders aloud if the kidnappers have fed her and suddenly can't stand the thought her daughter might be hungry. And suddenly you heart breaks a little for a character who seemed without heart herself.

Performances are all round excellent with the above mentioned Amy Ryan (and it's not surprising the film feature not one but two alumni of The Wire as it shares a similar complexity) outstanding and Casey Affleck carrying off the dual task of seeming out of his depth and yet being the girl's one chance of being found.

And if the conclusion to the case does perhaps seem a little too neat in the end the agonising choice it leaves Patrick more than makes up for it. If you want an intelligent and though provoking drama this is highly recommended, head and shoulders above the likes of Kiss The Girls.

Below is the opening sequence of the film which pretty much encapsulates the world in which these people live.

Spot, this damn spot.

Well yesterday was the Superbowl which means plenty of special Superbowl trailers have gone live on the airwaves and intertubes.

So far the spot for Year One is my favourite, largely because I'd not come across the film before and well, because it is quite funny.



There is also a first look at Transformers 2. It is possible to spot Ravage and Devastator in there if you keep those peepers peeled;



Also another look at the incoming reboot of Star Trek with explosions and Bones!



And Will Ferrel gets lost...



There were also spots for GI Joe, Up, Race To Witch Mountain, Angels & Demons, Fast & Furious and Monsters vs Aliens. So it goes to show there is at least one good reason that America's showpiece sporting event stops every two minutes.