Best Picture (Comedy/Musical): The Hangover
Best Actor (Drama): Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart"
Best Actress (Drama): Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side"
Best Actor (Comedy/Musical): Robert Downey, Jr., "Sherlock Holmes"
Best Actress (Comedy/Musical): Meryl Streep, "Julie & Julia"
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds"
Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire"
Best Director: James Cameron, "Avatar"
Best Screenplay: Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, "Up in the Air"
Best Original Song: "The Weary Kind" by T-Bone Burnett & Ryan Bingham, "Crazy Heart"
Best Original Score: Michael Giacchino, "Up"
Best Animated Film: "Up"
Best Foreign Language Film: "The White Ribbon"
Posts
ughhh bullock? really? Downey? really? happy about monique, up for score, and up in the air for screenplay. No Bigelow? That's sad. If she doesn't win the oscar i may lose all hope for the sexists in the academy. I actually spoke to Courtney Hunt (Frozen River) and she recognized the sexism she's encountered numerous times.
ReplyDeleteSurprised about Bullock for sure. Glad Cameron won, but was HOPING for Bigelow. We'll see if there's any surprises at the Oscars. Also, glad Giacchino won for Up. Greatly talented indeed.
ReplyDeleteDowney Jnr? Really? For Sherlock Holmes? Really?
ReplyDeleteYEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!! Now The Hurt Locker's chances are even better!
ReplyDeleteOr, I guess I should say Bigelow's chances are better, since James Cameron remarked that he thought she was going to win Best Director and there's always that ominous GG/AMPAS curse.
ReplyDeleteStill, the Oscars love to screw quality in favor of spectacle...
It was a great show. I have always been a fan of the GGs but last night it was amazing. I am really happy for Streep and Bullock - it seems that officially they are the front runners and as somebody said the SAG Awards will be very interesting as Meryl took the award last year. I am glad that Avatar won the Best Picture award but I am a little sad for Bigelow. It will be great to see her win the Oscar for Best Director and Avatar - for Best Picture, and I think that eventually this will be the result. Mo'Nique and Waltz are locks for win and I think that Streep and Bridges will be crowned Best Actress and Actor.
ReplyDeleteIf Avatar wins the Oscar this year I may just give up and quit following the whole show.
ReplyDeleteIf Avatar doesn't more people than just you will stop following the show.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@ Nathan: It just floors me when I hear people say stuff like this. You acknowledge that Avatar has "serious plot issues" but you're backing it to win Best Picture anyway. You didn't say why you're not a Hurt Locker fan, but I have a feeling that if I asked you would give me the same "It was good, but not THAAAT good" routine that I've heard from dozens of people who are just seething at the idea of Bigelow becoming the first woman to win Best Director.
ReplyDeleteThis is how Titanic was able to beat the superior L.A. Confidential (and that's not even counting unnominated films like Boogie Nights and The Sweet Hereafter) in 1997. People just adored the spectacle so much that they forgave the thin plot and piss-poor dialogue, but L.A. Confidential didn't stand a chance because while its detractors could point out no actual flaws, they disliked it anyway because it didn't have this undefined magical "something" that they thought it should have had.
I hope I'm not coming across as insulting to you, but I do not understand how anyone could be backing Avatar at this point, and forgive it for problems that they would flay any other movie alive for.
We're forgetting about the first and probably biggest problem against Avatar winning Best Picture at the Oscar. And that is that the movie is, ultimately, a fantasy movie. I know that Avatar is a visual masterpiece and should be rewarded for that, but it has no sense of reality except for the love story and that humans can be as cruel as the devil itself. But I really can't believe that people are still comparing Avatar with Titanic only because both were directed by James Cameron. Titanic's plot was not the best but it was a movie based on the tragedy that happened to that cursed ship. So far, the only fantasy film winning the Best Picture award was The Return of the King, which we all know it was a reward for the whole trilogy and not only the last movie. And even though I’m not a big fan of TLOTR trilogy, no comparisons can be made with Avatar. TLOTR trilogy is in a whole other level. Visual effects aside Avatar is pure and simple entertainment. There’s nothing fresh and new other than the visual effects. So why people are still thinking that this movie totally deserves the Best Picture Oscar? If that’s the case then, just off the top of my head, Aliens and Star Wars should’ve won too. But they didn’t. Even thou they were better and way more original than this movie. And the visual improvements they created for the visual effects at the time were considered impossible until this two movies came out. Nowadays, nothing is visually impossible. And with that being said and to make a conclusion, now that the Academy is everything about the ratings and get people’s attention for their show, I wouldn’t be surprise at all if Avatar wins Best Picture this March. But I would be extremely sad, because it would mean that the Academy finally gave up for all-things entertainment.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOkay, no offense, but I have serious problems with some of your responses:
ReplyDelete"Avatar is ABOUT visuals. The question is, whose to say that a visual masterpiece is less deserving of Best Picture than a film with a great storyline?"
Well then, why not give Michael Bay a Best Director nomination for all the technical wizardry he's displayed in his career? Movies are, at the end of the day, STORY-DRIVEN works of art. You can lay all the bells and whistles of amazing CGI on the screen, it doesn't matter if they fail to create a compelling narrative.
To be honest, I'm not even convinced that the visual design of Avatar is praise-worthy (Jim Emerson said it best when he described the setting of Pandora as "...a kitschy melange of 1970s Roger Dean album covers by day, and Thomas Kincaid 'Painter of Light' Christmas-twinkle scenes by night."), but for the sake of argument let's say I do believe that this film is a "visual masterpiece." Well, that's why AMPAS has technical awards. The aspects of Avatar that work best - the sound, visual effects, editing, art direction - can be recognized without deluding anyone to believe that this is the most compelling, original, well-constructed film released in the year 2009.
"Heck, The Departed was a great film, but we all know it won for Scorsese."
I don't even know how to respond to this, since that movie was one of the most celebrated of 2006 and plenty of people believe it genuinely deserved to win BP/BD. Maybe Scorsese was instrumental in the film's critical and commercial success, because, oh I don't know, he's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time?
"Realistically would we all be wanting Bigelow to win so badly if it wouldn't make her the first female Oscar winner?"
As an unabashed fan of that film, I can say, "YES!" to that question. This whole "she'll only win because she's a woman" accusation pisses me off so fucking much you have no idea. Only three women in the history of the Oscars have ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. Women filmmakers have always climbed an uphill battle when it comes to garnering financial or critical attention for their films, and it's not exactly disputed that the Best Director shortlist almost every year has comprised of old white men. Yet this year a woman may actually win the most prestigious prize for direction of a film, and suddenly AMPAS has some sort of feminist agenda?!? It's that kind of bullshit attitude that has historically made year-end awards a boys club, because if a woman wins a prize, well, that MUST mean it's only to make a political statement. Do you realize how absurd you sound?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis is 'Part 2' of my response:
ReplyDelete"...his direction is on a level of its own, whether we like the film or not."
Trying to fashion that statement as some kind of objective fact doesn't make it so. I agree that Cameron's technical accomplishments with Avatar are considerable, and the film will absolutely deserve its inevitable Best Visual Effects Oscar. But the aesthetic merits of this film are debatable at best. If one were to argue that Avatar deserves Best Picture out of some kind of acknowledgement of its cultural and industry impact, then I can see merit in that. But to argue that Cameron deserves to win Best Director for his most creatively derivative film is almost laughable.
"Ultimately the reason its box office is high is cos people love it and are seeing it, sometimes more than once. That kinda makes it the people's choice for the Best Film of the Year."
Let me introduce you to Three Men and a Baby. It was a likable enough but ultimately unremarkable flick about three bachelors trying to adapt to fatherhood with the arrival of one of their children. It also happened to be the highest-grossing film of 1987. Gosh, I guess that "kinda" makes it the people's choice for the Best Film of that Year, and as we all know, box office successes ALWAYS end up being great films.
"But don't lose hope for Oscars. Avatar hasn't won yet. Anything can still happen. And even if it does, just try and enjoy the ride and fun of the event :)"
I agree with almost all of that, but I'll amend the last sentence, "And even if it does, The Hurt Locker will stand the test of time and proudly place alongside such other Oscar 'losers' as Brokeback Mountain, Pulp Fiction, and GoodFellas."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Robert Hamer... I have to agree with everything you wrote, Robert. You just nailed it.
ReplyDeleteI was kinda doubting of writing that Avatar is a visual masterpiece, but it does have great visual effects, so it should be rewarded with all the technical awards and I'm sure it will.
This quote also made me laugh out loud: "Ultimately the reason its box office is high is cos people love it and are seeing it, sometimes more than once. That kinda makes it the people's choice for the Best Film of the Year."
All I can say about this is WOW. So that means that even New Moon could be name the Best Film of the Year? Well, then I'll be damn. That stinky movie that I could only described it as a sort of a softcore erotic movie for 13 years old teens can be Best Film of the Year just because is having success at the box office?? Honestly, that is just funny. I believe the people that say that Avatar will win the Oscar because of the box office CLEARLY don't know a thing about the Academy Awards.
It did happen that sometimes a commercial success won the Best Picture Oscar. But I might say that it was only a coincidence to say the least. Maybe I'm wrong, but honestly, it doesn't mean that it won only because it was a comercial success. Not at all.