Oscars

[faustus]

Best film: No Country for Old Men

Best director: No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen
A brilliant film, but I’m a sucker for the Coens.


Best actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
DDL chews the scenery from all accounts. I’m dubious about him, and Paul T. Anderson made the excrable Magnolia, less interesting as a film than a colour for walls.


Original screenplay: Juno
Not caught yet – I want to.


Documentary feature: Taxi to the Dark Side

Documentary short: Freeheld
Not seen and unlikely to see.


Original score: Atonement
So wanted to be The English Patient, and sank without trace.


Cinematography: There Will Be Blood
Roger Deakins’s votes split between his two films?


Song: Falling Slowly, Once
Haven’t heard. Part of a weird Irish/Slovak musical that I saw the trailer for a dozen times.


Foreign language film: The Counterfeiters
A splendid film: thriller set in a concentration camp. Very impressive if let down by the frame narrative.


Honorary Oscar: Robert Boyle
Was having a law named after him not enough? An art director – worked with Hitchcock, has been retired for thirty years.


Film editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Roderick Jaynes was robbed. S-h_A-k-e-y-C-A-m rulz.


Best actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
When she won the BAFTA “more well known” actresses were snubbed. It’s not the most famous, it’s the best. I missed the biopic both times; maybe I ought to give it a go.


Sound mixing: The Bourne Ultimatum

Sound editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
The difference being... Skip Lievsay was robbed.


Adapted screenplay: No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen
Because they couldn’t win original.


Supporting actress: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
The blessed Tilda. Glory be! I want to see this.


Animated short: Peter and the Wolf
This has been out for years – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh_dRnq7pZE and by the same director. It is very good.

Live action short: Le Mozart des Pickpockets
No seen.


Supporting actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Define supporting. All three stars were equally important, but a great performance.


Art direction: Sweeney Todd
Will see tomorrow.


Visual effects: The Golden Compass
Figures


Makeup: La Vie en Rose
For aging Piaf.


Animated feature: Ratatouille
Not much competition I suppose


Costume: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Tokenism? The first one did rather better.

Comments

[dalmeny]

I saw There Will Be Blood a week or so ago and for once I agree with the Academy. DDL's performance is extremely good, as is the cinematography. The first two+ hours were riveting, with a real sense of physical danger. Then the plot wraps up and you realise just how hollow the story is.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I've vaguely been looking around for Upton Sinclair's novel Oil to see where the set-up comes from, but no joy thus far. Penguin did reprint it:

Oil!
We're publishing this fantastic novel to coincide with the big-screen opening of There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and directed by Paul Thomas Andrson. Oil! is a novel about the oil scandals of the Harding administration, and it gives a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels a running debate with his father. Senators, small investors, oil magnates, a Hollywood film star, and a crusading evangelist people the pages of this lively novel.

But I don't really want to buy it.

Note that they were pretty vague about the author's name once they get to it (May? Lewis? Clive?) and how close it is or isn't to a film with an entirely different title.

I think Sight & Sound summed up Magnolia with "all women are flakes because of all men being bastards" but it's three hours of my life I won't get back again and so I was reluctant to commit to this.

[kayxh.livejournal.com]

Interesting. The book description sounds not that much at all like the film. It's more one man's development of one oil field in California. It could be about a man's relationship with his son. It could be about the relationship between an ungodly man and a deeply religious one. It could be about a man and his relationship with oil. But detailed development of the oil industry was lacking. As was socialism.


I've long liked Daniel Day-Lewis, liked most of Magnolia, and found the film absorbing. I left wanting to watch both Punch-drunk Love and Last of the Mohicans

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

The book description sounds not that much at all like the film

Hold out for the John Sayles version? If only.

I've long liked Daniel Day-Lewis, liked most of Magnolia, and found the film absorbing. I left wanting to watch both Punch-drunk Love and Last of the Mohicans.

I may be have been unlucky with those I've seen - I guess I'm out of sorts with the media portrayal of him which has put me off going seeing his stuff. Magnolia I saw the same week as The Green Mile and Eyes Wide Shut, and figured that that was ten hours I could have spent better, like rearranging my sock drawer. I can't recall a film full of actors I like that I liked less.

[dalmeny]

Ah. based on that I will avoid Magnolia then. Life is too short.

[kayxh.livejournal.com]

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I remember that I really disliked the last hour of Magnolia.

I'm waiting for the Ken Loach version of Juno