Kevin's Watch

Well, it's that time of year again. Sunday February 25 will be the Academy Awards night.
I think the list is fairly predictable (not that the winners will be).
Will it be Scorsese's year?
Will Peter O'Toole capture Best actor?
And will any of 2 the youngins beat out the very strong elder actresses for 'Best'?

A couple awards I don't want to see:

Best Supp. Actor: Eddie Murphy
Costume Design: Devil Wears Prada
Makeup: Click
Adapted Screenplay: Borat
<cue heaving and some chunks if any of these win>

it's early, but let the campaign and sniping begin!

A full list of nominees:

Best Picture
Babel
The Departed
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole, Venus
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

Actress
Penelope Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

Supporting Actor
Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

Supporting Actress
Adriana Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

Director
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Babel
Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Clint Eastwood, Letters From Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Paul Greengrass, United 93

Foreign Language Film
After the Wedding, Denmark
Days of Glory (Indigenes), Algeria
The Lives of Others, Germany
Pan's Labyrinth, Mexico
Water, Canada

Adapted Screenplay
Sacha Baron Cohen and Anthony Hines and Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips, Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, Children of Men
William Monahan, The Departed
Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, Little Children
Patrick Marber, Notes on a Scandal

Original Screenplay
Guillermo Arriaga, Babel
Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, Letters From Iwo Jima
Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine
Guillermo del Toro, Pan's Labyrinth
Peter Morgan, The Queen

Animated Feature Film
Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

Art Direction
Dreamgirls
The Good Shepherd
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

Cinematography
The Black Dahlia
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prestige

Sound Mixing
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Dreamgirls
Flags of Our Fathers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Sound Editing
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Flags of Our Fathers
Letters From Iwo Jima
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Original Score
Babel, Gustavo Santaolalla
The Good German, Thomas Newman
Notes on a Scandal, Philip Glass
Pan's Labyrinth, Javier Navarrete
The Queen, Alexandre Desplat

Original Song
I Need to Wake Up from An Inconvenient Truth, Melissa Etheridge
Listen from Dreamgirls, Henry Krieger, Scott Cutler and Anne Preven
Love You I Do from Dreamgirls, Henry Krieger and Siedah Garrett
Our Town from Cars, Randy Newman
Patience from Dreamgirls, Henry Krieger and Willie Reale

Costume
Curse of the Golden Flower
The Devil Wears Prada
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette
The Queen

Documentary Feature
Deliver Us From Evil
An Inconvenient Truth
Iraq in Fragments
Jesus Camp
My Country, My Country

Documentary (short subject)
The Blood of Yingzhou District
Recycled Life
Rehearsing a Dream
Two Hands

Film Editing
Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed
United 93

Makeup
Apocalypto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth

Animated Short Film
The Danish Poet
Lifted
The Little Matchgirl
Maestro
No Time for Nuts

Live Action Short Film
Binta and the Great Idea (Binta Y La Gran Idea)
Eramos Pocos (One Too Many)
Helmer & Son
The Saviour
West Bank Story

Visual Effects
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Poseidon
Superman Returns

You may notice that while Dreamgirls has the most nominations (eight I think), it is nomintaed three times in one catagory (Best Original Song), which it can obviously only win once.

Haha, I've only seen Borat out of all those, and it was lousy.

variol son wrote:Blood Diamond

Hey...they filmed a large chunk of that at my cousin's school in KZN, and the studio rented my uncle's place (where I go on holiday) for accomodation for a bunch of the cast & crew.

Movie looks bad though. And my god. I swear that nobody can actually manage to fake a South African accent. DiCaprio's attempt is ludicrous.

--A

I have seen The Queen, Little Miss Sunshine, The Prestige, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Borat. I loved the first three and hated the last two.

Will see Dreamgirls next week and Pan's Labrynth when we bring the flatmates XBox downstairs and hook it up to the TV.

So was DiCaprio nominated for worst fake foreign accent? I laugh everytime I see an ad for that movie.

Surprised that Jack Nicholson didn't get nominated for his role in The Departed, but also glad because he's overrated.

Avatar wrote:

Haha, I've only seen Borat out of all those, and it was lousy.

I can actually top that, I haven't seen a SINGLE one of the films listed. Maybe I should stop reading so much and go see a movie or two...

I also have not seen any of the nominated films. I'd better get to work!

Dreamgirls did not sweep the nominations like it was supposed to. Hmmm.

Jove wrote:I also have not seen any of the nominated films. I'd better get to work!

I saw Beerfest three times (in the last weeks, nonetheless). Does that count?

I know Waddley would encourage everyone to see Pan's Labyrinth.

I see The Illusionist is up for Best Cinematography (I really want to see The Prestige)--but from what little I've seen of it Pan's Labyrinth looks like it will take it...

wow, Helen Mirren' has teh highest odds ever given to win her categorie ...!
And she has already won basically every actress award so far for her role ...

hmmm, I guess I'll pick her for the Oscar...

Well, another year gone. Ellen was pretty good as host. A few surprises, and even though in our little group, the winner had the lowest percentage, it was me!
Weeeeeeeee!

Anyhoo.
Some obsevations:
Glad they didn't win:
* "Click" for make-up (WT?!)
* "Borat" for adapted scrrenplay (c'mon... much of it was improvised ... and not that funny)
* Abigale Breslin for supp.actress (it's not fair to destroy a young life in Hollywood that way)

The "What the--?" awards:
* Alan Arkin (love him, but didn't see that coming).
* Best song not from "Dreamgirls" (in fact, "An Inconvenient Truth" wins as many awards as the most nominated movie this year.. heheheh)
* "Pan's Labyrinth" lost best foreign film?.... (yah, a shame, as it was the most ambitious one in my humble opinion. But "The Lives of Others" is powerful and did get good 'buzz'.)

Glad they won:
* Marty Scorsese finally gets his director Oscar and his picture wins the same night (not expected by many).
* "The Danish Poet" (Although I picked "Lifted", it was nice to see another Canuk team win the animated short award.)
* "An Inconvenient Truth" - best doc. feature (bring some attention to the topic... comes at a nice time. Validates my voting for Canada's 'Green' party in the last 2 elections .. tee hee...)

Other comments...
* Helen Mirren looking pretty hot in her white dress last night. Wow.
* Ann Hathaway looking not so hot last night. I am sad 'cause I got the serious 'hots' for her!
* Ellen did a good job as host. She made me laugh and kept things rolling.
* No one's acceptance speach stuck out for me. They were pretty much the same.

YAY SCORSESE!!!



Haven't been this happy since Return of the King swept the Oscars.

As soon as SS, GL, and FFC came out to present i knew MS had it in the bag (for director). I also had an inking when i won for editing as well.

All in all, I thought the production was boring. Ellen wasn't the right choice to MC. That and they had a couple of montage things that were not value added.

I thought tht Dreamgirls would fade.

Anyone see Penelope Cruz and Catre Blanchett's dreses? Rowrf!

A Gunslinger wrote:As soon as SS, GL, and FFC came out to present i knew MS had it in the bag (for director).

Yeah, the ol' gang - they just needed leather jackets to do a Lords of Flatbush strut. It was nice to see Scorsese win at last, even if I haven't yet seen The Departed. I haven't seen any of the films on the list except for An Inconvenient Truth (which was brilliant) and Superman Returns (which was boring).

Usivius wrote:Abigale Breslin for supp.actress (it's not fair to destroy a young life in Hollywood that way)

That is an interesting observation. I think I agree with you, though it really depends on the individual.

And yessir, Helen Mirren was very elegant.

I was shocked that Arkin won, although he was very good in the role.

Do yourself a favor, guys, and see The Departed.

Lord Mhoram wrote:Do yourself a favor, guys, and see The Departed.

Agree 100%, it's a damn fine movie, and we'll still be saying that 10 years from now, just like Goodfellas.