Review - Gravity

220 miles above the earth and with little chance of coming back down. That's not only the basic premise, but also the way one feels after having just watched Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's long gestating follow-up to 2006's Children of Men. After literal years of hype and ecstatic festival buzz, the question for me was whether Cuaron's magnum opus could possibly meet my out-of-this-world expectations. The answer is a resounding YES. Gravity is a triumph; A groundbreaking invention of pure cinema that captivates from its awe-inspiring start to its potent final images.

The opening title card ominously warns that life in space is impossible, before cutting to the still serenity of Earth, glowing blue against the infinite blackness. A white dot creeps into view, slowly growing in the frame until we can recognize it as the space shuttle Explorer. Veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney doing his best George Clooney impersonation) and rookie Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) are making repairs to the Hubble telescope. Matt makes jokes and regales mission control with amusing anecdotes while he putters around on his mobile thruster pack. Ryan is nervously tethered to her work, trying hard to keep her breakfast down on this routine mission. But of course, nothing about space travel is routine. With little warning, a field of satellite debris tears through the shuttle and leaves the space walkers stranded. From here, Gravity takes off on a dazzling roller coaster ride that rarely lets up, as Ryan must learn to defeat her traumas (past and present) and muster up the courage to make it back home.

Early Oscar predictions - Part 1

Spring is in the air. As the warmer weather thaws me out of post-Oscar hibernation, it's time to start looking ahead to next winter in search of potential awards projects that just might tickle the Academy's fancy. I was going to hold of on this ludicrous practice until after the Cannes Film Festival wrapped up, but it's not like that would make my crystal ball any less foggy, so may as well get it over with.

Last year's early predictions turned out to be a typically imprecise 44/96, but believe it or not, that's actually the best I've ever done! Can I improve?

This is the first of five early predictions pieces I'll be posting this month. I'm starting out this week with Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Actress. Next Monday I'll finish off the major categories.

Golden Globes live blog

So yeah, like everyone else on the net, I'll be live-blogging the Golden Globes when they begin in about three and a half hours time. Check back for updates throughout the evening.

7:33 - Usual banter on the red carpet. The women look cold. Apparently it's chilly out on the West coast tonight.

7:53 - Got my laptop. Got my port. Let's get this party started.

7:55 - Shameless Quartet plug by Dustin Hoffman. Supose I shouldn't prejudge (but I heard it's awful).

8:04 - "When it comes to torture, I trust the women who spent three years married to James Cameron" ZING! Fey and Poeller were great. Laughed at almost every joke.

8:09 - Supporting Actor: Goes to... Christoph Waltz in  Django Unchained. Weinstein at work, as always.

My Awards nominations: Adapted Screenplay

Strong crop this year. Here's what I deem the best Adapted Screenplays of the year:

Drive (Hossein Amini):
The irrepressibility of one's true nature is a theme that's startlingly made in Drive. Amini minimizes dialogue and focuses more on implied backstory to illustrate the driver's character.

The Ides of March (George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon):
Clooney et. al. realize that making the actual politics the meat of this story would either alienate or bore their audience, so they wisely keep it on the side, keeping the screenplay lean, polished, and efficient.

Moneyball (Steve Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin):
While not one that always pops, the script does brim with ideas. The dialogue willfully revels in awkward beats that force unspoken characterization. Anyone who can make baseball stats interesting has to be a good writer!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan):
This is a thoughtful and attentive screenplay that intentionally moves a bit slowly, but at least it allows its audience time to process all the little narrative cogs that compose the complex plot.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, Rory Kinnear):
The book's more objective narration is translated into a brilliant first-person character study that comes tinted with its character's guilt and confusion. Cleverly structured as a pseudo mystery.

Just missed: The Help, Project Nim, Tintin

Golden Globe nominees

It's hardly a surprise to see the Hollywood Foreign Press Agency tow the party line by honouring The Artist with a field-leading six nominations. It'll probably tap dance its way to an easy Best Picture win in the Musical/Comedy category. What interests (and pleases) me more is their wave of support for George Clooney's terrific The Ides of March, which has thus far been rudely ignored by the precursor circuit. Even if its four nominations have more to do with Clooney's star power than the merits of the film, I won't object. Here's hoping the Academy will stick up for it somewhere.

Best Picture, Drama
The Descendants
The Help
Hugo
The Ides of March
Moneyball
War Horse

Best Picture, Comedy or Musical
50/50
The Artist
Bridesmaids
Midnight in Paris
My Week with Marilyn

National Board of Review annoints "Hugo"

Scorsese's venture into the realm of 3D family fantasy has yielded a somewhat surprising Best Picture and Best Director winner with the National Board of Review. I admit to being somewhat sceptical of it chances in the major Oscar categories, but maybe I've been underestimating it.

The other big winner, after being shut out by the NY Critics two days ago, was Alexander Payne's The Descendants, landing awards for George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, and its screenplay.

All winners after the cut.

Review - The Descendents

The Descendants, Alexander Payne's eagerly anticipated followup to Sideways, tells a sad, drawn out tale of grief and growth with a mellow Hawaiian flavour.

George Clooney plays Matt King, a landowner from Oahu whose wife is in a terminal coma following a boating accident. With his two daughters Alex and Scotty (Shailene Woodely and Amara Miller) struggling to cope in their own unique ways, and with a pending business transaction that would make Matt and his extended family very wealthy at a moral cost, the stress has already reached a smothering level. The discovery that his wife was cheating on him with a slick realtor is only the grain of salt that tips Matt's scale in the direction of (for once in life) taking action, setting him a personal mission to confront his wife's lover in the hopes of finding some kind of closure – or maybe something else entirely.

Review - The Ides of March

One only need know the title of George Clooney's The Ides of March – aptly named for the day of a fateful backstabbing – to suspect that this political drama is less to do with public policy and more to do with the cutthroat chess match that plays itself out on the other side of the curtain. As designed by Clooney and his co-writers Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon (the latter of whom penned the original play), the actual issues are peripheral as seen from the vacuum in which jaded campaign strategists ply their splenetic trade; people are played against each other, secrets divulged, secrets kept, trust severed, but all with a purpose. All for the cause of The Campaign.

Sunday Top Ten: Batman characters; the movies + The Animated Series tag team

With the recent release of a teaser poster and trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, I can't be the only one who's had Batman on the mind lately.

Everyone has a favourite Batman character (well, except for people who don't care about Batman, but they're just an urban legend), but with so many different incarnations of all the heroes and villains having been contributed over the decades, it's hard to give a consistent assessment of each one. Do you have a favourite continuity? The 1960s Adam West TV series, maybe? Any of the films by directors Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, or Christopher Nolan? I can tell you right now my definitive Batman canon is the fantastic Warner Brothers cartoon from the 1990s, whose dark and mature treatment of the material made for an atypically grown-up childrens program. For kicks, I'm appraising ten character combos that team up the performances from the major motion pictures with their animated doppelgangers.

One Category at a Time: Best Actor

Johnny Depp, one of America's most elite actors (though it may be easy to forget, given his resume of late), stars in an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, written and directed by Barry Robison. I'm sure everyone is eager to see Depp take on a role that doesn't involve Jack Sparrow or Tim Burton. I know I am.

Ryan Gosling probably missed a nomination this past year by the skin of teeth, having given one of 2010's best performances in Blue Valentine. If the Academy wants to make it up to him (not saying they necessarily do), they may pay closer attention to his work in George Clooney's The Ides of March, in which he plays a disillusioned political staffer.

As for George Clooney himself, after laying low in 2010, he's on course to have a big year starring in Alexander Payne's The Descendants and his own directorial project The Ides of March. He faces internal competition from the latter's Ryan Gosling, but he is the main attraction in the former, which will allow him to tap into that well of understated emotion that he does so well.

David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method has two prime contenders in Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender, playing Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung respectively. Will vote splitting ruin both their chances? Will one be pushed to Supporting? Can they both sneak in? These questions depend on a number of factor's, including how well the film is received, but for the time being, it's safe to assume that biographical roles are in for their fair share of awards attention.

And finally, is Hollywood ready to forgive Mel Gibson? He's got a plum role in Jodie Foster's The Beaver, as an unbalanced man who can only communicate with others through a hand puppet. Oscar loves a good comeback, although it may still be too soon after Gisbon's tabloid antics for them to welcome him back to the flock with a nomination. We shall see.

Predicted five:
George Clooney in The Descendants or The Ides of March
Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary
Mel Gibson in The Beaver
Ryan Gosling in The Ides of March
Viggo Mortensen in A Dangerous Method

Also consider: Antonio Banderas The Skin That I Inhabit, Damien Bichir A Better Life, Matt Damon We Bought a Zoo, Michael Fassbender A Dangerous Method, Ralph Fiennes Coriolanus, James McAvoy The Conspirator, Brad Pitt Moneyball, Michael Shannon Take Shelter.

One Category at a Time: Best Adapted Screenplay

There look to be a lot of previous Oscar nominees (and winners) for screenwriting back in play this year for high profile adaptations. Certainly more than in the original field, but that doesn't make it that much easier to predict from a year out.

Alexander Payne won this category for his last feature film Sideways with his writing partner Jim Taylor. He's got two new collaborators in Nat Faxon and Jim Rash with whom he's adapted the Kaui Hart Hemmings novel The Descendants, which fits with Payne's style of balancing smart humour and real emotion. I'm looking forward to it.

Another past Oscar winner in this category is Christopher Hampton, who received his Oscar back in 1989 for Dangerous Liaisons which was based on his own play. For this year he's adapted another one of his own plays with the word ''dangerous'' in the title; A Dangerous Method, which explores the work of and relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

And yet another pair of previous Adapted Screenplay winners with a project in the race this year are Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network), who have teamed up to adapt Moneyball, Michael Lewis' nonfiction account of Billy Beane's computerized drafting system of MLB prospects, for the screen. I'll be interested to see where they can go with it.

George Clooney and Grant Heslov were nominated five years ago for writing Good Night and Good Luck, and are collaborating again to bring us their adaptation of Beau Willimon's play The Ides of March. Political dramas are never an unwise bet, and this one has enough star power to make it a big awards magnet for Clooney and Heslov.

Back in the realm of more traditional Oscar bait is Steven Spielberg's War Horse, based on Michael Morpurgo's novel which is also coming out as a Broadway play this year. Richard Curtis and Lee Hall have written the screenplay, which is sure to catch many an Academy member's fancy with its sentimental story and hefty WWI setting.




Predicted five:
A Dangerous Method
The Descendants
The Ides of March
Moneyball
War Horse

Also consider: Albert Nobbs, A Better Life, Coriolanus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Iron Lady, The Help, The Skin That I Inhabit, Water for Elephants, We Bought a Zoo, We Need to Talk About Kevin.

One Category at a Time: Best Director

I think it's safe to say that the days of the lone Best Director nod are over. With ten nominees for Best Picture, your Directing nominees are going to be five of those ten. From my ten predicted Best Picture nominees, the five I'm guessing to land a Director nod are the ones who have been nominated there before.

The first, and most famous of whom, is Steven Spieberg. who was last nominated in 2006 for Munich. He looks to have a high-profile year with The Adventures of Tintin likely to make a big box-office impact and War Horse to tantalize awards-voting bodies at year's end. Spielberg has been one America's most important filmmakers since the 1970s, and assuming that he'll earn the Academy's attention is seldom far-fetched.

Also nominated in 2006 (for Capote) was Bennett Miller, directing this year's baseball-centred drama Moneyball. Some are quick to chalk his Capote nomination up as bit of a fluke in a weak year, but he's a sensible director who works well with actors. With Oscar-winning screenwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian handling the script and an impressive cast signed up, Miller has a good opportunity to make something really good out of this.

And would you look at this, another person who was last nominated in 2006 (for Goodnight and Good Luck), the multitalented George Clooney. His political drama The Ides of March, which he also wrote and produced with collaborator Grant Heslov, lands this year and is poised to be a force to be reckoned with on the circuit. Clooney has a terrific cast with lots of awards potential. Multiple acting nods is often good news for the director's chances.

Last nominated in 2005 for Sideways, Alexander Payne has not made a feature film since. Everyone's very excited to see him return this year with his take on the acclaimed novel The Descendants. Payne is adept at tackling drama and humour in balanced measure, and the story of a soon-to-be single father trying to reconcile with his two daughters may benefit from his sense of poignancy and levity.

Terrence Malick has only ever made one film the Academy really responded to (The Thin Red line for which he was nominated in 1999), but he's only ever made a handful of films anyway. His filmography is so small and spread out that fans of his are always hungering for his next feature, often forced to wait several years. It feels like we've been waiting for The Tree of Life forever, but now that it has a release planned this spring, we can finally see if it was worth the wait.

Predicted five:
George Clooney, The Ides of March
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Bennett Miller, Moneyball
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Steven Spielberg, War Horse

Also consider: J.J. Abrams Super 8, David Cronenberg A Dangerous Method, Cameron Crowe We Bought a Zoo, Drake Doremus Like Crazy, David Fincher The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jodie Foster The Beaver, Phyllida Lloyd The Iron Lady, Jason Reitman Young Adult, Tate Taylor The Help.

One Category at a Time: Best Picture (part 1)

Now that the 2010/11 Oscar season is a comfortably distant memory, I suppose I'd better toss up some early guesses as to who the nominees will be for next year's awards. I must confess that I'm struggling to fill my ten Best Picture predictions somewhat. There only appears to be a handful of awards-bait projects lined up for a 2011 release, and I somehow doubt that we'll see an animated feature or summer blockbuster up for the big prize this year. I gladly invite tiny independent films to surprise me, because for the moment, I can't pretend I'm that excited about many titles this year.

But on to the predictions. The biopic has always been a decent threat for Oscar's crown, and one with potential is David Croneneberg's A Dangerous Method, starring Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen as pioneering psychiatrists Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. The screenplay was adapted by Christopher Hampton from his own play, an approach which netted him an Oscar over 20 years ago for Dangerous Liaisons. It's period setting and focus on historical figures makes this project prime bait, but... with David Cronenberg at the helm? I'm actually a bit intrigued.

Alexander Payne hasn't made a feature film since winning his Oscar six years ago for Sideways. His long-awaited followup, The Descendants, headlines George Clooney as a powerful landowner in Hawaii who tries to bond with his two wild daughters in the wake of a tragic accident involving his wife. Sounds like a downer, right? Wrong. The novel on which the film is based has been praised by critics for its balance of audacious comedy with emotional heft, a style for which Payne has a proven talent.

Getting back to more traditional Oscar bait, it's hard to argue that Dreamworks' upcoming take on the popular novel The Help seems to fit the bill. Set in a 1960s Mississippi, it tells of an aspiring writer (Easy A's Emma Stone) who shocks her tightly-knit Southern community by interviewing African Americans who have spent their lives in servitude of the wealthy white. Gently rocking the boat on racism as appeased Oscar before (even as recently as 2009 with The Blind Side), and the film's formidable female ensemble sure looks enticing to me.

Besides The Descendants, George Clooney is involved in another potential awards pony this year called The Ides of March, in which he stars and directs. He also co-wrote and co-produced it with Grant Heslov, the man alongside whom he was nominated for Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). The film is a political drama also starring Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Marissa Tomei, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Evan Rachel Wood, and Max Minghella. Can you say, "SAG Ensemble award"?

Will Meryl Streep finally get that third Oscar this year? It's certainly a possibility given that she'll be staring as Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first – and heretofore, only – female Prime Minister, in The Iron Lady. Having the air of "Importance" is always helpful when courting Oscar, and this subject offers a plethora of such "Important" issues to touch on. Combine that with what many are anticipating will be yet another charismatic performance from Streep, and I'd say there's potential.

Five more Best Picture predictions coming Monday.

My Award nominations: Actor

Crowded field, as always. Wish I could include more. My five Best Actor picks are:

GEORGE CLOONEY in The American:
George Clooney is at his understated best playing the most professional of professional killers with a non-fussy attitude and an excellent sense of dramatic timing. The film's quiet, observational style is the perfect stage for the subtlety and detail of Clooney's performance. He doesn't need much dialogue; his face does all the talking.

AARON ECKHART in Rabbit Hole:
Nicole Kidman is getting most of the press for her terrific performance in Rabbit Hole, but Aaron Eckhart is equally brilliant, playing a character who staunchly clings to every memory of his son in order to subdue a bitter rage that simmers just beneath a stoic front. Watching him finally lash out is painful but entirely understandable.

JESSE EISENBERG in The Social Network:
Eisenberg gives a highly mannered yet nuanced performance as Zuckerberg, or rather, a quasi-alternate-universe projection of Zuckerberg. He doesn't try to do an imitation, but carves out a unique and complicated social outsider who seems to suffer from both an inferiority and superiority complex all at once, wanting to belong, but on his own.

JAMES FRANCO in 127 Hours:
He’s the film's biggest asset, holding all 90 minutes of the movie almost entirely by himself, bringing not only a lot of energy and charisma, but also the restraint and tact to evoke his character's arc from blissful ignorance to his moment of epiphany. What I’ll ultimately remember 127 Hours as is a gripping performance piece from a skilled actor.

RYAN GOSLING in Blue Valentine:
A wholly realized, lived-in performance that cuts close to the bone. Gosling turns himself inside out for Derek Cianfrance's devastating marital drama, embodying all the love, anger, fear, compassion, and regret that goes hand-in-hand with marriage all at once, but in different proportion and focus depending on the progression of his character.

Just missed: Javier Bardem in Biutiful, Jeff Bridges in True Grit, Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception, Robert Duvall in Get Low, Colin Firth in The King's Speech