Posts Tagged ‘Best Picture’
The Slums of Johannesburg: Oscar Review of “District 9″
Fifteen years ago…no maybe seven years ago, we would have never seen District 9 nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The Oscars have come a long way in recognizing the fantasy and science fiction genres in the same light with all the high dramas that they typically think only deserve the greatest of film making awards. I hope that one day, there will be no difference between the greatest drama and the greatest sci-fi/fantasy film in the opinion of the academy.
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“The Hurt Locker” playing dirty in the Oscar race?
You did What?
The Oscar race is getting dirty. According to the excellent film blog Deadline.com one of the producers of the Best Picture frontrunner “The Hurt Locker” (Nicolas Chartier) has been sending out dirty emails to Academy voters. The message: Don’t vote for “Avatar.” Now, the Oscars have always been about politics as much as filmmaking, just look to the Weinstein brothers for conformation. Yet, this form of cheating seems to take things to a new low. Read the email below. Read the rest of this entry »
Layovers and Layoffs : Oscar Review of “Up In the Air”
To me “Up In the Air” is the single greatest thematic achievement of 2009. It manages to accomplish what every great film should strive to do; make you look at the characters and their situations, and then look back at yourself. “Up In the Air” is about the modern man. Home is the road. Scratch that. Home is the sky, and as we all know the sky is the limit. Until, you are grounded. Read the rest of this entry »
Tarantino’s Masterpiece: Oscar Review of “Inglourious Basterds”
If there was ever a director who knew how to make hyperbolic statements concerning his own work and upcoming projects it is Quentin Tarantino. Rumors of the semi-sequel to his early films’ “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” titled “The Vega Brothers” have been talked up for years. So naturally when Tarantino said he had an idea for the WWII movie to end all WWII movies I simply rolled my eyes. Now don’t get me wrong, I wanted to see that movie in a bad way. I may have even thought of kidnapping him at one point, and forcing him to write the script, but thats neither here nor there… Read the rest of this entry »
Give the Oscar to a Cartoon: Oscar Review of “UP”
The first two times I sat down to watch UP I kept getting interrupted by this and that, not getting a good feel for the film as a whole. I just turned off the PS3 after watching it all the way through, and I’ll be at a loss if it doesn’t get best picture this year. Welling up during a cartoon is an extremely rare occasion for me, but it happened almost three times during UP. This isn’t to say if a film makes you cry that it deserves an Oscar, but there’s a certain amount of undeniable brilliance that shines through with this Pixar masterpiece.
