SAG nominations and my predictions

The SAG noms are out. My predictions of the winners in Bold:

Screen Actors Guild awards nominations MOTION PICTURE

Actor
Richard Jenkins - "The Visitor"
Frank Langella - "Frost/Nixon"
Sean Penn - "Milk"
Brad Pitt - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Mickey Rourke - "The Wrestler"

Actress
Anne Hathaway - "Rachel Getting Married"
Angelina Jolie - "Changeling"
Melissa Leo - "Frozen River"
Meryl Streep - "Doubt"
Kate Winslet - "Revolutionary Road"

Supporting Actor
Josh Brolin - "Milk"
Robert Downey, Jr. - "Tropic Thunder"
Philip Seymour Hoffman - "Doubt"
Heath Ledger - "The Dark Knight"
Dev Patel - "Slumdog Millionaire"

Supporting Actress
Amy Adams - "Doubt"
Penelope Cruz - "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Viola Davis - "Doubt"
Taraji P. Henson - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Kate Winslet - "The Reader"

Ensemble Cast
"Doubt"
"Frost/Nixon"
"Milk"
"Slumdog Millionaire"
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

Stunt Ensemble
"The Dark Knight"
"Hellboy II: The Golden Army"
"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
"Iron Man"
"Wanted"

Latest screening: Seven Pounds

Now here's an odd one. A film essentially as bland as the poster advertising it (see left) and yet oddly kind of involving! I have to say i neither particularly liked nor disliked Seven Pounds. Some people will rail against it's vaguely self-involved messianic central character, others will embrace it whole-heartedly i suspect. It left me with a kind of "meh!" feeling.

Will Smith at first appears kind of an ass in the movie but it's Will Smith so you know this is leading somewhere more feel-good. Even so when i got to the end of the movie his character seemed somewhat selfish and self-absorbed.

No-one makes a particular impression on the acting front. Smith is fine doing his Pursuit Of Happyness thing, Barry Pepper has little to do but look anguished and Woody Harrelson has even less. Only Rosario Dawson gets decent screen time apart from Smith and while she does well with what she has her character is under-developed and is kind of at loggerheads with the gradually revealing back-story of Smith's character as to make you question the motivation used for the story. There does seem to be a fairly simple and less complex solution that would have made the film more likeable and accessible even if not actually better, but never mind.

Generally it passes the time but this is not one to charge out and see and a good many people i know will actively hate it. Personally i'm sticking with my indifference!

Awards chances: Meh!

BAFTA Screeners - the must-sees

Okay, so i don't want to influence peoples voting and if i could get everyone to see everything i would but it's just not practical and since i've been asked by time-constrained friends which of the 45ish screeners i would prioritise i offer here an in-order top 10 with 5 runners-up in no order. This list assumes that everyone will already have seen WALL-E and The Dark Knight and is for those not in the foreign-language chapter. This is not necessarily my favourite 10 (two of the runners-up would be in that) but the 10 i think need to be seen.

1 Waltz With Bashir
2 The Reader
3 The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (though better seen on big-screen if possible)
4 The Wrestler
5 Revolutionary Road
6 Slumdog Millionaire
7 Doubt
8 I've Loved You So Long
9 The Changeling
10 Milk

Runners-up: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Rachel Getting Married, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, Frost/Nixon, The Visitor

Latest Screening: Australia

One of the things you have to admire about Baz Luhrmann is he takes risks. On all three of his previous movies i went in expecting to hate them: a ballroom-dancing comedy? a modernised Romeo & Juliet with guns? a pop-song musical? But damn it if i didn't love all three. Australia is an equal risk and i admire Luhrmann once again for making a film no one would, hell probably could make. Unfortunately this time it didn't work.

Australia's biggest problem is tone. It is daft. Tonally it fits with Strictly Ballroom or Moulin Rouge! but that tone doesn't work for this subject. It is often intentionally funny in the first half but the humour comes from a high-camp angle. The lingering soaped-up shot of Jackman; the almost moustache-twirling villainy of David Wenham; the blatant process-shot FX; the CG settings; the outrage and outrageousness are all deliberately silly but the film is going to get serious and at its heart is a frankly rather beautiful story element about the stolen generation of aboriginal children that is done a massive dis-service by this early and lingering tone.

The film doesn't recover. When the second world war comes along the film would love to be, as judging by the marketing Fox would like you to think too, Gone With The Wind; but Gone With The Wind didn't spend its first half being His Girl Friday! - both great films, but hardly a good tonal match.

The film's saving grace is the fantastic performance by Brandon Walters as Nullah, the aboriginal child Kidman comes to mother, and that Jackman and Kidman do there best. But here, ultimately, Luhrmann has doomed the whole enterprise with a style and approach that really seems at odds with his story. Had he gone the full Gone With The Wind old-fashioned epic i suspect this may have worked. Shame.

Awards chances: not a chance!

Latest screening: Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

Finally! It's been a long time coming and i wasn't sure it would happen but we finally have a big, brash, epic, wonderful Hollywood movie in the awards season.

So far it's been all big performances in little-feel movies and character pieces, but Benjamin Button is glorious. It shares a distrinctly Tim Burton-Jean Pierre Jeunet feeling with its odd-people populated world and its quirkiness, but has the feel-good elements of writer Eric Roth's Forrest Gump. "Aargh!" I hear you cry. Don't worry, because this is David Fincher, not Robert Zemeckis, and you can rest assured the saccharine has no place in Fincher's world.

Benjamin Button is a superbly realised film on every level. The performances are spot on, especially a truly memorable turn from Taraji P Henson as Benjamin's adoptive mother; the visual effects are excellent; the score is complementary and beautiful; the photography is luxurious. I really can't find significant fault with Benjamin Button and it is unlike the rest of this year's pack on so many levels it will be a hard one to call once the nominations start flying.

Rest assured though Fincher has to be a front runner because here he has brought together a collective of faultless element into a seemless and damn entertaining film, while making something wholly different from anything he's done before.

Awards chances: Pitt and Blanchett are good (as usual) but work within the film's world rather than stand out from it - good for the film but unlikely to gain them the necessary attention for awards. The film though is a shoe-in in both major (Picture, Director, Screenplay) and technical categories. And i'm planting my flag in Fincher for Best Director right now.

Golden Globe nominations and a knee-jerk feeling of winners!

Golden Globe noms have just been announced. Here's the full list of film nominations and my knee-jerk prediction for the winners (in bold):

BEST FEATURE - DRAMA
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
"Frost/Nixon"
"The Reader"
"Revolutionary Road"
"Slumdog Millionaire"

BEST FEATURE - COMEDY
"Burn After Reading"
"Happy-Go-Lucky"
"In Bruges"
"Mamma Mia!"
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

ACTOR - DRAMA
Leonardo DiCaprio - "Revolutionary Road"
Frank Langella - "Frost/Nixon"
Sean Penn - "Milk"
Brad Pitt - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Mickey Rouke - "The Wrestler"

ACTRESS - DRAMA
Anne Hathaway - "Rachel Getting Married"
Angelina Jolie - "Changeling"
Meryl Streep - "Doubt"
Kristin Scott Thomas - "I've Loved You So Long"
Kate Winslet - "Revolutionary Road"

ACTOR - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Javier Bardem - "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Colin Farrell - "In Bruges"
James Franco - "Pineapple Express"
Brendan Gleeson - "In Bruges"
Dustin Hoffman - "Last Chance Harvey"

ACTRESS - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Rebecca Hall - "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Sally Hawkins - "Happy-Go-Lucky"
Frances McDormand - "Burn After Reading"
Meryl Streep - "Mamma Mia!"
Emma Thompson - "Last Chance Harvey"

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Tom Cruise, "Tropic Thunder"
Robert Downey Jr., "Tropic Thunder"
Ray Fiennes, "The Duchess"
Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Doubt"
Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams, "Doubt"
Penelope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Viola Davis, "Doubt"
Marisa Tomei, "The Wrestler"
Kate Winslet, "The Reader"

SCREENPLAY - MOTION PICTURE
Simon Beaufoy - "Slumdog Millionaire"
David Hare - "The Reader"
Peter Morgan - "Frost/Nixon"
Eric Roth - "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
John Patrick Shanley - "Doubt"

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
"The Baader Meinhof Complex" (Germany)
"Everlasting Moments" (Sweden)
"Gomorrah" (Italy)
"I've Loved You So Long" (France)
"Waltz with Bashir" (Israel)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
"Bolt"
"Kung Fu Panda"
"Wall-E"

Question of the day: LA Critics!

The LA Critics have announced their best of 08 list and best film went to WALL-E. Yet best animated film went to Waltz With Bashir. Since WALL-E is animated and is apparently "the best picture" shouldn't that automatically make it "the best animated picture"?!

Personally i think i'd give it to Bashir over WALL-E anyway but surely this makes no sense!

Animation review: Bolt

Since when i did my analysis of the animation contenders i hadn't seen Bolt (which doesn't qualify for BAFTA but does for the Oscars) it seems only fair now i have to give it a mention.

I have to admit Bolt was a pleasant surprise. Between cutesy trailering, a DreamWorks-esque placing of star names on the poster and documented issues with the film, such as the style and design being changed significantly half way through, i had kind of written this off. But lo! Here we have a genuinely funny family film. It has no pretensions of Pixar's grace and beauty, this is intended purely to entertain kids and the adults. Nothing wrong with that and it completely works at that.

The sidekick character of Rhino (a hamster in a running ball) is inspired and really helps the film avoid a center-stage lag. There's nothing stunningly original here - in fact fans of Inspector Gadget may find the TV show within the film strikingly familiar - and the voice cast, with the excpetion of Rhino (Mark Walton), don't particularly stand out. But at the same time they all work. I saw the film in 3D, which i continue to love, but here, as with 2006's Monster House the film is actually worth seeing regardless of 3D, which has been rare so far with the relaunch of the technology (yes Polar Express, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Beowulf, i'm looking at you!).

Awards chances: It isn't going to threaten the triumvirate of WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda and Waltz With Bashir for the three nominations but it's better than most of the others i've seen and kids will love it.