Oscar Predictions: The Major Awards

Welcome back to our annual Oscar Predictions special, a yearly exercise in beautiful futility. Having dealt with the Technical awards we will now talk about the ones that actually matter. (I'd just like to point out that, whilst I have been a bit disparaging towards the other awards, I do think that they are very important, but also realise that the Oscars that get peoples attention on posters and DVD covers are the ones I am about to discuss.)

Let's get to it.

Oscar Predictions: The Technical Awards

Welcome once again to A Mighty Fine Blog's Oscar prediction special! Much like the ceremony itself, it promises to be overlong, sporadically interesting and ultimately futile. On the plus side, there will be no interpretative dance sequences or mawkish tributes to people you've never heard of, and it won't take you five hours to read. (Though it may take me that fucking long to write.)

As with last year, I will split the predictions into two posts; one for the Technical Awards and one for the Main Awards. This is intended to make them easier to digest, so that you, the reader, won't have to read through one mammoth post, but it also means that if you don't care about Best Cinematography you can just look at the other post and see who is going to win the awards that most people care about.

So, unfunny introduction down, let's delve into the Academy Awards, 2011, and try to make some sense of them.

An Introduction to Hope Lies on Television

Starting today, I will be writing a fortnightly television column at www.hopelies.com, in which I will examine the meeting points between film and television using a variety of thematic elements.

Partly in order to keep track of just how much writing I do, and partly so I will have easy access to all of them, I will be posting links to these columns on here along with brief notes of explanation so that they aren't just complete wasted spaces.

So, here's the introduction, in which I lay out my intentions for the column.

The Cold Open

Film Review: Never Let Me Go (2010)

Never Let Me Go, an adaptation of a critically beloved novel by Kazuo Ishigiro (which I have not read) is a film that is easy to admire but hard to like. Set in an alternate present (or recent past, but let's not split hairs) it tells the story of three young people - played in adulthood by Kiera Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield - who form a love triangle as they try to come to terms with their existence as part of a radical medical program that will save lives but dooms their friendships and loves to a predetermined end.

Film Review: Animal Kingdom (2010)

There is a crucial scene roughly two-thirds of the way through David Michôd's Animal Kingdom in which detective Leckie (ably played by Guy Pearce and his glorious moustache) talks to Josh (James Frecheville), a young man who finds himself at the centre of a family of bank robbers following the death of his heroin addict mother, about nature. Specifically, about how smaller creatures can either be preyed on by larger ones, or they can allign themselves with larger creatures in the hope of being protected. Leckie hopes that it will convince Josh to throw his lot in with the police so they can protect him from his family, but it's also a neat summation of a criminal world which is positively Darwinian.

Things I Learned From Movie X: The Last Airbender

Having already evicerated M. Night Shyamalan's adaptation of the hugely popular and acclaimed animated series once, I decided to base my latest Things I Learned From Movie X column on The Last Airbender. I cover some of the same material in both, but obviously the style and content vary wildly so I'd say that they are complimentary pieces.

Film Review: Paul (2011)

Clive (Nick Frost) and Graeme (Simon Pegg) are a couple of British science fiction nerds who, after making a holy pilgrimage to that mecca of fandom, San Diego Comic-Con, embark upon a transcontinental road trip to visit sites associated with extraterrestrial activity. After antagonising a pair of redneck types (David Koechner and Jesse "Landry" Plemens) in a bar, they drive off in a hurry, inadvertently witnessing a night-time car crash. As they survey the wreckage, cigarette smoke and a gruff voice float across the desert air. Out of the shadows steps a little green man named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen). Paul is an alien who has been held by the government for more than sixty years, and he has escaped in order to finally go home. Faced with the opportunity to befriend a bona fide alien, Clive and Graeme decide to help him, unaware that Paul will prove to be the least of their problems.

Film Review: The Last Airbender (2010)

Hey, it's just like the TV show, but it's only a fraction of the length and incalculably worse!

For fear of making a broad generalisation (hey, we're on the Internet, the home of broad generalisations!) there are two kinds of bad movie. The first are films which, through their sheer ineptitude, achieve a state of entertainment as fodder for derisive laughter and drunken group viewings. Movies like Tommy Wiseau's legendary The Room, owing to the glorious incompetence with which they are written, acted and directed, are far more nourishing experiences than most genuinely good movies because they are so fun to mock.

The Viewer Who Knew Too Much

Warning: Since this article is about the nature of spoilers and twists, it does mention several in detail. If you haven't seen Audition, The Third Man, Psycho, Citizen Kane or The Usual Suspects and don't want them ruined, best not to read it.


For a very long time I've wondered about "spoilers" and the question of how much should be revealed about a film to prospective viewers. Where should the line of demarcation be drawn? At what point does giving a plot synopsis bleed over into ruining the film?

Things I Learned From Movie X: Wild Wild West

As I mentioned before, my friend Arron basically taunted me until I agreed to review Wild Wild West, the poorly received remake of the '60s television series. As always, I try to get as much value out of the experience of seeing a terrible film as possible, so decided to use the film as the subject for my new Things I Learned From Movie X column at boxofficeprophets.com.

I hadn't seen Wild Wild West since I watched it in the cinema when it was first released, back when I was so obsessed with Will Smith that I would try to see every film he starred in the very day it opened. I remember thinking it was pretty bad at the time and it has not aged well. The plot's stupid, the acting is variable - though Kevin Kline is fun in a deadpan, Bill Murray sort of way - and the whole thing is pretty irredeemable. Still, I got two articles out it.

Film Review: Neds (2010)

John McGill (Connor McCarron) is a bright young thing faced with a not particularly bright future. Growing up in Glasgow in the late '70s, he seems destined to follow his father (writer and director Peter Mullan) in to a menial job. Despite his furious intelligence, his prospects seem limited and unfulfilling. Faced with no viable options, he follows in the footsteps of his older brother Benny and becomes part of one of the gangs of feral youths that roam the streets, inflicting increasingly vicious acts of violence on each other. John becomes a Non-Educated Delinquent.

Film Review: 127 Hours (2010)

In April 2003, Aron Ralston went hiking in Utah. Five days after entering the Blue John Canyon, he staggered out, having undergone extreme deprivation and self-sacrifice in order to survive. Whilst climbing, a boulder had become dislodged and trapped his arm. With little food and water, Ralston was ultimately forced to amputate his own arm to escape. 127 Hours, the latest film from Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) tells the story of Ralston's ordeal.