24/1/11

- GOLDEN GLOBES - The Social Network was unsurprisingly named Best Film- Drama, with its director David Fincher also winning Best Director and its writer Aaron Sorkin winning Best Screenplay. I was very pleased to see The Kids Are All Right do well, winning Best Film- Musical or Comedy, and Best Actress- Musical or Comedy for Annette Bening. Best Actor and Actress went entirely as expected, with Colin Firth winning for The King's Speech and Natalie Portman for Black Swan- both were incredibly deserving winners, though. Toy Story 3 was an obvious Best Animated Feature winner, while Danish film In A Better World was a rather more surprising choice for Best Foreign Language Film. Paul Giamatti was Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Barney's Version, Christian Bale, often badly overlooked at the awards ceremonies, won Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter, a film that also got Melissa Leo the Best Supporting Actress award. Ricky Gervais as host caused some epic-scale controversy over in the States for his actually rather amusing opening speech, which you can view here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvHXzP2SpLA. It's actually very funny to me just how controversial this proved with many Americans, and apparently with the show's producers- you knew what you were going to get, he'd hosted before, if you don't like it why ask him back? He had the balls to stand up and say what he thought, to tease people as he would his friends, or any person off the street, and there lies the question- why should the people at the Globes be treated any differently? It's also worth checking out the Ricky Gervais interview with Piers Morgan a few days later, as Gervais actually raises some really interesting and intellectual discussion points about comedy- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlfYX9MMK0k.

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- BAFTA 2011 NOMINATIONS - Announced the other day. I'll list each of the 'main' categories and try and predict which I think will triumph in each. We'll find out how right I am on February 13th.

BEST FILM: Black Swan, Inception, The King's Speech, The Social Network, True Grit (The Social Network is going down as the favourite for the Oscars, but I can see BAFTA siding with the Brits and favouring The King's Speech in this category. It would be well deserved too)

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM: 127 Hours, Another Year, Four Lions, The King's Speech, Made In Dagenham (if The King's Speech doesn't win Best Film it will almost certainly win this. It might even both! If not, i'd like to see Mike Leigh's brilliant Another Year triumph)

OUTSTANDING BRITISH DEBUT: The Arbor, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Four Lions, Monsters, Skeletons (Very difficult to choose- some fantastic debuts there. Banksy might just about deserve it for Exit Through The Gift Shop)

DIRECTOR: 127 Hours (Danny Boyle), Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky), Inception (Christopher Nolan), The King's Speech (Tom Hooper), The Social Network (David Fincher) - (I'd give it to Aronofsky just because I'm in love with him. But I think this is probably Fincher's to lose)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Black Swan (Mark Heyman, Andrés Heinz, John McLaughlin), The Fighter (Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson), Inception (Christopher Nolan), The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg), The King's Speech (David Seidler) - (Probably go to Seidler; deservingly so, too)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy), The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Rasmus Heisterberg, Nikolaj Arcel), The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin), Toy Story 3 (Michael Arndt), True Grit (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen) - (Would be shocked if Sorkin didn't walk away with this one)

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: Biutiful, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I Am Love, Of Gods And Men, The Secret In Their Eyes (Difficult one. The Secret In Their Eyes may have been released too early for voters to remember it. Biutiful, meanwhile, will be fresh in their memories and also has an awards-darling of a director)

ANIMATED FILM: Despicable Me, How To Train Your Dragon, Toy Story 3 (Toy Story 3, without a shadow of a doubt)

LEADING ACTOR: Javier Bardem (Biutiful), Jeff Bridges (True Grit), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Colin Firth (The King's Speech), James Franco (127 Hours) - (some very strong competition, but this should be Firth's)

LEADING ACTRESS: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore (both The Kids Are All Right), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Noomi Rapace (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) - (Should be Portman's)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale (The Fighter), Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), Pete Postlethwaite (The Town), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech) - (between Bale and Rush)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams (The Fighter), Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech), Barbara Hershey (Black Swan), Lesley Manville (Another Year), Miranda Richardson (Made In Dagenham) - (between Helena Bonham Carter and Lesley Manville for me)

ORIGINAL MUSIC: 127 Hours, Alice in Wonderland, How To Train Your Dragon, Inception, The King's Speech (I'd give it to Hans Zimmer for Inception if it was me)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: 127 Hours, Black Swan, Inception, The King's Speech, True Grit (I'd like to see Matthew Libitique get this award for Black Swan)

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I'm still kinda reeling from 3 straight days of cinema in which I got to see The King's Speech, Blue Valentine and Black Swan. I feel like I need a breather! A chance to sit back and actually think through each film- they've sort of become one big blur of awesomeness with how quickly I saw each one after the next. I thought I'd write a very quick review of each of them, though, and suffice to say that each one was a fantastic, visceral piece of cinema- well made, well acted, well shot, etc.


THE KING'S SPEECH - 5/5

Colin Firth was of course fantastic- I think, given the universal praise of his performance, I was unlikely to think otherwise! Geoffrey Rush surprised me with just HOW good he is- his performance is one of humour, sincerity and warmth, and he would be a deserving winner of Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. Likewise, Helena Bonham Carter surprised me with her terrific performance as the Queen Mum- a very different sort of role for her, she represented well both Elizabeth's cheeky nature but also the agonising heartache of watching her husband struggle with his speech. The music throughout (by Alexandre Desplat) was superb. Strong support comes from Derek Jacobi, Guy Pearce and Timothy Spall. The screenplay by David Seidler is terrific, full of moments of touching, heartbreaking beauty but also moments of warm, delightfully British humour. I hadn't given a film five stars for a long time before this, but The King's Speech deserves every five stars, and every award, it gets.



BLUE VALENTINE - 4/5

A stunningly frank and real portrayal of the beginning and end of a relationship, this movie is almost unbearably honest, making it a hard watch but always worth persevering with. We aren't really shown the middle of the relationship, the events that begin to shift the dynamic from the happiness we see at the beginning, to the extreme sadness of the end- we are left to work this out for ourselves, and the movie is all the better for it. The soundtrack, which features the gorgeous music of Grizzly Bear, and also the voice of lead actor Ryan Gosling on 3 songs, works fantastically within the story. The film, in its frank reality, becomes intensely voyeuristic- we really feel at many stages as though these are moments that we should not be watching, that are too private and personal. It brilliantly evokes an uncomfortable, can't-look-away feeling in the audience. The real driving force of the film, however, is the performances of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in the lead roles. If they aren't Oscar-nominated then it is a travesty, for they lay themselves so physically and emotionally bare in these roles that their performances are almost unbelievably raw and naturalistic.



BLACK SWAN - 5/5

Now, to get it out of the way- I love Darren Aronofsky. I think he's one of the very finest filmmakers working today, and being as young as he still is, there is such an exciting future ahead of him too. Bearing this in mind, I probably view any new film he makes with some level of bias. Having said that, I think Black Swan is probably an exceptional movie with or without that bias, and Aronofsky is on fine form once again. Many people have drawn the similarities between this film and his previous feature, The Wrestler, and they are definitely there to be seen. Both portrayals of a physically destructive, under appreciated art, both portrayals of a person who seems only truly able to connect with that art- the people and things outside of it seem alien to them. Where Black Swan differs from The Wrestler, of course, is in its descent into a real psychological, fantastical hell- something which could easily slip too far into silliness and melodrama were it not anchored by Aronofsky's stylish direction and Natalie Portman's exquisite performance-of-a-lifetime as the troubled ballerina Nina. Black Swan borrows heavily from the body horror of early Cronenberg, from the psychological thriller genre, from the classic ballet movie The Red Shoes, but manages to find an originality all of its own. Clint Mansell, possibly my favourite ever soundtrack composer and a regular Aronofsky collaborator, contributes a superbly eerie score that twists and subverts Tchaikovsky's original Swan Lake music. The support from Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassell and Barbara Hershey is terrific, but the film is Portman's, and her performance must be a dead cert for the Oscars now. A delightfully twisted and dark fantasy horror of a ballet movie, full of psychosexual undertones (and overtones) and a disturbing view of the madness of both mind and body.