Wow! I just got finished watching the Oscars, and what a movie year it was! Not only that, but I made my most accurate predictions ever. Didn’t that set with the Swarovski crystal curtain look incredible? And I think the device of having 5 past winners in a category present the award was marvellous. This year’s winners and nominees must have felt so lucky!

Here are the highlights and the things that surprised me:

• Sean Penn beat Mickey Rourke for Best Actor! I thought Sean gave the better performance, but I was sure emotion would carry Mickey into the top spot. Shows what I know.
• Slumdog Millionaire takes 8 awards. Like I told you, they went down just like bowling pins. India has arrived.
• The foreign film that won had no distribution in the U.S. whatsoever. I saw The Class, Revanche, and Waltz with Bashir and was able to read a pretty extensive review of The Baader Meinhof Complex. But Departures won! There may be something to the rule that requires those who vote on foreign films to attend screenings of them. At least in this case, it seemed to give them all a fair shake.
• I correctly predicted 13 winners. I got 8 wrong and didn’t vote on 3 (the shorts categories). The only major category I didn’t get right was Best Actor.

My pal B.J. Schone asked me to make a top ten list of movies for the year, so here they are (not all were Oscar nominees):

1. The Dark Knight
2. In Bruges
3. Twilight – Yes, I’m a Twihard, and that will be the subject of another blog post.
4. Slumdog Millionaire
5. Milk
6. Happy-Go-Lucky
7. Frozen River
8. Let the Right One In
9. Doubt
10. The Wrestler

My husband will no doubt be shocked that I left out WALL-E, Tropic Thunder and Iron Man. I just wish I could have included Revanche, but I kept it to 10.

What did you think? Anyone get robbed at the Oscars, in your opinion? Was there a brilliant movie I didn’t mention? If so, leave me a comment.

The 2009 Academy Awards are just two days away! Here’s who would win if I ran the show, along with my predictions for who will win.

Best Actor
On pure acting chops, the best was Sean Penn, but Hollywood is a big softie and tends to reward living the role. In that case, Mickey Rourke takes it. Frank Langella was damn good, but I don’t see him beating the Mick. Michael Sheen should have been nominated for Frost/Nixon.

- My pick: Mickey Rourke
- Who will win: Mickey Rourke

Best Actress
Kate Winslet won the Golden Globe, but for Revolutionary Road, not The Reader (which is what she’s nominated for here). Meryl Streep won the SAG. This will be a squeaker. I’d be thrilled if Melissa Leo beat them both.

- My pick: Meryl Streep
- Who will win: Between Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep, too close to call – probably Meryl by a nose

Best Supporting Actor
Anyone who bets against Heath Ledger in this category is a fool, and I think I would say that even if he hadn’t died (though we’ll never know, will we?).

- My pick: Heath Ledger
- Who will win: Heath Ledger

Best Supporting Actress
Remember that urban legend about Marisa Tomei not really winning the Oscar, but the envelope was misread? It wasn’t true, but it felt true. Don’t count on her winning again. Viola Davis wins the Dame Judy Dench Briefest Performance to Be Nominated Award.

- My pick: Penelope Cruz
- Who will win: Penelope Cruz (Please God, let Javier Bardem present it to her and kiss her really hard!)

Documentary
I had absolutely no way to see 3 of the 5 nominated films, so I’ll pick from the 2 I did see.

- My pick: Man On Wire
- Who will win: Man On Wire, but really I have no idea

Foreign Language Film
Revanche was quite good (and good luck finding it), but Waltz with Bashir was absolutely shattering. I’ve never heard a theater so silent as was mine at the end of this film. I couldn’t decide whether The Class was a documentary or scripted.

- My pick: Waltz with Bashir
- Who will win: Waltz with Bashir

Adapted Screenplay
Benjamin Button proved that you can make a 3 hour movie, and base it on an F. Scott Fitzgerald work, and still have no story at all. Expect Doubt to feel the “But did he do it?” backlash. Slumdog bowled us all over, so I see a lot of awards going down just like duckpins – this is one of them.

- My pick: Slumdog Millionaire
- Who will win: Slumdog Millionaire

Original Screenplay
Oh, so many good nominees in this category. You really can’t go wrong, whatever you pick. See them all. The Dark Knight should have been nominated in this category – if it had, it would be my pick.

- My pick: In Bruges (very narrowly over Frozen River)
- Who will win: Milk

Cinematography
Did you notice how every scene in Benjamin Button looked like a landscape painting? A bit too precious for my taste, but it wins awards.

- My pick: The Dark Knight
- Who will win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Director
Another pin goes down for Slumdog. Christopher Nolan should have been nominated for The Dark Knight and would have been my pick.

- My pick: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
- Who will win: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

Best Picture
Slumdog will make it a turkey (in bowling, that’s good). Should have been The Dark Knight. Really, the Academy has to get over its prejudice against comic book movies. They aren’t going to stop making them, and making them well.

My pick: Slumdog Millionaire
Who will win: Slumdog Millionaire

What are your picks? Leave me a comment!

I’ve been making good progress on my Oscar Run. Just to remind the uninitiated, an Oscar Run is an attempt to see all feature-length movies nominated for an Oscar or containing an Oscar nominee before the prizes are awarded. This year, that is this Sunday, February 22.

Coming soon: my top ten list from these movies, my Oscar predictions, and who would win if I were giving out the Oscars.

Movies still left to see:
Revolutionary Road
The Class

Movies I didn’t see, but can’t access:
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Departures
The Garden
Trouble the Water

Movies I’ve seen:
Australia (reviewed here)
Bolt
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Defiance
Doubt
The Duchess
Encounters at the End of the World
Frost/Nixon
Frozen River (reviewed here)
Happy-Go-Lucky (reviewed here)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
In Bruges
Iron Man
Kung Fu Panda
Man On Wire
Milk
Rachel Getting Married
The Reader
Revanche
Slumdog Millionaire
Tropic Thunder
Vicky Christina Barcelona
The Visitor (reviewed here)
WALL-E
Waltz with Bashir
Wanted
The Wrestler

Which were your favorites? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Official website – IMDB listing

Oscar nomination: Costume Design

I was prepared to laugh it up over Australia. Something about the trailers hinted at a movie that was way too ambitious, too arch, too earnest, and at 3 hours, too long – and this was the director that gave us Moulin Rouge, after all.

Well, I finally watched it last night, and damned if I wasn’t laughing and crying at all the right parts (you know, when the director wants you to).

It is not the hot mess I expected. It is not a steaming pile. It is, in fact, a rather good Aussie hybrid of a western and a war picture, and the family dynamic at the heart of it (Nicole Kidman as mom, Hugh Jackman as dad, and cute newcomer Brandon Walters as their adopted son) was one I bought completely. The only significant flaw I saw was that you can see the neat resolution coming about a mile off.

So good for you, Baz Luhrmann. All is forgiven. And I think I’d like to see your little film again, if only to experience again that thrilling cattle-stampeding-toward-the-kid scene.

In other news: I’m still not sure how I’m going to see The Baader Meinhof Complex, but here’s a review of it I found online in Time Magazine.

A successful Oscar Run can only be achieved if you see every nominated feature length movie. Thus, I’m in a pickle, because the following films are hiding from me. Can you help?

I need to find a way to see:

• The Baader Meinhof Complex (from Germany)
• Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
• The Class (from France)
• Departures (from Japan)
• The Garden
• Trouble the Water

I’m sure it won’t shock you to hear these are all documentaries or foreign films. Nevertheless, I want them, and will drive anywhere from San Diego to L.A. to see them. Little help?

Many thanks to my friend Jonathan Rimorin, who got me copies of Revanche (from Austria) and Australia (not strictly a foreign film, but a if-you-were-sick-that-week-you-missed-it film).

Ray (Melissa Leo) turns to border smuggling to keep the heat on.

Official website – IMDB listing

Oscar nominations: Best Actress – Melissa Leo, Best Original Screenplay – Courtney Hunt

Times are tough. It’s the dead of winter in Massena, New York, and Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is a part-time cashier down to feeding her two kids nothing but Tang and popcorn. It gets cold in their rusted-out old trailer, but when your gambling husband takes off with the balloon payment for the double-wide you hoped to buy, what’s a mom to do? Loading Chinese and Pakistani illegal immigrants in the trunk of your car and smuggling them across the border suddenly seems like a viable option.

First-time writer/director Courtney Hunt’s film Frozen River tells the story of two moms desperate for some easy money who learn there is no such thing. Ray forms an uneasy partnership with Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk Indian woman who cons her into driving back and forth across a frozen river on the reservation, one of the many unguarded spots on the U.S./Canada border. She needs Ray for her ability to count the cash during transactions (Lila’s eyes are bad, though she is fairly young) and for her car’s push-button trunk release. Ray’s whiteness also means troopers won’t pull them over. Once Ray realizes what’s in her trunk, she hesitates, but decides to do it again. It’s thin ice for both of them, in more ways than one.

The river is that place you shouldn’t go, that thing you shouldn’t do, but that circumstances keep bringing you back to. Melissa Leo has mostly acted in TV shows prior to this (Homicide: Life on the Street), so it’s nice to see her get an Oscar nom for what I believe is her first starring role in a feature film. She is fierce and sad as Ray, and her frustration as her desperate bids to keep her family afloat don’t work out is heartbreaking.

Widowed Lila is no better off than Ray – fired from her job at an Indian bingo parlor, she hides in her mother-in-law’s back yard at night to spy on her toddler son, who was abducted from her. She leaves the money she earns in a potato chip can by the back door, but M-I-L promptly rejects it. Misty Upham is the picture of dumb suffering in the role, her stoic silence resembling that of a short-haired Marilyn from Northern Exposure.

When they realize that on their last trip they left a baby in a duffel bag out on the river ice, you’d think they’d quit the game, but like any addict, they both need one last score. It’s one too many, of course, and someone’s got to pay the price. Who will it be?

Oscar Run status: In addition to movies reviewed here, saw Defiance, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Kung Fu Panda, and Man On Wire, which leaves 17 more movies to see in 19 days. Gotta pick up the pace! Coming soon: Review of Man On Wire.

Even Scott, the angry racist driving instructor, eventually succumbs to Poppy's goofy charm

Official website – IMDB listing

Oscar nomination: Best Original Screenplay – Mike Leigh

Do you know that moment when you open a bottle of champagne, and you can feel the cork moving in your hand, almost of its own volition? It’s like an angel is saying, “Let me out!” In the same way, giggles seem to explode from Sally Hawkins as she plays the irrepressible Poppy in Mike Leigh’s film, Happy-Go-Lucky.

Poppy is a kind, goofy primary school teacher, a PJ Harvey doppelganger in pink, and friend to children and madmen. She dresses as if colorblind, and at first you wonder whether she isn’t a little nuts. Even when she’s in physical pain, she laughs her head off. But her positivity is forceful – to those who find her odd, she keeps smiling, and eventually they smile back. She bounces through the film as if on a perpetual trampoline. Too angular to be sexy, too goofy-faced to be beautiful, she is nonetheless a queen, and my kind of heroine.

Her polar opposite is Scott (Eddie Marsan), a bitter, emotionally stunted, and dictatorial driving instructor. She begins taking lessons from him, and each session is a little war: Pollyanna versus the Nazi. He rails at her about her carelessness, her improper footwear, how she will kill him and herself and all the pedestrians in the road. She grins and laughs, cracks jokes and tries to figure him out, not letting it get her down. Her driving seems to get only marginally better, but they keep at it, meeting every Saturday at noon.

Poppy proves to be a kind of emotional savant. She detects abuse at home in the life of the bully in her class, and listens to the ranting of a homeless man with what seems like perfect comprehension. Her head is filled with more than just fizzy champagne, after all. And her occasional perceptive questions start Scott thinking about her a bit too often. She finds him hanging around her block, and not on Saturday.

But how can a man incapable of happiness really connect to a woman who is incapable of feeling any other way? He can’t – and when Poppy falls for the kind and hunky social worker (Samuel Roukin) who helps her with her bully student, Scott explodes. The resulting confrontation is remarkable not only for the violence of his rage, but the equal steel with which she meets it, and the sympathy in her eyes all the while.

Mike Leigh shot this film mostly on the streets of London, and employed the improvisational style for which he is known. This works especially well with the Cockney interjections of the actors, though I confess I might need to see the film a second time with a translator. (Can anyone tell me what “worra” means?)

See this film! You’ll be happy you did.

Viewing note: We saw this film at the last place it’s showing in the San Diego area, the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas. It was refreshing to hear the clackety-clack of an old-fashioned film projector there. Better hurry if you want to see it on a big screen!

Richard Jenkins gets his groove back with a little help from his friends

Official website – IMDB listing

Oscar nomination: Best Actor – Richard Jenkins

This is a quiet little film from Thomas McCarthy, the writer/director of 2003′s The Station Agent, about the power of music to draw us out and connect us. Walter (Richard Jenkins) is a Connecticut college professor who has taught the same class for 20 years and claims to be writing a book, though he’s mostly just avoiding other people. When pressed to present a paper in New York, he finds an immigrant couple has taken up residence in his apartment in the city, and an unlikely friendship results between himself and Tarek (Haaz Sleiman). Just as Tarek begins to teach Walter to play the djembe, an African drum, and “to feel, and to not think,” Tarek is arrested and Walter discovers that he and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira) are in the country illegally. Walter finds that he is the only person who cares about Tarek that can visit him while in detention, as both Zainab and Tarek’s mother, Mouna, are illegal and can’t risk it.

Richard Jenkins gives a subtle and nuanced performance as a man who is not looking for a connection, but finds one anyway. What he learns from Tarek changes the meter of his life and there’s no turning back to his old hermit ways.  Haaz Sleiman’s portrayal of Tarek is especially moving, from his joy when playing the djembe, to his despair as a Muslim detainee in post-9/11 New York City. Hiam Abbass (Mouna) has quiet dignity as the mother who can only comfort her son from a distance, and who completes the reopening of Walter’s heart.

Fans of Fela Anikulapo Kuti will appreciate the soundtrack and fans of Greenwich Village will appreciate the location shots. I liked the whole dang thing.

Viewing note: This is the first Oscar Run movie I saw by using my cable company’s On Demand service. Pretty good price ($6), couldn’t be more convenient, and it was in HD. Oscar Runs are getting easier all the time!

Now that the Oscar nominees have been announced, it’s time to go see a lot of movies.As I explained in my previous post, I try to watch as many Oscar-nominated movies as humanly possible before the Oscar telecast. That has sometimes meant nearly 40 movies in less than a month.

This year’s list is much more manageable. There are 36 nominated movies (not including shorts), and I’ve already seen 12 of them.

Here’s what I’ll see and how:

That breaks down to 12 movies to see in the theater, 5 to see on DVD, and 6 I have no effing idea how I’m going to find.

By the way, I am not a movie industry insider, so none of these will be sent to my home on DVD for my consideration. I’ll be paying full price at the theater or buying the DVD (with any luck, on BluRay).

If you have any leads on how to see the NFI movies (those marked with ?), please share!

Have you seen the Oscar nominee list yet? No? Okay, go here and then let’s talk:

81st Annual Academy Awards Nominees

You back? Great. Here are my initial reactions.

• Dark Knight snubbed! In my opinion, it should have gotten noms for Best Picture, Best Director and one of the screenplay awards. Somebody buy Christopher Nolan a drink, even this early in the morning.
• How did I overlook Frozen River? Completely missing from my pre-nomination list. Forgive me, Melissa Leo.
• Damn the costume award! It always makes me see a movie I don’t want to. This year, that’s Australia (shudder).
• Yay for In Bruges! That was a brilliant but mostly overlooked film that got some love from both the Golden Globes (winner, Colin Farrell, Best Actor in Musical or Comedy) and the Academy (nominee, Original Screenplay). Well done.
• Nothing for…I’ve Loved You Too Long, Gran Torino, or Burn After Reading. Hmmm.
• Foreign film noms did not include Let the Right One In. Go see it anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll post my revised “movies to see” list, and in coming days, reviews of Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler.