The 83rd Academy Awards are Sunday. The list of nominees can be found at this link: http://www.imdb.com/features/oscars/2011/nominations
If I picked the winners:
Best Picture and Best Director: “The Social Network” David Fincher. A vivid look into very high places in this world, Ivy League Harvard and business in Silicon Valley, angel investors and broken contracts met with impregnable mergers. Not the least, classic narcissistic personality disorder.
Best Actor: Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network.” All the other nominees did some truly superb work. But Eisenberg demonstrates uncompromised nerve in playing somebody who is both computer tech genius but dismissive of anybody that helps him, a scrawny jerk as opposed to the great machismo jerks DeNiro played in “Raging Bull” or “This Boy’s Life.” His character really believes he is the smartest guy in the room, but the subtle vulnerability (subtlety by Eisenberg is great) is that he can be won over by Sean Parker or a hot approachable girl.
Best Actress: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan.” As the over-trained Nina with no social life outside the ballerina company, Portman expertly poises a key quality of fragility. Portman’s body matches the necessities of the character, but she uses her body in a number of ways (the obsessive-compulsive scratching, per se) to a point that not only is she obsessed with what’s under her skin but she gets under our skin, too.
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, “The Fighter.” How beserk is Bale within the very first scene? Bale is in constant hyper-mode mania as a drug addict who gets in the way of his brother Mickey’s dreams (Mark Wahlberg) by chewing up family attention. He steals the center of attention in every scene he’s in, but adding to the family squabble is what the movie is about.
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter.” As the control freak mother, Leo is just as essential to adding to family turmoil even when she believes that she is an antidote to family turmoil. Because of her, we get a sense of what a wildly dysfunctional family this really is. She is the epitome of toxic love.
Best Original Screenplay: Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, “The Fighter.” An unusual (meathead) choice, it must appear. But I think it’s best because the behavior is so natural that we forget it’s written. How against the grain, you must consider, in that the family circle of chaos becomes so captivating that your anticipation for boxing scenes matters less. “Another Year” would be a close second choice.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network.” Smartest story construction and the most acid-strong dialogue. One of the key choices made was to employ “Rashomon” flashbacks which pivot around two law depositions. One trap Sorkin could have fallen into was to over-explain Eisenberg’s motivations through dialogue. Instead, he lets us ponder on his protagonist’s coldness and invites us to theory. Along in the process, he creates one of cinema’s great thought-provoking microcosms of driven, selfish guys driving 21st century business practices.
Best Animated Feature: “Toy Story 3.” The most wonderful and life-embracing film in quite some time. Touching, marvelous, witty, and a trustworthy delight.
Best Cinematography: “The Social Network.” Burrowed in deep and stark colors, it lends feeling in the corrosive, competitive world that is essential to its theme.
Best Film Editing: “127 Hours.” How do you manage to just get your arm stuck in rocky canyon lands? The editing lets you see how improbable is possible. But moreover, there is no other film that so fiercely spirals into a stream of consciousness than this Danny Boyle film.
Best Original Score: “Inception.” Is there a composer out there who crafts an entire symphony to accompany the images better than Hans Zimmer? His work brings a startling pulse to a production. He previously scored Christopher Nolan’s previous smash “The Dark Knight.”
Best Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Visual Effects: “Inception.” The year’s most sensory enhanced film.
Best Foreign Film: “In a Better World” (Denmark). Susanne Bier is becoming a world renowned filmmaker worth recognizing. “After the Wedding” and “Brothers” are among her other films.
****
There is something more elusive that I wish happens at the 83rd Oscars that would be far more significant than any chosen victor. It would help change the industry back to what it once was. It would put on-screen talent center stage again instead of talent regulated as a prop which what actors have become. It would give movies integrity again, and respect audience intelligence and taste again.
If there is anything I want it is for one of Hollywood’s most respected and powerful actors to take the podium and make a vociferous attack against 3-D that has permeated multiplexes. To axe Hollywood’s crummiest gimmick and inform the suckers that continue to give 3-D movies a second, third and fourth chance that 3-D is not going to get any better, it’s only going to continue to swindle and intrude upon the movie experience. You can’t see a damn thing anytime you wear those glasses, i.e., those plastic blinders and the movie transforms into darkness.
“Avatar” 3-D was a one-time curious experience and “Toy Story 3” was tolerable. Any animated film in 3-D, in general, has nothing three-dimensional about it. “Yogi Bear” as puerile as the content was at least had lunchmeal flying at you from the screen. “Alice and Wonderland” and “Tron: Legacy” had occasional multi airborne effects but were mostly negligible that were lacking in texture and marred by grubbiness. So many of them are riddled in sucky-ness – that’s you “The Last Airbender.” What all of these titles have in common is that 3-D is an unnecessary distraction and an eye-sore. 3-D jacks our very natural deciphering ability to see 2-D images as three-dimensional.
If the powerful figures stood up and made a statement at the podium ripping 3-D to shreds then I honestly would be so happy that I wouldn’t care who wins.
