Oscar Nods Announced!

I had written my Oscar predictions for the year, but never got around to posting them. So, now that the Oscar nominees have already been announced, let's see how close I was:

Best Picture
Juno
No Country for Old Men
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood
Zodiac

3 out of 5 ain't bad. I'll go ahead and say that I naïvely included a lot of nominations for Zodiac, thinking that a low-key Spring release date wouldn't hurt its chances of Oscar gold. Silly me!

Best Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

I was really surprised at how many of the Best Actor nominees I got right. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was another film that undeservedly got snubbed by the Academy this year, but at least Hoffman got a nomination in the Best Supporting category. Also, I didn't know if Tommy Lee Jones' character in No Country for Old Men was the "star" of the movie, which probably explains why he was nominated, but for In the Valley of Elah instead.

Best Actress
Amy Adams, Enchanted
Helena Bonham Carter, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Julie Christie, Away from Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Ellen Page, Juno

Once again, three out of five. Adams will soon receive the Oscar she should've gotten for her role in Junebug, just not this year. I have no idea why Cate Blanchett received a nod for her Elizabeth sequel, not only because she was nominated for an Oscar for the same role back in 1998, but she's also up for a Best Supporting nod for I'm Not There.

Best Supporting Actor
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Paul Dano, There Will Be Blood
Robert Downey, Jr., Zodiac
Albert Finney, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Kene Holliday, Great World of Sound

Wow, did I ever screw this one up. Bardem is a given, but no props for Dano? Seriously? The dude more than held his own with Daniel Day-Lewis, so that's gotta be worth something! Also, I believe Kene Holliday's performance is one of the best I saw at Cucalorus 13 and I hope Great World of Sound finds some sort of a cult following.

Best Supporting Actress
Juliette Binoche, Paris Je T'Aime
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Jennifer Garner, Juno
Samantha Morton, Control
Imelda Staunton, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Once again, a measly one out of five. Even though Juliette Binoche's part in the sprawling project Paris, Je T'Aime is a small one, I was moved by her performance and thought it deserved recognition. I'm surprised the Academy overlooked Jennifer Garner in Juno, but maybe they haven't forgiven her for Elektra yet. Also, let me just say that Imelda Staunton's character in the fifth Harry Potter movie is one of the great villains of modern-day cinema.

Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
David Cronenberg, Eastern Promises
David Fincher, Zodiac
Sidney Lumet, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

I was happy to see P.T. Anderson and the Coens up on the list, but no Lumet? I enjoyed Jason Reitman's direction as much as the next person, but there were better directors out there this year. Cronenberg and Fincher have never even been nominated for a Best Director Oscar, a mistake that must soon be rectified.

Best Original Screenplay
Brad Bird, Jim Capobianco and Jan Pinkava, Ratatouille
Jeffrey Blitz, Rocket Science
Diablo Cody, Juno
Kelly Masterson, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
George Smith and Craig Zobel, Great World of Sound

I was blown away to find that I had correctly predicted that Ratatouille would be up for a Best Screenplay Oscar. And even though Blitz and Zobel were on there mainly 'cause I loved those movies so much at Cucalorus, I am once again disappointed at the Academy's lack of props for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Leslie Dixon, Hairspray
John Logan, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
James Vanderbilt, Zodiac

Hairspray was kind of a last-minute addition to my list, mainly because I hadn't seen a whole lot of movies based on a previously existing work. Sweeney Todd also didn't get as many nods as I had thought it would, and once again, no love for Zodiac.

Overall, I'm happy that two of my favorite films of 2007, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, got the most nominations this year. I'm also happy that at least one song from Once is up for the Best Original Song award (though, according to the New York Times, this may be redacted). However, it saddens me to say that the Onion's pick for the worst movie of 2007 has been nominated for a Best Makeup award. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Academy Award nominated...Norbit.

Cloverfield Breathes New Life Into a Dying Genre

J.J. Abrams’ latest silver-screen spectacle reminds me of those “moving chair” rides at theme parks. You sit in front of a giant movie screen and watch some five-minute action-packed film (sometimes in 3D) while your chair rocks back and forth to correspond with whatever is happening onscreen. I half expected to walk out of the theater to find guys handing out buttons that read, “I survived Cloverfield.” However, the biggest surprise of the evening wasn’t the big reveal of the hotly-debated monster, but the remarkable attention to character development and plotline that producer Abrams and his crew (comprised of director Matt Reeves and screenwriter Drew Goddard) bestow upon the often dumbed-down and over-expository genre of giant monster movies.

The film opens with some ingenious “Department of Defense” visuals, informing us that what we are about to see was obtained from wreckage in an area “formerly known as ‘Central Park’”. Pretty soon, we are introduced to Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a successful twentysomething who’s just landed a vice president position at some company in Japan (what he does exactly is never elaborated on). He begins filming his girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman), and they start planning a trip to Coney Island. Suddenly, the film cuts to a few weeks later, when one of Rob’s friends, Lily (Jessica Lucas), and his brother, Jason (Mike Vogel), decide to throw a surprise going-away party, and take the camcorder in order for people to give testimonials during the event. Pretty soon, the camera ends up in the hands of Hud (T.J. Miller), another of Rob’s friends, and then the trouble starts happening. One of the more innovative plot devices in Cloverfield is the fact that Hud is recording over the aforementioned Coney Island footage, so that throughout the film, the camera occasionally cuts back to that earlier recording, providing an ironic juxtaposition of visuals, as well as a bittersweet ending scene.

Goddard's script spends a generous amount of time building each of the characters’ back-stories, something that comes in handy once the mayhem begins. In fact, one of the best things about Cloverfield is that the filmmakers have crafted a sci-fi/horror film in which the audience is actively engaged with the characters and is genuinely concerned about what will happen to them. Hud provides much of the comic relief, but none of it feels forced and the script thankfully keeps the humor to a minimum when things start to get serious. For a PG-13 film, Cloverfield is surprisingly violent, with a scene involving a makeshift hospital in the middle of a clothing store being the most gruesome.

As for the monster, Abrams and Co. do a great job of only showing parts of the monster from time to time, very much in the tradition of Alien, only quite larger in scale. Early in the film, news reports show the creature unleashing smaller, spider-like parasites that play an important role in a particularly unnerving scene involving a pitch-black subway tunnel. Thankfully, Cloverfield doesn’t keep its secrets for long, and fans will be happy to know that you get to see more than enough of the main creature towards the end of the film, in broad daylight, no less!

Overall, Cloverfield breathes some much-needed life back into a genre that all but vanished from the American landscape after the dismal box office of 1998’s Godzilla. Hopefully, J.J. Abrams’ vision will pave the way for future filmmakers to revisit the giant monster movie and deliver their own original and innovative spin on it.