Very Last Minute Oscar Nominations Predictions

Just checked and is UP! Expect post soon.

Nominations are not up yet, but can't believe I guessed the 10 movies right!! LOL! I'm SOOOOO glad Javier Bardem got a nod!!! Deep inside me I'm VERY glad that Nolan didn't make it to Best Director (didn't enjoyed much film) and well, Russell got in. Also got right the actress (GREAT!) and now we know Hailee got a supporting nod (she should WIN the Oscar) and I'm glad that Hawkes got a nod, which gives Winter's Bone three top nominations - very good! Will wait for nods to be at site to do post!

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My crystal ball says the following.

Best Film
The Social Network
The King’s Speech
Black Swan
The Fighter
True Grit
Toy Story 3
The Kids Are All Right
Inception
127 Hours
Winter’s Bone

Another possible film is The Town, but there are no more slots, so if makes it, maybe one of the last two will be out.

Best Director
David Fincher for The Social Network
Darren Aronofsy for Black Swan
Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech
Christopher Nolan for Inception
Joel & Ethan Coen for True Grit

To be honest I prefer Debra Granik to Nolan but is almost impossible that Granik gets a nod; if she does will be a HUGE and very pleasant surprise. Coen Brothers are not a sure thing as David O. Russell could get in the fifth and last slot.

Best Actress
Natalie Portman in Black Swan
Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right
Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone
Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole
Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine

I’m so glad that tomorrow we will know who gets nominated as this category has so many good performances that makes guessing quite difficult. The last slot is the one more vulnerable and I didn’t included Hailee Steinfeld as she’s being promoted to the supporting role where she has better winning odds. Still, I insist that she deserves a nomination as lead actress (got one in BAFTA) and I really hope she gets one.

Best Supporting Actress
Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo in The Fighter

This category is not easy and my crystal ball has full blur; but will Hailee Steinfeld land here? I don’t know. Will Jacki Weaver? Who knows. Will Amy Adams get a nod? Will Mila Kunis or Barbara Hershey make it? Big mystery besides the two I’m sure will get nominated.

Best Actor
Colin Firth in The King’s Speech
Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network
Jeff Bridges in True Grit
James Franco in 127 Hours
Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine

The last slot is the most vulnerable and deep inside I wish that the name will be: Javier Bardem in Biutiful, let’s hope my wish becomes true.

Best Supporting Actor
Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech
Christian Bale in The Fighter
Andrew Garfield for The Social Network
Mark Ruffalo in The Kids Are All Right
Jeremy Renner in The Town

Last slot is the most vulnerable and the likes of John Hawkes, Sam Rockwell and sentimental choices like Michael Douglas or Pete Postlethwaite could make it.

Won’t try to guess the other categories but for the first time will guess winners at the last and final prediction of Oscar winners. We don’t have to wait much as nominations are tomorrow and then we will be playing the winners game.

Cheers!!!

2011 Guldbagge Awards Winners

Not yet at the official site but from news, here are the winners -in *Blue. As soon as they publish at their site will post link to check other categories. Noomi Rapace didn't win the award this year, but she got it last year for the Tattoo movie, so is all right; besides Pernilla August's Beyond got three awards.

To check all winners go here, available only in Swedish.

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Yesterday the nominations were announced and the film with more nominations, eight, is none other than Svinalängorna (Beyond) by Pernilla August and starring Noomi Rapace, excellent. Awarded annually since 1964, the Guldbagge or ‘Golden Beetle’ is the name of the Swedish Film Institute’s award for achievements during the previous year and the award ceremony will be on January 24 at Stockholm with Swedish Television SVT broadcasting the event live.

These are the nominees.

Best Film
I rymden finns inga känslor (Simple Simon), Andreas Öhman
*Sebbe, Babak Najafi
Svinalängorna (Beyond), Pernilla August

Best Director
*Pernilla August for Svinalängorna(Beyond)
Lisa Langseth for Till det som är vackert (Pure aka Beloved)
Babak Najafi for Sebbe

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Pernilla August in Miss Kicki, Håkon Liu, Sweden and Taiwan
Noomi Rapace in Svinalängorna (Beyond)
*Alicia Vikander in Till det som är vackert (Pure aka Beloved)

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Sebastian Hiort af Ornäs in Sebbe, Babak Najafi
*Joel Kinnaman in Snabba Cash (Easy Money)
Bill Skarsgård in I rymden finns inga känslor (Simple Simon) (yes, his father is Stellan Skarsgård)

Best Foreign Language Film
Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold, UK and Netherland
*Lourdes, Jessica Hausner, Austria, France and Germany
The Social Network, David Fincher, USA

To check nominees in all categories go here.

These are the best nominations I have learned so far as did you notice the many women honored with nominations? I’m impress. Even in the foreign language category out of three nominees two films are by female directors. Also impressed by Pernilla August who got two nods, one for her debut film as a director and another for her performance in a film that seems interesting. Most films are known to me, but there are a few new ones that captured my interest, especially Miss Kicki.  Since a few months ago I have been 'dying' to be able to watch Noomi Rapace's performance in Beyond and now got more interested as surely film will be great.

Michael Bay TMNT Reboot Will Not Be as Good as This Short

How to get gobs of attention as short-filmmaker:

STEP 1: Adapt popular comic/game/toy/etc property from 1980s or early-90s.

STEP 2: Do really good job.


hat-tip: io9

INTERMISSION

Sorry, I had to take a few days off from blogging to knock out some work so I could slip away and celebrate my wife’s birthday AND head to downtown Atlanta to go for a walk with a few thousand of my new closest pals. Now the Atlanta March For Life draws nowhere near the crowd of places like DC or San Francisco, but there was still an eerie kind of power to be found in thousands of people silently walking through the concrete canyons of the city, the only sounds being the occasional siren, a few helicopter flyovers, and the stray Hail Mary.

Of course, being who I am, on the way down to the march I couldn’t help but call to mind the most recent image of Atlanta which has been on everyone’s mind… that of hordes of zombies shambling through the various Peachtree Streets on AMC’s The Walking Dead.

The knee jerk reaction (especially if one only has the discernment skills of something like, say, an unfunny HBO talk show host) would probably be to compare the marchers to the zombies. But in this instance, the zombies in the above photo are more readily identifiable with a society hell bent on devouring itself. They are a tidal wave of mock-life mindlessly spreading a culture of death. On the other hand, Officer Rick up there, that’s us, trying to survive and protect human life where we find it.

Only, unlike in most zombie stories, there’s more than just a rag tag band of survivors involved in the struggle. At least it sure seemed that way from my viewpoint last Friday afternoon…

One day, in a more appropriate venue than a silly blog devoted to discussing crappy movies, I’ll have to tell everyone my personal involvement with abortion and why walking in that throng was the very, very least thing I could do. But for now, I’ll just let the Catechism have it's say. “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”

Please take a moment today to pray for our brothers and sisters marching around the country, and for those women (and men) who out of fear and desperation are considering the wrong choice, and especially for those unborn who deserve a chance at the life we ourselves so often take for granted.

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And then come back later when things aren’t so serious, cause I’ve still got more crappy movies to discuss than I know what to do with.

Brand New Day

Ladies and gentlemen, the 3rd and final appearance - as host, anyway - of The Game AntiThinker...



...but The Quest of The OverThinker has only just begun!

"I was an insect who dreamed of being a jogger... but now the dream is over"

Y'know what sucks about having over-developed foresight? The fact that it only seems to work in regards to the fate of ill-concieved movie projects. I can't call the Lottery or win a card game to save my life, but are you wondering who or what to short on the Hollywood Stock Exchange? Cuz if so, I'm your man.

The GOOD thing about it? I'm typically through with the stages of fanboy-outrage and into "acceptance" (or, rather, "whatever") pretty quick. Case in point: I find myself unable to summon the energy to give a damn about, say, J.J. Jameson being left out of The SpideReboot - yeah, kinda dissapointing in theory; but I kinda used up all my surplus-irritation for this mess back when they announced it, so every new detail just hits me with a middling sense of "lousy-sounding movie sounds slightly lousier, we'll find out next year."

Case in point: This weekend's meh-inducing panic-button were the above-pictured spy-snaps of Andrew Garfield's stuntman wearing a "stunt version" of the new Spidey-Suit, giving us a (sort-of) first look at the full design and the new mask. (The metal "spats" on the feet are probably to help the stunt-guy run, instead of a "real" part of the costume.)

It's not substantially more "revealing" than the first official shot from last week, nor is there any significant newness worth writing home about. They've gone with much smaller eyes, mainly, and you can more clearly see the how much more "busy" the design is: The blue parts are "broken up" into segments by lines, the strips of red up the arms is super-thin to the point of looking like racing-stripes and there are "matching" ones going down the back of the legs. You can also see that the interior of the gloves has blue fingers. Still immediately recognizable, but like I said... "busier." I'll be honest: I think all the extra detailing is kinda ugly-looking. Devin over at BAD thinks it looks like Ben Reilly's version from the books, which it sorta does and which is perversely appropriate.

What I DO hope this view of a harshly-lit, non-"battle-damaged" version of it does it put to rest this bullshit meme that this version looks more "home-made" than the one from the earlier films. No, it doesn't. It's same style with the same fabric-pattern and even the same raised-webs. Neither of them look anything like something a teenager can make in his house, neither has any live-action Spider-Man suit ever filmmed except the wrestling-costumed from the first one, maybe. And for that matter... why would anyone want it to? In a movie where a guy becomes a superhero - as opposed to a cancer patient - from a radioactive spider-bite, is the sewing skill really where you hinge the suspension of disbelief?

2011 Producers Guild of America Award Winners

Seems that Oscar race could be interesting after all -IF trend continues- as last night (well, not long ago) the first actual Academy voters gave the top award to The King Speech! News are all over but not yet at the site. Winners are in *BLUE.

--//--

Today the Producers Guild of America announced the complete list of nominees and here it is.

The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures

127 Hours, Danny Boyle
Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky
Inception, Christopher Nolan
The Fighter, David O. Russell
The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko
*The King’s Speech, Tom Hooper
The Social Network, David Fincher
The Town, Ben Affleck
Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich
True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
Despicable Me, Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud
How To Train Your Dragon, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders
*Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich

As previously announced these are the nominees for the documentaries.

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Alex Gibney
Earth Made of Glass, Deborah Scranton
Inside Job, Charles Ferguson
Smash His Camera, Leon Gast
The Tillman Story, Amir Bar-Lev
*Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim

Above names are directors and to check the list with the producers names plus TV categories go here. Winners will be announced on Saturday, January 22, 2011.

With the announcement of the feature films we get our first idea of how the Best Picture nominees could look at the Oscar, as members of the guild are also Academy voters and even if there are many other Academy members I tend to believe that not much will change as the ten nominated films are the same as the ones that everyone has been speculating will get nominated at Oscar. By the end of the month we will learn the winner and things could get a bit more interesting, but my crystal ball tells me that winner will be one of the following: The Social Network, The King’s Speech or True Grit.