Victoria, no, not the Queen.

In 1872, 45 year old Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to run for president.  27 year old Brie Larson is about to make a movie about the campaign.  Talk about age discrimination.

The Interview

Really want to piss-off Kim Jong Un?  The Interview is now eligible for Academy consideration.  Yes, I'm talking about a best picture nomination.  Come on Academy members, do us a favor.   You guys can give the actual award to one of those boring English films you love so much, but a nomination...why not?

Roger Ebert

Film critics like to think of themselves as arbiters of taste.  Roger Ebert, who died yesterday at the age of 70, was one of the few who could legitimately make that claim.  As an admirer of good writing, I wish I could say that it was because of his newspaper columns, but that would be a lie.  It was the television show that he hosted, first with the late Gene Siskel, then others, that made him America's most respected critic.  Fortunately, unlike many other film critics on the airwaves, Ebert really knew film; what made a good movie, and what made a bad one.  After I heard about his death, I went on line, and found the one thing that's practically a job requirement for all critics, the top 10 list.

His top ten, in alphabetical order, 1. Casablanca, 2. Citizen Kane, 3. Floating Weeds, 4. Gates of Heaven, 5. La Dolce Vita, 6. Notorious, 7. Raging Bull, 8. The Third Man, 9. 28 Up, 10.  2001: A Space Odyssey.

Any  top ten list is, by it's very nature, highly idiosyncratic.  Looking over Ebert's choices, I'd question Gates of Heaven, a documentary about pet cemeteries, and Raging Bull.  I've always felt Martin Scorsese to be over rated.   (That doesn't mean I think Raging Bull is a bad movie, it just wouldn't be on my list.)  And just to come clean, I can't comment on 28 Up, the only film on the list I haven't seen.  I was also happy to Casablanca on his list, a movie that gets too little respect, I suspect, because it's so loved, by so many people.  Still, while admitting the impossibility of coming up with a top ten that isn't open to challenge, here's mine, in no particular order.

1. The Searchers, 2. Sunrise, a Story of Two Humans, 3. Pandora's Box, 4. Notorious, 5. A Corner In Wheat, 6. The Apu Trilogy (Actually three films, Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and The World of Apu) 7. The Battle of Algiers, 8. Grand Illusion, 9. Tittiticutt Follies 10. Barry Lyndon.  And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that two hours from now, that list would be completely different.

A few years ago, a couple of film fanatic friends of mine and I agreed to start a blog of films we loved.  Nothing fancy, just a list of films, main credits and plot synopsis.  We all gave up on it after awhile.  I keep thinking I should go back and update things, but, so far, I haven't done so.  It can be found at www.greatmovieslist.blogspot.com

Last Minute Oscar Predictions

I admit it, I should have put this up a week ago.  The fact is, I've been very lazy with the whole political/cultural blogging thing.  It's not that I haven't had anything to rant about, it's that I've become some deadened by what's going on, that I'm kind of just rolling over and letting the numb pass.  Problem is, it's not passing.  Still, I'm a huge movie buff and even though I find the Oscars exasperating and the actual show to be a major bore....well, movie buffs love the Oscars.  So here goes, my annual Oscar prediction post.

Like last year, I'll be listing three names or titles.  The first will be my prediction of who will actually win.  The second, who I would award from among the nominees.  And finally, who I would chose from all the movies I've seen.  As noted in the past, I work in the film industry, and as I've also noted,  most of  us who work in film don't make enough money to see manymovies.  This year hasn't been too bad.  I've seen all the best picture nominees except Life of Pi, all the directors except Ang Li, and all the acting nods except Helen Hunt in The Sessions.  So here goes.

Best Supporting Actress.  1. Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables.  2. Amy Adams for The Master.  3. Amy Adams for The Master.  Hey, I might have meant the Clint Eastwood movie she was in, but then I didn't see that one.  Nothing against Hathaway,but the nice voice, weight loss and and the filmed head shave doesn't alter the fact that she was only on screen for about four minutes.  Adams as the hard as steel, manipulative wife of cult founder Lancaster Dodd in The Master really stood out for me.  I was also impressed by Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook.  It's hard to play the less flashy roll and still hold a moral center in a complex film.

Best Supporting Actor.  1. Robert De Nero in Silver Linings Playbook.  2. Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master.  3. Samuel. L. Jackson in Django Unchained.   This is the one category that doesn't have a real, clear cut favorite.  De Nero will win because he hasn't won an Oscar in thirty years.  I know that's a silly reason, but I've seen some of the ads aimed at voters and it's the same approach used last year for Meryl Streep and The Iron Lady. ( A dreadful movie.)  I was hard pressed to find a preference from among the nominees.  Hoffman and Waltz could just as easily been nominated as leads, which gives them a bit of a leg up.  In the end, I chose Hoffman because I loved The Master more than Django.  Which brings us to the actor I would have given the Oscar to if he had been nominated.  Samuel L. Jackson's turn as Stephan, the house slave, who lives by manipulating those around him, by playing one side against the other in a fight for survival in a harsh and brutal situation, created  an incredibly complex character that a lesser actor couldn't have accomplished.  Jackson's best, and that's saying a lot.  Why hasn't Sam won one of these things before?

Best Actress.  1. Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook.  2. Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook.  3. Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook.  I hope no one out there thought I meant Hunger Games, though after seeing SLP, I wouldn't mind seeing her in, well anything.  There is only one person in this category that I would nix and that's Naomi Watts in The Impossible.  Other than that, I wouldn't be unhappy with any winner.  This is also a category that could have the big upset.  If it happens it will be Emmanuelle Riva for Amour.  Great movie. Depressing, but a great movie nevertheless.

Best Actor.  1. Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln.  2. Joaquin Phoenix for The Master.  3. Joaquin Phoenix for The Master.  Yes, I know.....Day-Lewis, English actor, aren't they all wonderful, yada, yada, yada.  Hey, no knock on the man, but it's Phoenix in a land slide for me.  His performance as a man desperate for any real human connection and his complete inability to make that connection just blew me away.  I don't often say this about a performance because it's kind of on the pretentious side, but we're moving into one for the ages, Shakespearean, and all those other, over the top superlatives that actors like to use.  Watch his body as well as listening to his words.  Always stiff and posed in odd angles.  Just great.  As far as Day-Lewis goes, quite frankly, I thought it a bit wooden.   Or more aptly, marble like, as in more statue than human being.

Best Director.  1.Steven Spielberg for Lincoln.  2. Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild.  3. Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master.  I've always had mixed feelings about Spielberg.  Quite frankly I think he's at his best when making slight movies.  Jaws was a great horror film and the much derided War of the Worlds was pretty good science fiction.  It's the serious Spielberg that's less interesting.  In ads for the film, Spielberg let's us know that he didn't want to make a movie about the great man but about the human.  He didn't succeed.  As far as Zeitlin, the only reason I chose him over David O. Russell for SLP or Michael Haneke is because he made a wonderful movie with a whole lot less resources, including an amateur cast.  And again I go to The Master.  Let's put it this way, I don't think anyone's going to be surprised about the next category.

Best Picture.  1. Argo  2. Django Unchained.  3. The Master.  Argo will win because the directors branch of the Academy snubbed Ben Afleck and the actors branch is offended.  It's a really good movie, but for me the three films that stood out, among the nominees, were Django Unchained, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook.  Throw in Amour, and there are five really good choices this year.  As already noted I didn't see Life of Pi, so no recommendation there, and as far as the others go, Zero Dark Thirty could have been trimmed to Zero Dark Twenty, Lincoln, as I've already noted was too reverential, and Les Miserables....it's not a great musical, it's a bad opera.  It's The Master that was the great film of the year.  Writer, director Paul Thomas Anderson came up with a film about the universal human need for acceptance as seen through the eyes of one of the great misfits of film history.  In the end, Anderson had the courage to cast Freddie adrift, a man forever alone.

The democracy of time list.  The American writer Edward Abbey, near the end of his life, gave an interview in which he was asked for his assessment of where he stood in American literature.  Abbey confessed that he viewed himself as a major writer.  When reminded that the critics disagreed, he said that the critics didn't make that decision.  It was the democracy of time that sorted out the great from the also ran.  Here is my list of films I saw last year that will, in my opinion, do well with the democracy of time.  The Master, Looper, Skyfall, Amour, Argo, Django Unchained, Haywire, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook, Flight and Moonrise Kingdom.  I'm sure there are others, but like I said, I work in the movies, that means I can't afford to go to the movies.

The Top Ten

Every ten years, Sight & Sound, a British film magazine polls critics and film historians and comes up with a list of the ten best movies of all time. The big news from this decade's poll is that Vertigo has upset perennial winner Citizen Kane to move into the top spot.  Too, Man With a Movie Camera has knocked Potemkin off  the list.

Interesting....Okay, let's start with the obvious point.  Beyond a certain level of quality, we're really dealing with preferences here.  Still, it's fun and I need a break from Mitt Romney, mass shootings, rumors of war, and my own, ongoing financial problems.  So, let's start with the Sight & Sound list.

1. Vertigo (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
2. Citizen Kane  (1941)  directed by Orson Welles
3.  Tokyo Story  (1953)  directed by Yasujiro Ozu
4.  La Regle du jeu (1939) directed by Jean Renoir, and for those who prefer the English translation, Rules of the Game
5.  Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans  (1927)  directed by F.W. Murnau
6.  2001: A Space Odyssey  (1968)  directed by Stanley Kubrick
7.  The Searchers  (1956)  directed by John Ford
8.  Man With a Movie Camera  (1929)  directed by Dziga Vertov
9.  The Passion of Joan of Arc  (1927)  directed by Carl Theodore Dryer
10.  8 1/2  (1963)  directed by Federico Fellini

And now for my top ten.

1.  Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans
2. The Searchers
3.  Pandora's Box  (1929)  directed by G. W. Pabst
4.  Rules of the Game
5.  2001: A Space Odyssey
6.   Titticut Follies  (1967)  directed by Frederick Wiseman
7.  Red River  (1948)  directed by Howard Hawks
8.  Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler  (1922)  directed by Fritz Lang
9.  Pather Panchali  (1955)  directed by Satyijat Ray
10  Casablanca  (1942)  directed by Michael Curtiz

First of all, I set a rule for myself; Only one movie per director.  If not, Fort Apache and They Were Expendable both directed by John Ford could have made the list.  Also, Nosferatu by Murnau, Barry Lyndon and A Clockwork Orange by Kubrick, Grand Illusion by Renoir, and Metropolis and M by Lang could have all made the list.  Too, these are all about preferences, and mine might be different on another day.  Citizen Kane and Veritgo both belong on a top ten, that is if a top ten had twenty or more entries.  Although, I have to confess, I prefer Hitchcock's Notorious to Vertigo.  And then there are Modern Times, City Lights, and The Circus all by Chaplin.  In Titticut Follies, I had one documentary on the list, but why not Grass or Nanook of the North.  And a few shorts like D.W. Griffith's A Corner In Wheat.  And why doesn't Casablanca make these lists?  Snob factor I suspect, and I'm not exactly snobbish.  And a final confession, with the exception of Tokyo Story, I've seen every movie on the Sight & Sound list and I don't have a problem with any of the films.  They're all great movies and anyone would be foolish not to get the DVD and take a look.

One last thing.  I am a huge movie buff.  I know a lot of other movie buffs.  Most of us are under employed, perpetually broke with too much time on our hands.  A few years ago, some of us decided that we were going to start great movie list blogs.  The idea was that we could go on line and check each others tastes.  To put it mildly, most of us got bored with the chore after awhile and let it slide.  My list is still on line at www.greatmovieslist.blogspot.com  Who knows.  If I start getting visits, I might go back and add some more movies.

Anyone But Streep

Let me start off with a confession. I am quite able to put aside my political beliefs and praise a great movie, play or novel that I consider to be on the wrong side of the moral divide. As a silent movie fan, I admire Birth of a Nation despite it's racism. I own a DVD of both Triumph of the Will and The Dark Knight. But, The Iron Lady is not a great movie. It's not even a good movie, so it doesn't get a pass. And now that awards season is upon us, neither does it's star, Meryl Streep.

For almost two excruciating hours, this film, a conservative's wet dream, ignores the true legacy of Margret Thatcher. Dame Maggie was a supporter of the far right government of Augusto Pinochet, a friend to President Botha of South African apartheid fame, and an enemy of those fighting for their freedom from right wing oppression. (Why is it that conservatives love to yammer about lose of freedom when liberals talk about banking regulation but get all misty eyed about third world, right wing dictators?) She hated the idea that poor people in her own country should get a helping hand from their government. Cut education, of course. Housing for the homeless, what an absurd idea. Worker's rights, how communistic.

Despite my hatred of all things Thatcher, I concede that a good movie could be made of her life. Thanks to post World War 2 left wing policies, the daughter of a small grocer could go to one of the world's great universities. Why not a movie about how she came to hate the very policies that allowed her the social mobility that the traditional British class system would have denied her just a few decades earlier? Instead, The Iron Lady is all about praising her rise to power, with the opposition to Thatcherism presented as liberal sexism that opposed her because she was a woman, (Talk about getting history backwards.) and the timidity of conservative men who didn't have the backbone to shift the tax burden from the wealthy, to where it belonged, the lower middle class, and poor. Margret Thatcher is portrayed as a lone defender of western civilization, standing against the dark hordes of the unwashed and their unreasonable demands for social justice. How brutish.

As great an actress as Meryl Streep is, she should not be rewarded for this white-wash of a truly despicable person. There are other equally worthy performances that can be given SAG awards and Oscars. Why not Viola Davis for The Help, or the long over due Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs? Please, anyone but Streep.

Elizabeth Taylor

I've long believed that actors aren't remembered for their acting, they're remembered for their movies. John Wayne was in The Searchers, Stagecoach, They Were Expendable, Red River, The Wings of Eagles, The Big Trail, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Shootist, In Harms Way, Rio Grande, Rio Bravo, The Quiet Man, and The Long Voyage Home. Laurence Olivier was not. With Rebeca, Spartacus, and a few solid, though not great films, Olivier will fade from memory while John Wayne will be remembered.
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When I heard that Elizabeth Taylor had died, I realized that while I knew a lot about her personal life, I had trouble recalling anything from her movies. A quick look at her filmography and Giant jumped out at me, but I've long held the Giant's status as a classic had more to do with the James Dean death cult than any special qualities that the film had. While Taylor made a number of solid movies, most were on the over the top soap opera side.
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So why was Elizabeth Taylor such a film icon? One of the things that I've observed as a film fan is that there are some people who photograph well in black & white. Greta Garbo is an excellent example. From her early silent films to Ninotchka, there was just something about the way the planes of her face reflected light and and reproduced in black & white. There are also some people who photograph well in color. Elizabeth Taylor came along right at the time when black & white was fading from the scene and color was taking over the movie screen. Those violet eyes, the pale skin, the jet black hair, and the red lipstick she almost always wore could take over the large screens of her day. She was stunningly beautiful and she was made for technicolor.

Better Late Than Never Oscar Predictions

Well, I should have done this a couple of weeks ago, but here are my annual Academy Award predictions. This year I'm going to do something a bit different. I'll make one prediction for who I think will win in some of the major categories. Then, who I think should win from among the nominees. Then, who I think should win from all the films I saw last year. In the second two tiers of predictions, I will list more than one winner, but the first of the group will be who I would vote for, if I had a vote, and if someone had a gun to my head and said choose one.
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Best supporting actress. Melissa Leo, for The Fighter will win. Even though I think she is mis-nominated and should be considered a lead, from among nominees I would vote for either Hailee Stienfeld for True Grit or Amy Adams for The Fighter. Melissa Leo was, in my opinion, over the top, while Amy Adams did the hard work of toning down what could have been a real scenery chewing role. And my favorites from all movies...Chloe Moritz from Kick-Ass, Kristen Scott-Thomas from Nowhere Boy, and Barbara Hershey and Mila Kunis from Black Swan. This is the one category where most of the my nods didn't even get nominations.
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Best Supporting Actor. Christian Bale for The Fighter will win. From among the nominees, Bale or Geoffrey Rush from The King's Speech. Across the board, Andrew Garfield for The Social Network,Vincent Cassel for Black Swan, Armie Hammer for The Social Network, and Bale and Rush. Garfield's performance of the only true friend of Mark Zuckerberg who watched, understood, but couldn't believe that his friend would betray him is one of the best acting jobs I've ever seen, bar none. I couldn't believe he hasn't won all of the acting awards.
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Actress. Natalie Portman for Black Swan will win, I'd vote for her and only her among the nominees, and opening things up to all the films I saw lasy year, only Hailee Stienfield for True Grit would be considered on the same level. Between those two, my only toss-up.
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Actor. Colin Firth for The King's Speech will win. From among the nominees, Javier Bardem for Biutiful, Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network, and Jeff Bridges for True Grit. And no, Firth would not be on my short list. From all films, the same list, with one addition, Mark Wahlberg from The Fighter.
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Director. Tom Hooper for The King's Speech will win. Who should win from among the nominees, David Fincher for The Social Network or the Coen brothers for True Grit. Again, the same list for all films.
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Best Picture. The Kings' Speech will win, and it does not deserve the award. There is a certain type of American that has a reverence for all things British, and any examination of their history... well let's just say it's an undeserved reverence. From among the nominees, The Social Network, True Grit, Black Swan and The Fighter. Among all films, add Biutiful after The Social Network, and Kick-Ass Taking up the rear.
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And the best release from last year, the restored version of Metropolis.

Lone Star and Hollywood, Texas

Fox series Lone Star has been cancelled, and all I've got to say is thank goodness. I grew up in western Pennsylvania and watched as the United States threw away the domestic steel industry. At 55 I'm old enough to remember when the United States had a shoe, garment, and electronics industry, all of which, we abandoned. And now, it looks like we're doing the same thing with Hollywood film and television production.
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In it's mania to save money and get tax breaks, Hollywood studios have been moving a lot of production out of traditional film making centers, Los Angeles and New York City for the boonies of Texas, New Mexico and Detroit, Michigan. I work, albeit in a very basic position, in the film industry. And believe it or not there is a talent pool that is not made up of actors, writers, and directors that are necessary to make movies. If the film industry spreads out American production, the talent pool of grips, gaffers, set medics, focus pullers, and the whole lot will eventually shrink to a number so small that domestic production will be hard to sustain. The movies and television might be glamorous, but if the crafty guy has to live in a car to work on a film set, more than likely, he's going into another business.
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So yes, even if Lone Star was the greatest thing on the small screen since Alcoa Theater, I'm glad it's gone. Moving production to Texas endangers the jobs of below the line personnel, and that in turn makes it more difficult for me to make a living. And, then the worst case scenario, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, when the majority of top flight technicians move on to other professions in order to survive. Now, let's get Chase, The Good Guys, Detroit 187, and Hawaii Five O cancelled. And don't forget, stop watching reality shows!

Mad Mel!

We know that Mel Gibson's father is a holocaust denier and an extreme anti-Semite. We know that such people usually have a whole host of such prejudices. We know that the man embraces a very conservative Catholicism that divides women into three categories: saintly virgin, wife and mother, and whore, bent on corrupting righteous men.
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It's very possible that Mel Gibson is at war with himself. One side is rational Mel, who knows that the holocaust did happen, that Jews aren't responsible for the Crucifixion of Christ, and that other minorities are not inferior sub humans. And one the other side, emotional Mel is ruled by the prejudices pounded into him by his father. Or then again, Mel Gibson may just be a major league jack-ass.
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Is it just me, or are there others out there wondering why Mel's use of certain racial slurs is a much bigger story than the domestic violence?

Roman Polanski 2

Well, I'm not really all that surprised. Roman Polanski is a free man, at least if he never ventures out of France or Switzerland. I always thought it unlikely that the Swiss would extradite Polanski to Los Angles to face sentencing for his rape (Plea bargained down to unlawful sex with a minor.) of a 13 year old girl.
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What has always bothered me is the large number of people, who should know better, that seemed to just brush off what Polanski had done as some sort of right for those creative enough to have directed Chinatown. Let's be clear about what happened. Roman Polanski had forcible sex with a thirteen year old after giving her drugs and alcohol. He admitted this. He also admitted that he knew she was thirteen and that it was against the law for a man in his forties to have sex with a minor. In her initial interviews with the police, the victim claimed that she said no. Even if she was lying, it is still against the law. If she was telling the truth, she was forcibly raped by Polanski. Some of Polanski's supporters claim that the victims mother, basically, pimped out the girl to Polanski. There is no proof of this, but even if it were true, it is not legal to have sex with a thirteen year old, even if the mother consents. Many of Polanski's supporters point out that the victim, now a mother in her own right, would prefer that this all go away and that any prosecution of Polanski end. In the United states one does not commit a crime against a person, but rather against the laws of the state. It is irrelevant what the victim thinks. Many of Polanski's supporters argue that he was unjustly made an example of for his crimes, and was receiving unusually harsh treatment. In fact, in being allowed to plea bargain down to statutory rape from forcible rape, he was treated with a great deal of leniency. Polanski fled the jurisdiction when he learned that the plea bargain negotiated by his lawyers and the DA's office might not be honored by the judge. Plea bargains only go into effect when the judge signs off, and Polanski was informed of that possibility ahead of time.
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For those who would argue that there was a lynch mob mentality in the United States surrounding Polanski's case, I would refer them to the death of Emmit Till. A request for extradition is far from being a lynching. For those who would argue that what Polanski did was not "rape rape," whatever that means, I would ask them to refer to the facts of the case. For those who would argue that Polanski has been punished enough I would ask them where in the law does it say that someone who has suffered in life is exempt from rape laws. For those would argue that his film career justifies his actions, I would ask what are the limits of the creative exemption to the law. Is is battery, robbery, rape, murder?
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Roman Polanski is a great director. I have another blog that I've made up, primarily for my movie buff friends http://www.greatmovieslist.blogspot.com/, and sooner or latter I'll add Chinatown, Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby to the list. But even though I admire his movies, that doesn't mean I think he should get away with rape and fleeing the jurisdiction to avoid jail time.
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Is it just me, or are there others out there that find the Swiss claim that national interests were involved in denying the extradition request a little weird?

Oscar Nomination Predictions (Revised)

The Oscar nominations come out tomorrow and I figured, what the hell, let's beat the news to the punch. So here are my predictions on who gets the nod, with the eventual winner first on the list.

BEST PICTURE

1. The Hurt Locker
2. Avatar
3. Up In The Air
4. Precious
5. Inglorious Basterds
6. An Education
7. Invictus
8. A Serious Man
9. 500 Days of Summer
10. Up

ADD

1. The Blind Side
2. District 9

Subtract

1. Invictus
2. 500 Days of Summer


(Almost. I was only off by two on this one. I was very surprised that Invictus didn't get a nod. Far from being Clint Eastwood's best, it was however, the type of biopic that usually makes these lists. 500 Days of Summer, not making it, wasn't too surprising, as if fell into that how to fill out the last couple of spots list. To all the far right critics (Not film critics.) who like to moan about liberal Hollywood, well Blind Side, a movie that was poorly reviewed, except for Sandra Bullock's performance, got a nomination. Oh those old fashioned, far right, Christian values. On District 9. These predictions were based on what critics have written, and other awards that have been given out, not strictly limited to films I've seen, but I did see District 9 and hated it. Very much of a video game film, with the constant pop pop pop of action.)


BEST DIRECTOR

1. Kathryn Bigelow: The Hurt Locker
2. James Cameron: Avatar
3. Lee Daniels: Precious
4. Jason Reitman: Up In The Air
5. Quentin Tarantino: Inglorious Basterds

(Right across the board.)


BEST ACTOR

1. Jeff Bridges: Crazy Heart
2. George Clooney: Up In The Air
3. Colin Firth: A Single Man
4. Morgan Freeman: Invictus
5. Jeremy Renner: The Hurt Locker

(Right across the board.)


BEST ACTRESS

1. Sandra Bullock: The Blind Side
2. Meryl Streep: Julie & Julia
3. Helen Mirren: The Last Station
4. Gabourey Sidibe: Precious
5. Zoe Saldana: Avatar


(I went against conventional wisdom in picking Zoe Saldana against Carey Mulligan for An education. I overestimated Avatar's coat tail affect.)

Add

1. Carey Mulligan: An Education

Subtract

1. Zoe Saldana: Avatar


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

1. Cristoph Waltz: Inglorious Basterds
2. Stanley Tucci: Julie & Julia
3. Christopher Plummer: The Last Station
4. Anthony Mackie: The Hurt Locker
5. Woody Harrelson: The Messenger


(I was sort of wrong on two of these. I'm a big Stanley Tucci fan, but found his work in Julie & Julia far more impressive than his creepy turn in The Lovely Bones. If I was rooting for any actor in these catagories it was Anthony Mackie for The Hurt Locker. His performance was the perfect counterpoint to Renner, and Renner's performance works far less well without Mackie. Matt Damon was good in Invictus, but if that part had been played by a lesser known actor, I doubt it would have got a nod, even if it had been better executed.)

Add

1. Matt Damon: Invictus
2. Stanley Tucci: The Lovely Bones

Subtract

1. Anthony Mackie: The Hurt Locker
2. Stanley Tucci: Julie & Julia


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

1. Mo'Nique: Precious
2. Maggie Gyllenhaal: Crazy Heart
3. Diane Kruger: Ingloriuos Basterds
4. Melanie Laurent: Inglorious Basterds
5. Vera Farmiga: Up In The Air


(Of all the categories, to me, this one had the biggest surprise. Diane Kruger for Ingloriuos Basterds got across the board nominations in virtually every other competition. I'll bet the lady went to bed last night assuming her name would be listed. A big disappointment for her and all the fans of the film, and I'm one of them. I know, the same can be said for Penelope Cruz in Nine, but in all honesty, I thought it was over rated, and thought for sure it was the most disposable of the lot. I guess we can never underestimate the star power of a sex pot role. I've kind of overlooked Anna Kendrick as the far more conventional character in Up In The Air. Farmiga was memorable, but Kendrick has always been just "sort of there" for me. Not bad, but her work wasn't the role I thought about after the movie was over. If she wins, does she say goodbye to the Twilight franchise? It would probably be a good move.)

Add

1. Anna Kendrick: Up In The Air
2. Penlope Cruz: Nine

Subtract

1. Diane Kruger: Ingloriuos Basterds
2. Melanie Laurent: Inglorious Basterds


The increase in best picture nominations makes it both easier and harder to make predictions. The number of sure bets goes up, but the border line pictures add to those last three or four nominations. If the major nominees divide the vote enough, it's possible that a film like Inivctus or 500 Days of Summer could win, though that is very unlikely. With 10 noms, it's unlikely that a director without a picture in the running can get nominated. I just picked those I thought most likely. I thought the five actors listed are so far above and beyond the other contenders that this is the one category I feel really sure about, though Daniel Day Lewis for Nine wouldn't surprise me. I felt sure about the first four actresses listed, but with all the money made by Avatar and curiosity about new technical advances, I snuck Zoe Saldana in for Avatar. It's also the nomination I feel least sure of. Supporting nominations are always the ones with the most chance to have unexpected nominees and winners. I picked Tucci for Julie & Julia rather than The Lovely Bones because it was a far more popular movie, and let's be honest, he was more creepy than effective in Bones. A Christopher Plummer could end up winning the Oscar just like Alan Arkin did; a career award, edging out Cristoph Waltz. Anthony Mackie sneaks in because The Hurt Locker is winning so many other awards. Supporting actress is the real guess work category. Mo'Nique and Diane Kruger are, to me, the only sure bets in this category. Melanie Laurent may be a stretch, but I thought she was better than Kruger for the same movie. Gyllenhaal gets swept along with Jeff Bridges.