Best Supporting Actor: Christolph Walz completely deserves to win Best Supporting Actor – and he will. Me and Orson Welles’ studio made a huge mistake and pushed Christian MacKay for Best Actor instead of Supporting for his amazing performance as Orson Welles; MacKay belongs among the nominees here. And the funniest performance as a Supporting Actor – maybe in the decade – is Fred Melamed as Sy Ableman in A Serious Man; Melamed creates a hilariously pompous and blatantly manipulative character as the guy who seduces the protagonist’s wife and then expects the hero to bend over backwards to make everything convenient for them; I’ve never seen such an earnestly self-entitled character. Woody Harrelson is also great in The Messenger.
Best Documentary: The Cove is nominated for Best Documentary, and I’ve heard that it is very, very good. But it’s been a strong year for documentaries. My favorite,
Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, may actually be a 2008 release. But I think that Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 and Tyson are nomination-worthy. Other goods documentaries this year include Outrage, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The September Issue, More Than a Game, The Way We Get By, It Might Get Loud, and Thrilla in Manilla.
Best Animated Feature: Just saw The Secret of Kells, and I have no idea why it has a high Metacritic score or why it is nominated for Best Animated Feature.
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Nine, but her better performance was in Broken Embraces.
Best Foreign Language Film: And why wasn’t Broken Embraces nominated for Best Foreign Language Film? It was one of my top five films of the year, and the Academy loves Almodovar. I am rooting against The White Ribbon – a brilliantly made film that tells a disappointingly shallow story. The White Ribbon is a depiction of a village in which every father is emotionally, physically and/or sexually abusive, all of the kids are very creepy and a mysterious someone is doing some very, very bad things. That could all work toward a good film, if the message were something a little deeper than “Germany’s WWII generation had very mean parents”.
Avatar star arrives on red carpet wearing what appears to be a lavender luxury on top, but turns downstairs into a Mexican mariachi fiesta complete with hideous crepe paper flowers.
But the mariachi soundtrack on planet Pandora was stirring? Si
MoNique arrives wearing a tourniquet from Avatar; makes her breasts look uneven and her arms pop out sideways.
Even Randolph Duke says that we can all now be black and blue.
Sigourney Weaver, usually consistently classy, pushes the red envelope a little too far. Lose the belt.
Christoph Waltz says he’s complimented on being selected as a Nat-zee.
Is Jeremy Renner the new Daniel Craig?
Bullock looks fantastic, but lipstick color is too blue for her skin color.
Bigelow: simply sublime silver
Clooney: class act to go to the “other” fans for autographs
The date looks like it could be serious for George.
Actress from An Education: walking work of art with whimsical miniatures on black
Meryl Streep makes matronly nurse modern