| 10 March 2010
Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service (Disney’s Studio Ghibli)
Release date: March 2
Standard list price: $19.99 each
Girls always rule in the films of Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s top animator and one of international cinema’s most empowering feminist voices. In his four most prominent Western exports – Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and the recent Ponyo – Miyazaki’s protagonists are girls, from princesses to hat shop workers, whose fantastical journeys change themselves and the worlds around them. In Miyazaki’s tender dreamworlds, there is no such thing as a patriarchal hierarchy. Women aren’t just equal; they’re usually smarter than the men and are more equipped to save the world.
Of course, they’re still adolescent girls, prone to teenage insecurities and harboring fragile tear ducts. This is especially true of three of Miyazaki’s older titles reissued by Disney in two-disc editions this month: 1986’s Castle in the Sky, 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro and 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, each boasting informative new making-of featurettes.
Before delving into the best of these early works, a polite disregard for the one movie that doesn’t stand the test of time or adulthood: Castle in the Sky, Miyazaki’s adventure tale of a princess and a young miner who attempt to find a supposedly mythical sky castle while being pursued by a rickety gang of sky pirates and a corrupt military machine.
Cartoonish in the most infantile sense of the word, Castle in the Sky is silly and predictable, sacrificing storytelling and depth for two hours of almost nonstop action. It lacks the idyllic whimsy of Miyazaki’s later films, and its comic relief is head-scratchingly obtuse. It’s notable solely for its fabulous set designs of the titular castle and other complex edifices, but even these can be seen as phantasmagoric M.C. Escher knock-offs.
My Neighbor Totoro couldn’t be more different in tone and substance, and it’s a welcome change. Centering on two young sisters who endure their mother’s hospital-bound illness with the help of a few friendly forest spirits, Totoro dares to be slow-paced and contemplative from time to time – box-office poison for many children’s works.
Though comparisons to Alice in Wonderland are apt (Miyazaki is an avowed Lewis Carroll devotee), Totoro is less a fantasy than a real-world study of coping. It’s a truly successful family film in that, unlike most of them, it doesn’t talk down to adults or pander to children, striking a deft medium between lightness and darkness, comedy and tragedy.
And finally, in my favorite Miyazaki film, Kiki’s Delivery Service, an adolescent witch’s coming of age makes for an enlightening parable about acceptance, tolerance and self-confidence. Leaving home on her broomstick to live away from her parents for the first time, Kiki settles on a small town that’s seemingly unwilling to accept a witch into its populace. Unaware of any special abilities she may possess, Kiki transforms her known distinguishing talent – her ability to fly – into a delivery service for the town’s residents.
On her routes, she witnesses bountiful kindness and snobbish ingratitude, learning much about the way the world works and battling her insecurities in the process.
Kiki is exactly the kind of character girls will find inspirational, and more than any other protagonist in these films, she anticipates Miyazaki’s later heroines. Peppering his film with dark undercurrents – including an exciting action set-piece surrounding an upturned dirigible – Miyazaki again strikes a concordant balance between whimsy and reality.
Much like the brave-yet-vulnerable, confident-yet-insecure girls at the heart of these pictures, it’s clear Miyazaki himself had yet to blossom into the maturity and sophistication of his later work. The animation is crude, particularly when held up to Pixar’s incomparable standards, and not all of his storytelling conceits walk his now well-worn tightrope of kidvid accessibility and arthouse inventiveness. But two of these underrated titles represent peeks into the visionary looking glass of a future master.
The Beaches of Agnès (Cinema Guild)
Release date: March 2
SLP: $23.99
At 81, Agnès Varda, the director of the 1962 French New Wave classic Cleo From 5 to 7 reinvents cinema once again, this time in the genre of the autobiographical documentary. One of the most overlooked movies of last year, The Beaches of Agnès is a cineaste’s dream from the first frame to the closing credit.
In this literally self-reflexive film, Varda sets up a collection of mirrors, gazes at herself and proceeds to walk backwards through the memories of her life, from childhood to her beginnings as a photographer to her emergence in the New Wave and her romantic relationship with fellow auteur Jacques Demy.
Employing archival film clips, split screens, picture-in-picture, superimpositions and newly filmed documentary diversions, Varda reanimates old film stills and reenacts old memories, all the time with the formalistic boldness and playfulness of someone a quarter her age. The Beaches of Agnès feels every bit like a swan song, and what a lovely, ceaselessly creative way to conclude a life in cinema.
The generous Cinema Guild disc includes an essay by critic Amy Taubin, two shorts about the making of the film and Varda’s magical 2003 short Le Lion Volatil.
The Wedding Song (Strand)
Release date: March 9
SLP: $24.99
This uninhibited drama set in Nazi-occupied Tunisia centers on a multicultural ghetto and two 16-year-old best friends fixated on marriage: Jewess Myriam (Lizzie Brochere), set to be betrothed to a much older man, and Muslim Nour, whose heart is set on an unemployed man, closer to her age, that her father permits her from marrying.
As outside influences shape the apolitical teenagers’ nascent ideologies, the two girls’ friendship becomes a microcosm for the way Third Reich propaganda divided otherwise stable communities, pitting friend against friend, and certainly Arab against Jew. But Karin Albou’s film doesn’t limit its rage to the stoking of hatred and the Nazi atrocities that followed.
More than any ethnic or religious discrimination, it details the subjugation of women in general with excruciating detail, something that ultimately reconnects the two friends. Its most shocking scene involves a genital waxing, shot in the kind of extreme, gooey close-ups that would never make its way past a Hollywood censor. It’s painful to watch, but it’s the unforgettable backbone of the filmmaker’s aggressive feminist argument.
The Stoning of Soraya M. (Lionsgate)
Release date: March 9
SLP: $19.99
This latest, nasty example of torture porn from Passion of the Christ producer Stephen McEveety should have been the moving, enraging women’s picture to end them all. Instead, it’s an exploitative propaganda film whose clunky script and artless direction border on the embarrassing.
A proudly unsubtle attack on the Dark Ages inequalities of Sharia law, The Stoning of Soraya M. is based a 1994 book of the same name about an Iranian woman unjustly accused of adultery (she was found cooking for a friend’s widowed husband) whose protestations to the legislative status quo lead to her eventual stoning at the hands of her ravenous, bloodthirsty community (a climactic sequence offensively shot by director Cyrus Nowrasteh as if it were a multi-angle, action-sports extravaganza).
Designed to provoke gut reactions from guilt-consumed limousine liberals as much as anti-Islamist right-wing xenophobes, this is self-important dreck designed solely for Western export, and it makes me wonder what adventurous filmgoer is cloistered enough to find any of this remotely eye-opening.
John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
| 09 March 2010
Flowers, (1964) acrylic, silkscreen on canvas by Andy Warhol.
The Norton Museum has an expanding collection of contemporary art, and, like many museums that evolve and grow from their initial purpose, it does not have a permanent exhibit space for it.
Although significant, it would be difficult to justify replacing any of Ralph and Elizabeth Norton’s original collection, or changing the focus of current gallery space, and the museum already underwent a significant expansion in 2003 with the addition of the Nessel Wing (Oh, that every museum should have such troubles as what to do with so many great donated works). The temporary solution: biannual exhibits providing a peek at some wonderful — yet otherwise hibernating — gems.
This is the case with Here Comes the Sun: Warhol and Art After 1960. The exhibit showcases 40 works by significant contemporary masters that include paintings, drawings, and sculpture. The Norton’s curator for contemporary art, Cheryl Brutvan, has organized the exhibit chronologically, providing a microcosm of an explosive period in the evolution of art when the very nature of art itself was questioned, tossed in the trash, and made over on completely different terms. Then its old self begin to emerge again through the cracks.
Some might argue that it’s been the most exciting period in the history of art because during this time the epicenter of the art world moved from Europe to our own backyard. Although merely a glimpse, many of the artists that ushered, or partook, in revolutionary post-modern movements, beginning with Andy Warhol, are here. Donald Sultan, Keith Haring, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joan Mitchell all make an appearance to remind one of the resounding triumph of post-World War II American art.
Actually, it’s a shame these works aren’t on permanent view. Many are stunning, such as Donald Sultan’s The Granary (1988), a massive concoction of tar and acrylic paint. They epitomize the radical shift that engulfed the art world and brought us to where we stand now. Although vastly different in style and medium, the unifying element is that these works were completed when the definition of art was challenged, the future of the paintbrush was questionable, and conceptual thought trumped artistic mastery.
Robert Rauschenberg, Captiva, Florida (1988) enlarged photograph with acrylic and transfer by Gianfranco Gorgoni and Robert Rauschenberg.
Warhol, viewed by many as the messiah of post-modernism, and the man who married the fine arts and consumerism, rightly has his own wall at the entrance. The exhibit features his omnipresent Four Jackies (1964-1965), which depicts four images of the first lady. Then there is an assemblage of the Campbell’s soup cans that propelled Warhol to superstar status and marred the line between artist and celebrity. And it’s interesting to view Flowers (1964), the work that gave rise to issues regarding appropriation in art and resulted in a lawsuit from the original photographer, as well as referencing the hippie movement’s flower-child ideology.
There are four sculptures in the exhibit by Sol LeWitt, Anthony Caro, Nancy Graves, and Harry Bertoia that follow along on the progression procession. The Italian-born Bertoia’s minimalist Sunburst III (1968) stands delightfully near the exhibit’s entrance, seemingly inviting one to blow on it and make a wish. Then there’s Chilean-born sociopolitical artist Alfredo Jaar’s Untitled (Water) (1991-1994), which utilizes a light box and color transparencies to make a statement about reality and representation, and provides a hybrid of sculpture and photography.
Continuing with the hybrid theme, a large painting produced by Gianfranco Gorgoni and Robert Rauschenberg provides a witty glimpse into Raushchenberg’s day-to-day existence. Italian photographer Gorgoni came arrived in New York in 1968 to photograph and chronicle New York artists. There he befriended Rauschenberg. He captures the artist leisurely floating in his pool in Robert Rauschenberg, Captiva, Florida (1988). The image is hard to shake from the mind afterwards because of the intimate glimpse into Rauschenberg’s private world.
Moving from Rauschenberg to the aforementioned Sultan and Philip Pearlstein’s Untitled (1966), one views a mini-series on the reemergence of the “painterly” painters, those artists who seem inspired by the sheer physicality of the medium of paint and who gained momentum in the 1980s. Even after painting had been pronounced dead on multiple occasions, these “necrophiliacs” confirmed that the reports of death were, at best, greatly exaggerated.
Untitled, (2009) oil on canvas by Jacqueline Humphries.
It’s reassuring that the exhibit culminates with a work by Jacqueline Humphries. Her presence confirms that the Norton’s contemporary focus has merely just begun. The large, lyrically assaultive abstract painting Untitled (2009) inspires, and illustrates the beginning of an ever-evolving journey. Humphries’ work infuses abstraction with something fresh.
“The objective is to knit wildly varying perspectives into a unified space,” the artist has said. “Because of the way light reacts to the metallic paint, the paintings change as your physical relationship to them changes.”
Here Comes the Sun also knits “wildly varying perspectives into a unified space” with a procession of works primarily by American artists who leapfrog off of one another’s breakthroughs — and a few surprises thrown in, such as Picasso’s Harem Scene (1968). Although it’s a Cliff Notes version of the past 50 years, it’s impactful and it establishes the Norton’s commitment to contemporary art, which, hopefully, someday will have a permanent space.
Jenifer A. Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. She’s been enamored with American painting for the past 20 years.
Here Comes the Sun: Warhol and Art after 1960 in the Norton Collection is on view at the Norton Museum of Art until May 2. Hours for this exhibition are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults, $5 for visitors aged 13 through 2, and free for children under 13. For more information, call 561-832-5196, or visit www.norton.org.
| 08 March 2010
Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker.
Leave it to Steve Martin to sum up Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony with a final ad-lib, calling the broadcast so long that “Avatar now takes place in the past.”
At three-and-a-half-hours, it actually ran longer than James Cameron’s bloated, 3-D science fiction epic, which got left in the dust by the documentary-like The Hurt Locker, directed by Cameron’s ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow.
Kathryn Bigelow.
The Oscars show was awfully long, but it was one of the more entertaining awards fests in many years. It began with such an obvious, but previously overlooked, touch of introducing all10 best actor and actress nominees onstage. How could no one have thought of that before?
Neil Patrick Harris kicked the show off with a reasonably clever song, No One Wants to Do It Alone, which sounded like a sanitized version of a Marc Shaiman party song. Then came Martin and his co-host Alec Baldwin to toss off roast one-liners about the nominees (“There’s that damn Helen Mirren.” “No, Steve, that’s Dame Helen Mirren.”) Compared to such dud past emcees as David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Chris Rock, Martin and Baldwin were just what the show needed.
Nominees were introduced with longer -than-usual clip montages of their performances, which were another plus. Ditto the best song category, which was cut down to size, with the nominees all lumped in one sequence, not unlike best costumes. A real time- (and ear-) saver.
Ben Stiller was back with an elaborate makeup award introduction in which be entered as an Avatar blue creature, spouting verbiage that was part Navi and part Hebrew. At least he self-effacingly admitted that the bit “seemed like a better idea in rehearsals.”
It was 10:06 EST before Avatar won its first Oscar, for art direction, and Hurt Locker was already building momentum. By the time the best director category came up and Barbra Streisand came out to present it, you just knew that she was chosen because she would be announcing the first-ever woman to win it -- Bigelow.
There was an unnecessary and rather redundant montage of horror movies, another attempt by the Academy to seem more populist. Still, it could have easily been cut to save time.
Following on last year’s winning idea of having past actor winners talk about the current nominees, this year it was colleagues or co-stars of those in the running for the performance awards. Precious producer Oprah Winfrey for Gabourey Sidibe, Fabulous Baker Boys co-star Michelle Pfeiffer for Jeff Bridges. Nice and personal and rather touching.
Yes, Sandra Bullock won best actress for The Blind Side, marking a painful victory for likeability over acting achievement. (Didn’t any voters see Mirren in The Last Station?) So, as promised, I will submit my resignation to the Academy in protest, even though I’m not a member of the Academy. I did like Bullock’s speech, which began “Did I really earn this or did I wear you all down?” Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Sandy.
I didn’t think there were many surprises in the awards, but then I got 19 out of 24 right. (Curse you, short subjects!) Too bad that Up in the Air left the Kodak Theater empty-handed, but at least The Hurt Locker, another small, independent film won the top Oscar, despite the Academy’s attempt to manipulate the system towards bigger, more mainstream fare.
(A list of Sunday night's winners can be found on the official Oscar site.)
| 07 March 2010
Renée Fleming with the Russian National Orchestra at Mizner Park on Saturday night. (Photo by Sherry Ferrante)
She opened the New York Philharmonic's current season with an infrequently heard song cycle by Olivier Messiaen, and her newest album is a collection of rarities from the verismo composers of the late 19th century.
One of the best things about Renée Fleming is her fondness for fresh, interesting repertoire, and the soprano offered ample evidence of this side of her art as she opened the Festival of the Arts Boca 2010 in Mizner Park on Saturday night.
A chatty, friendly presence on stage, dressed for the first half in green and the second in a grayish silver with a black wrap ("This is my summer dress," she said to laughter from the large, slightly chilled crowd. "I'm so disappointed."), Fleming joined conductor Patrick Summers and the Russian National Orchestra at the Count de Hoernle Amphitheater for an evening of arias and songs that ranged from bel canto to classic Broadway.
Fleming was in strong voice for most of the night, with the velvety lower range that has made her singing so distinctive in full flower, and her highest notes powerful without being shrill. In her very first aria, the coloratura showstopper D'amor al dolce impero, from Rossini's 1817 opera Armida, all of Fleming's beautifully rounded instrument could be heard, bottom to top, as she nimbly negotiated the busy embellishments of its repeats.
After an impressive Casta diva, the standout aria from Bellini's Norma, Fleming moved to Tchaikovsky, presenting one of her signature pieces -- the Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin -- and something most unusual, an attractive aria (Pochudilis mne budto golosa) from The Oprichnik, an earlier (1871-4) Tchaikovsky opera.
The Onegin scene showed also that Fleming is a first-rate singing actress. She fully engages herself with the text, and in the climactic pages of this aria, with its famous descending-scale motif, Fleming sang with a straightforward purity that expertly mirrored Tatyana's painful honesty in offering her heart and her life to a man who is about to reject her.
Patrick Summers leads the Russian National Orchestra on Saturday night. (Photo by Sherry Ferrante)
That first half of Fleming's concert also featured the orchestra in the overture to Norma as well as the overture to Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila. Both were played with intensity and drive by this big band, though perhaps with less of the precision the group demonstrated last year under its chief conductor, Mikhail Pletnev.
Fleming opened the second half with a lovely quartet of songs by Richard Strauss -- Ständchen, Freundliche Vision, Winterweihe and Zueignung -- in which she could float her voice luxuriantly above the rich orchestration, and did so. She is a fine exponent of this repertoire, and in Winterweihe, her avowed favorite of the four, she brought an added layer of warmth and earnestness to its lullaby-like melody that dipped into the bottom of her range.
A verismo package of arias by Leoncavallo, Giordano and Mascagni that followed the Strauss (and the Intermezzo from Puccini's Manon Lescaut) offered not just good singing, but revelation. Here is a body of overlooked music by Puccini's contemporaries that deserves to be heard more often, and Saturday night's audience gave them generous applause.
After beginning with a marvelously judged reading of the great farewell aria (Donde lieta usci al tuo grido) of Mimì from Act III of Puccini's La Bohème, Fleming sang two arias from Leoncavallo's treatment of the same story, which at the time was a source of bitter dispute between the two composers that destroyed their friendship. And the Leoncavallo version has much fine music, including Testa adorata, a wonderful aria for Marcello that was popular with an older generation of tenors.
Fleming sang two playful, witty arias of similar character, the better of which, Musette svaria sulla bocca viva, was a reminder in its melody and layout that Leoncavallo is also the composer of Mattinata (perhaps best-known in its pop-crooner version as You're Breaking My Heart). In this and the second aria (Mimi Pinson, la biondinetta), Fleming sang with charm and sparkle.
Giordano's death scene for Loris from Fedora (Troppo tardi! Tutto tramonta, tutto dilegua), which features a reminiscence of that opera's hit tune, Amor ti vieta, was in Fleming's hands moving and deeply affecting. Best of all was Un dì (ero piccina), from Iris, Mascagni's Japanese-themed opera of 1898. A smartly paced aria based on swiftly moving back-and-forth minor chords and a catchy modal melody, this is a most effective theatrical piece even without the stage, and Fleming made a marvelous case for it.
A lush performance of the first Hungarian Dance (in G minor) of Brahms served as a nice crossover transition to Fleming's final set, two songs by Richard Rodgers: Hello, Young Lovers, from The King and I, and You'll Never Walk Alone, from Carousel. Fleming used a handheld microphone for these plush songs, perhaps because her voice had begun to tire, and also to help make herself heard above the elaborate arrangements here, which were replete with wind solos and numerous harmonic changes from the original.
The arrangement was misguidedly busy on Hello, Young Lovers, but quite effective on You'll Never Walk Alone, with a strong trumpet motif that led the way in the middle to a massive brass statement. Fleming had plenty of stamina left for the higher reaches of You'll Never Walk Alone, and after a standing, shouting demonstration from the audience (which in any case had handed her its collective heart during the Puccini), sang two encores: I Feel Pretty and Somewhere, from Bernstein's West Side Story.
Although some of the topical rewrites of the I Feel Pretty lyrics, reflecting Fleming's receipt of the keys of the city, weren't really necessary, she sang both of these songs with the same sense of style, dedication and general excellence that distinguished this concert, and that continues to distinguish this artist's inquisitive, intelligent career choices.
The Festival of the Arts Boca 2010 continues today with two literature events. Author Noël Riley Fitch will speak at 4 p.m. in the Cultural Arts Center on the second floor Plaza Real in Mizner Park; her lecture is titled Appetite for Life: Writing the Story of Julia Child. At 7 p.m. tonight at the Count de Hoernle Amphitheater, writer David Brooks of The New York Times gives a talk on the current political outlook. Tickets: $25-$50. For tickets, call 866-571-2787; for more information, call 561-368-8445 or visit www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.
Renée Fleming speaks Saturday night to a crowd at Mizner Park. (Photo by Sherry Ferrante)
| 06 March 2010
A scene from The Hurt Locker.
And then there were 10.
No, not by a process of elimination, but by inflation. I’m talking about the new, probably not improved, look for the Academy Awards, with its revised voting dynamic for best picture. Not only are there 10 nominees for the top Oscar, but members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be ranking their 10 choices, with number one choices receiving 10points, the second getting nine and so forth.
According to the academy, this is all in the name of being more inclusive, but the reality is the desire to boost their slipping broadcast ratings for the broadcast ceremony. It airs live this Sunday night ( 8 p.m. on ABC-TV) and seems likely to drone on even more than usual with so many more nominees vying for airtime.
You can probably trace the genesis of this revised format to the snub two years ago of the mainstream commercial and critical hit, The Dark Knight. It got squeezed out by smaller, independent films which more fit the profile of best picture winners in recent years. Potential viewers were less involved in the ceremony without a big popular film to root for, and so they never bothered tuning in. In droves.
The best picture category this year is large enough to include the audience-friendly, but depressingly ordinary The Blind Side, the quirky, but unlikely-to-win District 9, and Pixar’s high-grossing, family fare Up, only the second animated film to be nominated for best picture. Up has no chance in this field, either, but its inclusion here means that it is a shoo-in for best animated feature, which it probably would have won anyway.
I am not a big fan of the Oscars, feeling that they select the wrong films and artists too much of the time, with votes cast for a variety of reasons other than excellence or achievement. Still, I would argue the purist line for the tradition of five best picture nominees rather than a watered-down list of 10.
We can expect this year’s show to get that ratings bump, but it will be due more to the presence of blockbuster Avatar, which has made more money (more than $700 million domestically, at the latest count) with a vast number of moviegoers have seen it, the main reason they will bother to tune in.
Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side.
For the first time since the first year of the Oscars, the show will be co-hosted, by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, an interesting odd couple that has generated added buzz. Do not expect the wit of the heydays when Billy Crystal was emceeing or even the charismatic success last year of Hugh Jackman, but the Baldwin and Martin team will probably not be dull.
To compensate for the extra time spent of the added Best Picture nominees, the word is that this year’s producer Adam Shankman (Hairspray) has eliminated the production numbers for each Best Song candidate. Sounds like a smart move, considering some of the tuneless nominees in recent years.
Even though there are 10 films in the running, this is really a two-horse race. In this corner is Goliath (the mega-successful science fiction yarn with landmark 3-D visuals, Avatar) and over there is David (the powerful Iraq War story made on a tight budget, The Hurt Locker). Mind you, whatever went up against Avatar would be cast as David, but even with its wide distribution, The Hurt Locker is at the bottom of the pack in attendance and box office.
Still, both films pulled in nine nominations and there is that wonderful tabloid match-up in the best director category between Avatar’s James Cameron and his ex-wife, Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow.
Expect Avatar to jump out ahead in the first hour of the broadcast. It really is a technical marvel that deserves to win most of the early awards, but if The Hurt Locker wrests a few away, like Sound Editing or Sound Mixing, it could be a big night for the small picture. I figure it to be close in statuette totals, but look for the best picture bragging rights to go to the Iraq War film.
In the acting categories, expect sentiment and likeability to win out over genuine performance achievement. Indications are that this is Sandra Bullock’s year to win (for the overrated The Blind Side), versus, say, the great Helen Mirren, so brilliant in the little seen The Last Station. Think of Bullock as this year’s Julia Roberts in the year she won for Erin Brockovich. It’s not much of an acting workout, but if Bullock is ever going to get an Oscar, it will be for this movie, so the Academy will rise up and say, “We like you, Sandy. We really like you.” (Do make a point of seeing Mirren in The Last Station. Please.)
Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart.
The case for Jeff Bridges is pretty much the same, another industry favorite, but at least he is a four-time nominee and his performance as the alcoholic country-western singer is quite good, so he will win as best actor. If you want to see the best performance in this category, watch Colin Firth in A Serious Man. He had always been seen as a light comedy lightweight, and this work as a grieving gay professor should change all that.
In the supporting categories, there have been two performers who have swept the preliminary awards and had better have another acceptance speech in them. I’m talking about Mo’Nique in Precious and Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. And it would be hard to argue that they are not extremely deserving.
Below is the full ballot of my picks. Yes, I have money riding on the outcome in a small pool among friends. If I do not win, you will not hear any more about it from me.
Hap's Oscar Predictions
Here are the probable winners at Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony, in my opinion at least:
* Best Picture: The Hurt Locker
* Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
* Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
* Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
* Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
* Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, Precious
* Best Documentary Feature: The Cove
* Best Documentary Short: China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
* Best Animated Feature: Up
* Best Foreign Language Film: Un Prophète (France)
* Best Original Screenplay: The Hurt Locker
* Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air
* Best Cinematography: The Hurt Locker
* Best Art Direction: Avatar
* Best Animated Short Film: A Matter of Loaf and Death
* Best Live Action Short Film: The New Tenants
* Best Visual Effects: Avatar
* Best Costume Design: The Young Victoria
* Best Film Editing: The Hurt Locker
* Best Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker
* Best Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker
* Best Original Score: Up
* Best Original Song: The Weary Kind
* Best Makeup: Star Trek
