The Year in Review

There is Christmas, there is my birthday, and then there is Oscar night. These are the days that halt the earth in orbit, the biggest holidays of my calendar year. All are red-carpet moments: when the tiny infant baby Jesus came out with pudgy fists of healing power; when I came out with the eventual capability to grow cool sideburns and by which I accumulate another year of wisdom; and when people who thought I was weird for liking the non-traditional critique of immigration policy in "District 9" can watch it again and finally realize its insightfulness and wonderfully out-of-the-box storytelling as it gets nominated for Best Picture.

Please realize that both Easter and my mom's birthday both have high station on this list, but I beg you readers, after wading through my catharsis regarding film school: this is Oscar season. Please indulge me.


After Wall-E's snub from Best Picture last year, we were all forced to ask: if The Dark Night isn't as good as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but is easily the most well-made film within its genre--the superhero film--of all time (and stands strikingly well by itself even to people who don't like the Batman comics), does it deserve mention by Oscar as one of the best of the year? And what do we do with Wall-E and other animated films--which are all in the running for the Best Animated Film award--when it is one of the best films of the year in general? And what about those incredible indie films that will only be noticed by the non-indie community by a nod from the Academy (which will help put more bread on the table of these struggling filmmakers)? The answer: ten Best Picture nominees.

First off, I have an apology to make. I didn't think Sandra Bullock had it in her to do what she has done with The Blind Side, and this will forever add depth to what we refer when we mention "a Sandra Bullock movie" (often populated by Miss Congeniality, romances, and other entertaining-but-not-necessarily-life-altering films). Moreover, I thought that Precious looked incredible when I saw the preview first, but feared it was like this year's Notorious, which was targeted only to a small audience. They have defied my expectations, and I have to apologize to both movie and give them mad props.

Anyway, in the Best Picture nominees we've got District 9's incredible blend of immigration commentary and pumping sci-fi action. We've got An Education, the stolid art house piece. We've got the very applicable Up in the Air, in which Jason Reitman cast several people who have lost their jobs in this past year as the people George Clooney reluctantly has to fire (his business is to let people go when their employers don't have the stomach). Props to The Blind Side and Precious, heartrendering stories. Up! finally brings Pixar into the Best Picture category which Wall-E and Finding Nemo were so close to having before. The Coen brothers are back in a pseudo-spiritual film with no big names (A Serious Man). Colin Firth is finally in an Oscar-nominated movie where he does not play the nice, cheated-on husband (he's up for Best Actor for A Single Man), though Jeff Bridges looks like he'll finally take one home for playing a rugged old country musician in Crazy Heart.

It's been a South African year, with aliens descending on Johannesburg in District 9 (which I hope will take home a writing Oscar) and the surprisingly sparsely-nominated Invictus, Clint Eastwood's look at Nelson Mandela's first years in office and unifying a new South Africa under a World Cup rugby team. Gavin Hood, the other South African with a movie out this year, won't be taking any home for Wolverine, though he did win one for his Africaans crime story--Tsotsi--a few years ago; I didn't like Wolverine, but Hood's got skills.

Yet I am most excited about the duel between Avatar, The Hurt Locker, and the well-deserved recognition of Tarantino's new Inglourious Basterds. James Cameron and Kathryn Bigalow, former spouses who still help each other on their films, are both up for 9 Oscars, and Tarantino's wonderfully slow-paced film--wherein the tension ratchets up for twenty minutes often before exploding into impossibly quick, explosive violence--is up for 8. Yet The Hurt Locker is the most successful film about the Iraq War, pt. II, and the only nominated one apart from Tommy Lee Jones' Best Actor nod two years ago for In the Valley of Elah; also, Bigalow's nomination makes her the second American woman ever to be nominated for Best Director, and one of only four or five that have ever been nominated, but never won. While Avatar is a shoo-in for many technical awards--it sports the best CGI in history--I think it's Bigalow's year, and am excited to see what happens with this small, independent film. Finally, as a screenwriter, I have to give love to Tarantino's latest effort, especially to Christoph Waltz, the quadrilingual, part-goofy, part-sadistically evil Austrian SS agent who ensures World War II will have a different ending. I'm always excited when an actor who was on the decline for years and years (as he was in Europe) gets a chance to come back in a big way. Such is the correlation with Tarantino's films with John Travolta, Pam Grier, and others.

For the first time in a while, I don't feel that anything was slighted this year. Of course, I've only seen a number of these films, since we're traveling, but, of what I've read of them, I'm excited to come back and get NetFlix.