Stray Thoughts: 84th Academy Award Nominations

Don't usually update twice in the same day if I can help it, but the Oscar nominations have come through and I'd like to chat about them a bit. The list of nominees is up everywhere, as are break-downs of who the favourites are and which films have the most nominations, so I'm just going to offer some stray thoughts, in no particular order:

• First up, Stephen Daldry's Tom Hanks starring 9/11 film 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' (which I admittedly haven't yet seen) is perhaps the worst reviewed Best Picture nominee of all-time. Currently it has a 46 on Metacritic and 48 on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm not suggesting review aggregating sites are an infallible guide to the arts, but these are despairingly low numbers for a major, prestige picture.
• 'Bridesmaids' hasn't been nominated for Best Picture despite being overwhelmingly well reviewed and figuring on many major critic's "best of 2011" lists. It's difficult not read this as further proof that Oscar doesn't like comedy. Considering there are 9 Best Picture nominees (including 'Extremely Loud'), this seems like a bit of a joke. By my calculations (and ignoring comedy-dramas like 'Juno' and 'Shakespeare in Love') the last out-and-out comedy to get nominated was 'Tootsie' in 1982.
• It's great to see Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Terence Malick competing for Best Director.
• It's equally great to see 'The Tree of Life' featuring in the Best Picture field, considering it's been overlooked by the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. I'm not the film's biggest fan - I appreciate it more than I like it - but in recent years the big award ceremonies have mostly picked the same nominees and picked the same winners. Oscar gets some serious credibility points here.
• It's really great to see 'Hugo' garnering the most nominations (11), though I suspect it'll be one of those unlucky movies that's nominated in every category and wins nothing. For those keeping score, 'The Artist' (the overwhelming favourite at this stage) is just behind with 10 nods.
• The excellent Rooney Mara being nominated for Best Actress is a nice touch, though Meryl Streep is sure to pip her to the prize for her showy, award-bait impersonation of Margaret Thatcher.
• Despite my earlier bemoaning the lack of attention given to 'Bridesmaids', I find it really odd that Melissa McCarthy has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. A lot of people felt she stole the show but I personally found her to be the weak link. Rose Byrne or Chris O'Dowd would have been better acting choices for that one, methinks.
• I thought 'My Week With Marilyn' was awful - without redeeming quality. So, though I really like Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh, I think it's a bit of a joke that they're nominated here - particularly Branagh's scenery chewing turn as Olivier.
• Really pleased to see recognition for Christopher Plummer and 'Beginners'. I think he'll win Best Supporting Actor. It's an interesting field though, Branagh aside, with left-field nominations for Nick Nolte in 'Warrior' and newly svelte funnyman John Hill in 'Moneyball'.
• 'Albert Nobbs' currently has no UK release date, at least according to the usually reliable FilmDates.com. Hopefully its two acting nominations - for Glenn Close and Janet McTeer - will change that? I really hate missing Oscar nominated movies.
• Glad that 'A Separation' is nominated for Best Foreign Film - the only category it could realistically have been recognised in. Just noticed it also got a nod for Best Original Screenplay, which is a major boon. Nice work.
• An odd thing I've just noticed looking at the official Academy Awards site: although Best Picture awards are given to producers, Best Animated Feature Oscars are awarded to directors. Why is that exactly?
• Wasn't 'The Ides of March' supposed to be a big Oscar movie? Only one nomination (for Best Adapted Screenplay). That's two less than 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon'.
• I predict the main winners will be: The Artist (Best Picture), Alexander Payne (Best Director, for 'The Descendants'), Brad Pitt (Best Actor, for 'Moneyball'), Streep (Best Streep in a Leading Streep), Plummer (as mentioned above) and Jessica Chastain (ostensibly for 'The Help', but picking up votes for an impressive year's worth of performances, including 'The Tree of Life').
• Finally, I'd like to see the following winners: 'Hugo' (Best Picture), Woody Allen (Best Director, for 'Midnight in Paris'), Gary Oldman (Best Actor, for 'Tinker Tailor Solider Spy'), Rooney Mara (Best Actress, for 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'), Plummer (as above) and Jessica Chastain (ostensibly for 'The Help', but really for 'Take Shelter').

If you want to read the full list, check it out at The Guardian.

'Three Colours Trilogy' review:

I watched Krzysztof Kieslowski's 'Three Colours Blue/White/Red' over the weekend and really enjoyed them, which was a surprise as I thought they'd be the sort of strained arthouse fare that's far easier to merely "appreciate". 'White' was especially good - a darkly funny Polish chapter - though the virtuosity of 'Blue' and Irene Jacob's radiance in 'Red' also left a strong impression.

My review of the Blu-ray box set, released today, is up now at What Culture!.

I've also had DVD reviews in the last two Saturday editions of the Daily Telegraph which I hadn't bothered plug here for some reason.

Gross-out gals comedy 'Bridesmaids' - which I enjoyed far more on a second viewing than I did upon theatrical - and the repugnant, mean-spirited, black-hearted 'Horrible Bosses', a more typical dude comedy which will never get the chance of a second viewing.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to have time to review the brilliant 'Weekend', which totally justifies the recent hype and box office success.

'Bridesmaids' review:

"It's coming out like hot lava" screams a character in blockbuster comedy 'Bridesmaids' as they unleash a torrent of diarrhea into the sink of a plush public bathroom. It's a line, and indeed a scenario, that wouldn't be out of place in any other Judd Apatow produced comedy, where it might just as plausibly have been shouted by Seth Rogen. Here however, the difference - and the selling point - is that this line is shouted by a woman, Megan played by Melissa McCarthy.

Co-written by and starring Kristen Wiig, 'Bridesmaids' is about Annie, a woman in her thirties who is watching her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) get engaged and wondering how life has passed her by. Her car is rusty, her cake shop closed down in the recession and she lives with a couple of creepy room mates (one of whom is played by Matt Lucas). Worse still, the elegant, high-society Helen (Rose Byrne) seems set on supplanting her as Lillian's maid of honour.



'Bridesmaids' is a rare comedy that gives women permission to be funny, to pull ugly faces and to fart in public. Unlike the majority of comedies which relegate female characters to disapproving shrews and the perennial, sighing babysitters of giant man-children, this is a film in which the few male characters play it relatively straight whilst a female ensemble carries all the crass, sweary jokes. In this way it both subverts and conforms to the lucrative Apatow comedy model.

It's hard to recall another film comedy in which women take centre stage (perhaps the Tina Fey penned 'Mean Girls'?) and 'Bridesmaids' should definitively put to bed the myth that women aren't funny, with a first half hour as solidly amusing as that of any comedy made in the last decade. Yet sadly the rate of laughs is not sustained beyond the opening minutes and for most of the two hour running time 'Bridesmaids' seems to forget that it's a comedy, getting bogged down in Annie's inevitable fall-out with her friends and with her mild-mannered love interest (Chris O'Dowd).



It's also disappointing that some of the laughs are so uninspired, desperate and lazy, for instance when Wiig plays drunk and cringingly mimics Hitler, asking an air steward if he's German. Or when we are asked to laugh as an overweight person runs towards some food. The more manic and exaggerated the film gets in pursuit of easy laughs, the less funny it becomes. These moments are made more disheartening by the early promise offered by a laid-back and naturalistic lunch scene in which Wiig and the ever-excellent Rudolph effortlessly convince as best friends, showing that Wiig as a writer and a performer can offer so much more.

'Bridesmaids' is far better than its only real summer comedy competition, 'The Hangover: Part II', and must therefore be considered the year's best out-and-out comedy. At times it certainly lives up to that billing on merit, but mostly the fact this is what currently passes for above average just highlights the dearth of quality comedy films being made right now. But at least the long overdue emergence of this film, and its subsequent commercial and critical success, should ensure women are allowed to keep on being funny on film. David Brent once said "women are as filthy as men", but it's taken until now for Hollywood to make a feature of it.

'Bridesmaids' is out now in the UK and has been rated '15' by the BBFC.