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• Final stab at the Oscar nominations. Is Hurt Locker now favourite?

  January 31, 2010 @ 10:22 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Hello. Billy the Fish here with his final attempt to guess Tuesday’s Oscar nominations. As we seek to anticipate the Academy’s shortlist for best picture, a strange revelation sets in. When, last summer, it was announced that the powers that be were to increase the number of best picture nods from five to 10, Screenwriter was not alone in suggesting that the real nominees would come to be seen as those films whose directors received nods. As things have worked out, the best director nominations appear already to be sewn up. So, if there were still just five best picture places, speculation would already have ended on that race. If you haven’t been following the action, the pictures in question are Avatar, Up in the Air, Precious, Inglourious Basterds and The Hurt Locker. Only Quentin Tarantino, director of Basterds, need have even the slightest worry about not ending up in the director derby.

  

  L to R: Bigelow, Cameron, Your one out of Titanic who’s now married to Jim.

  With that in mind, expanding the race seems, for pundits at least, to have been a very good idea. At least we have something to talk about. Not much has changed in the bottom region of the list over the past few weeks. As has been the case for a month, there seem to be seven dead certs: the five pictures mentioned above plus Up and An Education. The remaining three places are, in this writer’s estimation, sure to be drawn from the following pool of eight: Star Trek, Invictus, A Serious Man, District 9, Crazy Heart, The Messenger, A Single Man and (no, really) Julie & Julia. That’s right. After figuring in everyone’s list in late October, Nine and The Lovely Bones now shiver on the Oscar equivalent of an undiscovered moon of Pluto. No three from that eight would amaze me, but it would be a disappointment (not least to the mainstream-hungry Academy) if one of the two science fiction pictures didn’t make it in. My heart — though not my head — votes for both Star Trek and District 9.

  What really has changed over the last few days is the race for the best picture Oscar itself. Last night, The Hurt Locker added the Directors Guild prize for best picture to the Producers Guild gong it won earlier in the week. Unlike the stupid Golden Globes, these prizes have a very good record in predicting Oscar success (not least because both electorates are packed with Academy members). So, Avatar is no longer a dead cert. The Hurt Locker has become a very, very strong second favourite. In fact, more than a few pundits now have Hurt Locker back in front.

  This creates several intriguing conflicts. Firstly (and most deliciously) the directors of the two films — Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron — were once married. Secondly, whereas Avatar would (duh!) be the most successful film ever to take the top prize, The Hurt Locker would, by most estimates, be the least financially lucrative ever to win best picture. Indeed, a recent article in the LA Times suggested that it might be the first best-film winner to actually lose money on its theatrical release. And of course there’s the issue of gender. No woman has ever been so close to nabbing the best director Oscar.

  So it’s David (née Mrs Goliath) versus her swaggering giant of an ex. Fun, fun, fun.

  Enjoy our stab at guessing the main nominations below. The lists are arranged in order of likelihood. So you can take each number one as my current pick for the final prize.

  BEST PICTURE 

  1. Avatar

  2. The Hurt Locker

  3. Up in the Air

  4. Precious

  5. Inglourious Basterds

  6. Up

  7. An Education

  8. Star Trek

  9. Invictus

  10. A Serious Man

  BEST DIRECTOR

  1. James Cameron

  2. Kathryn Bigelow

  3. Jason Reitman

  4. Lee Daniels

  5. Quentin Tarantino

  BEST ACTOR

  1. Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)

  2. George Clooney (Up in the Air)

  3. Colin Firth (A Single Man)

  4. Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

  5. Morgan Freeman (Invictus)

  BEST ACTRESS

  1. Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)

  2. Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)

  3. Carey Mulligan (An Education)

  4. Helen Mirren (The Last Station)

  5. Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

  Comments (42)

• Ernie Shackleton retreated close to the pole.

  January 29, 2010 @ 11:27 pm | by Donald Clarke

  As it’s the weekend allow me to recommend  a tune to accompany your progress through brunch and advertising supplements. Comic rock is rarely comic and it almost never rocks. The one notable exception is the oeuvre of the imperishable Birkenhead band Half Man Half Biscuit. Older readers may remember superb tunes from the 1980s and 1990s such as Dickie Davis Eyes, The Trumpton Riots and All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit. You should, however, be aware that they have been plugging away ever since and, far from allowing age to wither them, have grown stronger and more amusing with the passing years.

  Here is a slightly ropey live version of their excellent 2008 tune Bad Losers on Yahoo Chess.

  Apologies for the awful picture (and sound).

  

  To get the full value from the tune, you may need to consult the lyrics:

  Checkmate!
  Dennis Bell of Torquay
  Too late
  With your Nxe3
  Good game sir
  Do you want another bout?
  Well Dennis ain’t replying
  ‘cos he just signed out
  Bad losers on Yahoo Chess

  Deep Blue
  In ‘97 I voted for you
  As Sports Personality of the Year
  I thought at least
  You’d get the Overseas
  ‘cos when all’s said and done
  You’re not like some of these
  Bad losers on Yahoo Chess

  Cetshwayo got a shock
  When he attacked Rorke’s Drift
  But he didn’t get stroppy
  And he didn’t get miffed
  Ernie Shackleton retreated
  Close to the Pole
  He didn’t want men dying
  To achieve his goal
  But did he get a gob on?
  No he gave a little grin
  Heed this Dennis Bell
  When you next sign in
  Bad Losers On Yahoo Chess

  What makes it so funny? I think, more than anything else, it’s the hint that the Great Nigel Blackwell is not entirely joking. He has certainly pushed the pieces about on Yahoo and I fear Dennis Bell might be a real opponent.

  At any rate, do the decent thing and download the song from iTunes or, better still, buy the entire album CSI Ambleside.

  Comments (7)

• Messrs O’Toole and Boorman ponder the most successful picture of all time.

  January 26, 2010 @ 11:25 pm | by Donald Clarke

  At the time of the 1987 British general election, I was living in London — in Mrs Thatcher’s constituency, in fact — and, like many of my Guardian-reading friends, greatly appreciated a cartoon that appeared in that paper the day after the apocalypse. A man with Guardian glasses and Guardian hair (you know what I mean) looks disconsolately out the window and says to his similarly attired wife: “We must live a very sheltered life. We don’t know anybody who voted for her.”

  

  The Na’vi celebrate all that lolly with, erm, a lolly.

  This gag came to my mind while enjoying a recent article by Fintan O’Toole and letter by distinguished director John Boorman on the subject of Avatar’s seemingly unstoppable advance. As it happened, Mr Boorman’s missive was published on the very day that James Cameron’s modestly diverting fantasy flick surpassed Jim’s own Titanic to become the most lucrative film ever at the world box office. (That’s today if you’ve accessed Screenwriter good and early.)

  I have some minor quibbles with both the letter and the article. I can’t quite buy Fintan’s assertion that  ”It is the case that Hollywood can’t combine technological innovation, good storytelling and human beings.” The recent re-invention of Star Trek managed all those things. So did Coraline. Despite enjoying Pixar’s work, Fintan does not, it seems, feel that the studio’s animations check all three boxes. Yet Carl Fredricksen, hero of Up, is as convincing a “human being” — this appears to be the sticking point — as any character in a typical Restoration comedy or Evelyn Waugh novel.

  In assessing the reasons for Avatar’s financial success, John (understandably) fails to mention one tedious economic consideration: tickets for 3-D movies cost about 15 percent more than those for flat films. Without that extra boost, Avatar would still be an enormously successful film, but it might be a mere Return of the King rather than an awe-inspiring Titanic. I also felt, given that another subject under discussion was The Wizard of Oz, he was too modest in not mentioning his own, extraordinary Zardoz. Of all the many takes on The Wizard of Oz, it could be the most delightfully strange and curiously undervalued.

  Never mind that. We are all three largely in agreement. The technological innovations are unquestionably noteworthy, but the picture is narratively underpowered, desperately short on character and philosophically muddled. I also happen to think that the imagined universe often looks like it’s been vomited up by My Little Pony after scoffing too many licorice all-sorts, but I guess — to mangle Dolly Parton once more — it takes a lot of ingenuity too look this cheap.Meanwhile, visitors to this “blog” have consistently — indeed near-unanimously — declared that Avatar is, well, just about okay.  Indeed, I have received complaints that I was too kind to the thing in my review. We all must live very sheltered lives indeed.

  So, what gives? How has Avatar achieved its success? Titanic appealed to so many demographics — Grandmothers saw it as a period piece, young boys as a disaster movie, teenage girls as a swoony romance — that it was almost guaranteed to vacuum up a spectacular amount of money. Yet Avatar is very much a genre piece. Mashing together the aesthetics of Yes album sleeves with those of 1950s science fiction paperback covers, the picture seems specifically designed to appeal solely to a solitary class of fantasy enthusiast. Well, no film makes $1.8 billion at the box-office by drawing on just one niche market.

  A few things spring to mind. Firstly, don’t forget that, though the film got very guarded reviews on this side of the Atlantic, it received genuine raves in America, often from quite respectable critics. It seems that a belief in the virtues of uncomplicated wonder — something we rather sneer at — still throbs in the hearts of many American pundits. That swell of opinion has pulled in a lot of older viewers.

  Secondly, after looking west, you may want to cast your eyes towards the rising sun. The very fact that the film has such an uncomplicated, oft-repeated central story is positively a boon in the area known to Hollywood as Rest of the World. Cultural and linguistic differences matter less when your film is set on another planet and based on a story that could spring from ancient myth. Keep in mind that, at time of writing, Avatar has some way to go to before it catches Titanic in America and a bit to go before passing out (ahem) Mamma Mia! in the United Kingdom. More interesting still, in Ireland it has, of yet, made only a little over three quarters of what Titanic eventually took. The real powerhouse behind the film’s success is the non-Anglophone market.

  Thirdly, remember that people who like Avatar tend to like it a lot. I am fairly sure that the chap who emailed me saying I should be sacked for only giving it three stars went to see the flick again (and again). Repeat viewings are driven by the  knowledge that, whatever the advances in home entertainment, a 3-D, motion-captured picture is never going to be as visually bludgeoning on telly as it is when projected on a screen the size of a football pitch. If you do want to see it again now’s the time to do so.

  And finally let me reiterate that (boring, but true) the tickets cost that bit more than those for your average flat film. Combine that with inflation and the film’s advance up the charts becomes a little bit more understandable. Meanwhile, with tedious predictability, Gone with the Wind still sits happily atop the inflation-adjusted box-office hit parade. I don’t think that will be beaten in my lifetime. Mind you, in my recent interview with Cameron, I indicated — with weasel words — that I felt the same about Titanic’s record in the unadjusted chart. Oh man. There’s egg on my stupid face.

  Comments (24)

• Bullock triumphant! Brangelina in trouble?

  January 24, 2010 @ 11:42 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Events at the Screen Actors Guild this weekend confirmed one of the odder cinematic developments of 2009. Sandra Bullock picked up the SAG best actress award for her performance in The Blind Side — some blubby American foorball thing — and was thus firmly installed, at a sprightly 45, as the actress of the moment. You probably already know this, but, by any measure that matters, Bullock proved to be the most bankable star of last year. She is now, also, favourite to take the Oscar on March 7th.

  

  Is that…? Yes. Good grief. It’s my career.
  

  Sure, many films made more money than The Proposal or The Blind Side, but none of them was flogged as a star vehicle. Think about it. When discussing your trip to Avatar, did your partner say: “Hey, let’s go and see that new Sam Worthington movie.”? Thought not. “Oh look!” he/she didn’t say either. “There’s a new Kristen Stewart film on at the Ritz. Oh, I don’t know. Something about a vampire I think.” The Blind Side is, apparently, the first film ever to pass $200 million at the US box office with a woman’s name above the title.

  I haven’t seen The Blind Side yet. The Proposal was pretty ordinary and — in cinemas now, folks — All About Steve was fairly dreadful. But it’s hard to begrudge Sandy this unexpected boon. She’s an amiable sort and has a decent gift for the delivery of a punchline. In a business where women have, traditionally, been left out with the trash at 30, it’s good to see somebody genuinely middle-aged getting proper romantic leads.

  That said, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that she has secured the title by default. Last year, the power of the movie star proved less significant than at any point in the preceding 20 years. A lot of films made a lot of money. Virtually none of the real smashes owed their success to the presence of a Cruise, an Eastwood, a Roberts, a Jolie, a Pitt or even a Van Damme. Sandy has inherited a ravaged kingdom.

  Speaking of Jolie, how on earth are the supermarket tabloids going to react if — as reported by some slightly more reputable sources — Brad and Angie are, indeed, to split? I imagine one of those fellows who used to wear sandwich boards declaring “The End is Nigh” pointing with indecent delight towards a hurtling asteroid. “See! I’ve been telling you for years! We’re all going to die! Hooray!”

  Comments (16)

• Pat the Deity and stuff.

  January 22, 2010 @ 10:26 pm | by Donald Clarke

  When I began this “blog” I never expected to find myself writing about bread commercials, but, after a trip to the Dart station, I find just such an urge coming upon me. Consider the ubiquitous billboard — sadly I can’t find an image on the net — that features a picture of a cornfield beneath a legend asking: “Who makes the sun come up?” Who, indeed? Well, it’s “Pat the Baker” apparently.

  

  Now, hang on a moment. I know that manufacturers often make claims about their products’ jokey personifications.  But I don’t remember Kentucky Fried Chicken suggesting that Colonel Saunders was God. And he had a white beard and everything! Similarly, McDonald’s has never argued that Ronald McDonald created the Earth and all that dwell upon it. Fox’s have, to my knowledge, not urged us to bow down before the polar bear stranded on their mint. In fact, the only organisations I can think of that claims such powers for its leader are certain of the more demented dictatorships. Perhaps, rather than thinking of Pat as God, we should think of him as Mao Zedong or Kim Jong Il.

  Anyway…

  Screenwriter is currently reading: Family Britain 1951-1957 by David Kynaston. The second volume of the historian’s absurdly ambitious Tales of a New Jerusalem sequence is every bit as brilliant as its foggy predecessor.

  Screenwriter is currently listening to By the Throat by Ben Frost. Seriously spooky stuff from the Australian ambient master.

  Screenwriter is watching the following telly: Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe on BBC4 (and on YouTube). If you haven’t encountered Charlie yet then… Well, where have you been? A brilliant dissection of the news.

  Comments (3)

• Where do I begin…

  January 20, 2010 @ 10:44 pm | by Donald Clarke

  …to make sense of the phenomenon that was Love Story? Erich Segal, who died a few days ago, was a distinguished classics scholar, literary critic and sports commentator. Unfortunately, Eric, a nice, smart bloke by all accounts, will forever be associated with one of the more curious and dubious fads of the early 1970s. Published in 1970, Love Story told the tale of a poor girl who falls in love with a rich bloke and then dies beautifully. The book was a major hit, but the film (released the same year, oddly) was something else altogether. If you’re not old enough to remember the wretched thing’s emergence –  I just about am — you probably think of it as one of many undistinguished movies that exist to remind us that, during the Easy Riders Raging Bulls era, thrilling, dangerous films such as, well, Easy Rider and Raging Bull were very much the exception.

  

  Cough! Cough! It’s all going dark, Ryan.

  But Love Story was not just another film. It’s hard to imagine quite how huge the bloody thing was. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” the key line, became a standard meaningless aphorism of the age. If you’d just smashed your husband on the face with a tire iron, you now, thanks to Hollywood, didn’t even need to offer an apology. The horrible theme song, Where do I Begin?, was covered by every frilly-shirted crooner. Ali MacGraw, already 30 when the film was made, despite playing a student, became a major star for about a year and a half (till people woke up to certain horrible truths, in other words). The picture was nominated for a best picture Oscar and made a bucket of money. In the  all-time inflation-adjusted box-office chart  it sits (at time of writing) at number 34, just one place behind something called Avatar.

  Yet the film is barely talked about now. Could it be that properly bad films are only capable of establishing camp immortality? Love Story is certainly pretty wretched. The failure to give Ali MacGraw’s disease a name — you could  kill whole tribes of Native Americans on film, but saying the word “cancer” was frowned upon — now strikes us as absurd and offensive. Ali and Ryan O’Neal have no more chemistry than you’d encounter between a horseshoe and a jar of mustard. And the dialogue!  “What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?” Eugh! Sure enough, just about the only place Love Story is now shown regularly is at Harvard, the picture’s location, where it is endured as an initiation rite. Good grief. Spare me that. Just pummel my backside with a ping-pong bat, why don’t you?

  Even the generation that grew up with it are reluctant to admit ever liking it. Remind you of anything? Fans of Titanic, despite that film being the most successful ever, are now weirdly thin on the ground. The hysteria for the big-boat picture now looks a little like the hysteria following the death of Princess Diana. The blubbers are all just a little embarrassed.

  What will we think of Avatar in 40 years time? Heck, the picture’s still at number one and we’ve already forgotten the ghastly theme song. What’s it called? I’m in You? Here I be? May Contain Nuts?

  Oh, who cares.

  Comments (18)

• It’s the Golden Globe$

  January 19, 2010 @ 11:14 pm | by Donald Clarke

  There were, for those of us who stayed up to watch the stupid Golden Globes, a few pleasures to make up for the depressing intelligence that Avatar has now been installed as the third most popular religion in the United States. Ricky Gervais’s turn as presenter was poorly reviewed in many places, but, in a peculiar way, the silence that greeted his sparkier quips could be seen as a sort of victory. It wasn’t an ordinary silence. It was the feet-shuffling, slightly furious silence you might encounter following a stoning or the dunking of a witch. When, come to think of it, has any line by a presenter on the Golden Globes achieved the sort of resonance accorded his quip about the world’s greatest Australian? “I like a drink as much as the next man, unless the next man is Mel Gibson,” he sniggered. Mel didn’t seem to mind. Good for him. He may be a right-wing religious maniac, but he can certainly take a joke.

  

  It’s Rachel from Friends and that bloke from 300.
  

  Elsewhere one could marvel at some of the worst speeches ever delivered at an awards ceremony. Mo’Nique was gushy and bible bashing. Drew Barrymore shamed herself yet again. Even Meryl Streep, invariably the most dignified figure in the room, made a raving twit of herself.

  Still, who could take an event seriously that so shamelessly tips its hat to the biggest money-makers in the room? If the Globes could have given an award to Warren Buffett (or Richie Rich) they would gladly have done so.

  Our predictions for the Oscars remain unaltered.

  Comments (6)

• Movie hack hand-wringing in duplicate

  January 17, 2010 @ 11:13 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Did anybody visit the Guardian’s film page over the weekend? On the left-hand column (and somewhere in the real paper, I guess) there was a piece by Kidman-fancier-in-chief David Thomson entitled Ozu vs Avatar — this really is what cinema has come down to. On the right hand column, reliable LA-based film journo John Patterson was happy to bellow: No more Ninja Assasin, I’m going back to Ozu.

  

  I’ve had enough of Ozu. I’m going back to Big Momma’s House 2.

  I guess Yasujiro Ozu, director of Tokyo Story and a dozen other masterpieces, would be delighted to hear that film hacks were still using him as a stick — or perhaps a Kendo Shinai –  with which to hammer contemporary cinema. But two hand-wringing pieces in the same vein really is at least one too many.

  Anyway, if you want to compare for yourself the Ozu season continues at the IFI.

  Comments (9)

• One of the five best sitcoms ever is nearly available.

  January 13, 2010 @ 10:13 pm | by Donald Clarke

  A little over a decade ago, RTÉ began repeating The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the middle of the day. Visiting favourite TV series from one’s youth is always a tricky business. Dad’s Army still looks like a 24-carat classic; the same team’s It Ain’t Half Hot Mum is a genuine embarrassment. Columbo is untouchable; Mannix is unwatchable.

  It was, thus, with some relief that we (then) thirtysomethings discovered how well The Mary Tyler Moore show held up. Much lauded in its home territories, the series, which ran from 1970 to 1977, has, on this side of the Atlantic, never set in as solidly as did, say, Bilko, Cheers or even Taxi. But a quick glance confirms what a superb piece of work it is. Now, after a long wait, the entire run is finally available to download  from the UK version of  iTunes. But, for some weird reason, it is still not available on the Irish version of the service (or on Region 2 DVD for that matter). What gives?

  

  As older readers may be aware, the show followed the day-to-day adventures of a TV news producer in (of all places) Minneapolis. At home, she gossiped with her mate Rhoda (Valerie Harper, later the star of a much less impressive spin-off) and cast her eyes skyward whenever Phyllis (Cloris Leachman), her mad landlady, swanned over the threshold. The real meat of the show was found, however, in the sections at Mary’s workplace. Everyone loves boozy, irascible  Lou Grant (Ed Asner, later the star of a rather brilliant spin-off). The superb Betty White was hilarious as lascivious homemaker Sue Anne Nivens and Georgia Engel touching as the shy, supernaturally mousy Georgette. Brilliant as all those performances were — and Tyler Moore herself is immaculate throughout — the funniest scenes still belong to the cretinous, fantastically pompous news anchor Ted Baxter. As played by Ted Knight, Baxter proved to be a hugely influential character. James L Brooks, the show’s creator, went on, following further hits such as Rhoda, Lou Grant and Taxi, to develop a little show called The Simpsons. What is Kent Brockman but a nastier version of Ted?

  Come to think of it, what is Brooks’s Broadcast News but a movie adaptation of The Mary Tyler Moore Show? Murray Slaughter (Gavin McLeod), the show’s exasperated, underappreciated writer, becomes Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks). Mary becomes Jane Craig (Holly Hunter). Ted becomes the somewhat less pompous, but equally unqualified Tom Grunick (William Hurt).

  It’s a good film, but it doesn’t quite have the resonance of the series. Aside from anything else, MTM had the best theme tune to any sitcom ever. Ever!

  Comments (22)

• Nine out, Trek in at Oscars?

  January 12, 2010 @ 10:46 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Viz comic used to great mileage from the fact that, as the editors saw it, nobody cared much for Fulchester goalkeeper Billy the Fish. His exploits were often accompanied by copy such as “the strip everybody hates” or “everyone’s least favourite Viz character”.

  I am beginning to suspect that Oscar gossip is Screenwriter’s equivalent of the great piscine footballer. The regular updates on the waxing and waning of various titles’ chances for the awards is usually met with a mixture of boredom and hostility. Fair enough. The Oscars are rubbish I suppose.

  It is, nonetheless, time for another rumination. What’s changed since last time? Well, The Messenger, an interesting indie film concerning Iraq, has  not picked up the support that might have been expected. More dramatically, the largely appalling reviews for Nine — including one from this writer — have finally propelled that musical into the outer wastelands of Awardsland. Now, the weird thing is that Nine still could win best musical or comedy at the Golden Globes on Sunday, but that is only because the competition is — in Awards terms — not all that juicy. The Hangover and (500) Days of Summer are both better films, but they don’t have that necessary middle-brow sheen about them. If that does happen then it’s back in the running for an Oscar nomination. The picture has, however, no chance whatsoever of winning.

  

  The crew of the Enterprise marvel at intergalactic levels of tunelessnes in Nine.

  The other big mover of the new year has been Star Trek. When it was announced, back in the summer, that there were to be 10 nominations for best picture, everybody felt that the superbly reviewed, financially satisfactory science fiction romp was now a dead cert. By Christmas  its hopes had faded and it looked as if we would be stuck with yet more big, dull potboilers in the final 10. But what’s this? Star Trek has just received nominations from the Producers Guild of America, the American Cinema Editors and the Writers Guild of America for those organisations’ respective awards.  With that and Avatar in the final running the Academy might actually get the populist ceremony on which they were counting.

  Meanwhile, propelled by absurdly positive reviews, Avatar has become the second biggest film ever at the world box-office. It is now the runaway favourite for best picture.

  SCREENWRITER’S PREDICTIONS FOR THE BEST PICTURE NOMINATIONS

  1. Avatar
  Sam Worthington saves the Smurfs. James Cameron saves Hollywood.

  2. Up in the Air
  Suave, old-school Clooney pic will definitely get many nods. But what can it now win? Even the best adapted screenplay could go to…

  3. Precious
  Though utterly different in tone, the grim drama is this year’s Juno, Sideways or Little Miss Sunshine. The quasi-indie that could.

  4. The Hurt Locker
  Been a lock for a nomination ever since it received raves in the early part of the year. Mind you, its box-office takings in the US were truly appalling.

  5. Up
  Why not just give it the best animated feature gong now?

  6. Inglourious Basterds
  Well, well, well. Who knew? Quentin’s unruly war flick has been picking up vast numbers of nominations throughout awards season and is now certain of a place in the final 10. Christoph Waltz is the big favourite for best supporting actor.

  7. An Education
  Again, nobody went to see it in America. But the surge behind Carey Mulligan should keep it afloat.

  8. Invictus
  Eastwood’s tale of rugby in post-Apartheid South Africa is fading a bit. But the classy personnel — Clint, Morgan Freeman — will continue to appeal to Oscar voters.

  9. Star Trek
  Loved by all — though it underperformed outside America — this is the critically acclaimed crowd-pleaser the Academy was hoping for when it increased the number of best picture nods. Boosted by nominations from a host of professional bodies.

  10. A Serious Man
  It’s back. Just hovering outside the top 10 last time, the Coens’ masterpiece should profit from Nine’s decline.

  In: A Serious Man (re-entry), Star Trek.

  Out: Nine, The Messenger.

  Comments (22)

• Trailerspotting hits the mother lode.

  January 10, 2010 @ 10:07 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Okay. Now, this is the trailer we’ve all been waiting for. There are few films more delightful to the Hibernian palate than the Hollywood Mick-flick. Did you see Laws of Attraction? How about P S I Love You? Yeah? How long did the post-traumatic stress disorder last? I don’t want to get too hoity-toity about it, but if the studios treated African-Americans this way they’d be under permanent threat of boycott. From where have they plucked this awful combination of twinkly whimsy and unfiltered, whiskey-soaked idiocy? From their own films I suspect.

  The latest potential atrocity is a little thing called Leap Year.

  

  Cows block the highway; old men fall down drunk; landladies disapprove of sex before marriage: all that’s missing is a leprechaun with an ArmaLite rifle. My favourite moment comes when Amy Adams declares that she is here to propose to her boyfriend on “Leap Day” and, rather than saying “What the hell are you talking about?”, Matthew Goode — what is that accent? — wisely replies through a mouthful of raw potato (perhaps) that this is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. Quite.

  We, of course, should not be surprised that the trailer takes such an unreconstructed view of Irish culture. After all, right from the beginning it announces its reactionary tendencies — common to so many rom-coms — by clarifying that Amy  cannot contemplate happiness without a wedding and that she is unable to propose marriage herself. Come to think of it, considering her stone-age attitude to life, Amy probably finds this version of Ireland unimaginably sophisticated. I get the impression this character would regard life among Barbary apes a step up the sociological ladder. Note this line again: “I am not going to die without getting engaged.” It’s like the last 100 years never happened.

  On an unrelated issue, have a look at Jason Reitman’s little film documenting his experiences promoting the nifty Up in the Air. If you can be bothered to look closely you will spot a near-subliminal glance of Screenwriter. The resulting interview will appear in the Ticket this Friday.

  Comments (27)

• The greatest gift ever for headline writers.

  January 8, 2010 @ 1:35 am | by Donald Clarke

  By now, you should have heard the news — revealed in a fantastically creepy BBC Spotlight investigation — that Iris Robinson, gay-bashing DUP outrider and professional Margaret Hamilton impersonator, had a torrid affair with a brave 19-year-old chap. Might I suggest that any tabloid headline writer who fails to make reference to Anne Bancroft’s character in The Graduate should immediately be sacked.

  All together now. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo doo. So here’s to you…

  

  Homosexuality is “an abomination”, you know. 

  Comments (19)

• Irish-American Notes

  January 6, 2010 @ 11:19 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Unkind commentators have, from time to time, suggested that certain sections of the Irish-American community tend towards sentimentality in their attitude to the old country and paranoid chippiness in their approach to the United Kingdom. What else do these rogues claim? Well, they say that, when not providing us with the means to blow each other to bits, the less sensible class of Irish-American spends his time plastering shamrocks on anything that moves and identifying every worthy in the United States as a fellow countryman. Johnny Cash’s folk are from Leitrim, you know. Sure, isn’t Jimi Hendrix a Waterford man. Jaysus, didn’t Charles Manson’s family spring from Roscrea. And so on.

  

  Klaus O’Kinski in the best Irish film of 1972.

  I don’t hold with this sort of gross generalisation myself, but it is true that, from time to time, Irish-America can allow its patriotism to get the better of its common sense. Consider my new favourite place Irish Central. Predictably shamrock-bedecked, the website, online home to Irish Voice and Irish America magazines, adds a number of surprising obsessions to the usual focus on the awfulness of the English and the brilliance of the Irish. No opportunity, for example. is wasted to eulogise Scottish MOR warbler Susan Boyle or to castigate skeletal heartthrob Robert Pattinson. Mind you, Rob is English and Subo’s parents are Irish, so I suppose this fits in with the site’s big-hearted ethos.

  A typical recent entry raged about the London Film Critics Circle’s decision to include Irish talent — Michael Fassbender, Saoirse Ronan and (ahem) Anne-Marie Duff — in the shortlist for the body’s best British actors awards of 2009. Let’s begin by pointing out that, though of Irish parents, Anne-Marie Duff was born and raised in London and, thus, that only the fascist British National Party would object to her being called British. That noted, we should acknowledge there is very definitely a problem here.  The amiable Jason Solomons, the LFCC’s awards chair, is nobody’s idea of a cultural imperialist, but the body should — for accuracy’s sake at least — consider retitling the awards.

  I put this before you as a taster for the fabulous main course: Irish Central’s list of the best Irish films of the decade. Ready? You’re going to love this. Here goes:
  

  1. The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006)

  2. Hunger (2008)

  3. Once (2007)

  4. The Departed (2006)

  5. Brothers (2009)

  6. Gone Baby Gone (2007)

  7. The Magdalene Sisters (2003)

  8. Hotel Rwanda (2008)

  9. Atonement (2007)

  10. Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

  Atonement? Gone Baby Gone? Capitalism: A Love Story? I beg your pardon? If you’re still rubbing your eyes in disbelief, let me explain that, to qualify, a film must feature “an Irish director, theme or star”. Now, when you consider that Irish-Americans are, for the purposes of this list, regarded as Irish — that’s how Michael Moore’s Capitalism gets in — you quickly realise that Irish Central’s definition covers the majority of all films ever made in Britain or America. An exaggeration? Well, Saoirse Ronan has a medium-sized part in just the first half of Atonement, so obviously supporting performers count. Flick through a few cast lists on IMDb and see how many films you can find without Irish names attached. (Funnily enough, if they had included cinematographers in their criteria, they might have been on surer ground with Atonement. The film was, of course, shot by Armagh’s Seamus McGarvey.)

  The hypocrisy here is really quite staggering. Irish Central gets its shamrock-covered knickers in a twist when (as I say, unwisely) the LFCC appears to label Saoirse Ronan British, but it still feels able to describe Atonement — directed by an Englishman in England, starring a largely British cast and based on an English novel — as an Irish film.

  This, however, is not the real outrage. Michael Moore would probably chuckle ironically upon hearing his film redesignated as Irish. Ben Affleck, director of Gone Baby Gone, would take it on his big, square chin. The people who should be really upset are the directors (and writers and stars) of proper Irish films who have been left off the list to accommodate American and British product. Where are Lenny Abrahamson’s Adam & Paul and Garage? Where is John Crowley’s Intermission? Where is Lance Daly’s Kisses? We could go on for some time. Irish cinema is no longer a version of early 1990s football and we no longer need to point to a film’s granny — hey everybody, Inland Empire’s nan was from Letterkenny! — to locate top quality domestic product. Indeed, in this writer’s view, both of Abrahamson’s films are somewhat better than Atonement. Ditch the inferiority complex, chaps.

  Comments (14)

• Colin Farrell adds his tribute to Michael.

  January 4, 2010 @ 4:20 pm | by Donald Clarke

  It hardly needs to be said that I am very touched by all the comments beneath the notice of Michael Dwyer’s death. He would have been delighted to know that he was remembered so kindly and would have been particularly moved that so many old associates found the time to post a tribute. Please continue to add any further comments at the original post.

  A kind email arrived from Colin Farrell just a little too late to include with the tributes in today’s paper. Here it is:

  Hello Donald,

  So sorry to hear of the loss of your friend and colleague Michael Dwyer.

  Ireland has lost its greatest fan of cinema and the world one of its most uncynical of journalists.  Michael’s involvement in film went beyond the pale of critiquing.  He was a student and professor of film who shared his love for the medium with all.  Though gone he leaves behind a wealth of work, and a very real ambition for the growth of Irish cinema, of which he was such a pioneer.  From the very beginning, for me, his kindness and keen intellect were a wonder to be around.  I will miss speaking with him because an interview with Michael was more than a session of Q and A.  It always felt, quite simply, like a chat between friends.

  Best,
  Colin

  Comments (4)

• Michael Dwyer 1951 – 2010

  January 2, 2010 @ 2:13 am | by Donald Clarke

  

  My friend Michael Dwyer, this newspaper’s film correspondent, died on New Years Day. He was just 58.

  Comments (105)