Taking aim at the best and worst of movies and television.
With a shift to 10 nominees in the Best Picture category, the Academy is also changing voting procedure this year. In the past, Oscar voters picked their favorite, and the title that got the most votes won. This year, voters will be asked to rank the films, 1 to 10, and the winner will be determined by a system called "preferential voting."
Our critic doesn’t get to vote (one of the Academy’s many boneheaded decisions), but if he did, here’s what his ballot would look like.
1. Inglourious Basterds
2. A Serious Man
3. Up
4. Precious
5. Up in the Air
6. The Hurt Locker
7. Avatar
8. An Education
9. The Blind Side
10. District 9
A tough choice at the top Although they’re both curiously preoccupied with the Jewish-American experience, you’d be hard-pressed to find two more wildly different movies than Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterdsand the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man. One is an elaborate revenge fantasy that rewrites the fall of the Nazis; the other is a grimly comic, modestly scaled character study about a university professor who comes to believe that God is sending down a series of plagues upon him. If I give the slight edge to Inglourious Basterds, it’s because it seemed so joyously exuberant and elastic — a true epic that reminds us of the endless possibilities of cinema. Beyond Tarantino’s baroque set pieces and his teasing dialogue exchanges, this is an audacious work that turns every World War II movie cliché on its ear.
High on Pixar When I walked out of the funny and heart-piercing animated comedy Up in April, I couldn’t imagine how I would see a better film all year, for grown-ups or children. Alas, it turned out to be a very good year. Still, I’d cheer loudly if Up pulled off an upset in the Best Picture category. For one thing, the Best Animated Film Oscar — which Pixar has dominated for the past decade — is a ghetto that makes it too easy to dismiss the achievements of animated filmmakers. For another, Pixar’s work since 1995, from the “Toy Story” pictures, to Finding Nemo , to The Incredibles , to Ratatouille, has been so groundbreaking, so original and so consistently wonderful that it’s high time to acknowledge the studio with the biggest Oscar prize of them all.
Did ‘Up in the Air’ peak too soon? Ever since it began playing at festivals last fall, Up in the Air looked like the movie to beat. Its portrait of a corporate shark who specializes in layoffs was timely and poignant. Hollywood seemed ready to anoint star George Clooney with a second Oscar. But almost as soon as the movie opened, the buzz seemed to fade; most prognosticators now expect that it will take home only the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar as a consolation prize. What went awry? My guess is that Up in the Air got so aggressively talked up by bloggers and critics that a lot of voters felt let down when they discovered that it was a modest, simple drama that mostly features three people talking. Note to studios for next year: If you have a low-key contender, it might be wisest to keep it hidden from view until the last possible moment.
Bigelow vs. Cameron: Who cares? Can we just come out and say it? Avatar and The Hurt Locker, the two movies considered the front-runners for the Best Picture prize, are both a little overrated. No doubt, Cameron’s futuristic fantasy is a technical tour de force that uses digital technology as it’s never been used before. But the story remains cold, inert, uninvolving — watching it is like trying to make an emotional connection to your computer’s hard drive. The Hurt Locker is its own tour de force, a harrowing immersion into the lives of a group of IED specialists in Iraq. But once again, the story feels shapeless, a series of similar scenes repeated again and again.
The movies that don’t belong here Sorry to burst the hype bubble, but The Blind Side remains the most glib, insultingly naïve treatment imaginable of a potentially fascinating story; if the Academy is going to hand out nominations for cheesy feel-good movies simply because they struck a chord at the box office, well, where is the nomination for Zombielandand ? As for District 9, I remain mystified by the response to this belabored, overly literal allegory with unlikable characters and B-movie. aliens.
Who will win It looks like a fight to the end between ex-spouses Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron, but Avatar was a true industry game-changer that the Academy will be eager to reward.
