And the nominees are (Oscars 2009)...

[Brien]

I really hope in bruges wins best original screen play, and slumdog millionaire wins best film...but i doubt that will happen. And I agree Benjamin Button did waste potential, it could have been forest gump epic, but imo just was kinda stale, and elongated. Not to take away from the makeup and Brad Pitt being a great actor though.

[Norellicus]

imo:

Performance by an actor in a leading role

• Brad Pitt in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Paramount and Warner Bros.)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

• Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight" (Warner Bros.)

Best animated feature film of the year

• "WALL-E" (Walt Disney)Andrew Stanton

Achievement in makeup

• "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Paramount and Warner Bros.)Greg Cannom

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

• "WALL-E" (Walt Disney)Thomas Newman

Best animated short film

• "Presto" (Walt Disney)
  A Pixar Animation Studios ProductionDoug Sweetland

Achievement in sound editing

• "Iron Man" (Paramount and Marvel Entertainment)Frank Eulner and Christopher Boyes

Achievement in sound mixing

• "The Dark Knight" (Warner Bros.)Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo and Ed Novick

Achievement in visual effects

• "Iron Man" (Paramount and Marvel Entertainment)John Nelson, Ben Snow, Dan Sudick and Shane Mahan

I left off all the other categories that I didn't have a fair shake at, haven't seen most of these movies lol :/

Thought Dark Knight was at the last awards though, why is it in these?

[0ni0n]

Honestly I didn't think Ledger's performance was great enough to be on the Oscars list anyway. Was it good? Sure, I liked it a lot, but Oscar worthy? Ehhhhhhhhh

Are you serious? I don't remember anyone as memorable as he was in the dark knight. Granted, the movie was a bit hyped, but his performance is undoubtedly one of the best. Can you think of anyone who's better this year?

I really hope benjamin button and slumdog win multiple awards this year since both are excellent movies.

[TacoTaru]

As far as his catagory goes? RDJ did excellent in Tropic Thunder, but I don't that I'd say he was better. Out of his catagory Brad Pitt blew his performance away in Benjamin Button, and from what I hear Mickey Rourke does in The Wrestler too (I'm an Arrnofsky fanatic though, so I honestly can't say I can come back and judge this movie fairly though.)

[Katlan]

I'm also pretty surprised at RDJ being nominated for best supporting actor. He did a great job and the movie wouldn't of been half as good w/o him, still odd to see a comedy up there. Ledger did an amazing job... I kinda would like to see him get the award cause how does that work?...

And for animated movie: Will definitely be Wall-E
I gotta go see Benjamin Button now... didn't care to see it at first cause it got mixed reviews

[Kwijiboe]

I guess I wasn't too surprised by Downey, Jr. being nominated, and I guess having considered the academy awards past-- He can walk away with the award. Kevin Kline walked away with an Oscar in a Fish Called Wanda, but he was absolutely awesome in that.

As for Benjamin Button's wasted potential, I think the writers forgot that Ben was aging backwards until we reached the ending of the film. Think about it, if you removed the aging backwards phenomenon, you'd have almost the same film. While I thought initially the movie's focus would be anti-war, and the story's beginning heavily foreshadows this, but after the war scene (which was ridiculous, do you really attack a submarine with a Machine gun mounted on a tugboat) all mention of the horridness of war goes amiss. The movie continues, and the (great beginning) story of the watchmaker's disgust of war is essentially wasted. The movie's focus is not on war, it's focus is not on men's impact on history (Why Forrest Gump was so great), the movie is about missed opportunities.

However, as I walked out of the theater, the only missed opportunity I felt was that I should have gone and seen Frost/Nixon instead.

If you take a look at the original short story by F Scott Fitzgerald* there is almost nothing remaining from Fitzgerald's story except the 'aging backwards' phenomenon.

The movie has little or no focus, and relies on mandatory emotional scenes every 25 minutes to keep the viewer from becoming bored. It works, some parts of this movie were excellent, but the scenes in between detract from the story. What was the point of inserting the affair with the older woman, and mentioning the man she married was a spy? Was it to point out the difficulty of a first love? No. The only reason that was in the film was to later show that the older woman would try to swim across the channel again and succeed. It's little things like this that were peppered into this film that stretched out the process. It was at this point of the film that aging backwards became irrelevant for nearly the next hour and a half of the film.

This film comprises of four to five quality scenes connected by scenes that only act as a bridge to getting to the next quality scene. I can't stand when movies do this; directors/writers fall in love with their work and refuse to cut scenes. Movies that go beyond 2hrs30m need to make sure it is necessary to do so. In this film, it is not necessary at all. Overall, the film was alright, containing some great thought provoking pieces of film--but the rest of the experience is dragged down by a lack of focus. When I see a film that follows someone's life, I want to walk away with a message. This movie can't settle for one message, instead it throws out multiple messages hoping the viewer snags on to at least one. A decent film, but not Oscar worthy. Although, I won't be surprised if it wins awards.

(This should really be posted in General Discussion, I completely forgot I had posted in this topic.. Is it just me or is the system of sub-threads more political than anything else? What I mean is, football and nude pics on general discussion.. anime, video games, and film geeks get pushed elsewhere)

*You can be lazy and read the summary of the original F Scott Fitzgerald Benjamin Button short story at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cur..._(short_story)

[Katlan]

(This should really be posted in General Discussion, I completely forgot I had posted in this topic.. Is it just me or is the system of sub-threads more political than anything else? What I mean is, football and nude pics on general discussion.. anime, video games, and film geeks get pushed elsewhere)

It's mainly to make things easier to find and categorized. When General had gaming and Movies, ect... all rolled into one, the pages moved so fast and pretty much had to search most stuff and/or scroll back pages to find anything that wasn't given a new post in... say... 5-10 hrs?

[Mrcloudz]

FUCK YEAH OSCARS

I'm kind of an Oscars/other-film-awards-shows lunatic, so excuse me if this post becomes an enormous wall-o-text.

Personally, here are my predictions for the big awards:

Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
I WANT Slumdog to win, because IMO it was better, but if I know the Academy at all they're going to be more inclined toward the epic love story with fan-goddamn-tastic special effects (and Brad Pitt/Taraji Henson's acting obviously were pretty integral, too).

Best Director: Danny Boyle
It definitely wouldn't be the first time a different director has won this when his film hasn't won Best Picture, and Boyle deserves it so much. Part of Slumdog's appeal is how fucking dazzling it is as a whole, and as someone mentioned earlier, YOU try being a Brit directing real Asians that well lol. It really is a tossup between him and Fincher though; I wouldn't be surprised if I got Picture and Director switched, or if either film wins both, but this is just how I see it playing out. Also, I've been wanting the motherfucker to win an Oscar ever since I found out he directed Trainspotting lol.

Best Leading Actor: Mickey Rourke
Now, granted, I haven't seen Frost/Nixon and I hear Langella is superb, but I've seen all the other nominees, and I think it belongs to Mickey. The Wrestler wouldn't be half the movie it is if it didn't have him in it, and even aside from his performance, this movie to me is like an accumulation of every movie he's done, and he's had a long and impressive career. The only other huge contender is Sean Penn (and I wouldn't be surprised at all if he wins it), because I thought he was phenomenal too, and I have a strange feeling that after they snubbed the fuck out of Brokeback Mountain 3 years ago they'll be a little more generous toward Milk this year.

Best Leading Actress: Kate Winslet
Personally, I'll be super pissed if she doesn't win. Kate is literally my favorite living actress. For fuck's sake, this is her sixth nomination, and ever since she lost for Eternal Sunshine I've been wanting for her to win the goddamn thing more badly than any other actor/actress. I kinda flipped out (with joy, lol) when she won the double Golden Globes, and seriously, I think Hanna Schmitz is the most powerful performance of her career thus far.

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger
This isn't at all about hype, this is about an honest-to-God superior performance. The Dark Knight was already a fantastic movie, but IMO Heath did for it what Mickey did for The Wrestler: he's the BIGGEST reason it's so damn good. Which reminds me actually:

Either Brolin or Ledger will win best supporting actor. If i HAD to put money on it, it would be on Ledger. I'd be shocked if he didn't win it.

Have you seen Revolutionary Road? Michael Shannon was fucking amazing... not that Brolin doesn't deserve his nomination, but I definitely think Shannon deserves it if it doesn't go to Heath.

Best Supporting Actress: Penélope Cruz
This one is almost too perfect. Not only was her performance ACTUALLY the best (at least IMO; Viola Davis comes in a close second), but if she wins, the award will be presented to her by Javier Bardem, her boyfriend. Plus, it will make her and Bardem literally the only two Spanish actors with Oscars. The Academy will EAT that shit up.

Best Original Screenplay: In Bruges
I kind of wanted to say Milk at first, because it's the only original screenplay nominee that's also nominated for Best Picture (and for that reason, it's my second choice), but I thought In Bruges was so goddamn clever when I saw it; it reminded me in a weird way of The Usual Suspects (which also won this category) and A Fish Called Wanda (which was nominated).

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Again, just like with Best Picture, I WANT Slumdog to get this, but I can see them favoring this more. I mean hell, personal biases aside, it's probably the best adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald in movie history, and that's kind of saying something lol.

Best Animated Film: WALL-E
Um, this one's kind of obvious, lol.

The rest I'm not too sure about; I've never been good with predicting sci-tech Oscars so I'm not even going to try.

Crap, it became a wall of text. Sorry :<

[Blarg]

Wall-e should win even if it was up against both toy stories, I love that movie so much.

[Headspace]

Well Toy Story 2 sucked, so not hard to win against that.

[Blarg]

Toy story 1 and 2 are like the only movies to get 100% on rottentomatoes

[Pharaun]

WRU GRAN TORINO

needs to be said again...again

Best movie I have seen in well over a year.

Also Kung Fu Panda should win best animated, but Wall-E will. Normally I back the Pixar films, but KFP was just so much better.

[Viq]

bumpbump because I rarely check this section. Slumdog definitely deserves to win everything it's nominated in. I'd love to see Waltz with Bashir, which is in the Foreign Film category. Unfortunately, it's not playing anywhere near me, and I'd prefer to support the movie than find a torrent.

[Titanss]

Ask this about Ledgers performance. Did you find yourself watching TDK and watching Batman or Joker .. I know they hyped it and the music made him more captivating (Like when he would tell stories about his scars and that sick guitar in the background). One of the best actors of our generation said he wants to see the performance that gets the Oscar if he doesn't win. I'm with that guy.

[TacoTaru]

Just saw The Wrestler last night and god I hope that sweeps everything it's in. Was seriously the best movie I've seen in a long time.

[Mrcloudz]

Just saw The Wrestler last night and god I hope that sweeps everything it's in. Was seriously the best movie I've seen in a long time.

Seriously. Seen it three times now, I would say it's my favorite movie of the year (TDK is a close second). I was kinda irritated it didn't get nominated for Best Picture (or really anything besides acting awards), but I saw it coming. Mickey Rourke is a SHOE-IN for Best Actor, but Marisa I'm not too sure about; I see Penélope Cruz getting Best Supporting Actress, but you never know!

[TacoTaru]

The fact that it's not up for the Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Directing, or Cinematography makes me want to piss all over the Academy. Aronofsky is one of the best filmmakers of our time, it sucks that he's hardly getting any recognition for it.

[Tanthalass]

WRU Dark Knight for Best Picture.

Go go Academy bias.

[TacoTaru]

I've seen 3/5 nominated for Best Picture (seeing the last two this weekend) and the Dark Knight doesn't even come close to any of those. It's not on Best Picture because it doesn't need to be.

[Tanthalass]

I've seen Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, and Benajmin Button.
Slumdog and Button were good, but not TDK good =/. TDK should at LEAST be on the list. Even if the Academy isn't going to give it the award (which they never would. Hi2u Academy bias again), they should at least acknowledge it as a contender.

Also:

I think there's a lot of hype about his acting soley based on the fact that he died. I've met plenty of people who have been personally offended that I said I thought Ledger was just ok in the Dark Knight. Every since he's died people have started taking his role way to fucking seriously.

The hype didnt have a goddamn thing to do with his death. The hype had to do with the first good (fuck good, outright amazing) portrayal of a very hard character to put on screen. Nicholson fucking sucked as the Joker, and us Batman fans finally got a good one on screen.

I'll say it again: Fuck Academy bias. They almost always favor hardcore dramas and movies released at the end of the year. How many of the nominees were released last quarter? Fuck, some of them aren't even out in time for the awards, the Academy pre-screened them just to take them into consideration.