OFCS Awards: Winners

I guess it's a good thing I gave Melanie Laurent those extra five points with my second-place vote. Here is the full list of winners. Respectable, even if I'm already sick to death of Anvil (not a bad film, but dammit if it isn't relatively meaningless in comparison to The Cove).

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Best Actor: Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
Best Actress: Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious
Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Best Adapted Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on a book by Roald Dahl
Best Documentary: Anvil!: The Story of Anvil
Best Picture Not in the English Language: The White Ribbon
Best Animated Feature: Up
Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson, Inglourious Basterds
Best Score: Michael Giacchino, Up
Best Editing: Chris Innis and Bob Murawski, The Hurt Locker

Voted: 5 (36%)
Predicted: 8 (57%)

UPDATE 1/7/10: Here's something new: the OFCS has prepared via webcam their own Awards ceremony of sorts, replicated here for your viewing pleasure. I haven't actually looked at these yet myself; I tend to find this sort of thing embarrassing, even when it's not me on display (and yes, I have found myself as the proverbial deer in the headlights once before in such a manner, but I'll be damned if I'm going to say when, how, or where).

150: (500) Days of Summer, The Princess and the Frog

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER (Marc Web, 2009): Bearing a degree of emotional sincerity atypical to its indie-approved brand of self-identifying quirk, the gimmicky (500) Days of Summer can be said to succeed in spite of itself. Honesty is key here, as the central conceit - the roughly year-and-a-half long emotional rollercoaster the main character, Tom Hansen (the always superb Joseph Gordot-Levitt), experiences as a result of his relationship with Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) - is explicitly titular, explored in bits and pieces shuffled back and forth in time. Many have compared the film to Annie Hall (which also begins post-breakup looking back), but more appropriate to these eyes is Scenes from a Marriage, albeit through a far inferior, twee lens. Abound conventions (the supporting characters en masse) and the occasional nugget of overwrought wit (the final "gotcha" moment) threaten, but fail, to cripple the leads' revelatory sincerity, best marked by two scenes, both transcendent, one an upper (bluebird), the other a heartbreaker (park bench). B

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG (Ron Clements and John Musker, 2009): While at times suggesting a manic greatest-hits package of Disney's modern catalogue - complete with ready-for-Broadway musical numbers and supporting characters bordering on racial stereotypes - the emotionally earnest The Princess and the Frog more routinely reminds one of the Mouse House's original golden days. Much has been touted about the utilization of an African American character - the first among the Disney line of "princesses" (to say nothing of other ethnic backgrounds already represented) - but advertising campaigns be damned, the film is most progressive in its decision to not emphasize the color of its hard-working heroine's skin, but rather the cultural and economic roots that drive her desires and passions (see an interesting angle on the film's purported race card here, and then here). The New Orleans setting is surely an olive branch apology of sorts for Katrina and its portrayal of history a bit idealistic, but as far as instilling humanistic values across class boundaries (far and away more substantial than the racial kind, argues the film), The Princess and the Frog is nearly unparalleled. B+

OFCS Awards: Ballot

Kept things simple this year, voting for only one movie per category (as opposed to ranking all five), two at most when the competition was close enough. Last year my selections proved 75% accurate; I seriously doubt I'll be that elated come the announced results this year. Full roster of nominees can be found here. When different, I've included my predicted winners in parenthesis.

Picture - Inglourious Basterds (The Hurt Locker)
Director - Quentin Tarantino (Kathryn Bigelow)
Actor - Joaquin Phoenix (Jeff Bridges)
Actress - Tilda Swinton, Mélanie Laurent (Gabourey Sidibe)
Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz
Supporting Actress - Diane Kruger (Mo'Nique)
Original Screenplay - Inglourious Basterds (The Hurt Locker)
Adapted Screenplay - Fantastic Mr. Fox (Up in the Air)
Documentary - The Cove (Anvil! The Story of Anvil)
Non-English - Abstained, haven't seen enough (Summer Hours)
Animated - Fantastic Mr. Fox (Up)
Cinematography - Inglourious Basterds (The Hurt Locker)
Score - Fantastic Mr. Fox (Up)
Editing - Inglourious Basterds (The Hurt Locker)

Five, Four, Three...

150: Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker

THE HURT LOCKER (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009): Arguably the first great war film for our generation (warts and all, I'd include Redacted's inclusion on such a list, but I digress), Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is, among many things, a model example of examining the universal (political) via the singular (personal). Plot is scant, the thematic rumblings better for it: after an insurgent attack kills the leader of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team in Iraq, Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) fills in his shoes, quickly turning heads as a reckless "wild man" in his devil-may-care approach to the constantly life-threatening tasks at hand. Among the best of recent shaky-cam implementations (take that, Greengrass), Bigelow's roughly-hewn approach emphasizes the rush of battle and complicates typically easy psycho-sexual metaphors (Jarhead) into something far more existentially confrontational. A singular, obvious screenwriting tactic is all that upsets this transfixing and vital vision. A-

UP IN THE AIR (Jason Reitman, 2009): Like its antisocial protagonist - a "Terminations Expert" (George Clooney) hired out to companies solely for the purpose of delivering pink slips - Up in the Air's problems lie primarily in a an inability to communicate and an indecisiveness as to what it wants in the first place. The film bites off more than it knows how to chew (particularly the confused third act) and asks us to swallow it wholesale. Purportedly a reflection of our Current State of Affairs, the film trots out a healthy mixture of celebrities and non-actors for tearful employment dispatches, yet these sequences never accrue a sense of purpose beyond mere lip service to social trends (Oscar, are you listening?), one reinforced by the fairy-tale sense of remove the film takes to its chief subject. Responsibility to the fellow man takes a backseat to Screenplay 101 hysteria, made largely palatable by an able cast of celebrities (finally, a film that recognizes Vera Farmiga's luminous screen presence) whose knowing smarm almost relegates this bout of well-polished bullshit to the realm of auto-critique where it belongs. Without having achieved that status, Up in the Air is merely oblivious. C

Catching Up: Sherlock Holmes, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

Guy's raucous filmmaking tendencies mesh amiably with big-budget sensibilities in this retooling of the classic literary sleuth; save for a pleasantly traditional plot not far from Scooby-Doo territory, not a gear at work is less than fully realized. Zimmers's score amplifies Ritchie's verve with epic swirl, although the in-combat editing often frustrates action unlike the too-disconnected fisticuffs of Batman Begins. The camera's eye is swoon-worthy yet less gonzo than either Revolver or RocknRolla, a well-made choice in that it allows a precise, seemingly effortless Robert Downey, Jr. (quickly becoming the movie star of our time) to more fully take the reigns. He and Jude Law's interplay (some of the best in recent memory) is delivered sans gay panic, which is to say such implied humor is just that (implied). The increasingly savory Ritchie has delivered a miracle: a film in the National Treasure format actually worth a damn. [B+]


Precious wants, so very badly, to give us perspective into the trials of its prototypical inner city youth that it arguably goes overboard in its callow flaunting of unpleasantries (rape, greasy foods, rape again, AIDS...). The titular teenage black girl (in an acutely realized, broadly pitched performance by Gabourey Sidibe; Oscar, are you listening?), described as a composite character, trounces Larry Gopnik for sheer suffering quota. Armond White's invocation of Griffith is appropriate, if misplaced; the film has a powerful, if comparatively shrill, sense of unfolding human drama. Precious's escapist daydreams are as slap-it-on-thick as anything by Paul Haggis, so no wonder Ebert and Oprah want to make love in its shadow. At the end of the day, it comes out on top - if barely - because its flaws are more so of the executional than the conceptual kind, the whole more than the sum of its parts. [B-]

2009: Year in Film, A Photo Essay (First Draft)

A rough sampling of my 2009 favorites, to tide things over while I catch up on a few more dozen blind spots. A more complete (and elaborate) year-in-review post will come in January.

35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)

Adventureland (Greg Motolla)

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

Julia (Erick Zonca)

Public Enemies (Michael Mann)

A Serious Man (Ethan and Joel Coen)

The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov)

Surrogates (Jonathan Mostow)

Two Lovers (James Gray)

TEN MORE: Coraline, The Cove, Land of the Lost, Liverpool, Michael Jackson's This Is It, Oblivion, Orphan, Pontypool, Taken, Up