oscar predictions-2010-film awards (I)

Best Director

Most likely winner : James Cameron for Avatar. Big scale, big budget and the academy loves James Cameron.Also won at the Golden Globes. Apart from that, directing interaction fictional characters and actors set in an generated world couldn't have been easy.

Backup Pick : Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. War dramas traditionally do well and this is one of the best about the Iraq war thus far. The intensity and tension is kept up through the entire film. The director never goes into criticism of the war but always remains focused on the people who are fighting.

Most deserving (My pick): Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. Directing a movie with so much storylines and characters can be daunting but by now we're used to Tarantino pulling it off. I think there should be some recognition for a director who never fails to disappoint and blends (critically) good cinema with popular acclaim.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Most likely winner : Up in the Air - Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner from Up in the Air by Walter Kirn. Winner at the Golden Globes. Manages to stay faithful to the book and capture the style of the author while also adding parts that made for a successful movie.

Backup Pick : District 9 -Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchel from the short film Alive in Joburg by Neill Blomkamp. A completely original take on extraterrestrials, showing them to be worse off and not better. Also a not so subtle dig at the apartheid era and xenophobia. Blomkamp and Tatchel take the world of the short film and build on the concepts to make District 9.

Most deserving (My pick): In the Loop-Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche from the miniseries The Thick of It by Armando Iannucci. A long shot but if you've seen the miniseries then this is the movie you want to win. One of the few good comedies of the year and a great take on international politics.

Best Original Screenplay

Most likely winner :A Serious Man - Joel Coen & Ethan Coen . No stars at all. The Coen brothers write a movie where everything is falling apart for a middle-aged Jewish professor. They manage to make it humorous although serious questions concerning religion, family and death remain present.

Backup Pick : Inglourious Basterds- Quentin Tarantino. A men on a mission film partly like The Dirty Dozen and partly like The Good,The Bad and The Ugly. Tarantino develops an alternative timeline WWII film and creates an epic fueled by the violence of war.

Most deserving (My pick): As much as I'd like to go for Up, the Coen Brothers have written the script for a movie unlike any other I can remember seeing. That has to give the edge because the others at least have a history to fall back on.

Oscar Predictions-Film Awards (i)

Best Director Most likely winner : Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. Leaving out Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino pretty much made this Spielberg's to lose. And doesn't reflect too well on the Academy either. Backup Pick : David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook. The production company of Weinstein have been campaigning hard for this and it's a good film with the acting performances set up well. The thing about best director is it's the easiest award to give to someone the academy likes because it's ambiguous and the academy doesn't really love Russell. Most deserving : Michel Haneke for Amour. Haneke has the most carefully crafted film here. All in all it is definitely his film in every scene. His presence is all around the film and it is an excellent film. If they give it for the greatest impact a director has on the film, this is it. Best Adapted Screenplay Most li...

a list about plays (post 1950)

The general perception is good plays stopped being written. That all the plays being performed which remain popular are classics and there is no place for the playwright in the current dramatic world. The role of the playwright has been diminished but good plays have not become extinct in the 20th and 21st century.This list will attempt to reflect that by giving a selection of excellent plays written (and performed) after 1950. 20. Prelude to a Kiss- Craig Lucas. Premiered in California in 1988. Quick Description: Thought to be a metaphor for AIDS. A story about the switching of bodies between a new bride and an old man and how the husband must find the old man while keeping his love alive. Something of a Sci-fi style and one of the most original works in recent times. 19. Long Day's Journey Into Night - Eugene O'Neill.premiered in Stockholm at the Royal Dramatic theatre in 1956. quick summary: A play about addiction and how it affects everyone around the addict.The characters ...

Travel Writings- Rome (I)

Rome is a cliché. Usually that isn’t a good thing but when the cliché is that a city is cool, full of life and gorgeous, the clichés can stay. Rome is possibly the only European capital that can claim to rival Paris in the popular imagination in terms of having an expectation around it. Even Paris is now succumbing to parallel narratives due to the sheer size of the city (much like London), with the immigrant experience less of an unknown story (to non-immigrants anyway. Immigrants always knew it wasn’t cities paved with gold they’d find). Some combination of smaller population, less immigration and the weight of centuries of civilization being still visible across the city has allowed Rome to actually deserve the tag of “The Eternal City”. My idea of Rome comes to me primarily from Italian films of the 1960s. Rome is black and white in my mind just as it is on Fellini’s film reel. I had low expectations. Months in London had allowed cynicism to set in...

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