Global News Bloggers of India: Our Oscar Favourites

4 Golden Globe statuettes in pocket, Slumdog Millionaire has whizzed its way through the top Oscar favourites. But Oscar and Globe are little different. They have been twitched on their edges. Unlike the Globe which is decided by 90 odd film journalists, mostly freelance writers, and critics from around the world, the jury of the Academy Award is altogether a different demography. There are more than 6,000 artists and professionals who constitute Academy members and it is completely Americana. In spite of the fact, that the probability of same film and actors getting the golden Oscar and Globe is close to 4:5, there are always interesting and shocking deviation. This year could be the Year of Diversion, too.
But Slumdog Millionaire will not have a disappointing rendezvous with the 81st Academy Award. Possibly, the celebration of human spirit -- which is Oscar’s most affectionate emotion -- could help the film get nominations as well as a couple of golden statuettes. In the wake of Mumbai attack, the film capturing the spirit of Bombay could find its name reverberate in the Kodak Theatre on the night of February 22.
Here’s a list of nominations and winners of the top SIX categories as per The GNBI. (We are deeply sorry to exclude others due to lack of time). It’s not predictions, it is simply our way of heaping admiration. However, when the Academy would come up with their own nominations and the winners we, as accountable ones, would verify how correct our wrong we were. We, the team GNBI, would then gauge the amount of coherency or incoherency we and Academy share.

Best Motion Picture of the year
Nominations (in alphabetical order)
Milk

Dan Jinks, Bruce Cohen
Focus
Based on the true life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician of the US in 1970s, the film “charts the last eight years of his life” before his tragic death in 1978. His pivotal role in campaign against Proposition 6 -- statewide referendum to fire gay schoolteachers and their supporters -- is documented in this film. In view of recent victory of Proposition 8 -- annulment of gay marriage -- in California, the movie has evoked a buzz.

Rachel Getting Married
Jonathan Demme, Neda Armian and Marc Platt
Sony Pictures Classic
The film depicts the “heartfelt, perceptive and sometimes hilarious family portrait” of Kym whose sister Rachel is getting married. The family occasion brings Kym back from rehab along with “personal crisis, family conflict and tragedy.” The wedding -- “a joyful weekend of feasting, music and love” is marked by Kym’s “biting one-liner and flair for bombshell drama”. Note that the Academy loves American family conflict, if it is well portrayed just like this film does.

Revolutionary Road

John N Hart, Scott Rudin, Sam Mendes and Bobby Cohen
An Evamere Entertainment BBC Films Neal Street Production; DreamWorks Pictures in Association with BBC Films and Paramount Vantage
Based on Richard Yates novel of the same name, it showcases the marriage of a beautiful couple -- Frank and April -- in America’s 1950s. The film beautifully directed by Sam Mendes, Academy Award winner for American Beauty, brings together Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (Mendes’ wife) on screen together for the second time.

Slumdog Millionaire
Christian Colson
Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Bros
Based on the novel Q&A written by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, the film narrates the story of Jamal, a slum boy, who wins 20 million rupees (Rs 1 crore) on India’s “ Who wants to be a millionaire” only to be interrogated by police as how he “managed” to know the answers of every question. Jamal spending a night at police station where he unfolds the mystery of the answers -- all of which are related to his incidents in life.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Ceán Chaffin
Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards. A man, like any of us, unable to stop time. The film follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man’s life can be. Directed by David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a time traveller’s tale of the people and places he bumps into along the way, the loves he loses and finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.” --excerpt from the movie's promotional website.

.... and the Oscar goes to...

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Achievement in Directing

Nominations (in alphabetical order)

Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)

Oh! Boyle who had directed horror stuff like 28 Days and hyped film like The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, comes with a scintillating eighth venture in Slumdog, a career best with a layered narrative.

David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Known for directing films, mostly dark, like Panic Room, Fight Club, Fincher has come up with a fantasy film that has generated a huge curiosity for Brad Pitt’s ageing talk. But the director is being credited for giving visual presentation of such a difficult story.

Gus Van Sant (Milk)
Winner of 2003 Best Directing Award at Cannes Festival for his film Elephant just after his controversial remake of classic Psycho, Van Sant made his directorial debut in 1985 with critically acclaimed Mala Noche. With Milk, he has again raised the bar for himself as the portrayal of Milk Harvey is not entirely eulogizing one, that normally happens with the biopic.

Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road)
He took the Best Director Oscar in 1999 for his debut Hollywood movie American Beauty, a movie which captured the confusion, dreams and fragility of an American family. With Revolut

ionary Road he once again brings back the tribulations of a married couple in the 1950s US through Yates novel. The buzz he had created by directing a sex scene of his wife (Kate Winslet) with Leonardo DiCaprio for the film. When asked by a leading British journal, The Observer, about Caprio’s sex scene with Winslet, Mendes had this to say:
“Directing any sex scene, Sam Mendes says, is 'a profoundly weird experience', but when the sex scene is between Leonardo DiCaprio and your own wife, it's 'almost impossible' for them to do it if you're in the same room. So for the relevant parts of Revolutionary Road, his first collaboration with Kate Winslet, and the first film Winslet and DiCaprio have made together since Titanic, Mendes moved the monitor screens into another room, and watched from there. The actors would hear him shout from around the corner: 'Leo, don't bang her head so hard against the kitchen cabinets!' And: 'Could you not do it for so long this time?' DiCaprio wanted specifics. 'Like how long?'
'About 45 seconds.'
A meaningful smile from DiCaprio: 'Really? Only 45 seconds?' Mendes laughs as he retells the story. 'I chose to ignore the obvious inference. I said: What's wrong with 45 seconds? That's a long time. Anyone would be lucky..."

Woody Allen (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

Nominated for Best Actor in 1977 Academy Awards for his role of Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, Allen got the Oscars for Best Director and Best Writing for the same film. Huh! What a year it was for Allen. Since then he has been nominated 18 times!!! ( Four times for Directing and the rest for writing). This year with Vicky Cristina Barcelona -- a tale of two Americans, Vicky and Cristina, spending summer in Barcelona where they meet an author and how their lives is thrown into a chaos with the author’s ex-wife thrown in the middle. Allen score again with one-dimensional narration of multi-dimensional characters without making the film look chaotic.

.... and the Oscar goes to...
DANNY BOYLE

for Slumdog Millionaire

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Nominations (in alphabetical order)

Here we had to make some unusual choice. We dropped Leonardo DiCaprio for his performance in Revolutionary Road, but it was a difficult option. We hope Caprio to make the Academy nomination list

Brad Pitt (The Curious case of Benjamin Button)
Academy Award nominee for his role in Twelve Monkeys, Pitt who meanders between award winning movies and entertaining flicks, has given a wonderful performance as Benjamin Button. By ageing backwards in this film, that required the best make-up, he has inched forward to the Oscar podium after 14 years.

Colin Farrell (In Bruges)
Never nominated for an Oscar, Farrell’s performance in In Bruges is his career best. With Golden Globe in his hand this year, Farrell can rejoice over his role of a hit man asked by his boss to cool his heels with one of his colleague in Belgium ahead of Christmas but get caught in unusual circumstances in the comedy thriller.

Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
In the year when Americans were drowned in the Presidential elections and made history by electing Barack Obama as first African American president of the country, Watergate scandal revisited the country, albeit in screens. Langella as disgraced President Nixon gives an interview to British TV personality David Frost, played by Michael Sheen, in Ron Howard’s yet another political drama after

The Queen. Adapted from Peter Morgan’s play of the same name, this is Howard’s another feather in his crown, As New York Times in its review for the film writes: “Mr. Sheen has been pitted against a scene-stealer who, if not carefully tethered, will devour the screen by the greedy mouthful. And devour Mr. Langella does, chomp chomp. Artfully lighted and shot to accentuate the character’s trembling, affronted jowls, his shoulders hunched, face bunched, he creeps along like a spider, alternately retreating into the shadows and pouncing with a smile. That smile should give you nightmares, but Mr. Howard, a competent craftsman who tends to dim the lights in his movies even while brightening their themes (A Beautiful Mind), has neither the skill nor the will to draw out a dangerous performance from Mr. Langella, something to make your skin crawl or heart leap.” As somewhere someone wrote why watch a film when one can see the original 360 minutes interview of Nixon with Frost that caught the most eyeballs in 1977.

Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
It’s the resurrection of one of the Hollywood’s “lost actors”. Rourke as Randy the Ram tries to scrap through his life after being once a wrestling star. It is Rourke

career best performance and while taking the Golden Globe award for Best Actor he did say, “It's been a long road back for me.” As Ram, Rourke tries to get mend his life by seeking affection from his estranged daughter and reaching out to a stripper, played by Marisa Tomei in an award winning role. The Hollywood Reporter says: “Rourke dispenses with all vanity to plumb the depths of this well-meaning but severely damaged man… Ram might be the ultimate loser, but Rourke scores a winning tour de force.”

Sean Penn (Milk)
Four times nominated for Best Actor role in Oscars (1995, 1999, 2001 and 20

03) he won the coveted golden statuette in 2003 for Mystic River. This year he is back with his sensitive and restricted portrayal of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in 1970s US. Having also reported for journals like Time, Rolling Stone and The San Francisco Chronicle, his coverage of Iraq war in 2004 followed by elections in Iran are his high points as scribe. So, will Oscar honour him once again..

.... and the Oscar goes to...
SEAN PENN

for Milk

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Nominations (in alphabetical order)

Anna Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)

Portraying the role of Kym in this family drama, Hathaway is brutal, embarrassing and most of times oozing sarcasm. Just back from rehab, Hathaway has not been so bruised, mentally, and never so “revenging” in her own way to open up the family’s scar and its best kept secrets.

Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road)

Nominated fives times for Oscar in Best Leading Actress and Best Supporting Actress roles (1995, 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2007), Winslet has a winner this year in her role as embattled wife of Caprio in the film directed by her husband Sam Mendes. Winslet has done complete justice to her role who wants to play the wife and also chart her own course.

Kate Winslet (The Reader)

Kate again for her role as a Nazi war criminal in the film adaptation of German novel of the same time. Again a gritty portrayal by Kate Winslet as Hanna Schitmz, a tram conductor who has a short affair with a 15-year-old boy. But she soon disappears only to be discovered eight years later by the boy, now a divorced father, in a court room as Nazi war criminal and then the unraveling of mysteries. Directed by Stephen Daldry, the film is gripping but Kate’s act is fabulous that even the Globe gave her the Supporting Actress award -- though she is in a leading role!!! Amused. Read what Rolling Stone wrote in the film’s review about Kate: “Her fierce, unerring portrayal goes beyond acting, becoming a provocation that will keep you up nights.”

Meryl Streep (Doubt)
An Oscar veteran Streep has been nominated 14 times and on two

occasions she has taken the golden uncle to her home. This year is another high for Streep. After getting nominated for her role as Miranda Priestly in The Devil wears Prada, Streep has once again don the role of an iron-gloved and no-nonsensical Sister Aloysious who “believes in power of fear and discipline” and wants to throw away Father Flynn for trying to bring in CHANGE. Newsweek writes : Streep, with her no-nonsense Bronx accent and know-it-all smirks, gives this battleaxe a sly wit: she may be working too hard, but she's fun to watch.

Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky)
With economy in recession, Oscar has all the right reason to give the golden statuette to Poppy, a free-spirited school teacher who finds happiness even in the most trying circumstances. Portrayed by Sally Hawkins, who has never been nominated for Oscar, can wear BE POSITIVE attitude. Having been awarded with Golden Globe she can be optimistic like her reel character. With Winslet likely to dominate this year’s Oscars, she can still see the half glass half full.

.... and the Oscar goes to...

KATE WINSLET

for Revolutionary Road

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Nominations (in alphabetical order)

Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire)

The 18-year-old British actor of Indian origin must be getting goose bumps. Although he failed to achieve nomination at the Golden Globe nomination, the Academy will not disappoint him. He is most likely to get nomination and some are even predicting that he could beat the next nominee in the list, Heath Ledger (Though we don’t think so). But his portrayal of a young Muslim boy from Mumbai’s slum who wins Rs 20 million in the quiz show is a gripping role with confuse, painful, sardonic and sometimes witty look.

Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
The last but not the least performance by Ledger in Christopher Nolan’s rendition of Batman that led the audience to question whether the central character was the superhero or the wicked villain Joker as epitomized by the late actor. It could be possible that the Academy nominates the Brokeback star in the list of Actor in a Leading role. But in either the category he wins hands down.

Josh Brolin (Milk)
Playing the role of Dan White in the biopic of Harvey Milk, Brolin makes his argument with Milk real and genuine. His body language exudes the character and in many scenes he even manages to diminish Penn’s (as Milk) charisma.

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)

Portraying the role of Father Flynn as the agent of change or reform in St.Nicholas, Hoffman after winning the Best Leading Actor Oscar in 2005 for biopic Capote, has once again a meaty role in John Patrick Shanley’s movie rendition of his own theatrical presentation Doubt. Hoffman who is doubted for giving too much “personal” attention to Donald Stewart - the first black student of the church has to fight a battle of doubt and suspicion raged by Sister Aloysious.

Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder)

16 years have passed since Downey Jr. was nominated for Oscar in the Lead Actor category. In an all star ensemble cast -- Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller (also the director of the movie) Jack Black -- Downey stands apart as Kirk Lazarus, a white Aussie who has been tanned for the role. The Telegraph wrote: “But Downey Jr is the unquestionable star. He not only embraces the absurdity of his character, but takes it to such an extreme that he becomes weirdly real and affecting” in this once again Vietnam war flick.

.... and the Oscar goes to...
HEATH LEDGER

for Dark Knight

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Nominations (in alphabetical order)

Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)

Having already won the 1992 Oscar Best Supporting Role, this will be her third nomination in the same category. In The Wrestler, she plays a gritty stripper girlfriend of Randy the Ram. Rolling Stone writes: “Tomei is flat-out fabulous, playing a woman who knows as well as Ram that a body can take only so much abuse.” And Hollywood Reporter has this to add: “Tomei delivers one of her most arresting performances, again without any trace of vanity.”

Taraji P. Henson (The Curious case of Benjamin Button)

As a black surrogate mother of Benjamin Button, Queenie, Henson says she was not expecting to get this role. Awarded the Outstanding Supporting Actress at the 2005 Black Movie Awards and having received the Best Actress nod at the 2006 BET Awards for her performance as Shug in the drama Hustle & Flow, Henson must be looking forward to Oscar as this year the list of Supporting Actress in not so competing.

Tilda Swinton ( Burn After Reading)

She is back again in Award circuit with Coen Brothers’ most “happiest” film Burn After Reading which is in fact a comical spy thriller. As a wife of an CIA analyst and already having an affair with a Treasury Department official, she “investigates” into her husband’s riches that reveals the loss of secret CIA information by her husband followed by divorce. Rolling Stones writes: Props to the freshly Oscar-ed Swinton for flashing a delicious look of contempt that could freeze lava.”

Penelope Cruz ( Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Nominated for Best Actress in 2006 Oscar for her role in Volver, Cruz has done a fabulous portrayal of an insane wife separated from her flambuoyant author husband. Her Spanish accent only adds to the originality of the character in this film set in Barcelona.

Viola Davis (Doubt)
Nominated for Golden Globe in the same category, Davis is a treat to w

atch in Doubt. Mother of David Stewart, the first black student of a church, she is told by Sister Aloysious that Father Flynn pays too much personal attention to her son. Newsweek in its review of the film writes : “Hoffman (as Father Flynn) makes a worthy, sympathetic foe, but it's Viola Davis as Donald's mother who gets the most striking scene. Her reaction to Sister Aloysius's suggestion that Father Flynn is taking advantage of her boy is not at all what the sister, or we, expect.”