OSCAR DEATH RACE PART REAL TALK

Best Documentary Feature

- Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land - dir. Anders Østergaard
- The Cove - dir. Louie Psihoyos
- Food, Inc. - dir. Robert Kenner
- The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers - dir. Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
- Which Way Home - dir. Rebecca Cammisa

Who Will Win?: In many of the smaller categories it's foolish to pick a movie because it's the most popular or well known or has momentum. However, this is the category that only a few years ago honored March of the Penguins, so, lacking anything super-topical or about the Holocaust, I'm going to pick The Cove, which has won a few precursors and (whatever one says about its credentials as a Documentary) is pretty exciting. Everybody loves dolphins, right?

Best Documentary Short

- China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province - dir. Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill
- The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner - dir. Daniel Junge
- The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant - dir. Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
- Królik po berlinsku (Rabbit a la Berlin) - dir. Bartosz Konopka
- Music by Prudence - dir. Roger Ross Williams

Who Will Win?: Maybe one of these is a completely virtuosic example of documentary filmmaking, but I have nothing to go by except for subject matter. And while the death count of China's Unnatural Disaster might sway voters, I'd bet on the fact that if the Recession was enough to carry Up in the Air to Oscar Nominations and some kind of supposed relevance, I'm going to bet on it taking the day here too. That's The Last Truck, yall.

OSCAR DEATH RACE PART DESIGN

Best Achievement in Costume Design

- Bright Star - Janet Patterson
- Coco avant Chanel - Catherine Leterrier
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - Monique Prudhomme
- Nine - Colleen Atwood
- The Young Victoria - Sandy Powell

Who Got Snubbed?: For how showy its costumes are and the fact that it got noms for Best Pic, Best Director, etc, Inglourious Basterds omission is quite a shock. Bridget Von Hammersmark and Shoshana's costumes alone are awesome, not to mention the leopard print hat.

Who Should Win?: I haven't seen The Young Victoria, Coco avant Chanel, or, shockingly enough Parnassus, sorry. But Bright Star has really ill costumes that go a long way towards developing the main character. So that one.

Who Will Win?: It may be oversimplifying, but never underestimate how much they love a royal period piece, never mind a Victorian one, never mind about the actual Queen Victoria. The Young Victoria is my pick then, though a movie about Coco Chanel could be trouble.

Best Achievement in Makeup

- Il divo - Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano
- Star Trek - Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow
- The Young Victoria - John Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore

Who Got Snubbed?: Go figure the Oscars not recognizing a horror movie, but Drag Me to Hell should own this. As far as things that had an actual chance, District 9's snub here is very puzzling.

Who Should Win?: I've only seen Star Trek, and wasn't particularly impressed with the makeup. It was OK, I guess.

Who Will Win?: I think this'll be the one they'll actually give to Star Trek. Good for Eric Bana, I like that dude.

Best Achievement in Art Direction

- Avatar - Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, and Kim Sinclair
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - David Warren, Anastasia Masaro, and Caroline Smith
- Nine - John Myhre and Gordon Sim
- Sherlock Holmes - Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer
- The Young Victoria - Patrice Vermette and Maggie Gray

Who Got Snubbed?: See, how can Inglourious win Best Picture when it's a period piece that can't get nominated for any Costume or Art awards? Forrealtho Coraline should walk this.

Who Should Win?: I don't think Avatar doesn't deserve this because it's largely animated. I think it doesn't deserve it because its world isn't particularly original. Not having seen Parnassus or Victoria (I promise I'll get better at this when we get to the majors), I guess Holmes' Dickens by way of Steampunk bullshit is better than Nine's boring bullshit.

Who Will Win?: I was thinking Avatar's gonna win this one, because Nine is so hated and everything. But John Myhre won this award for Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha adaptation, and that was even more hated than Nine, so I'ma go out on a limb here and say it. NINE!

Oscar Death Race part Sound

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

- Avatar - Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, and Tony Johnson
- The Hurt Locker - Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett
- Inglourious Basterds - Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti, and Mark Ulano
- Star Trek - Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, and Geoffrey Patterson


Best Achievement in Sound Editing

- Avatar - Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
- The Hurt Locker - Paul N.J. Ottosson
- Inglourious Basterds - Wylie Stateman
- Star Trek - Mark P. Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin
- Up - Michael Silvers and Tom Myers

Who Should Win?: Here's the thing. I know Sound Design is important in movies and I'm definitely affected by it when I'm in theater, but I'd just be pretending if I told you I could pick good from bad. So on this count, I abstain.

Who Will Win?: I try to look for reason in these categories every year. I know mixing's the one that once in a while goes to a movie that involves music (like Ray, Dreamgirls, Chicago, even Eastwood's Bird), but that's not an issue this year. I know Editing is the one that always goes to a really loud movie, but Transformers is nominated for Mixing! I know Mixing's the one that more often goes with the Best Picture, but Transformers is nominated for Mixing! The three in the last ten that have swept both categories have been Oscar heavyweights The Bourne Ultimatum, King Kong, and The Matrix. So who the hell knows?

Yet if you're gonna win your Oscar Pool, these will probably be important, especially in this year of seemingly sure things up top. In two categories that obviously have no fear of rewarding action movies, Star Trek could be a dark horse, especially because it missed out on a Best Picture nomination to that it was kind of supposed to get with the category expansion. But I'm gonna go with The Hurt Locker for Editing, because big, real explosions and gunshots are so integral to its plot. I'll split and take Avatar for mixing, because it's gotta win some shit, right?

Best Original Score

- Avatar - James Horner
- Fantastic Mr. Fox - Alexandre Desplat
- The Hurt Locker - Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders
- Sherlock Holmes - Hans Zimmer
- Up - Michael Giacchino

Who Should Win?: I guess one could complain that Michael Giacchino's score for Up relies too much on one theme, but it's such a great theme. Of these 5 scores, I only really remember moments from Up and Sherlock Holmes, and I remember the former much more fondly.

Who Will Win?: I think Up will take it, actually. BAFTA, Golden Globes, and Crithatics Choice all bought it, and I see no reason that AMPAS shouldn't follow up. I'd imagine James Horner could play spoiler, especially if Avatar does well overall, but I'm not gonna bet on it.

Best Original Song

- "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart, written by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham
- "Loin de Paname" from Faubourg 36, written by Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas
- "Take It All" from Nine, written by Maury Yeston
- "Almost There" from The Princess and the Frog, written by Randy Newman
- "Down in New Orleans" from The Princess and the Frog, written by Randy Newman

Who Should Win?: "The Weary Kind" is the best of these. It's not amazing, or anything, but it works in the movie. "Take It All" is the best choice from Nine, I think, but that's not saying much.

Who Will Win?: I'ma put my money on the one that's sung by the guy who's gonna win Best Actor, written by a guy who looks exactly like James Cameron and the other guy who plays a guitarist in the movie and, in real life, has the same name as George Clooney in Up in the Air and is a bull rider turned songwriter. That's "The Weary Kind". It just seems so Oscary (especially with Randy Newman vote split, everybody hating Nine, and the other song being from a French movie that a total of 4 people in this country have seen).

The return of OSCAR DEATH RACE (shorts)

We're just a few days from the Oscars, and just a few days after I finished talking way too much about movies I actually liked this year. Sadly, there's no other way to do it. So here we present our Oscar preview which, do to me having a job, is gonna be a hell of a thing to try and finish on time, never mind do with any amount of effort. Nevertheless, I feel like it's something we have to do. So the Oscar Death Race is going to be a sprint this year, but here we go, starting as we did last year with the non-Documentary Shorts, which might very well be playing in a theater near you as we speak.

Best Short Film, Live Action

- The Door - dir. Juanita Wilson
- Istället för abrakadabra (Instead of Abracadabra) - dir. Patrik Eklund
- Kavi - dir. Greg Helvey
- Miracle Fish - dir. Luke Doolan
- The New Tenants - dir. Joachim Back

Who Should Win?: By far my favorite of the five was Australia's Miracle Fish (which you can stream here, about a bullied kid who falls asleep at school and wakes up to find it deserted. It's not perfect, but the middle section in which our hero walks through the empty building is really great filmmaking.

Who Will Win?: I think that we can disregard The New Tenants, a silly little bit of violence with Vincent D'Onofrio getting emotional and Kevin Corrigan channeling Walken. I also think and pray we can disregard Instead of Abracadabra. I know everyone is saying that it's similar in style to Napoleon Dynamite, but I didn't think it was possible that a Swedish short film nominated for an Oscar could be this similar to Napoleon Dynamite.

So that leaves the two "serious" entries: The Door, which is about Chernobyl, and Kavi, which is about Debt Bondage in India. (I do think films being reduced to their subject matter sucks, but these are the Oscars). I'm split on whether the latter will be helped or hurt by its similarity in setting (and texture, it's mud not poop in this case, but it looks similar) to Slumdog Millionaire (that movie seems so long ago). In the end, I'll wager that it helps, and the main character's likability elevates it over the thoroughly bleak Irish/Ukranian film. That's Kavi for the win.

Best Short Film, Animated

- French Roast - dir. Fabrice Joubert
- Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty - dir. Nicky Phelan
- La dama y la muerte (The Lady and the Reaper) - dir. Javier Recio Garcia
- Logorama - dir. François Alaux, Herve de Crecy, and Ludovic Houplain
- Wallace and Gromit in 'A Matter of Loaf and Death' - dir. Nick Park

Who Should Win?: Probably Wallace and Gromit again, but I'd very much also like to praise La dama y la muerte, which is a jaunty little picture that seems to be of the opinion that if an old person wants to die, you should just let them die.

Who Will Win?: Nick Park already has three Oscars in this category (and one for Animated Feature), but I just don't see them giving it to anyone else, especially in a year when there's no hand-drawn option and no Pixar option either. Logorama is the only other noteworthy thing here is Logorama, an action cartoon almost entirely made up of corporate logos. It's conceptually interesting for about a minute, and then it's ruined by cop/Tarantinoesque dialogue that doesn't at all work as satire, so must just be written by idiots. French Roast and Granny O'Grimm are pleasant and shrill respectively, but both are minor even for this category. Wallace and Gromit all the way.

(Cartoon Brew has links to view all the animated shorts online here)

A palate cleanser

We do on occasion remember that we are at heart a music blog, so as a bit of glorious respite from Year-End Movie Madness we present a track from Henrik Schwarz, Ame, and Dixon's new release on Innervisions. It's called "Berlni-Karlsruhe-Express" and it's certainly helping us start our week off in a forward-thinking manner.

Oscars soon. Then who knows what'll happen.

DUNNNNNN

Finally, the big one, expanded to ten movies because there are like twenty deserving ones. I present to you the greatest pair of presenters ever to grace any telecast: Robert Mitchum and Sigourney Weaver!


YR NOMINEES

- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
For Cage's performance, for the iguanas, for gleefully giving in its ending.

- Crank: High Voltage
For the great Statham surviving a fall from a plane, for taking cues from video games and actually meaning it, for sweet, sweet violence.

- Goodbye Solo
For Bahrani's continuing exploration of America, for the chemistry between Solo and Red, for the mountains.

- Hunger
For the shit, for the piss, for the acting.

- The Hurt Locker
For the virtuoso first scene, for William James, for the borrowed scene from Lost.

- Inglourious Basterds
For the gigantic pipe, for the dairy farm and restaurant scenes, for fun with regional accents.

- Pontypool
For the best new virus in quite a while, for Stephen McHattie's voice, for balancing theory, plot, and fun.

- Silent Light
For the sunrise, for the sunset, for everything in between.

- Summer Hours
For making a movie commissioned by a museum that questions the use of museums, for an amazing cast, for looking towards the future.

- Up
For those devastating 10 minutes, for the character design (Doug! Kevin!), for Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer's voices.

FINAL WINNER:
The Hurt Locker. So there.


We're gonna try to do an Oscar Preview next week, but God knows I haven't had anything new to say about movies in days now, so we'll see. (I guess luckily I won't have to talk about movies, just the Oscars. ZING!)

ALMOST DONE

Actors! What can you say about 'em? Here's Halle Berry!


NOMINEES:

- Nicolas Cage for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
It's one of the craziest performances of his career, and you know that's saying something. His hunchback walk, his timing, his eyebrows, they're all excellent.

- Matt Damon for The Informant!
Damon's pretty much always good, but he's never been this funny, nor this good at subtly hinting at darkness even before things start to totally fall apart.

- Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker
The final shot of him here is as iconic an image as an actor can hope to have, I think. He has just enough swagger to pull this character off.

- Sam Rockwell for Moon
This movie had the potential to be dreadfully boring, but Rockwell's performance is hilarious and surprising in its wackiness.

- Souléymane Sy Savané for Goodbye Solo
He plays the title character with a kind of aggressive friendliness, but does wonderfully to make that friendliness not a mask to hide his inner troubles, but a genuine part of his personality.

- AND THE WIENER IS:
To the break of dawn! If you haven't seen Bad Lieutenant, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Cage is an absolute force of nature as usual, and with Herzog's help he gets a movie that fully rewards his madness.

WOMEN

Ladies and gentlemen, to present the Maciej for Best Actress, I have to the honor to introduce two time Oscar winner (sadly neither for Big) and all-around hilarious dude, Mr. Tom Hanks!


- YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN:

- Isabelle Furhman for Orphan
Orphan is a very fun little horror movie that would be considerably less fun if Fuhrman wasn't so charming and evil. Creating a memorable horror villain is not an achievement that should go unrewarded.

- Charlotte Gainsbourgh for Antichrist
I'd assume that Embodiment of the Rage Felt at Thousands of Years of Oppressed Women is a role that many actresses wouldn't mind trying their hand at, but Charlotte attacks it with such a palpable darkness in her eyes that I have a hard time believing many other actresses could pull it off like she has.

- Maria Onetto for The Headless Woman
Lucrecia Martel's film about a woman who might have run someone over on a country road necessitates a supremely detached acting style, and Onetto, with her eyes, her movements, and her mumbling, very effectively gives the impression of someone who just isn't there anymore.

- Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia
She's so filled with joy here. The Julie parts of Julie & Julia are absolutely terrible, but any time Streep's Julia Child appears the fog is lifted. I just wanted to hear her talk and see her cook, and see her respond to people by leaning in with her head. My friends and I were left just doing the Julia voice for hours on end. If only this movie were just called Julia.

- Tilda Swinton for Julia
Obviously. She spends no time making her character likable and instead works on exploring the drunken mess for over two hours.

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN IN THE SECOND ROUND OF CHOOSING:
Tilda, predictably. She's hella expressive whether she's wearing a black mask or a very shiny dress. The points in the movie at which you can tell she cares about the kid but not as much as she cares about herself are pure, wonderful character development by facial and vocal tics.

TELL ME WOT TO DO

The lovely Liv Ullmann is with us this morning to present an award to the auteurs themselves. I've seen her direct a play and let me tell ya, the woman knows a little something about directing. WOOO!


THE NOMINAMANATED:
- Ramin Bahrani for Goodbye Solo
No one else this year synthesized narrative and observation of the everyday life of a community like Bahrani. His subtle nods to melodrama complement his neorealism perfectly.

- Kathryn Bigelow for the Hurt Locker
Who has any superlatives left for what she does here? The pacing, the repetition, the action, you can't fuck with any of it.

- Werner Herzog for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
This screenplay could very easily have been a slightly odd police procedural. Herzog shifts the tone to completely batshit and lets Nic Cage run wild and it comes out the other side as a sort of bizarro masterpiece.

- Steve McQueen for Hunger
Hunger, from the look, to the acting, to the ideas, is a very detailed film, especially considering that McQueen had to basically design three very different parts to it.

- Carlos Reygadas for Silent Light
Reygadas gave us more straight-up beauty this year than anybody else, which might be enough in itself. But he also made a great movie, delivering a story about a group of people I was completely unfamiliar with a nuanced exploration of morality and nature where lesser directors might have gone for exploitation.

- #1
Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow, Bigelow, Bigelow.

Obviously I'm running out of things to write about these movies, so luckily there are only three categories left. Sooon.

(original) WORD UP

Our final award of the night (you think the Oscars take a long time), is presented by the lovely Holly Hunter. Have you seen Copycat? You should see Copycat. Harry Connick Jr.'s great in that too. Here's Best Original Screenplay!


- NOM'D:
- Olivier Assayas for Summer Hours
Whether or not you think Assayas coming back from B-movie Land is good, I'd think you'll be able to find something interesting in his reflection on what objects mean to us. The way he ends it (this is not the type of movie that can really be spoiled) with a new generation is wonderful.

- Bahareh Azimi and Ramin Bahrani for Goodbye Solo
The relationship between Senegalese driver Solo and suicidal old grump Red is written with warmth, grit, and an eye towards realism. It's another great movie from Bahrani (his 2nd co-written with Azami) about, to be purposefully reductive, America.

- Mark Boal for the Hurt Locker
Boal's script gives equal energy to investigating the psychological makeup of its characters and investigating the Action/War Movie Hero as a type.

- Ethan and Joel Coen for A Serious Man
It's some of the most effectively dark comedy they've written in a while, and it's overflowing with great ideas, not the least of which a character who for the first part of the movie is only heard screaming from the bathroom.

- Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds
I don't mean to keep harping on it, but Death Proof really sucked. So that the dialogue here is filled with so much tension, comedy, hell, even relevance to the plot and characters, is both a relief and an immense pleasure.

- WIN'D
I'll give this to The Coen Brothers for taking their style to an even darker place and doing so with a considerable amount of very hard earned laughs. The irony and cynicism not only let the emotion shine through; they enhance it.

(adapted) WORD UP

It was much easier narrowing Adapted Screenplay down to 5 this year than it was narrowing down its Original counterpart category. Nevertheless, these 5 are awesome. Speaking of awesome, here's Gene Hackman to tell you about them.


-I NOMIT8 U
- Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci, and Tony Roche for In the Loop, spun-off from the TV show The Thick of It
Some characters in In the Loop are written so that you're almost scared for them to come on the screen, because they're gonna say something so darkly and angrily hilarious you might not be able to take it. That's a fucking comedy script.

- Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell for District 9, expanded from Neil Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joburg
It's an excitingly plotted, politically interesting movie. The trope of a character who works for a giant organization or government and slowly discovers its evils is not an uncommon one, especially in movies about the future or alternate timelines, but Wikus totally works as a naive little prick who is in way over his head.

- Tony Burgess for Pontypool, adapted from his own novel Pontypool Changes Everything
Semiotic Zombie Flick is a great hook (if your target audience is me), and Pontypool delivers, even (maybe especially) when the characters have to talk their way through figuring out how they're gonna get out of their besieged radio station.

- Scott Z. Burns for The Informant!, adapted from the Kurt Eichenwald book of the same name
It's not saying too much that The Informant! had the most entertaining inner monologues of the year, but their progression from slightly unhinged and obsessive to completely out there is an achievement in both character development and comedy.

- Henry Selick for Coraline, adapted from the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name
I'm a sucker for kids stories that are both very dark and very gorgeous, what can I say? The differences between the "real world" and "other world" characters are wonderfully written.

- W1NN3RS:
All those In the Loop guys. It was the funniest movie of the year and it's not even close. To reduce it to a lot of cursing doesn't give it nearly enough credit, (though the cursing is really great). There's a wealth of great characters here, and about a billion great lines.

I WAS FRAMED

Marty Scorsese is here. You may know him as that guy who only makes movies with Leo Dicaprio. They do look good though, so let's pretend he's standing next to a gigantic screen and gaze with him at stills from the movies nominated for the Maciej in Best Cinematography.


THE NOMINeeEeEeEES:

- Barry Ackroyd for The Hurt Locker
Ackroyd gets across the general grit of the Iraqi streets well, and the shootout in the desert looks awesome.

- Sean Bobbitt for Hunger
Whether in the harsh prison sequences at the beginning or the more ethereal stuff towards the end, Bobbit captures the texture of his scenes as well as anyone.

- Anthony Dod Mantle for Antichrist
The opening just looks so incredibly beautiful. I don't think think Dod Mantle deserved all the love he got for last year's hand held sprinting in Slumdog, but his black and white prologue is just unimpeachably gorgeous.

- Robert Richardson for Inglourious Basterds
After the disappointment of Death Proof I was very cautious in my optimism for Inglorious Basterds. The opening shot of the dairy farm immediately made me very comfortable.

- Alexis Zabe for Silent Light
You'd think that, after watching local news my whole life, a time-lapse of the sunrise wouldn't be such a big deal. You would obviously be very wrong.

WIN:

Alexis Zabe for Silent Light. There are a lot of wonderful uses of light in the movie, go figure, but it's not just cinematography calling attention to itself, it's absolutely essential to the thematic concerns of the movie. I really wish I had gotten to see this on a big screen and hope to at some point in the future.

AK-TINGH

Two decades after being snubbed for his heroic performance as Balldozer in YMD favorite Vision Quest, Forest Whitaker won an Oscar for a very good performance in the otherwise very boring Last King of Scotland. Good for him. Here he is presenting the Maciej for Best Supporting Actress.


SUPPORT THEM:

- Marion Cotillard for Nine
Please don't take this as any sort of approval of Nine; it's quite the opposite. The fact that Cotillard was able to pull a memorable, human performance out of such a terrible mess of a movie is simply amazing.

- Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" By Sapphire
Completely batshit and understandable without being the least bit likable, Mo'Nique's performance is as amazing as everyone says it is.

- Samantha Morton for The Messenger
When you first see Morton's character she is reacting to her husband's death by consoling the messengers. She makes it seem like the most natural reaction one could have.

- Lorna Raver for Drag Me to Hell
Granted, a lot of this is makeup. But a lot of it is also awesome physical and voice acting. It's one of the most fun to watch performances of the year.

- Edith Scob for Summer Hours
As the matriarch in Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours, Scob is lively and thoughtful. Her eyes in an early scene in which she receives b-day presents are more expressive than Oscar Nominee Anna Kendrick's whole body.

MOST SUPPORTED BY ME:
I just can't bring myself to pick against Mo'Nique. Her performance is one of the most genuinely disturbing in years (and to be honest there's definitely residual love from Beerfest and her Real Talk with respect to the Oscar process).

DEE-ZIGN

Moving along, here's Fordham University's own Denzel Washington to present an award to some folks who make fake worlds possible. Here it is, Art Direction and Production Design.



THE NOMINEES:

- Phil Brotherton, Bo Henry, Tom Proost, and Henry Selick for Coraline
Dark, fantastic, and slightly thrift store-y is pretty much what you would expect from Henry Selick and that's what's here. But it's great, and there's not one but two worlds of it.

- Karl Júlíusson and Tim Pannen for Antichrist
If you're gonna make a cabin/forest to stage Woman's explosion/revenge for a history of oppression, you better design the hell out of it. This is dark.

- Jess Gonchor and Nancy Haig for A Serious Man
Rabbi Marshak's office and Larry's neighbor's house are both absolutely perfect.

- Tom McCullugh and Brendan Rankin for Hunger
The shit-stained walls of the Maze cell have an incredible texture. Hypnotic shit.

- David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco for Inglourious Basterds
The claustrophobic farmer's house, the grand theater on fire, the bar (with its tucked-away, villain-hiding corner), the tower in the film-within-the-film. The sets in this are

WIN:
The Wascos win it. I was going to give this to Coraline until the last second, but thinking about how many of the sets in Inglorious Basterds I remembered in detail swung it. It might be Tarantino's overall best looking movie ever.

DRESSY

As at least one of the nominees (not to mention A Single Man) proves, pretty clothes probably won't make a terrible movie worth watching. But they can't hurt. Here to present some gorgeous clothes, the gorgeous Jane Fonda:



YOUR DESIGNERS ARE:

- Bina Deigeler for The Limits of Control
For Isaach de Banknolé's suits and Tilda Swinton's albino outlaw look (it would be gauche to thank for Paz de la Huerta's transparent raincoat and sweater, though the latter is the softest looking garment in the world).

- Monika Jacobs for The Last Station
Maybe I just got so bored of this terrible movie's plot, characters, and "ideas" that I had to focus on something, but I did really like some of the costumes, from some of Hellen Mirren's fancier dresses and hats to James McAvoy's more utilitarian work shirt, with the three buttons on the side of the collar.

- April Napier for Julia
This one gets nominated for the incredibly shiny green dress with gold shoes that Tilda wears in the opening and the solid black mask she uses later.

- Janet Patterson for Bright Star
It's essentially a movie about a fashion designer, so the costumes better be special. They don't disappoint.

- Anna B. Sheppard for Inglourious Basterds
Nazi uniforms are Nazi Uniforms, but Shoshanna's red dress is iconic and Bridget Von Hammersmark's outfits are even better. Her hat looks like it was made for that card to be sitting on it.

THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY ATTIRED:

Janet Patterson wins for Bright Star, which is a pretty good movie, by the way. The plaid worn by Paul Schneider is pretty great, but of course Abbie Cornish gets the best stuff. Her collars and hats help us understand the imagination of Fanny Brawne, who miss Cornish then plays quite well.

CHOP CHOP CHOP

I think when we do an Oscar preview I'll have our editor friend Jawn come in and explain what a good Film Editor actually does. Until then, let's let a young John Travolta present my nominees for Best Film Editing and pretend we understand!


NOM/NEES:

- Chris Innis and Bob Murawski for The Hurt Locker
It's hard to recall an action movie this decade with so much tension, and I think tension is an achievement that can at least partially be credited to sharp, patient editing.

- Mark Jakubowicz and Fernando Villena for Crank: High Voltage
I don't know for a fact that Crank has more cuts than any other 2009 movie, but it sure seems like it. Neveldine/Taylor's mission of maximum visceral impact relies a lot on sudden, unexpected but meaningful ("WTF" is a meaning) edits.

- Sally Menke for Inglourious Basterds
Quentin's trusty editor again does a great job both in ramping up both the tension (the opening, the dessert scene, the bar scene) and the comedy (any scene with the Basterds and their victims). It's to her and the films credit that none of the scenes I used as examples of tension are free of comedy, and vice-versa.

- Joe Walker for Hunger
The film has three sections, all edited completely differently (rapid images of violence and squalor, a long, one-shot conversation, and juxtaposition of nature and a man dying) and successfully.

- Ti West for The House of the Devil
Ti West wrote, directed, and edited this 80s throwback, and the combination of slow dread, unexpected introductions ("are you the babysitter?"), and violent climax (not as good as the rest of the movie, but that was always going to be impossible) make this exquisitely-paced film an easy candidate for our editing prize.

W*NN*R:
At the risk of being like AMPAS and confusing "Best" with "Most" in a technical category, I'm giving the award to Misters Jakubowicz and Villena for Crank: High Voltage. "ADD," "MTV," and "short attention span" have been complaints about action movies for decades now, but no one has owned those things with nearly this much flair and insanity. It's an Achievement in Editing indeed.

MAKE UP BREAK UP

In proud award show tradition, we retreat immediately from the glamour of an acting category into the depths of a so-called Technical Award. Here to present Best Makeup, the corpse of Jack Lemmon and the shockingly lively Cloris Leachman:


NOM NOMS (make-up design teams are huge, so whoever is most responsible for the winner can step up and pick the award up or have it mailed, lemme know):

- District 9
I think a lot of its best effects were combinations between Makeup and CGI, but the prosthetic work in District 9 is the most impressive makeup achievement in a Sci-Fi movie this year. I was suitably grossed out and interested in the transformation.

- Drag Me to Hell
Sam Raimi doing a B-horror movie was sure to mean some wonderful, gross prosthetic work, and there was definitely a lot of that in Drag Me to Hell. Most importantly, Lorna Raver gets turned into a walking old-person disease and the world is better for it.

- Hunger
You can't do a movie about a dude starving himself to death without a very committed actor and some good makeup, and Hunger thankfully has both. It's not just Bobby Sands though, and the hair and makeup of the other prisoners in the no wash protest is quite convincing as well.

- Moon
There's a lot of Sam Rockwell in this movie, and while the difference in his clean-cut character and his unshaven one isn't staggering, it definitely helps his character's considerably twisted arc.

- the Road
Viggo gets real gaunt and dirty, and while the movie itself may not be all that great, the look of the characters is never less than convincing.

A WINNER IS:

It's a two horse race here, and I'll take the silly horror make up of Drag Me to Hell in a photo finish over the sci-fi monstrosity of District 9. What can I say, I can't not reward a slobbery old hag with her teeth knocked out biting Allison Lohman's chin.

SPORTING ACTORS

To introduce our first award of the evening, a very talented actress who you may know as the pre-Fred Thompson DA on Law & Order (or as a two time Academy Award Winner), the always elegant Dianne Wiest presenting Best Supporting Actor:


THEE NOMINEES IS:

- Peter Capaldi (In the Loop)
Everyone spits darts in In the Loop, but Capaldi gets the best lines and, even when his character is at a disadvantage, always seems like the most likely to either kill several people or implode completely.

- Woody Harrelson (the Messenger)
In retrospect, it's almost inevitable that Woody was eventually gonna get a part as a a troubled but hilarious alcoholic and hit it out of the park.

- Fred Melamed (A Serious Man)
There were some great monsters in the movies last year, and Fred Melamed's terrifyingly "nice" Sy Ableman is definitely one of them. I cringed every time he touched Michael Stuhlbarg's cuckold, and I'll take him here over Richard Kind's yelling from the bathroom (which was also great).

- Hilmi Sözer (Jerichow)
This is maybe, slightly category fraud-ish, but Sözer doesn't actually have the lion's share of the screen time in Jerichow and I need to honor him somewhere. The film simply doesn't work unless his performance is amazing, and it is.

- Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds)
He really is just so damn good in every scene of the movie he's in. Watching IB a second time, knowing the choice that Hans Landa makes at the end of the movie, made the way he builds the character seem even more impressive.

¡WINNER!:

Hilmi Sözer. Waltz deserves every award that he's getting (it's not like the Oscars were going to nom Jerichow), but I have to rep for Sözer here. He's tasked with giving a real emotional performance opposite actors who are being purposefully one-dimensional and he does it brilliantly. This awesome movie would be a disaster if he wasn't so good in it.

The Maciejs

So the Oscars are coming up in two weeks, and we here at YMD HQ are busy planning the menu for our Oscar party and catching up on the last few pieces of terrible Oscar bait that we have yet to see. And, just like last year, we will get our epic Oscar preview some time next week. But this year, I'd like to spend some more time talking about movies I actually like. So, for the next few days, this blog will be the domain of the Maciejs:


Maciej Elegibility Requirements:
Debut, one-week theatrical run in NYC in 2009.

Oscar Categories that aren't Maciej Categories:
Best Song (they suck), Best Score (Up was the only one I remember standing out this year), Best Foreign Language Film (they're real movies!), Best Animated Feature Film (them too!), All shorts (I'll only get to see the Oscar nominees), Best Documentary (I've seen like two this year), Best Sound Mixing/Editing (I'm just not good with sound), Best Visual Effects (because Avatar ain't gettin' shit).

I've done entirely too much terrible Photoshopping for this. See ya tomorrow morning.

Ash Wednesday

61. Miranda Lambert - "Kerosene" (Epic, 2005)
62. Big Black - "Kerosene" (from the Atomizer album, Homestead Records 1986)

"Kerosene" is a simple, direct title that, with a small amount of context, tells you most of what you need to know about the lyrical content of these songs. The female-sung, country "Kerosene" is about a wronged woman burning her cheating lover's stuff, while the Midwestern 80s noise-punk "Kerosene" is about a disaffected, small-town youth playing with fire. For a talented artist, a clichéd concept is as good a jumping off point as any, and these are very talented artists.