Thanks to Alfredo, for tipping us to the new trailer for “9″ produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, and directed by Shane Acker, opening 09-09-09.

(click me, mew)

Happiest of Happy New Year’s Eve celebrations to our brilliant Sasha and all the fabu AD readers, from me and Taji (feline cinemaphile.)
See you on the other side of 2009!

By Daniel Kenealy

As we see out 2008 and welcome 2009 I thought I’d pen a few thoughts on this year technical races. Yes, they will crystallize significantly over the coming weeks as the guilds announce their nominees but it’s never too early to take a stab at some predictions.

Starting with the visual technical categories and, specifically, with my favorite category, Best Cinematography. History could be made at this years Academy Awards should the cinematographers opt to include Mandy Walker’s stunning photography from “Australia”. She would be the first female cinematographer nominated in the Academy’s eighty year history. She certainly has a claim to a nomination based on merit but there are two significant strikes against her. First, she is relatively new and the d.p.’s can be somewhat reluctant to welcome new faces. Second, “Australia” is failing to wow either audiences or critics.

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Those who have been following the development of Hitfix, a new entertainment website staffed by a few of our friends, most notably Drew McWeeny, who used to write as Moriarty on AICN, who will be writing Motion Capture.  And Greg Ellwood, who used to write for the LA Times, will be covering the Oscars this year, and he starts off with his top ten.

Check it out.

Erik Childress has put out his “Whore of the Year” column. The inspiration for the dubious honor is given to Pete Travers  for quotes like:

A powder keg with no agenda except the human one. (Stop-Loss)
…A slice of celluloid dynamite! (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
The two leads are dynamite (Let the Right One In)
Brad Pitt is dynamite. (Burn After Reading)
***1/2 Explosive! Full-out, in-your-face rock & roll. (Shine a Light)
**** Expect fireworks! It is explosive. (Doubt)
A total triumph! An American classic! Explosive. It will pin you to your seat. (Milk)
Indelible! Will pin you to your seat! (Trouble the Water)

No hard feelings on our end, Pete, you know we love you.  Both Petes, actually, Hammond and Travers.  This year’s winner?  Click the link to find out.    Another feature, the Top Twenty Dumbest Quotes:

13. This is the winner that will take it all! (Mamma Mia) – Ray Bennett, Hollywood Reporter
12. Semi-Pro puts the fun in funkedelic. (Semi-Pro) – Lisa Johnson, Filmstew.com
11. With great power come laughs. (Superhero Movie) – Staci Layne Wilson, Scifi Weekly
10. This year’s Oscar race starts with Sleepwalking. (Sleepwalking) – Rick Bentley, The Fresno Bee
9. It rekindles the great Hollywood romances. (Twilight) – Richard Corliss

I think these two work.  And I think they should have their own show.  Seriously.  I agree with Jeff Wells, who writes about them, “These guys are great at this because they’re glib and superficial and perceptive and blunt (at times to the point of being merciless) — surrender one of these qualities and it all falls apart! — and because Musto’s droll downtown urbanity meshes well with O’Neil’s eager-beaverness.”  I just think it all works.  And it’s not easy to talk Oscar and sound good doing it.  Both have great takes on the race.

It is ruthless, no doubt, and I personally don’t agree with Musto, but I think he’s funny and interesting to listen to.  It probably is down to, in my opinion, Winslet V. Streep.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5j5R0aQyns[/youtube]

Since the commenters were jonesing for this, one more time with feeling:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67uI6cqBpFE[/youtube]

What started as a horse race when Benjamin Button hit the IMDb Top 250 chart on the 27th has quickly developed into a neck-and-neck skirmish between Button and Slumdog. Nothing to hang your hat on, but just another indication of the widely dispersed passions people are feeling for their favorites this year.

For comparison, this past February, the day before the Oscars, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood were at #22 and #23 on the chart. Juno was in the 80s. Atonement had made a brief appearance but slipped off. Michael Clayton never showed up on the chart at all.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ratatouille, and The Bourne Ultimatum, were spread out in the top third of the chart, each sitting pretty in double-digit territory, but that didn’t do them much good in the BP sweepstakes. Into the Wild was nowhere in sight in February, but after its DVD release — and people around the country actually got to see it — it’s risen to #142.

The Film Experience’s ever-talented Nathaniel Rogers put together this pretty great vid to celebrate the year:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7Z81SPBK8[/youtube]

Just so that you don’t think we fashion all of our content after our advertising, here is a video where Michael Musto pretty much disses everyone and everything (except Mickey Rourke), snagged it from HE.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-DfxzfqOz0[/youtube]

The Gurus of Gold have posted a recent survey of people who make guesses about how the Oscars are going to turn out.  Two films appear to be most highly thought of to win, Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire, while there is some debate about what’s next in line.  The interesting thing is that The Dark Knight has jumped to the fifth slot, which shows that many more people are seriously considering the film’s chances where they weren’t before.  What does this mean?  Well, not much.  Blinded guesses at best.  Next week, the picture will become more clear, whether it confirms general predictions or not.  The DGA and the PGA announce in the New Year and then we’ll know.

In the meantime, the Hollywood Reporter’s Oscar columnist says no way, no how (no McCain) can the Dark Knight ever manage a Best Picture nomination:

- The Dark Knight, the dark horse: It’s a shoo-in for best picture! No, they’ll never nominate it in a million years! The Batman tentpole yielded as many alleged certainties as it did critics’ top 10 spots. Now that the dust has settled, its prospects are where many thought it would be — an Oscar lock for Heath Ledger and an outside shot for director Christopher Nolan.

That’s fine, I can accept that.  In fact, it’s the norm that the Academy misses the boat more often than not when it comes to finding the best picture of the year — the last two years have been a respite and if the Dark Knight is snubbed this year it would be mostly in keeping with their history, especially since it’s the dreaded “comic book movie,” and the even more dreaded “Batman movie.”  And it’s a sequel.  And some people think it wasn’t that good.  My thinking on this is if The Fugitive could get nominated and Tommy Lee Jones could win a Supporting Actor Oscar for it, The Dark Knight should not only be nominated but it should be one of the frontrunners to take it home.  Why?  Because it made upwards of $550 $530 million domestically, because it is a dark tale, brilliantly directed, with a memorable turn by Heath Ledger.  But you don’t want to hear all of this because you’ve heard it all by now.  So let’s move on to the race as it stands.

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The Daily Beast, a once semi-promising rag, plumbs the depths for this non-story about Mickey Rourke supposedly dissing Sean Penn. Non-story because it is totally unreliable, posted merely in an attempt to negatively influence Oscar voters during the height of voting season, and even if true is one person’s opinion, not a public statement.  This is the kind of stuff that will ruin The Daily Beast – is it really going to be this kind of outlet?  If so, I’ll take it off my RSS.

Cate Blanchett photographs so well she gives Angelina Jolie a run for her money.  Here she is in the most recent Vanity Fair, she also takes the cover of course.  JustJared has the pics.

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AD reader Vincent writes in the comments section:

Vincent, I agree with you that it’s weird and, after all of these years, the only thing I can come up with is that it’s a popularity contest.  Whose story is the best story is the one who gets most of the attention.     It has always seemed weird to me why a certain performance is better than any other – it all comes down to one’s own personal experience, where they’ve been that year, where they are the day they see that movie and that performance, what it recalls for them, and what it does to them physically.   Ideally, the critics are there to offer objectivity — but even that seems to be fairly unreliable because critics are just people who react to films subjectively; after all, how can art really be judged objectively?

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Thanks to our good friend glimmer for directing us to the results of the prestigious Film Comment Critics Poll. The complete lists with more detailed appraisals will appear in the January/February issue. This sneak peek from the Lincoln Center film blog not only gives us a look at the Top 20 films chosen by Film Comments “many contributors and members of the critical community” it offers up a tantalizing look at its list of 20 best movies not yet released that should be on our radar for 2009.

While Film Comment might seem to have a shaky relationship with eventual Oscar nominees, its list is not without relevance. Check out last year’s poll and you’ll find No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood ensconced at #1 and #2. We can also find find justification (and vindication) for our love for such films as Into the Wild, Zodiac, I’m Not There and Eastern Promises. It’s a reminder that the Oscars are not the ultimate arbiter of film excellence — and if nothing else, a list like this can comfort us in a couple of weeks when we realize we’ve seen all the “contenders” and find ourselves staring blankly at the wasteland of release dates for February-May of next year.

1. Wendy and Lucy Kelly Reichardt, U.S. 580
2. Flight of the Red Balloon Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France 564
3. A Christmas Tale Arnaud Desplechin, France 557
4. Happy-Go-Lucky Mike Leigh, U.K. 538
5. WALL·E Andrew Stanton, U.S. 534
6. Still Life Jia Zhang-ke, Hong Kong/China 521
7. Paranoid Park Gus Van Sant, France/U.S. 465
8. Waltz with Bashir Ari Folman, Israel/France/Germany 424
9. My Winnipeg Guy Maddin, Canada 406
10. Milk Gus Van Sant, U.S. 356
11. Let the Right One In Tomas Alfredson, Sweden 351
12. The Duchess of Langeais Jacques Rivette, France/Italy 335
13. The Class Laurence Cantet, France 334
14. Synecdoche, New York Charlie Kaufman, U.S. 297
15. Hunger Steve McQueen, U.K. 289
16. Silent Light Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands 286
17. Ballast Lance Hammer, U.S. 283
18. Man on Wire James Marsh, U.K. 282
19. The Exiles Kent Mackenzie, U.S. 257
20. Gomorrah Matteo Garrone, Italy 253

Numbers after the titles are the aggregate scores earned in the polling. Whet your appetite for next year with Film Comments list of Top 20 Unreleased movies, after the cut.

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