A couple of last minute changes …

Posted by Daniel Kenealy on Feb 22, 2009 in AWARDS CHATTER | 0 comments

Daniel Kenealy, February 22 (Oscar-day!)

As we all know the categories that frequently remain the most frustrating for prognosticators desperately seeking that perfect score of 24 are the ‘restricted categories’ for foreign language films, documentaries, and shorts. This year is no different. Now, at the eleventh hour I have decided to revisit foreign language film and am changing my prediction from ‘The Class’ to ‘Departures’.

Daniel’s Final Predictions

Posted by Daniel Kenealy on Feb 19, 2009 in AWARDS CHATTER, Cinema Audio Society | 0 comments

I have just reminded myself of the British Academy Film Award winners and, if you exclude the foreign, documentary and short categories, then the smart money might be one a virtually perfect match with the Academy. The only BAFTA winner that jars is ‘In Bruges’ which has scant chance of collecting the Oscar for best original screenplay on Sunday night. Otherwise everything looks on the money including the technical categories. Surely, something’s got to give right?

Attention has turned, in the closing days, to just how many Oscars ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ will win. Barring an unforeseen tie in the original song category the movie is eligible for nine wins, can it sweep all 9? It’s certainly possible but I remain sceptical. I doubt any sane prognosticator would take issue with me saying the movie is an incredibly safe bet in the following categories: Picture, director, adapted screenplay, film editing and original score. I will refrain from wasting any further space commenting of these categories because I feel they are genuinely settled.

Entering the Final Stretch … But Not Yet Ready for Final Predictions

Posted by Daniel Kenealy on Feb 15, 2009 in AWARDS CHATTER | 0 comments

By Daniel Kenealy

I am not yet ready to issue my final predictions although this year feels deceptively simple with most prognosticators penciling in ‘Slumdog’, Danny Boyle, Kate Winslet, Heath Ledger and Penelope Cruz for Oscars. The two main categories that seem to possess the label ‘head-scratcher’ this year are Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Personally I am feeling somewhat less baffled by these two categories than I perhaps should be and am struggling to finalise my technical category predictions. The purpose of this article is to consider a couple of things. First, the inevitability of ‘Slumdog’ and an article published over the weekend in the UK broadsheet The Guardian on that issue. Second, to consider the notion that ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ may emerge as a default winner in the technical categories by virtue of its haul of 13 nominations. And finally, to look at this years Best Actor race.

Those Crazy Brits

Posted by Daniel Kenealy on Feb 7, 2009 in AWARDS CHATTER | 0 comments

BAFTA Predictions by Daniel Kenealy

Those crazy Brits (I’m aloud to say it, I am one) …

This Sunday the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) will present their film awards for 2008. Sasha has recently written a predictions piece and I thought I would join in, adding a British perspective to the mix. It is perennial, by now, to call the British Academy somewhat quirky and they do like to differ. Just take a look at the Best Picture/Director winners from the past few years:

2007 – ‘Atonement’ / Coen brothers for ‘No Country’
2006 – ‘The Queen’ / Paul Greengrass for ‘United 93’
2005 – ‘Brokeback Mountain’ / Ang Lee for ‘Brokeback’
2004 – ‘The Aviator’ / Mike Leigh for ‘Vera Drake’
2003 – ‘The Return of the King’ / Peter Weir for ‘Master & Commander’
2002 – ‘The Pianist’ / Roman Polanski for ‘The Pianist’
2001 – ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ / Peter Jackson for ‘Fellowship’
2000 – ‘Gladiator’ / Ang Lee for ‘Crouching Tiger’
1999 – ‘American Beauty’ / Pedro Almodovar for ‘All About My Mother’*
* in 1999 the awards were moved pre-Oscar for the first time.

They are somewhat strange. Consider: in 1999 ‘American Beauty’ possessed unstoppable momentum but the Brits strangely withheld the directing award from one of their own (Sam Mendes). Similarly for Ridley Scott the next year. They seemed to provide a signpost for the Oscar-night success of ‘The Pianist’ in 2002 but were all over the place in 2006 honouring British films left, right and centre with prizes for ‘The Queen’ (Film), ‘United 93’ (Director) and ‘The Last King of Scotland’ (British Film). It just seems oh so strange yet oh so compelling. What will they do this year?

Best Picture/Best Supporting Actor

Posted by Daniel Kenealy on Jan 17, 2009 in AWARDS CHATTER | 0 comments

Rack ‘em up, rack ‘em up, rack ‘em up.
Daniel Kenealy, January 17 2009

“I had a vision, of a world without Batman. The mob ground out a little profit and the police tried to shut them down, one block at a time. And it was so … boring.”
- The Joker

The race to secure one of the five Best Picture nominations at this years Academy Awards has been highly paradoxical. Consider: the frontrunner is a film featuring no major stars set in Mumbai; ‘The Dark Knight’ looks set to become the first comic book adaptation to win a Best Picture nomination; and films made by Danny Boyle, David Fincher, and Chris Nolan look set to dominate the nominations. This year has no right to be boring. But it is. It is so … boring.
Five films – ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, ‘Frost/Nixon’, ‘Milk’, and ‘The Dark Knight’ – have dominated the precursor season. The only hiccups were the omission of the final two films listed above by the Golden Globes and the snub, by the British Academy, of ‘The Dark Knight’. The PGA and DGA dialled in matching shortlists comprising the ‘consensus-five’ (or C-5 for short). The only thing that can be said to negate the boredom is that with such a seemingly settled line-up there is some serious upset potential.
Let me return to the quote in the epigraph of this article for a moment. There are some prognosticators who, perhaps feeling a need to inject some excitement in the final week, are suggesting that ‘The Dark Knight’ may fail to make the cut. Most are quick to point out that they feel the movie deserves a place on the shortlist but that the Academy’s bias against genre movies may result in a cruel snub. These commentators have a vision, of a Best Picture line-up without Batman. Such a line-up would not be boring but it would be hugely disappointing.