Nominations, Baby!

Oscar Nominations were announced yesterday - yay! No major surprises, unless you look deep enough.

This year the Best Film category was expanded to include ten nominations, which I think is an excellent idea. The aim is not to ignore an intelligent summer film, as the Academy sadly did last year with The Dark Knight (2008), which should have been nominated and only had a couple of effects Oscars & Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger. The biggest surprise here is District 9 (2009), along with the rather wonderful news that, for only the second time in Oscar history, an animated film is nominated for Best Film, Up (2009) which is a shoe-in anyway for Best Animated Feature. The likely winner will be Avatar (2009), though this will also win all the effects Oscars this year - interestingly, no actor nominations for it or script nominations.

Best Motion Picture of the Year Nominees:

Avatar (2009)
The Blind Side (2009)
District 9 (2009)
An Education (2009)
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
A Serious Man (2009)
Up (2009)
Up in the Air (2009)

The Actor and Actress categories are less surprising, in my opinion. It's wonderful to see Colin Firth up for Best Actor, though the trend seems to be at the moment to give Jeff Bridges his long-overdue award - a "Scorsese moment" as it shall now be known. However, you shouldn't count your chickens too soon. Let's remember what happened last year, when Mickey Rourke was winning all the awards for The Wrestler (2008), only for Sean Penn to clinch the Oscar for Milk (2008). British wise, Carey Mulligan and Helen Mirren are up for Best Actress - isn't it amazing for Mulligan, who's probably pinching herself. If she doesn't win, which she's unlikely to as the money's on Sandra Bullock, this nomination will really boost her chances at getting more meaty roles, particularly in Hollywood.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role Nominees:

Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart (2009)
George Clooney for Up in the Air (2009)
Colin Firth for A Single Man (2009)
Morgan Freeman for Invictus (2009)
Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role Nominees:

Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (2009)
Helen Mirren for The Last Station (2009)
Carey Mulligan for An Education (2009)
Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia (2009)

Supporting nods have gone to a nice mix of actors and actresses. One would argue that the fight for Supporting Actor will be between Matt Damon for Invictus (2009) and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009). In the Supporting Actress category Penelope Cruz, last year's winner here, gets one of only a few nods for Nine (2009), but everyone is talking about Mo'Nique for Precious (2009), which will probably be one of the few Oscar wins that actually deserves it.

It would be a shame if The Hurt Locker (2009) didn't win anything. At the very least, it should win Kathryn Bigelow Best Director, as she won the Director's Guild equivalent recently, but chances are her ex, James Cameron, will win instead. If he does, I don't mind saying that it will annoy me a lot. Cameron is NOT a film maker, he's an event maker. If Avatar wins Best Film that's fine, but if you want proper suspense and real life drama, then The Hurt Locker is your cup of tea.

The last few surprises for me are as follows:

1. Five nominations for Best Animated Film, with Coraline (2009) and Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) standing up for Stop Motion; also The Princess And The Frog (2009) has brought traditional hand-drawn animation back in a big way.
2. No nominations for Let The Right One In (2009) in Best Foreign Feature, which is a real shame. Money is now on either A Prophet (2009), a winner at Cannes, or The White Ribbon (2009), Michael Haneke's latest.
3. Absolutely no nominations for The Road (2009).
4. No Screenplay nomination for The Hangover (2009). Now, admittedly, this wasn't the greatest film in the world last yer BUT if the Academy were trying to be more inclusive for a year's worth of features rather than a few months then they've completely overlooked the top grossing comedy for last year, unlike BAFTA who have nominated this film in this category.

Finally, it's good to see Nick Park nominated again for Best Animated Short for his latest Wallace & Gromit film, A Matter Of Loaf & Death (2008), though it wasn't as good as some of their previous outings and the brilliant The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005).

Some interesting choices, then, and some rather more obvious choices too. But, like I said, we should never take Oscar for granted; he always has some tricks up his golden sleeve.

Laters.

Score

There seems to be nothing - absolutely nothing - that the tabloids love more than a good old fashioned sex scandal. Over the last week I've become aware of two rather interesting cases: one over here in Blighty, the other over the waters in the US of A.

First, to the home grown territory. John Terry, captain of the English football team and also captain of Chelsea FC, has been scoring away from home (not my pun, sadly) with the ex of one of his England team mates, Wayne Bridge. The girl in question is a French underwear model. But then, she would be, wouldn't she?

My comments to this, I must say, are no way connected to the fact that I am an Arsenal FC supporter and Terry plays for Chelsea: He's an idiot. First of all, have you seen his wife? Seriously, she's stunning. Why the hell would anyone want to cheat on the likes of her? It's about as likely as a porn script winning Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars, but it happens all the time. Footballers' Wives, the rather hit-and-miss soapy gloss that ended here a few years ago, was all fun and naughty make believe but this is serious stuff. Terry has kids, and they're bound to be affected by the excrement that's due to hit the fan.

Terry was booed by Burnley supporters on Saturday night when Chelsea played away at Burnley, and he scored the last winning goal for his team (again, scoring away from home, and again, not my joke) - this conduct towards him is going to continue at every away game for the next few months. Should he be sacked as England captain? That's for the manager, Fabio Cappello, to decide. However, ideally the decision should be made on whether this revelation is going to affect Terry on the pitch. If it does, then maybe a break wouldn't be such a bad idea. Give someone else a go for the World Cup campaign, maybe.

Over in the States, it's a politician in the docks (the other most famous kind of tabloid scandal usually involves politicians). John Edwards, a one time presidential hopeful, is involved right now in a damning sex case where his former mistress, a Rielle Hunter, has won the right to claim back a sex tape that the couple made, as well as some interesting photographs. His former aide, Andrew Young, has just published memoirs which claim these exist, and further proving the point that he was asked to claim Hunter's daughter as his own and not that of Edwards, which she so obviously is.

Edwards' wife is leaving him, his political career is in tatters, and now every dirty old man and interested student is going to be surfing the world wide web for a One Night In Paris scenario featuring Edwards and Hunter.

Peter Griffin says in an episode of Family Guy: "Oh, it's fun to watch rich people be naughty". And it is, in a way. Affairs happen 24/7; there's probably one going on right now as I type. It's tragic, stupid and immoral (unless you happen to be in an open relationship, in which case, if that's what makes you happy, go with it). But when rich and famous people get caught, we feel like it's some kind of vindication. Yes, if we get caught then there's bad news on the horizon for us. But at least we won't get the media attention that Terry and Edwards are now having to face. At least we won't get booed by thousands of people at football games and political rallies.

Celebrities need to take more care in their lives - it's incredibly difficult, I'm sure, as we're such a celebrity hungry culture that we just eat this stuff up for breakfast. But what kind of a message does it give people? Mind you, the fact that it's been treated in such a negative way may arguably seen as a good thing. After all, if people see how much rubbish is thrown at you if you are guilty, maybe then people will think twice before cheating.

Laters.