Great old-fashioned movie making: The King's Speech (2010).

Great old-fashioned movie making: The King’s Speech (2010).

The 83rd annual Academy Awards for the film year 2010.  The nominations were announced on 25 January 2011 and the awards were held on 27 February 2011.

Best Picture:  The King’s Speech

  • The Social Network
  • Inception
  • True Grit
  • Winter’s Bone
  • Black Swan
  • Toy Story 3
  • The Kids Are All Right
  • The Fighter
  • 127 Hours

Most Surprising Omission:  The Town

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Ghost Writer

Rank (out of 84) among Best Picture Years:  #7  (by far the best among years with more than 5 nominated films) (more…)

A couple of star performances in the best film of the year.

A couple of star-making performances in the best film of the year.

My Top 20:

  1. The Social Network
  2. The King’s Speech
  3. Inception
  4. True Grit
  5. The Ghost Writer
  6. Winter’s Bone
  7. Black Swan
  8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
  9. Another Year
  10. Toy Story 3
  11. The Town
  12. Biutiful
  13. The Kids are All Right
  14. Tangled
  15. Shutter Island
  16. Never Let Me Go
  17. Rabbit Hole
  18. The Fighter
  19. Green Zone
  20. Blue Valentine

(more…)

Still the best animated film of this or any other decade.

Still the best animated film of this or any other decade.

2000  -  2009

Total Films I’ve Seen:  1296

Films That Make the Top 5 in Any Category:  48

Best Film Not to Make the Top 5 in Any Category:  No Country for Old Men

Film of the Decade:  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Worst Film of the Decade:  Captivity

Worst Best Picture Nominee of the Decade:  The Blind Side

Worst Film of the Decade Made by a Top 100 Director:  What Planet Are You From (more…)

The perfect ending.

The 81st annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2008.  The nominations were announced on 22 January 2009 and the awards were held on 22 February 2009.

Best Picture:  Slumdog Millionaire

  • Milk
  • The Reader
  • Frost/Nixon
  • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Most Surprising Omission:  The Dark Knight

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Dark Knight

Rank (out of 84) Among Best Picture Years:  #45

(more…)

A brilliant and perfect ending to the best film of the year.

My Top 20:

  1. Slumdog Millionaire
  2. Milk
  3. The Dark Knight
  4. Wall-E
  5. Revolutionary Road
  6. Rachel Getting Married
  7. The Visitor
  8. I’ve Loved You So Long
  9. Happy-Go-Lucky
  10. Let the Right One In
  11. In Bruges
  12. Iron Man
  13. Burn After Reading
  14. A Christmas Tale
  15. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
  16. Australia
  17. The Wrestler
  18. Gran Torino
  19. Changeling
  20. The Reader

note:  Nothing like the year before.  The **** films end with #8.  Zodiac – the #25 of 2007, would be the #9 film here. (more…)

Come on. You didn’t really think I would put a picture of Javier Bardem with that haircut here, did you?

My Top 20:

  1. No Country for Old Men
  2. Atonement
  3. Across the Universe
  4. There Will Be Blood
  5. Ratatouille
  6. Eastern Promises
  7. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
  8. Michael Clayton
  9. Juno
  10. Away from Her
  11. Sweeney Todd
  12. 3:10 to Yuma
  13. Persepolis
  14. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  15. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
  16. Lust, Caution
  17. I’m Not There
  18. Gone Baby Gone
  19. The Darjeeling Limited
  20. A Mighty Heart

note:  This list stops short.  **** films that are just off the list: Charlie Wilson’s War, Once, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  ***.5 films that follow: Zodiac, In the Valley of Elah, Black Book and Hot Fuzz. (more…)

I’m a Lord of the Rings fanatic with a thing for Cate Blanchett. What were you expecting to see here?

My Top 20:

  1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
  2. Moulin Rouge
  3. The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain
  4. Mulholland Dr.
  5. Memento
  6. Gosford Park
  7. In the Bedroom
  8. The Royal Tenenbaums
  9. The Others
  10. The Man Who Wasn’t There
  11. Ghost World
  12. Amores perros
  13. Monster’s Ball
  14. The Princess and the Warrior
  15. A.I.  Artificial Intelligence
  16. Vanilla Sky
  17. Black Hawk Down
  18. The Devil’s Backbone
  19. Monsters Inc.
  20. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone

(more…)

Almost Famous (2000)

Almost Famous (2000)

With the recent change in the Academy Awards, upping the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10, it calls for a look at Academy history. The first thing to remember is that the number of nominees fluctuated in the early years. It started with 3 (plus 3 for Best Production), then went up to 5 the next year, changed to 8 in 1931-32, went up to 10 the next year, up to 12 the year after that, stayed 12 in 1935, then went back down to 10 where it stayed until 1943. In 1944, it went back down to 5 and has stayed like that ever since.

Of course, the number of Best Director nominees will be staying at 5, so there will be guesses as to what “the real 5 are,” but for now, we are back to 10.

So what about the years between? If it had been 10 this whole time, what would the other nominees have been? I have taken my best stab at this for all the years in between and I tried to keep it as objective as possible. So, I set a few rules. (more…)

Curse of the Were-Rabbit - the best animated film of 2005 (according to me and the Academy)

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit - the best animated film of 2005 (according to me and the Academy)

It took until 2001 before the Academy finally could be bothered to give a separate award for Best Animated Film. The Annies had started back in 1992. Various critics groups had been giving the award out for years. The switch also finally pushed the Golden Globes to give it its own category and stop throwing them in the Comedy / Musical category. (more…)

it doesn't get any better than thisThe problem with AFI’s lists isn’t the final lists. It’s with the ballots they send out. Their recent top 10 genre lists had ballots of 50 films each from which to select their top 10. And for some reason, those ballots included mediocre recent Disney films like Pocahontas and Mulan rather than Lilo and Stitch, the best Disney film since Aladdin. They also, for some reason, even though it was eligible, didn’t include Ratatouille. Or Watership Down, a film I have always loved.

(more…)

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