The British Weighs In (and so do BAFTA)

Things are hotting up on the Awards front (or cooling down, depending on whether you think there's hope of an upset in one of the Actress categories) with the HFPA and BAFTA announcements these past couple of days. Yesterday was a serious hangover day for me (so many spirits, so little time) so at the risk of flogging a dead horse, here are the Golden Globe winners:

Drama: The Social Network

Musical or Comedy: The Kids Are All Right

Director: David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Actor, Drama: Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Best Actress, Drama: Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Best Actor, Musical or Comedy: Paul Giamatti, Barney's Version

Best Actress, Musical or Comedy: Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Original Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network

Original Song: "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" (written by Diane Warren), Burlesque

Foreign Language Film: In a Better World

Animated Film: Toy Story 3

Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

The winners were much less interesting than the whole hoopla around Ricky Gervais, who insulted anyone and everyone. For the record, I don't think you need to be personal about people to be funny, but when there's an organisation as shamelessly celeb-motivated as the HFPA they need to be taken down a peg or two. Awards shows exist to celebrate movies, but, as anyone on Twitter knows, most of the comments directed at performers/films involved are a critique. It's difficult to say what everyone else is thinking, but doesn't Gervais succeed simply because he's willing to call the Globes out on nominating "The Tourist" for ridiculous reasons? Personally, I wish he'd gone a step further and said something about "Alice in Wonderland" and "Red" while he was at it.

I won't say too much about what this means for everyone's Oscar bids, mainly because I plan to assess the big eight races in the next week with some final Oscar nominee predictions. Save for Director, no category seems totally locked up - which is more than can be said for the eventual winners. Still, ask the people behind The Aviator, Brokeback Mountain, Babel, Atonement, and Avatar whether they'd be confident about repeating a Globe win at the Oscars.

BAFTA Nominees:

BEST FILM

Black Swan

Inception

The King's Speech

The Social Network

True Grit

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM

127 Hours

Another Year

Four Lions

The King's Speech

Made in Dagenham

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER

The Arbor

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Four Lions

Monsters

Skeletons

DIRECTOR

127 Hours - Danny Boyle

Black Swan - Darren Aronofsky

Inception - Christopher Nolan

The King's Speech - Tom Hooper

The Social Network - David Fincher

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Black Swan - Mark Heyman, Andrés Heinz, John McLaughlin

The Fighter - Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson

Inception - Christopher Nolan

The Kids Are All Right - Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg

The King's Speech - David Seidler

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

127 Hours - Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Rasmus Heisterberg, Nikolaj Arcel

The Social Network - Aaron Sorkin

Toy Story 3- Michael Arndt

True Grit - Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Biutiful - Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jon Kilik, Fernando Bovaira

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Søren Stærmose, Niels Arden Oplev

I Am Love - Luca Guadagnino, Francesco Melzi D'Eril, Marco Morabito, Massimiliano Violante

Of Gods and Men - Xavier Beauvois

The Secret in their Eyes - Mariela Besuievsky, Juan José Campanella

ANIMATED FILM

Despicable Me

How to Train Your Dragons

Toy Story 3

LEADING ACTOR

Jarvier Bardem - Biutiful

Jeff Bridges - True Grit

Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network

Colin Firth - The King's Speech

James Franco - 127 Hours

LEADING ACTRESS

Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right

Julianne Moore - The Kids Are All Right

Natalie Portman - Black Swan

Noomi Rapace - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale - The Fighter

Andrew Garfield - The Social Network

Pete Postlethwaite - The Town

Mark Ruffalo - The Kids Are All Right

Geoffrey Rush - The King's Speech

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams - The Fighter

Helena Bonham Carter - The King's Speech

Barbara Hershey - Black Swan

Lesley Manville - Another Year

Miranda Richardson - Made in Dagenham

ORIGINAL MUSIC

127 Hours - AR Rahman

Alice in Wonderland - Danny Elfman

How to Train Your Dragon - John Powell

Inception - Hans Zimmer

The King's Speech - Alexandre Desplat

CINEMATOGRAPHY

127 Hours - Anthony Dod Mantle, Enrique Chediak

Black Swan - Matthew Libatique

Inception - Wally Pfister

The King's Speech - Danny Cohen

True Grit - Roger Deakins

EDITING

127 Hours - Jon Harris

Black Swan - Andrew Weisblum

Inception - Lee Smith

The King's Speech - Tariq Anwar

The Social Network - Angus Wall, Kirk Baxter

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Alice in Wonderland - Robert Stromberg, Karen O'Hara

Black Swan - Thérèse DePrez, Tora Peterson

Inception - Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias, Doug Mowat

The King's Speech - Eve Stewart, Judy Farr

True Grit - Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh

COSTUME DESIGN

Alice in Wonderland - Colleen Atwood

Black Swan - Amy Westcott

The King's Speech - Jenny Beavan

Made in Dagenham - Louise Stjernsward

True Grit - Mary Zophres

SOUND

127 HOURS - Glenn Freemantle, Ian Tapp, Richard Pryke, Steven C Laneri, Douglas Cameron

Black Swan - Ken Ishii, Craig Henighan, Dominick Tavella

Inception - Richard King, Lora Hirschberg, Gary A Rizzo, Ed Novick

The King's Speech - John Midgley, Lee Walpole, Paul Hamblin

True Grit - Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, Peter F Kurland, Douglas Axtell

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS

Alice in Wonderland - Nominees TBC

Black Swan - Dan Schrecker

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - Tim Burke, John Richardson, Nicolas Ait'Hadi, Christian Manz

Inception - Chris Corbould, Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Peter Bebb

Toy Story 3 - Nominees TBC

MAKE UP & HAIR

Alice in Wonderland - Nominees TBC

Black Swan - Judy Chin, Geordie Sheffer

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - Amanda Knight, Lisa Tomblin

The King's Speech - Frances Hannon

Made in Dagenham - Lizzie Yianni Georgiou

I'm slightly ashamed at the narrowness of it all. Fourteen nominations is excessive enough a total as it is, without bestowing them upon "The King's Speech", a film with dull performances and even duller production values. It's also disappointing how much the Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing and Sound categories overlap. There were more than seven pictures out in 2010, wouldn't ya know?

On the plus side: Julianne Moore's hopes of an Oscar nod remain alive, and Hailee Steinfeld gets into the right category for once. However, I cannot fathom how anyone can think Noomi Rapace is better than Jennifer Lawrence, Michelle Williams, Tilda Swinton, or even Hilary Swank, who acquits herself well in "Conviction" and is surely in a baitier role. This category reinforces the sense that this is more about the popularity of the films than it is about other factors like (shock horror!) the performance, or (surprisingly) the reputation of the women in the running.

 

More commentary to follow this week, along with a review of Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy, recently released on DVD in the U.K. The film reaches cinemas across the Atlantic on March 11.

91. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Directed by Woody Allen
Starring: Mia Farrow, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, Barbara Hershey, Carrie Fisher

Woody Allen has a well-documented fascination with women. His films are usually scattered with interesting females, besieged by them in fact, and his penchant for sticking by his Actresses and getting them nominations (at least in the Supporting sense) is to be admired. This ability is epitomised none moreso than in his 1986 film, Hannah and Her Sisters, which sees a selection of Actresses (all of which probably deserved Oscars for this) navigate the murky waters of uncertain romance and sisterhood.

A lot of what makes Hannah so successful is that it won't really commit to telling any one story in particular, scanning a network of people without making each of their lives a separate, static representation of their personality, but a realisation of a constantly evolving family, whereby relationships aren't restricted or set in stone, and where sisterhood doesn't necessarily mean unconditional admiration or adulation. Each sister comes across as individual, but none of them have massive arcs to undergo or major hurdles to encounter, our view of them capable through their attitude towards each other, be it a hint of jealousy and resentment at a man's preference of one sister over the other, or an outraged reaction to literary truth.

Key to buying into this family's thinly-veiled and rather sad dynamic is the way that life is treated as so incidental; affairs happen matter-of-factly, and there's never any lingering impression of their lives as a drama. These sisters embody guilt, angst and contempt but aren't riddled with or defined by them. In theory, this family could so easily implode from within, but the nature of these women as unaware, the different perspectives that they have on life and the different roles that they fulfill, tell you that this is and always has been how things will operate.