The Oscars Preview: Part 2 – My Picks

I waited to write this column until I saw A Serious Man, the last of the bigger Oscar nominees I had yet to see. Ummm yeah…I shouldn’t have bothered. I haven’t included every category because I feel I couldn’t appropriately address everything, and while I love original scores, the music wasn’t fresh in my mind for a lot of films and as such felt I couldn’t give an informed opinion. However, I would like to note that Abel Korzeniowski & Shigeru Umebayashi’s score for A Single Man is beautiful and everyone should check it out if they enjoy that kind of thing.

Anyway, here’s my selections for nominations, and again, picks for what I would personally choose as my best of the year in bold. And this includes my Top 10 of 2009. Have I egregiously left anything out? Let me know and fire back in the comments below.

Read the rest of the article at my domain, www.cineastejohn.com.

The Oscars Preview: Part 1, Nominations

The Oscar nominations have arrived. In years past, I’ve been very bitter about certain snubs and certain inclusions. Last year, The Dark Knight and WALL-E were my biggest snubs for Best Picture and felt it was a complete failure on the Academy to have left them out. The system is very flawed, but that’s a much longer conversation. Last year was relevant though because it forced the hand of the Academy to expand the Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10 due to the exclusion of The Dark Knight. The last time we had more than 5 nominated films was 1943, when Casablanca took home the prize in a field of 10. Anyway, I have my reservations about what this means, but again, that’s a longer conversation. Here are the nominees and who I think will win in bold. I’ll offer up my nominations and what I think should win to follow in Part 2 next week in the major categories, as I can’t speak to some of what’s below because they are inaccessible (e.g. Live Action & Animated Short Films).

Read the rest of the article at my domain, www.cineastejohn.com.