1) A lot of my friends are catching up to The King's Speech right now and it's going over rather well. I mean, gun to their heads, they will admit that the film is akin to being tickle-fucked by banality, but their apprehension was that it was going to be a dry, not visual case of BBC-stuffiness. And it's not. I don't know anyone who thinks it's great but all of my friends who are now seeing it are treating it with a degree of refreshment. Which is to say that if it is refreshing twenty and thirtysomethings in the industry, then it must be a geyser of welcome to the Oscar voting bloc elders scratching their heads in apprehension at The Social Network juggernaut.
What's great about The King's Speech? Nothing. But it's more pleasurable than a lot of my friends had thought, and that's enough to convince me that it's our winner.
2. Dogtooth.
3. Everyone Else.
(Big Magilla @ Feb. 03 2011,6:08)
Here's a typical IMDb. review I picked at random. It talks about how wonderful the film is, but the praise is mostly for the characters and the situation with no mention about art direction, cinematography or any of the other "arts" involved in the making of film.
I agree. That's why I'm a much bigger fan of The Social Network. It's a bigger triumph of technical conception than most films this year in addition to its other virtues. But then we broach the film vs. filmmaking argument and it seems to me that the voters will always side with the story over the substance. Who really spoke about the filmmaking in Brokeback Mountain? Or Crash? What about Martin Scorsese's directing did people really go on and on about? They just dug his sensibility, and likely there was a great deal of affection for the editing, but I doubt Michael Ballhaus' name got brought up terribly much, and I think his work in The Departed is much stronger than the post-work done on The Aviator. Speaking of which, the "great filmmaking" in The Aviator (and a lot of it is very cool) couldn't help it overcome Million Dollar Baby. Yes, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire, and No Country for Old Men had a lion's share of discussion for their technical specifics, but less so than Avatar, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and There Will Be Blood, or for that matter Atonement. I think discussing the filmmaking more than any other nominated film may be a new kiss of death.