film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Alton Williams

  • Oscar Noms And… My Picks

    My Picks in GREEN

    BEST PICTURE
    Avatar
    District 9
    An Education
    The Hurt Locker
    Inglourious Basterds
    Precious
    A Serious Man
    Up
    Up in the Air

    BEST DIRECTOR
    James Cameron (Avatar)
    Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
    Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
    Lee Daniels (Precious)
    Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)

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

    ACTRESS
    Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
    Helen Mirren (The Last Station)
    Carey Mulligan (An Education)
    Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
    Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)


    BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
    Matt Damon (Invictus)
    Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
    Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
    Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
    Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

    BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
    Penelope Cruz (Nine)
    Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
    Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
    Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)
    Mo’Nique (Precious)

    BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
    Ajami (Israel)
    El Secreto de Sus Ojos – The Secret of Their Eyes (Argentina)
    The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
    Un Prophete – A Prophet (France)
    The White Ribbon (Germany)

    BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
    Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker)
    Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
    Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman (The Messenger)
    Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (A Serious Man)
    Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Tom McCarthy (Up)

    BEST ANIMATION
    Coraline
    Fantastic Mr Fox
    The Princess and the Frog
    The Secret of Kells
    Up

    BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
    Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell (District 9)
    Nick Hornby (An Education)
    Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche (In the Loop)
    Geoffrey Fletcher (Precious)
    Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air)

    BEST ART DIRECTION
    Avatar
    The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
    Nine
    Sherlock Holmes
    The Young Victoria

    BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
    Avatar
    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    The Hurt Locker
    Inglourious Basterds
    The White Ribbon

    BEST SOUND MIXING
    Avatar
    The Hurt Locker
    Inglourious Basterds
    Star Trek
    Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

    BEST SOUND EDITING
    Avatar
    The Hurt Locker
    Inglourious Basterds
    Star Trek
    Up

    BEST ORIGINAL SONG
    Almost There from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman
    Down in New Orleans from The Princess and the Frog by Randy Newman
    Loin de Paname from Paris 36 by Reinhardt Wagner, Frank Thomas
    Take It All from Nine by Maury Yeston
    The Weary Kind (theme from Crazy Heart) from Crazy Heart by Ryan Bingham, T Bone Burnett

    BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
    Avatar (James Horner)
    Fantastic Mr Fox (Alexandre Desplat)
    The Hurt Locker (Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders)
    Sherlock Holmes (Hans Zimmer)
    Up (Michael Giacchino)

    BEST COSTUMES
    Bright Star
    Coco Before Chanel
    The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
    Nine
    The Young Victoria

    BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
    Burma VJ
    The Cove
    Food, Inc.
    The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
    Which Way Home

    BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
    China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
    The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
    The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
    Music by Prudence
    Rabbit a la Berlin

    BEST FILM EDITING
    Avatar
    District 9
    The Hurt Locker
    Inglourious Basterds
    Precious

    BEST MAKE-UP
    Il Divo
    Star Trek
    The Young Victoria

    BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
    French Roast
    Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
    The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)
    Logorama
    A Matter of Loaf and Death

    BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
    The Door
    Instead of Abracadabra
    Kavi
    Miracle Fish
    The New Tenants

    BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
    Avatar
    District 9
    Star Trek

    EDIT – Miracle Fish, one of my choices of winners was loved here at BRWC.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Ben Stillerstrong Helping Haiti

    Just a quick one –

    Ben Stiller and his Stillerstrong organisation have an eBay auction on at the moment.
    Have a look?

    Proceeds from the auction will be used to build temporary schools in place of the ones destroyed in the awful Haiti earthquake.

    Auction prizes include: 2 tickets to the VIP Luxury Suite + 1 VIP assigned parking pass; a meet and greet with Ben (he will come to the suite, take pictures, sign autographs); plus an autographed STILLERSTRONG headband.


    © BRWC 2010.

  • Cemetery Junction

    Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant back with Cemetery Junction.

    The film is set in 1970s England and “follows the lives of three working-class friends trapped in a small town.” One of them gets a new job and reconvenes with his childhood sweetheart, causing drama among the group. It’s set for release on April 14, 2010.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Freestyle

    Here’s the story…

    Ondene Marchant (Lucy Stanhope-Bosumpim) is beautiful, talented, and destined to major in law at Oxford. She’s spent her whole life following demanding study plans laid down by her ambitious mother Hyacinth (Suzann Mclean), a high-powered barrister determined to push her only child to the top.

    After years of studying, Ondene is desperate to live a little. She discovers freestyle basketball, and takes up the offer of lessons from a charismatic and gifted student, Leon (Arinze Kene). When Hyacinth finds out, she resolves to put an end to the relationship.

    Although Leon’s fighting against the odds to educate himself, Hyacinth is convinced he is bad news because he lives in the projects – a place she escaped from long ago.

    As romance blossoms, the sweethearts face an uphill struggle with Hyacinth as they try to succeed in life and love.

    Freestyle is the new Brit film on in cinemas on Feb 26th, and oddly, on DVD March 1st. Please, go and see it in the cinema first, then buy yourself (and your loved ones) a copy on DVD.

    Twitter    , Facebook, Official Website.

    © BRWC 2010.

  • Avatar – Amazing, Revolutionary And Yet, A Bit Boring…

    Avatar – Amazing, Revolutionary And Yet, A Bit Boring…

    Review by Gabriella Incalza Kaplanova.

    Believe the hype, Avatar is absolutely impressive. Admittedly breathtaking, at first. But, between you and me, I started yawning an hour into the film. It’s simply too long. Well, at least for me it was. Two hours and 40 minutes with no breaks, quite frankly, felt too much to be sitting in a packed cinema theatre, wearing 3D glasses on top of my own glasses. And, once I got used to the impressive graphics, there was not much left.

    So, what’s this 2009 epic science fiction movie about? Well, Avatar is the story of an ex Marine who finds himself thrust into hostilities on an alien planet filled with surreal, exotic life forms. It is set in the year 2154, when humans are mining a precious metalcalled unobtanium on the moon Pandora, in the Alpha Centauri star system. The colonists’ expansion threatens the continued existence of the Na’vi, a humanoidspecies indigenous to Pandora, as well as the moon’s ecosystem. The protagonist is an Avatar, a human mind in an alien body, and he finds himself torn between two worlds, in a desperate fight for his own survival and that of the indigenous people. At first, the story feels a bit hard to follow but, as soon as you get the gist of what’s going on, it becomes a bit, well.. kind of, too predictable.

    Avatar marks the return of 1997 Titanic’s director James Cameron, who took ten years to put this film together. Yes, it is an extraordinary movie. And Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen Lang are all amazing in it. This film, which marks a breakthrough in film making technology and was released both in two dimensional as well as 3D projection, has broken all previous box office records and has already made more that $2 billion, whatever that means.

    Now, there will be a sequel, and probably it will be as astonishing as the first one. But, if you are not into science fiction, quite frankly, I think you can live without it.