Oscar picks for 2008

My choices for the best in 2008 film.

Top picks denoted with a (*).

Best Picture of the Year:
*“The Dark Knight”
“Pineapple Express”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“The Visitor”
“WALL-E”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:
Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Synecdoche, New York”
*Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor”
Sean Penn in “Milk”
Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:
Juliette Binoche in “Flight of the Red Balloon”
*Melissa Leo in “Frozen River”
Meryl Streep in “Doubt”
Michelle Williams in “Wendy and Lucy”
Kate Winslet in “The Reader”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:
Aaron Eckhart in “The Dark Knight”
James Franco in “Pineapple Express”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt”
*Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”
Haaz Sleiman in “The Visitor”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role:
Hiam Abbass in “The Visitor”
*Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Viola Davis in “Doubt”
Rosario Dawson in “Seven Pounds”
Marisa Tomei in “The Wrestler”

Best Achievement in Directing:
*“The Dark Knight” Christopher Nolan
“Pineapple Express” David Gordon Green
“Slumdog Millionaire” Danny Boyle
“The Visitor” Thomas McCarthy
“WALL-E” Andrew Stanton

Best Screenplay Based On Material Previously Produced or Published:
“The Class” screenplay by François Bégaudeau
“The Dark Knight” screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan & David Goyer
“Let the Right One In” screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist
*“Slumdog Millionaire” screenplay by Simon Beaufoy
“Tell No One” screenplay by Guillaume Canet

Best Screenplay Written Directly For the Screen:
“Pineapple Express” written by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg, story by Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
“Synecdoche, New York” written by Charlie Kaufman
“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” written by Woody Allen
“The Visitor” written by Thomas McCarthy
*“WALL-E” written by Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, story by Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter

Best Achievement In Art Direction:
*“The Dark Knight” Nathan Crowley, production designer; Peter Lando, set decorator
“The Fall” Ged Clarke, production designer; Riccardo Pugliese, Cynthia Sleiter, set decorators
“Slumdog Millionaire” Mark Digby, production designer; Michelle Day, set decorator
“Synecdoche, New York” Mark Friedberg, production designer; Lydia Marks, set decorator
“WALL-E” Ralph Eggleston, production designer

Best Achievement In Cinematography:
“Changeling” Tom Stern
“Che” Peter Andrews
“The Dark Knight” Wally Pfister
“Let the Right One In” Hoyte Van Hoytema
*“Slumdog Millionaire” Anthony Dod Mantle

Best Achievement In Costume Design:
“Changeling” Deborah Hopper
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Jacqueline West
“The Dark Knight” Lindy Hemming
“The Duchess” Michael O’Connor
*“The Fall” Eiko Ishioka

Best Achievement In Film Editing:
*“The Dark Knight” Lee Smith
“Let the Right One In” Tomas Alfredson, Dino Jonsäter
“Pineapple Express” Craig Alpert
“Slumdog Millionaire” Chris Dickens
“WALL-E” Stephen Schaffer

Best Achievement In Makeup:
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
*“The Dark Knight”
“Synecdoche, New York”

Best Achievement In Music (Original Score):
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Alexandre Desplat
“The Dark Knight” Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard
“The Reader” Nico Muhly
“Slumdog Millionaire” A.R. Rahman
*“WALL-E” Thomas Newman

Best Achievement In Music (Original Song):
“Down to Earth” from “WALL-E”
“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire”
“Little Person” from “Synecdoche, New York”
“O…Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire”
*“The Wrestler” from “The Wrestler”

Best Achievement In Sound:
*“The Dark Knight”
“Quantum of Solace”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Best Achievement In Sound Editing:
“Cloverfield”
*“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Best Achievement In Visual Effects:
*“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Incredible Hulk”

Best Feature Length Animated Film: “WALL-E”
(Honorable mention: "$9.99")

Best Foriegn Language Film:
“The Class” France
“The Counterfeiters” Austria
*“Let the Right One In” Sweden
“Reprise” Norway
“Tell No One” France

Best Documentary Film:
“Bigger, Stronger, Faster*”
“Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father”
“Man on Wire”
“Religulous”
*“The Unforeseen”

Special Awards:
Ensemble Cast: “The Dark Knight”

Voice Over Performance: Dustin Hoffman in “Kung Fu Panda”

Youth Performance: David Kross in “The Reader”

Memo to idiotic Emmy voters

Hour long shows can be comedies too.

This was a really strange year for TV and overall the nominations aren't terrible.

But these picks are way better.

Long time, no post

I've been busy, busy, busy but I'll try to keep updating on occasion (I try to keep the sidebars fresh, if nothing else, but I need to update with some summer music including White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, Mandy Moore and Rihanna).

A Top Ten TV list is a strong possibility sometime soon, hopefully before Emmy nominations.

But the most important thing right now is that there are a lot of good movies out there.

Starting with one of the best in some time: Ratatouille.

This week also brings one of Michael Moore's best efforts, Sicko, and a surprisingly satisfying sequel, Live Free or Die Hard.

Knocked Up is the only big movie so far this summer to display real box office staying power, and understandably so (although I suspect Ratatouille will change that).

A Mighty Heart, may be a mighty tough sell, especially in summer, but it's still worth seeing.

I still haven't caught up with Once, but Waitress, Away From Her and Paris je t'aime continue their deservedly charmed box office runs and Lady Chatterley is just starting out.

Even Transformers isn't horrible. A major success by Michael Bay standards.

I've been less impressed the past two months by (in descending order):
Ocean's Thirteen
La Vie en Rose
Broken English
Shrek the Third
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
1408
Nancy Drew
Bug
Evan Almighty

Summer movies

Summer movie season kicks off today with Spider-Man 3 (quick review: it's more of the same for the franchise, but this time a little bit less).

I've also already seen and enjoyed Away From Her, Waitress and Paris je t'aime, which are playing in select cities and will expand through the summer. They're small and worthwhile alternatives to the bigger Hollywood offerings.

I wrote this preview a couple weeks ago, and finally found time to mention it here too.

I'm much more excited about this summer than I was about last summer but I have a hard time singling out a movie as the one I'm most looking forward to.

Last year even most of the movies I wanted to see turned out to be disappointing (and I think the only pleasant surprise was Monster House, which I didn't catch until DVD). But with appropriately sunny optimism, here are the ten movies I'm most excited about this summer (in no particular order):

favorite franchises return with The Bourne Ultimatum, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Ocean's 13;

promising Sundance titles Joshua and Rocket Science;

40 Year Old Virgin director Judd Apatow's heavily buzzed Knocked Up;

Pixar's latest, Ratatouille;

interesting actor/director combinations in A Mighty Heart (Angelina Jolie with Michael Winterbottom) and Talk to Me (Don Cheadle with Kasi Lemmons);

and Hairspray, which originally sounded like a disaster but now appears more likely to do its enjoyable forerunners (on film and stage) proud.

But honestly I even want to see Michael Bay's Transformers (oh the inevitable pain...but I can't resist) and there's something intriguing about that trailer for the Fantastic Four sequel (which could be one of two sequels I see without bothering to check out the original, since I'll almost certainly be seeing Evan Almighty).

Oh summer.

Best Idol Ever

Oh happy day.

Stankjaya got the boot.

The glee on Simon's face as he realized his season-long dream coming true was priceless.

After Chris' disastrous performance I thought he'd be going home (he's been in the bottom three twice before, suggesting his fan base is weak, and he was practically as bad as lil' Stanky last night). But he didn't even hit the bottom three. Apparently America agrees with him that "nasally" is a valid form of singing...

LaKisha also seemed to be on shaky ground and was the last one standing next to He of the Demonic Grin.

But all negatives aside, now that the kid is gone I have to hope he doesn't have a life of ridicule ahead of him. The nasty side of Idol is in the way it can build people up and then toss them aside with no regard. It's not completely the show's fault, it's also Sanjaya's and his family's for deciding to enter the competition and stay in under the pressure.

Hopefully he'll just move on to a life and career outside of music. But the temptation to cash in on fame while he has it may be too much to resist. And the attempts to do so will surely be painful.

But the competition will be a lot more fun from here on. I don't think it's a coincidence Melinda and Jordin are now the only two contestants to never land in the bottom three. I think we have our final two right there (barring a Daughtry-esque elimination "shocker").

Go Doolittle!

Halle, just say "no"

I kind of wish I had thought of this to say about Perfect Stranger, the new Halle Berry trainwrec...er, thriller opening today:

Life is full of choices, and Halle Berry has made another bad one with Perfect Stranger, a perfectly off-putting thriller.

But that's from Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern, via Metacritic.

I also wish I had been gutsy enough to just call it what it is, a "crappy thriller," like Lisa Schwarzbaum in EW (unfortunately I saw that quote from her before I could even think of it).

Anyway, here's my review.

And no my mind wasn't made up just because of what I wrote about this movie close to two years ago. I'm just prescient like that. (Incredibly bizarre coincidence further tying this crap to Rich Man's Wife: character actress Clea Lewis is in both, and this is her first significant live action movie since that one.)

Also, I reviewed a not quite as bad Guy Pearce thriller, First Snow, last week. That one's just boring.

In praise of The Shield

The Sopranos' return to HBO was the TV event of the week (and probably the season) but one of its few true peers, FX's The Shield, is back on the air too.

I'm lucky enough to be the LA Times "showtracker" for the series and my first piece is up on the recently launched Showtracker blog.

Big fat spoilers if you've never seen The Shield, not to mention it won't mean much if you haven't, but I feel a little bit honored to be able to write about something so good. If it's not too lame to admit that.

First decent Idol results of the season

Finally, one of the top 12 who really deserved to be booted actually was. Goodbye Haley, no one will miss you or your botched attempts at sex appeal.

And since Stankjaya is still seemingly Untouchable (offense intended), it was appropriate to see Phil and Chris in the bottom three.

Latin week was hideous. Country week is up next...

These Idol producers really know how to pick a theme well suited to their contestants, don't they?