Come Oscar Time

It ain’t always easy being a movie geek in Belgium. Come Oscar time, there’s this sense of frustration that takes a hold of us when we see the list of nominations: half of them are still weeks away from their Belgian release date and some of them don’t even make it to our cinema circuit.

Take this year’s list for Best Motion Picture: only five out of the ten got screening time around these parts – with ‘The Kids Are All Right’ only playing in a limited number of cinemas. ‘Black Swan’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘The Fighter’ (March 9th), ‘The King’s Speech’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘127 Hours’ (Feb. 16th) and ‘True Grit’ (Feb. 16th) are all slated for a future release.

I know, I know, the studios can’t give every movie the same worldwide release date as some marketing budgets are more limited than others, plus they have to see whether an American movie will ring bells with the European audience and so on. But still: just once, I’d like to know what I’m talking about when I put my Oscar predictions on the table.

With that out of the way, let’s get to it.

BEST MOTION PICTURE

This year’s Best Picture draft is a pretty strong one. Don’t think there’s one film lover out there that’s not dying to see movies like ‘The Fighter’, ‘Black Swan’ and ‘True Grit’, all of which have been proclaimed as ‘masterpieces’ in the specialized (and privileged) press.

‘Inception’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ aren’t too bad, and I’ve yet to see ‘Winter’s Bone’ (probably on Sunday), but I think it’ll be one of the others that wins out. Probably either ‘The Social Network’ or ‘The King’s Speech’.

ACTOR / ACTRESS PERFORMANCES

You must watch this Vanity Fair gallery of ‘True Contenders’ – aptly described as ‘an exclusive gallery of nominees set to fight (Bale), flit (Portman), stammer (Firth), and saw (Franco) their way to Oscar glory.’ Good stuff.

Judging from the hype surrounding Colin Firth’s performance in ‘The King’s Speech’ (he’s got a Golden Globe for Best Performance to back up that hype), I think it’s safe to say Firth’s got a fair chance of winning the ultimate award in Movieland.

On the actress side of things, I’d put my money on Natalie Portman (‘The Swan’) for the Leading Role award.

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE / DOCUMENTARY

There’s not much left for me to say anything about the other categories, except for the Best Animated Picture and Best Documentary. I found ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ very entertaining in the former, while I also thoroughly enjoyed ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ (‘the Banksy documentary’) in the latter.

Roight, I’m leaving you to it.

For now.