Photo: Roadside Attractions
Given the nonstop Oscar odds-making and chatter, it feels, minutes after the 2010 nominations have been announced, as if they’re old news. But that’s not entirely the case: Now it has all been certified. Now when I tell people I think that Winter’s Bone was the best movie of 2010 and they say, “What the hell is that? You pretentious critics pick movies we’ve never heard of. What about Inception?” I can reply, “Well, I might be pretentious but you’re an ignoramus, since Winter’s Bone was nominated for Best Picture, just like motherfucking Inception, the dumb person’s idea of a smart movie that you had to see three times.” (Some chucklehead on NBC’s Today seemed quite taken aback that Winter's Bone made it over The Town. The Town!) John Hawkes as Uncle “Teardrop” in Winter’s Bone was nominated: I think I wanted that one more than any other. Hawkes, a gifted, unsung actor, is now on the map. Dale Dickey in the same film was a long shot: She lost out to Hailee Steinfeld for her lead performance in True Grit (she’s in virtually every scene before the epilogue) and another psycho matriarch, Animal Kingdom’s Jacki Weaver, who has been making the rounds in L.A. and has a lovely Aussie accent.
No Mark Wahlberg. Eeek: Now people will have to sit through Biutiful. Javier has already sent roses to Julia Roberts for the plug.
Good for Jeremy Renner, a most convincing sociopath in The Town and Amy Adams in The Fighter, less showy than Melissa Leo but even more fun. (Omigod that was my name saying nice things about her on The Fighter commercial after Peter Travers and A.O. Scott! They like me! They really like me!) I didn’t expect Nicole Kidman to get a nod for Rabbit Hole, but I’m happy she did: It’s her best performance in film that many critics stupidly overlooked. (It was no Greenberg!) And Banksy has a nomination!
Sorry, I have to lower the volume on my TV… “So now it’s going to come down to a race between The Social Network and The King’s Speech?” “Yeah, I thought The King’s Speech had been knocked out by the Globes but then the Producer’s Guild … ” blah blah blah blah blah ….
Some of the awards are probably already locked up: Leo, Christian Bale, Colin Firth — who gave unquestionably the best performance … of 2009, in A Single Man, losing to Jeff Bridges, who’s better in True Grit than in the mawkish country-western picture he won for … Will Natalie Portman win for, like Bale, losing all that weight and showing the effort? The first rule for winning acting awards: You must show the effort. One of Julianne Moore’s lightest and funniest and most charming performances is in The Kids Are All Right, but without the foreign accent or the terminal disease …: no way.
Now we can forget about the other great films and performances of 2010: Annette Bening in Mother and Child (well, she had no chance for that one anyway), Moore, Mark Wahlberg, Jim Carrey, Dickey, Ryan Gosling, Aaron Eckhart. So many more.
On to the important race: Harvey Weinstein (King's Speech) versus Scott Rudin (Social Network). Preferably in the ring trained by Christian Bale with Amy Adams and Melissa Leo shrieking from the sidelines, "Hit him again, Hahvey!" "Bust his fuckun' face, Scott." "Go for the fuckin' kidneys, Hahvey!!!!"