Oscar Bits and Bites

Brian Whisenant talks a bit about his gut feelings for this year’s Best Picture race on his blog, Awards Wiz (loves Black Swan).

Must-read Edward Copeland on Film’s essay about Michael Douglas in Solitary Man:

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve always had the best viewer-actor relationship with Michael Douglas despite his current illness. In fact, for most of his films, he plain got on my nerves, but that all turned around when he gave a truly great performance in Wonder Boys. I’d heard similar talk about his work in Solitary Man and I finally got the chance to see it. While it’s nowhere close to his work in Wonder Boys, he is good in a film that almost plays as a justification for his life both on and off screen.

Erik Childress drills down the upcoming critics awards season and aims straight at the upcoming National Board of Review:

So it remains to be seen which films and performances are going to be the standouts amongst this year’s awards. ‘Hereafter’ is destined to show up on the National Board of Review’s list since they love having Mr. Eastwood as their guest. (Both ‘Changeling’ and ‘Gran Torino’ made their top ten list in ’08.) But it probably won’t even make the Top 19 of the precursor season. (Unless they ‘Iwo Jima’ it by awarding it Best Picture, which is entirely possible.) ‘The King’s Speech’ and ‘The Social Network’ may be your leaders with ‘Inception’, ‘Toy Story 3’ and ‘True Grit’ filling in your list of five. From there it could be any combination of ‘127 Hours’, ‘Another Year’, ‘Black Swan’, ‘The Kids Are All Right’ and ‘Winter’s Bone’. And don’t forget those 19 films from ’09 included films of a comedic variety that factored into their own special categories. Which means you could also see ‘Despicable Me’, ‘Get Low’, and ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ amongst the possibilities.