A year ago, if you had asked me which film would win the 82nd Academy Awards top-prize, I would have answered that Nine was most definitely one of the contenders. The Weinstein Company had a sure-fire winner on their release schedule. An Academy Award-winning director with a Best Picture musical in his name; a cast of brilliant actresses, lead by a greatly-talented lead actor; and it had the advantage of being one of the few big-budget musicals out there.

Buzz was everywhere, and there was little that could go wrong for the Weinsteins. Until, people actually saw the film. It was a reminder to the world that a film cannot rely solely on the talent of its cast and crew; a great film, a film worthy of an Academy Award nomination and win, a critically-acclaimed motion picture that will be remembered for decades to come, needs the whole package. Nine toyed around with its talent; without a good foundation, lacking that solid screenplay that should have held everything together, the film flopped.

Today, the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony will be held in the Kodak Theatre, and, in my opinion, we can already call it a success: this year’s Best Picture nominees, each and every one, deserves to win more than last year’s slumdog win. They might not all be as good—The Blind Side and Inglourious Basterds—but these films, at least, will stand the test of time better than Slumdog Millionaire has.

But enough stalling—let’s get down to my predictions and, most importantly, which films are in my opinion the best of 2009.

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That wonderful time of year has arrived again, when the Academy announces the highest nomination honour in the motion picture industry. Taking into account the rule-book changes they introduced this year, you could say that the nominations are more exciting than last years—however, let’s not stress those changes, and rather focus on the actual nominations.

No big surprises this year, not even with ten Best Picture nominations. The Blind Side being nominated for Best Picture could be considered a mild surprise, but the rest of the nominees were set-in-stone for months. The Princess and the Frog not receiving a Best Original Score nomination was somewhat odd, but the two Best Original Song ones kind-of balance it out.

Overall, Avatar and The Hurt Locker received the most Academy Award nominations—nine. Again, not a surprise. Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds received eight, previous-darling-put-to-shame Nine only four (including only one for the music—a travesty for a musical), my favourite of the year, Precious, received Best Picture, Best Actress and Supporting Actress, Best Directing, Editing, and Adapted Screenplay nominations (six), the same as Up in the Air with Clooney a Best Actor nominee, Pixar’s Up followed in the footsteps of WALL-E and received five Golden Boy nominations, and Star Trek received three technical nominations.

Best Picture

• Avatar (James Cameron and Jon Landau)
• The Blind Side (Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson)
• District 9 (Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham)
• An Education (Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey)
• The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro)
• Inglourious Basterds (Lawrence Bender)
• Precious (Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness)
• A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)
• Up (Jonas Rivera)
• Up in the Air (Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman)

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Click here.

The Catholic Church adhering to their anti-contraception-based, homophobic, traditionalist and conservative dogma deserves notice in my opinion. I may not agree with any of their ideas (not anymore, at least), something must be said for them remaining firmly dogmatic and not budging from their principles. The Church truly believes it represents God on earth and that they have always done so. As such, it would be odd to throw away dogma that has represented God in the past—it would be an outright admission of being wrong, and, thusly, not being able to be trusted ever.

Yes, in that capacity I truly take notice of the Catholic Church—as I do fundamentalists. In my opinion, it is simply fact that religion and progressive do not go together; that religion and liberal concepts do not go together; and that religion and change are two incompatible concepts as well.

That is what makes the bible such a human book—without a doubt written by humans, for humans, and containing only human concepts. Read More »

Happy New Year, drunken fools.

Gelukkig Nieuwjaar, hooggeëerde mede-Nederlanders.

After a long break, it appears that I’m back to blogging again. Between everything at university; working on Aleksandr Magazine and other sites; writing short stories and poems; sending out lacklustre work to The New Yorker and the Virginia Quarterly Review, and some better work to the same Virginia, as well as the Boston Review and Columbia Journal; and, having absolutely no blogging inspiration, this little vixen was left abandoned and ignored.

However, no more of that! I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, I have to say. Not only am I way behind on the film ratings articles, I also haven’t shared much of my colourless and tedious life of the last six month with you—for shame! (Not that there’s really that much to share, but, whatever. Just roll with it.) Well, that’s definitely going to change from now on.