“the greatest promotion scheme that any industry ever devised for itself”

Legend

• Probably gonna win
• Might win / Maybe
• If I had it my way
• Better not!
• Haven’t seen it / Can’t say

Best Picture

• Avatar
• The Blind Side
• District 9
• An Education
• The Hurt Locker
• Inglourious Basterds
• Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
• A Serious Man
• Up
• Up in the Air

Best Director

• Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
• James Cameron – Avatar
• Lee Daniels – Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
• Jason Reitman – Up in the Air
• Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds

Best Actor

• Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart as Bad Blake
• George Clooney – Up in the Air as Ryan Bingham
• Colin Firth – A Single Man as George Falconer
• Morgan Freeman – Invictus as Nelson Mandela
• Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker as Sgt. William James

Best Actress

• Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side as Leigh Anne Tuohy
• Helen Mirren – The Last Station as Sofya Tolstoy
• Carey Mulligan – An Education as Jenny Miller
• Gabourey Sidibe – Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire as Claireece “Precious” Jones
• Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia as Julia Child

Best Supporting Actor

• Matt Damon – Invictus as François Pienaar
• Woody Harrelson – The Messenger as Capt. Tony Stone
• Christopher Plummer – The Last Station as Leo Tolstoy
• Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones as George Harvey
• Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds as Col. Hans Landa

Best Supporting Actress

• Penélope Cruz – Nine as Carla Albanese
• Vera Farmiga – Up in the Air as Alex Goran
• Maggie Gyllenhaal – Crazy Heart as Jean Craddock
• Anna Kendrick – Up in the Air as Natalie Keener
• Mo’Nique – Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire as Mary Lee Johnston

Best Original Screenplay

• The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal
• Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino
• The Messenger – Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman
• A Serious Man – Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
• Up – Tom McCarthy, Bob Peterson and Pete Docter

Best Adapted Screenplay

• District 9 – Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell from Alive in Joburg by Blomkamp
• An Education – Nick Hornby from An Education by Lynn Barber
• In the Loop – Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci and Tony Roche from The Thick of It created by Iannucci
• Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire – Geoffrey Fletcher from Push by Sapphire
• Up in the Air – Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner from Up in the Air by Walter Kirn

Best Animated Feature

• Coraline – Henry Selick
• Fantastic Mr. Fox – Wes Anderson
• The Princess and the Frog – Ron Clements and John Musker
• The Secret of Kells – Tomm Moore
• Up – Pete Docter

Best Foreign Language Film

• Ajami (Israel) in Arabic and Hebrew – Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani
• El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina) in Spanish – Juan José Campanella
• The Milk of Sorrow (Peru) in Spanish and Quechua – Claudia Llosa
• Un Prophète (France) in French, Corsican and Arabic – Jacques Audiard
• The White Ribbon (Germany) in German – Michael Haneke

Best Documentary Feature

• Burma VJ – Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller
• The Cove – Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens
• Food, Inc. – Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein
• The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers – Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
• Which Way Home – Rebecca Cammisa

Best Documentary Short

• China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province – Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill
• The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner – Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher
• The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant – Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
• Music by Prudence – Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett
• Rabbit à la Berlin – Bartosz Konopka and Anna Wydra

Best Live Action Short

• The Door – Juanita Wilson and James Flynn
• Instead of Abracadabra – Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellström
• Kavi – Gregg Helvey
• Miracle Fish – Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey
• The New Tenants – Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson

Best Animated Short

• French Roast – Fabrice O. Joubert
• Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty – Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell
• The Lady and the Reaper – Javier Recio Gracia
• Logorama – Nicolas Schmerkin
• A Matter of Loaf and Death – Nick Park

Best Original Score

• Avatar – James Horner
• Fantastic Mr. Fox – Alexandre Desplat
• The Hurt Locker – Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
• Sherlock Holmes – Hans Zimmer
• Up – Michael Giacchino

Best Original Song

• “Almost There” from The Princess and the Frog – Randy Newman
• “Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog – Randy Newman
• “Loin de Paname” from Paris 36 – Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas
• “Take it All” from Nine – Maury Yeston
• “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from Crazy Heart – Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett

Best Sound Editing

• Avatar – Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
• The Hurt Locker – Paul N.J. Ottosson
• Inglourious Basterds – Wylie Stateman
• Star Trek – Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin
• Up – Michael Silvers and Tom Myers

Best Sound Mixing

• Avatar – Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson
• The Hurt Locker – Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett
• Inglourious Basterds – Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano
• Star Trek – Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson

Best Art Direction

• Avatar – Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; Set Decoration: Kim Sinclair
• The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus – Art Direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; Set Decoration: Caroline Smith
• Nine – Art Direction: John Myhre; Set Decoration: Gordon Sim
• Sherlock Holmes – Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
• The Young Victoria – Art Direction: Patrice Vermette; Set Decoration: Maggie Gray

Best Cinematography

• Avatar – Mauro Fiore
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – Bruno Delbonnel
• The Hurt Locker – Barry Ackroyd
• Inglourious Basterds – Robert Richardson
• The White Ribbon – Christian Berger

Best Makeup

• Il Divo – Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano
• Star Trek – Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow
• The Young Victoria – Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore

Best Costume Design

• Bright Star – Janet Patterson
• Coco Before Chanel – Catherine Leterrier
• The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus – Monique Prudhomme
• Nine – Colleen Atwood
• The Young Victoria – Sandy Powell

Best Film Editing

• Avatar – James Cameron, John Refoua and Stephen E. Rivkin
• District 9 – Julian Clarke
• The Hurt Locker – Chris Innis and Bob Murawski
• Inglourious Basterds – Sally Menke
• Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire – Joe Klotz

Best Visual Effects

• Avatar – Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones
• District 9 – Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros, and Matt Aitken
• Star Trek – Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

nihilnoetia:

This may get a little long-winded…

Okay. So it ticked all the right boxes for me in terms of design and composition and a fully-realised world. It had a very distinct narrative structure and it stuck to that very rigidly. Certainly, it mirrored a number of films like Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai and Pocahontas, and it certainly stood out from them in terms of technical and conceptual realisation.

What bothered me about the film was on a more fundamental level. The Na’vi are a hunter-gatherer society deeply attuned to the rich and magical ecosystem around them. Humanity is portrayed as a corporate money-grubbing, military industrial complex that rather than hopping from continent to continent in search of fresh biodiversity to plunder is now hopping from planet to planet to do so (it being heavily implied in the film that Earth is a mined-out husk). So where does that leave us? The culmination of the story ends with a crippled Marine leaving his battered human body behind and inhabiting his avatar permanently, thus completing his integration into the spiritual hunter-gatherer society that he’s so fallen in love with. So far, so good. I agree with the overall sentiment of fighting to protect a wonderfully diverse and fascinating ecosystem against the almighty power of the corporate dollar. But guess what? We have a wonderfully diverse and fascinating ecosystem right here on earth.

What bothers me is this. The movie is pure escapism. I’ve seen a lot of posts about people wanting to go and live on Pandora and be a Na’vi and all that jazz and sure, that’s exactly the kind of sentiment the movie seems designed to evoke. The Na’vi are tall, graceful, zen warriors willing to fight and die to protect their world and their way of life, and humans generally suck. So, what, you’re happy to completely write off the human race as a lost cause? You want to write off this world that we’ve damaged so utterly as a lost cause and go start fresh on Pandora? What does that say about us? Why isn’t the film standing up and saying no, fuck that kind of escapism, let’s do something here, today, about the damage we’re causing.

You can argue that it does, certainly, but look at the mechanics of what’s there. The protagonist ends up as one of The People, but he does so in a body that’s genetically half Na’vi, half human DNA. He’s not pure. And he’s going to be mating with a princess of their species? So straight off the bat we’re introducing human DNA into that bloodline; I don’t need to give you a history lesson on where else that has happened right here on our planet. Moreover, just because our flora and fauna isn’t alien and bio-luminescent, does that make it any less magical? Just because we’ve damaged our environment so much that we’ll never be able to return it to what it once was, does that mean we can’t preserve what we have and foster at least a return to values that will actually encourage that? Do we really have to write off our species as needlessly self-destructive and try and hop over into another species that isn’t, rather than taking a good, hard look at ourselves and trying now, in one of the most technologically and spiritually innovative periods in our tiny little history, to step up and take responsibility for shaping the course of our future on this pale blue dot? Or do we need the flight-of-fancy and genetic equivalent of inhabiting a World of Worldcraft character because it’s just too hard, you can’t change human nature and that’s the way we’ve always been? Stop dodging the fucking bullet. As an exercise in entertainment yes, the film succeeded. But don’t dress it up as some environmentally friendly morality tale when you’re completely dismissing your entire target audience’s species as a lost cause.

Well spoken, Mr. Neotia. This is waaay deeper than I would care to take a serious discussion on Avatar though… I’ll be the first to admit it’s all about the bio-luminescence in this one.