Oscar Predictions: Best Actor

Oscar Predictions: Best Actor*   I write this post today in the knowledge that the Academy has yet again made a dumbfounding decision to leave Senna out of the long list for nominations for Best Documentary ahead of next year’s ceremony. With this in mind, it leads me to believe there will be no real surprises from the Awards next year. This has been stressed before, this blog series is to prove just how predictable, and on occasion ridiculously wrong, the Academy can be and this week I barely needed to set that up. They have, in one fell swoop, alienated film lovers the world over by leaving out possibly one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen. To twist the knife in further, they will no doubt invent some outlandish rule as to why this has happened “oh well, we couldn’t include that on the nomination list, because, … There’s more

Sweary’s Jaw

Surreptitiously petitioning for Lindsay Lohan’s release, so you don’t have to. There’s such a gender imbalance in celebrity gossip, don’t you think? Female celebrities are subject to much deeper scrutiny than their male counterparts - their weight, their hair, their clothes, their partying, all of which are much more readily criticised. The “standard” for female celebrities is a much narrower concept than that for men, with little room for quirks or nonconformity. So naturally, women are more likely to be featured in gossip columns and much more likely to be made the butt of the jokes of a sad skanger (that’d be me) … because there’s just that bit more interest, that bit more fodder, that bit more scope for natural deviance from the stiff, virtuous ideal they’re supposed to adhere to. Oh, hold on. The fellas are misbehaving this week! Caloo calay for equal rights! Caloo calay, too, for … There’s more

Shutter Island - Review

Shutter Island, the oft-delayed Martin Scorsese adaptation of the best-selling Denis Lehane book finally hits Irish cinema screens on March 12th. Usually these kind of release date changes result from studio unease at something that took place during production, be it unsatisfactory effects or the commonly cited “creative differences”. In this instance it would appear that these usual reasons were not at fault, for Scorsese brings us a vision that is so close to a Hitchcockian murder-mystery as to make you believe Alfred himself had a hand in its creation.