Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro, Producers
Directing: “The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow
Actor in a leading role: Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”
Actor in a supporting role: Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”
Actress in a leading role: Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side”
Actress in a supporting role: Mo’Nique in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Animated feature film: “Up” Pete Docter
Documetary: “The Cove“ Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens
Best moments of the night:
Steve Martin on Meryl Streep: “Anyone who’s ever worked with Meryl Streep always says the same thing: can that woman act! And what’s with all the Hitler memorabilia?“ The Guardian lists the best quotations of the night here.
Christopher Waltz accepting from Spain’s Penelope Cruz: “Oscar and Penelope. That’s an uber-bingo.” The Times features the best and worst speeches of the night here.
“Jeff Bridges is quickly closing in on Matthew McConaughey for `best actor who has become a character from an early movie.‘” — Bill Simmons (sportsguy33), ESPN columnist. The 10 funniest tweets during the Oscars broadcast – Associated Press article here.
The Times’ coverage here.
The Guardian coverage here.
The Independent’s coverage here.
The Telegraph’s coverage here.
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian didn’t have much time for Leap Year starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode:
Greater miscasting could only be achieved by getting Jeremy Irons to come on with a pointy hat, playing a leprechaun, while a straight-armed green-clad Edward Fox riverdances madly around him playing Charlie Haughey. Afterwards, the only “leap” I felt like making was off a motorway gantry into the fast lane of the M25.
Read all reviews here.
The digested reviews for the most talked-about titles of the past month:
Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter
The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves by Siri Hustvedt
The Thirties: An Intimate History by Juliet Gardiner
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell
The Pinch by David Willetts
Iris Murdoch: A Writer at War by Peter Conradi
Trials of the Diaspora by Anthony Julius
The Music Instinct by Philip Ball
Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her Family’s Feuds by Lyndall Gordon
Lesley Blanch by Anne Boston
Click here to read January’s non-fiction round-up
The digested reviews for the most talked-about titles of the past month:
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Maya by Alastair Campbell
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
Isa & May by Margaret Forster
The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare by Robert Winder
The Other Family by Joanna Trollope
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor
Click here to read January’s fiction round-up
We’re pleased to hear that Robert Service has won the 54th Duff Cooper Prize for his excellent biography of Trotsky. You can find all the reviews HERE
Those in search of some light relief should check out Tariq Ali’s dotty critique of Service’s “counter-factual” approach. The Guardian should be ashamed of itself for printing such nonsense.
Best Film: Avatar; An Education; THE HURT LOCKER; Precious; Up in the Air
Oustanding British Film: An Education; FISH TANK; In the Loop; Moon; Nowhere Boy
Best Director: James Cameron (Avatar); Neill Blomkamp (District 9); Lone Scherfig (An Education); Quentin Tarentino (Inglourious Basterds); KATHRYN BIGELOW (THE HURT LOCKER)
Best Film Not in the English Language: Broken Embraces; Coco Before Chanel; Let the Right One In; A PROPHET; The White Ribbon
Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer: Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock, David Pearson (Mugabe and the White African); Eran Creevy (Shifty); Stuart Hazeldine (Exam); DUNCAN JONES (Moon); Sam Taylor-Wood (Nowhere Boy)
Best Actor: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart); George Clooney (Up in the Air); COLIN FIRTH (A Single Man); Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker); Andy Serkis (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll)
Best Actress: CAREY MULLIGAN (An Education); Saoirsie Roisin (The Lovely Bones); Gabourey Sibide (Precious); Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia); Audrey Tautou (Coco Before Chanel)
Supporting Actor: Alec Baldwin (It’s Complicated); Christian McKay (Me & Orson Welles); Alfred Molina (An Education); Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones); CHRISTOPH WATZ (Inglourious Basterds)
Supporting Actress: Anne-Marie Duff (Nowhere Boy); Vera Farmigia (Up in the Air); Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air); MO’NIQUE (Precious); Kristin Scott Thomas (Nowhere Boy)
Few people are clever and talented enough to make the Omnivore jealous, but the Guardian’s John Crace, whose reliably excellent Digested Read is ten years old this week, is one of them. He marked the anniversary with a piece in today’s G2, which you can find here
Brandon Camp directs the hatchet-inspiring Love Happens. Toby Young in The Times noted:
Everyone is trying to re-invent the rom-com at the moment and the makers of Love Happens are no exceptions. The formula they’ve come up with is to remove all the comedy, which is a bold choice.
Read all reviews here.
Hugh Dancy vehicle Adam also provoked scorn from Nicholas Barber in The Independent on Sunday:
It’s a saccharine romance starring Hugh Dancy as an electronics whiz with Asperger’s syndrome, and Rose Byrne as his new neighbour. His condition could have made for an intriguing relationship if the characters had lived on Earth, and not the planet Romcom, but no: Byrne’s primary school teacher is so sunny she’s carcinogenic, while Dancy is a pixie-like being who takes her to see a family of wild raccoons in Central Park.
Read all reviews here.
Yet another dubious film, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard starring that guy from Entourage wasn’t a critical hit. Philip French in The Observer remarked:
They’re salesmen whose deaths even the compassionate Arthur Miller would greet with equanimity.
Read more reviews here.
The Last Station generally received favourable reviews but Tim Robey in The Telegraph (bad week, perhaps?) could only offer poison-laced praise:
Ah, the mania of film awards. The Last Station, an exasperatingly beardy and verbose costume drama about the final days of Leo Tolstoy, wouldn’t exist without them. Which does it deserve? For starters, I’d give it Lamest Entanglement of Helen Mirren in a Curtain. When Mirren’s fiery Countess Sofya tells Christopher Plummer’s Tolstoy “I’m your chicken, you be my big cock!”, it’s a shoo-in for Most Cringe-Inducing Pillow Talk. And it deserves an all-round ensemble prize for bustling, strangled histrionics, with one honourable exception — James McAvoy’s eager secretary, sporting the film’s only acceptable facial hair.
Read more forgiving reviews here.
Garry Marshall hasn’t recaptured the charm of Pretty Woman and his latest offering Valentine’s Day is commendable only for the hatchet jobs it inspired. Tim Robey in The Telegraph was one of the many to stick the dagger in:
Suffice to say that the many mysteries of the human heart aren’t solved by Garry Marshall’s Love Actually-style ensemble romcom. It’s more like an all-star perfect teeth and hair convention you could cheerfully firebomb.
Perhaps only remarkable for the fact that Jennifer Aniston wasn’t involved in this botched rom com attempt. Read the rest of the scathing reviews here.
