And the 2012 Oscar went to...

So The Artist did it: five Oscars – Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Score and Best Costumes.

But its haul only matched that of Hugo, which cleaned up in the technical categories: Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Visual Effects.

However Hugo did not secure the Best Editing award: that went to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Predictably, Woody Allen won Best Original Screenplay for Midnight In Paris, while The Descendants secured its only Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Supporting Actor categories went to the unbeatable Christopher Plummer and Octavia Spencer. Rango picked up Best Animated Film.

Shocks? Meryl Streep securing her third Oscar for a performance that many did not rate in The Iron Lady (which also won Best Make-up), and the Academy not going mad (like it usually does) with the Best Foreign Film by rightly placing A Separation at the top of the heap.

The Artist: more wins en route to Oscar

The Artist’s winning run continued at the Cesars and the Independent Spirit Awards, securing another 10 gongs.

In France, The Artist picked up six on Friday at its native Cesars: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and Best Score. But Jean Dujardin didn’t win Best Actor!

Then on Saturday at the Spirit Awards, it secured: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Cinematography.

Were The Artist to beaten at the Oscars would be the biggest awards upset in many years. According to Wikipedia, it’s won 25 Best Film awards

Also faring well at the Spirits: Christopher Plummer (Best Supporting Actor for Beginners); Shailene Woodley (Best Supporting Actress for The Descendants); and Michelle Williams (Best Actress for My Week With Marilyn).

BAFTA 2012: The Artist prevails

There is awards momentum… and then there is a steamroller. The Artist simply and silently steamrollered the opposition at the 2012 BAFTAs, snaring 7 gongs in the process, including Best Film, Director and Actor.

The Artist is the first truly foreign film to win the top BAFTA since Jean de Florette in 1988 (although I concede that Polanski’s The Pianist won in 2003, but that’s shot in English with a mainstream English-speaking lead). Jean Dujardin becomes the first foreign (ie English is not his first language) winner of the Best Actor gong since Roberto Benigni, and the first French winner since Philippe Noiret in 1990 (for Cinema Paradiso).

With £5.3m at the UK box office (already more than Hugo), it’s unclear how much further a black and white, silent French film can go. With two weeks to go until the Oscars, my estimate is that The Artist will cross the £10m barrier, but I can’t see it matching erstwhile BAFTA rival TTSS’s £14.1m.

The British spy story joined Hugo, and The Iron Lady on two gongs apiece. The latter meant Meryl Streep’s first BAFTA since 1981.

Also picking up two awards was Senna: not only did it win Best Documentary but also Best Editing. Given it’s rather skewed look at F1 history, I’m surprised it qualified as a documentary!

Christopher Plummer predictably secured the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in Beginners, taking the number of awards he has won from that film to 14, with two more possible wins to come before awards season ends. It means Plummer has a 100% BAFTA record: he’s only been nominated once, and he’s converted that to the win.

Shock of the night? The Skin I Live In beating A Separation. That's just bizarre.

The Artist: Film, Actor, Director, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume, Original Score
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Adapted Screenplay, British Film
The Iron Lady: Actress, Make-up & Hair
Senna: Documentary, Editing
Hugo: Production Design, Sound
Beginners: Supporting Actor
The Help: Supporting Actress
Rango: Animated Film
The Skin I Live In: Foreign Film
Harry Potter 8: Visual Effects

The Artist and The Help: ready for Oscar

The Artist and The Help gained seemingly unstoppable Oscar momentum at the weekend: The Artist triumphed at the Directors’ Guild of America Awards, while sharing the spotlight with The Help at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Artist director Michael Hasanavicius beat Woody Allen, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese and Alexander Payne to win the DGA trophy, cementing his position as favourite to win the Best Director Oscar.

His lead actor, Jean Dujardin won Best Actor at the SAG Awards, beating George Clooney. Only four SAG Best Actors have not secured the Best Actor Oscar, the last being Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote in 2005.

With The Artist already having secured the PGA’s vote, it is now the absolute favourite for the Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor Oscars.

Christopher Plummer continued his unbeaten run, taking the Best Supporting Actor SAG for his role in Beginners. If he fails to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, I’ll eat someone’s hat.

The Help’s Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer locked out the female SAG honours, as well as being part of the ensemble that secured the SAG best cast award. As pointed out by The Hollywood Reporter, The Help has tied with Chicago and American Beauty for most wins at the SAGs, but while the latter pair swept to Oscar glory, The Help will need to be happy with being favourite for the two female Oscars.

Why? As the Reporter points out, no film that has not been nominated for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Editing has gone on to win Best Film. But the thing in The Help’s favour is that it is by some distance the most commercially successful of all this year’s ‘proper’ Oscar nominees – ie it’s more likely Academy voters have seen The Help than any other film in contention. Nevertheless, I still don’t think that’s enough.

The next major awards ceremony is the BAFTAs on 12 February with the Oscars another fortnight later.

Review: War Horse

Let's get this straight from the start: the Tintin/War Horse double does not repeat Steven Spielberg's 1993/1994 double whammy of Jurassic Park and Schindler's List (the former enormo box office and the latter Oscar kudos).

Tintin is occasionally inspired yet sometimes leaden; embraced wholeheartedly by the French and the Belgians, the boy detective has met with critical support but the commercial cold shoulder from many territories, proving that even Spielberg's and Peter Jackson's names can't convince audiences to take a punt on a character they've never heard of.

War Horse has not crossed over in the US - undoubtedly the lack of awards nominations and wins has hampered it, especially as it positively screams 'Im an Oscar contender!'

The film has of course performed much better in the UK: straight in at number one two weekends ago with £4m, and then it held on to the top spot last weekend with only a small drop. This performance is clearly aided by the play's success in the UK, although without awards success, it will be intriguing to see if the film can maintain its box office momentum over the next fortnight.

As with elsewhere in the world, UK critical response has been varied: laudatory to mediocre paints the picture well enough. The combination of Spielberg and a well-loved text/play generates high expectations for many, me included.

And I can report that there are moments of rare cinematic brilliance on show, but also some misjudgements the logic behind which are hard to fathom.

Spielberg decides to go for the emotional jugular from the very beginning: this is absolutely intended to be an old-fashioned four-hankie weepie as the titular equine hero bears witness not only to mankind's compassion but also its continued brutality. Fortunately the compassion just about outweighs the brutality - but only just.

Did I need the four hankies? God, yes! Our hero's first triumph brings a huge lump to the throat; the scene in no man's land leaves you grieving for the generation that fell in the fields across Europe (while throwing in one moment of mordant wit that nearly broke me); and the finale competes with The Return Of The King for the most endings pregnant with emotion (even as I write this, there's a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye from just recalling those scenes).

The WWI battle scenes are not in the Private Ryan territory as this is a family film (this is the first time that Spielberg has tackled the Great War), and I’m bound to compare his trench scenes with Kubrick’s Paths Of Glory (and Stanley’s are better).

From a massive European cast, Tom Hiddleston takes my man of the match trophy for his performance as Captain Nicholls. Peter Mullan and Emily Watson also deserve mentions in dispatches.

Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski delivers some incredible images, but is also guilty of over-egging, and at one or two points the lighting is just appalling.

John Williams almost inevitably lays the score on a bit thick in places.

At its best, War Horse soars and is a 10, but elsewhere it’s disappointing, almost as if Spielberg and his team were rushed (and they weren’t), and thus my score must reflect this.
Score: 8/10

Oscar nominations 2012

Oscar has gone crazy! It’s official! The headlines may reveal that Hugo leads The Artist by 11 nominations to 10, but the real story is the omissions and surprise nods.

The highlights among the former are:
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy not nominated for Best Film.
• Neither Tilda Swinton (We Need To Talk About Kevin) nor Charlize Theron (Young Adult) for Best Actress.
• Ryan Gosling (The Ides Of March and Drive), Michael Fassbender (the actor of the year, but especially for Shame) and Leonardo diCaprio (for Clint’s J Edgar) not making the Best Actor list.
• None of the cast of Carnage being recognised.
• Neither Vanessa Redgrave (Coriolanus), Carey Mulligan (Shame and Drive), nor Shailene Woodley (The Descendants) making the Supporting Actress shortlist.
• Albert Brooks, widely rewarded for his performance in Drive, not making the Supporting Actor list.
• Neither Cars 2 nor Tintin making the cut for Animated Film.
• Neither Senna nor Scorsese’s George Harrison study making the cut of for the Documentary category.

Among the surprises are:
• The poorly reviewed Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close making the Best Film and Best Supporting Actor (for Max von Sydow) lists.
• The Tree Of Life being recognised for Film, Director and Cinematography.
• Rooney Mara (rightly) getting a nom for Dragon Tattoo.
• Demian Bichir getting on the Best Actor list.
• Nick Nolte making the cut on Supporting Actor for Warrior (this is probably the most leftfield nom this year).
• Both Margin Call and A Separation being nominated for Original Screenplay.
• A Cat In Paris and Chico & Rita getting on the Animated shortlist.

And what of 2011’s most commercially successful films? The Harry Potter finale picked up three craft/tech noms; ditto Transformers 3.

If we assume that the only Oscars that persuade people to see a (English-speaking) film are the major ones (Film, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, and Adapted Screenplay), then the field looks like this:
• Albert Nobbs: 2
• The Artist: 5
• Beginners: 1
• A Better Life: 1
• Bridesmaids: 2
• The Descendants: 4
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: 2
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: 2
• The Help: 4
• Hugo: 3
• Margin Call: 1
• Midnight In Paris: 3
• Moneyball: 3
• My Week With Marilyn: 2
• A Separation: 1
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 2
• The Tree Of Life: 2
• War Horse: 1
• Warrior: 1
Now that’s more representative the state of play! It’s The Artists versus The Descendants.

OK, money on the table time: of the top 10 categories, who will win each?
Animated Film: Rango

Foreign Film: A Separation

Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants

Original Screenplay: Midnight In Paris

Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help

Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Actress: this is a three-way fight between Viola Davis, Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams; each has factors in their favour – Davis’s character suffered in the most commercially successful ‘serious’ Oscar nominee, Streep’s performance is freshest in the mind, and Williams delivered probably the best performance as a Hollywood star; I’m going with Williams.

Actor: this is a showdown between Clooney and Dujardin; the former is an old school star while the latter is someone pretending to be an old school star; the latter leaps off the screen, the former slowburns; the former has a Supporting Actor Oscar at home for Syriana and two Best Actor noms to his name, the latter is a new face; I think Hollywood will reward its own, so step up George.

Director: if it’s The Artist’s night, Hazanavicius will take this, but in bringing ‘art’ to 3D, Scorsese must be considered his most serious rival; the outcome could depend on momentum – something Hugo hasn’t got, so it’s Michael Hazanavicius.

Film: the big one is a battle royale between The Descendants and The Artist; as with the previous category, The Artist is the one with the momentum; I’m so confident of my prediction here that I will buy a drink for all my work colleagues if the following film doesn’t win: The Artist.

The Artist continued its march to seeming Oscar glory this weekend as it walked off with the Producers’ Guild of America’s big award: its producer Thomas Langmann won the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures.

The Artist beat the following:
Bridemaids
The Descendants
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
The Ides Of March
Midnight In Paris
Moneyball
War Horse

As well as scooping the PGA’s top prize, The Artist’s weekend box office nearly doubled over the previous weekend to $2.4m, giving it a running total of $12.1m. With the Oscar noms due on Tuesday, the film’s momentum is surely set to increase.

While his War Horse failed to convince, Steven Spielberg, with Kathleen Kennedy and Peter Jackson secured the Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures for their other adaptation, Tintin. It has struggled at the US box office (just $72.3m to date and running out of steam; $278.8m banked in the rest of the world) due to Tintin being an unknown property, however awards success may help to keep it on the boil for a few more weeks.

For the record, Tintin beat: Cars 2; Kung Fu Panda 2; Puss In Boots; and Rango.