The Noah Castle Film Awards (Part III: The Big Awards Nominations)

Truth be told, the nominations have been uploaded on the main page for almost two weeks but with the Oscars, life and similar stuff I have not had the time or the will to comment... But I'm back! 

I wanted to use this post as an explanation to the question that must be burning in your minds... Why don't I give technical awards? Well, it is, as the best explanations in life, simple and embarrassing. I don't understand them. Well, I can talk of the costumes of a movie, I can discuss the make-up and I can appreciate cinematography and more or less I understand what editing means. 

But when it comes to aural categories I'm at a loss. I have the worst ear ever to identify scores because, for some reason, they don't register in my brain. I don't even know what the difference between sound and sound editing is so I think it would be hypocritical (not to say complicated) to give awards for those categories. I promise I'm going to learn about the technical aspects in film so I can include the categories in the next NCFA's. Nevertheless I have to say that I saw how wonderful the cinematography, costumes, make up and visual effects are in Black Swan, how great the score and the cinematography are in The Social Network, 

how gorgeous are the cinematography and costumes of I am Love 

and how good the make-up in Splice is. By the way, a special award for best costume design should have gone to Natasha Yarovenko's parents for creating that "suit".

A category I would like to comment further is Original Song because the four nominees at the Oscars were awful and tremendously boring. The following songs would have made my list had I made such a category:

"Sticks and Stones" by Jónsi for How to Train your Dragon

"Loving Strangers" by Russian Red for Room in Rome

"Kick Ass" by Mika for Kick-Ass

And speaking of sexy young man with curly hair, here is Xavier Dolan, one of my three runner-ups for Best Director of the year. 

The other two, in case you don't recognize them, are Sofia Coppola and John Cameron Mitchell. The three do a great job at directing their respective films but some of them had to stay out...

Coming soon: Acting Awards!!

Oscar Nominations

Oscar Nominations were a day ago and writing this post I feel like I'm getting late to the party... Well, that's me! A turtle! Anyways, Oscar voters were good this year. Of course, some things were good, some were bad but I don't think any of those things was awful à la Blind Side last year...

Let's break those things down:

THE BAD

- No Andrew Garfield.

- No Mila Kunis.

- No Black Swan screenplay.

- No Black Swan in Costume Design.

It's good that all bad things are snubs and not horrific inclusions. Wait, I forgot:

- Tom Hooper: Is there anything more bland and generic than The King's Speech direction?

- Alice in Wonderland (it was butt-ugly and it was not intended as in Biutiful so... what is the achievement exactly?)

- The Best Song category. Let's hope this year they don't perform or Lauren Bacall will fall asleep...

THE HILARIOUS

- No Nolan in directing. Fanboys must be burning stuff...

THE GOOD

- A great array of ten nominees for Best Picture.

- Twenty respectable performances (of those I've seen HBC is the weakest one and she is good)

- Four auteurs in Best Director. 

- The Way Back for Make-Up.

THE GREAT

- Exit through the Gift Shop.

- Dogtooth.

- The Social Network's score (and all the other seven nominations).

- I Am Love for Best Costume Design.

THE FANTABULOUS

- Black Swan's cinematography.

- Black Swan's editing.

- Natalie Portman.

- DARREN ARONOFSKY.

- Black Swan for Best Picture.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

- Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole!!

Strange things will happen...

... if you let them. And certainly the HFPA does let them. Golden Globe nominations! Chaos and fun! I'm not including a complete list but rather some random thoughts on the nominations. If you want a full list The Film Experience has one and IMDB another. And maybe, I don't know, try Google! (It is a page few people know and I enjoy recommending it ;))

Random thought #1: 127 hours is not up for picture but it is for script. (Thoughts pause for a while) And here I was thinking that my random thoughts would be more elaborated.

Random thought #2: I am Love is love. I am so glad it's nominated!

Random thought #3: Three of the nominees for best actress in a comedy have names that start with the letters An. Two of them have names that start with Anne. One of them has a name that also ends with Anne. That's Anne Hathaway, in case you're wondering...

Random thought #4: YAY! EMMA STONE IS SO FUN!

Random thought #5: Johnny Depp's next award will probably be Miss Universe. That is more likely than someone enjoying his performance (or anything about the movie for that matter) in Alice in Wonderland.

Random thought #6: I'm getting tired of typing Random thought all those times. From now one RT means Random thought.

RT #7: Mila Kunis is nominated!! Bliss!

RT#8: RT reminds me too much of Rotten Tomatoes, which by the way has also a list of the nominees. I'm going back to Random thought full.

Random thought #9: Aronofsky is nominated!! Bliss the Sequel!!

Random thought #10: In case Random thoughts #7 and #9 did not make it clear enough, I love Black Swan being nominated for things. And I still haven't seen it...

Random thought #11: In case Random thought #5 did not make it clear enough, Alice in Wonderland makes unicorn puppies die of cancer.

Random thought #12: I love Nicole Kidman so much. She is without a doubt my favorite actress. From this we can conclude that I am happy she is nominated. In fact, except for the two uninvited guests (Berry and Wahlberg), I am very content with the drama acting nominations (though Kidman, Portman and Eisenberg are extra special in my heart).

Random thought #13: I really feel there is too much wrongness with the TV nominations to put my regular thoughts into Random thoughts. Maybe some other time, some other post.

Random thought #14: I did not want to end with 13 random thoughts.

Random afterthought #1: As I wrote the tags I realized that I did not mention Fincher or The Social Network once and that is very wrong because that film is exquisite and deserves all the nominations it has. This is such a good year for great films but the greatest (so far) is The Social Network.