While most of the film blogosphere is wondering why Sony hasn’t yet greenlit a District 9 sequel, our old friends at the Oscar blogs are addressing a potential awards campaign for the sci-fi hit. According to Peter Bart at Variety, an Academy screening of the film over the weekend was very well received (best applause in years? come on), and the news has sparked buzz of a possible Best Picture nod. After all, there are ten available slots this year.
Honestly, I enjoyed the movie very much, but if it’s being considered Oscar-worthy, I’ll be the first to begin the backlash (against the awards push; Armond White already took care of the general backlash). District 9 shouldn’t be nominated for Best Picture any more than Star Trek should. It shouldn’t even be nominated any more than Transformers 2 should. Regardless of how much better it may be.
And I don’t necessarily have anything against a sci-fi movie being up for the award. If Cameron’s Avatar is groundbreaking and brilliant, give it a nomination. I just want to make it clear that District 9 is very good, but it is not that good. And just saying that it deserves an Oscar campaign adds to the continued depreciation of the Academy Awards.
Read what other film bloggers are saying about the District 9 Oscar buzz after the jump:
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Yesterday, for the second time in two weeks, In Contention’s Kristopher Tapley confessed to being done with 2008 and noted a bunch of anticipated 2009 films. These aren’t necessarily titles he’s looking forward to seeing, though; it’s basically a preliminary jump on next year’s Oscar season. Because apparently this year’s Academy Awards are all but handed out, the winners properly predicted and expected, and now it’s time to think about what will be up for what in 2010. Those titles Tapley lists are Rob Marshall’s Nine, Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Clint Eastwood’s “Mandela“ (formerly The Human Factor), Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked, Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart and the latest from Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Steven Soderbergh (The Informant), Paul Greengrass (Green Zone), Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) and James Cameron (Avatar).
Oh, and then Jeff Wells had to go and hint that Spielberg’s Lincoln is likely to arrive by year’s end. What and who else is being foreseen as nominated this time next year? Check out the links after the jump.
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Oh, 2008 … where has the time all gone to? It seems like just yesterday that we were cringing at the faux Golden Globes, learning about Sweding, and seriously debating Juno’s chance at winning Best Picture. What fools we were! Perhaps we ought to head into the last year of The Aughts with a better game plan.
With that in mind, I’ve devised a list of films that I’m excited to see (for the first time or not) and talk about in the coming 12 months. Later in the week, we’ll take a look at some movies we saw at festivals in 2008 which now have a release date in 2009, and also films which have no release date, but which we expect to see show up on the festival circuit in the coming months. But we’re going to get the macro out of the way first: after the jump, you’ll find three Big, Stupid Hollywood Movies which I’m assuming will be awful, but possibly in an interesting way. Do share the titles you have your own eyes on in the comments.
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