Some Academy award favorites this year…..

“Behind every brilliant performance there were countless hours of practice and preparation.”
-Eric Buttterworth

Some of the great movies will compete for this year for Oscars which is to be held on 27^th February……but as usual only few will have the pleasure of carrying the trophy home…..i would like to share my favorites for this years award…..but that will be solely my opinion, so you can share your opinion by participating in the poll, to choose your favorite……….

BEST PICTURE

There are ten nominations for this category…

Black Swan

The king’s Speech

Inception

127 Hours

The Fighter

 The Social Network

The kids Are Alright

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter Bone

But I think the real competition for this award will be between Inception,The king’s speech,The Social Network and Black swan…..with Inception having slight edge over the others…….

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Javier Bardem –Biutiful

James Franco-127 Hours

Jeff Bridges-True Grit

Colin firth-The King’s Speech

Jesse Eisenberg-The Social Network

For this category my favorites are Colin Firth for portrayal of role as King George 6 and James Franco……..

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Christian Bale-The Fighter

John Hawkes-Winter's Bone

Jeremy RennerShare My PickShare My PickShare to Facebook Share to Twitter -The Town

Mark RuffaloShare to Facebook Share to Twitter -The Kids Are All Right

Geoffrey Rush-The King's Speech

This could be decided between Christan Bale and Geoffrey Rush…..

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Annette Bening-The Kids Are All Right

Nicole Kidman-Rabbit HoleShare My PickShare to Facebook Share to Twitter

Jennifer Lawrence-Winter's BonShare My PickShare to Facebook Share to Twitter

Natalie Portman-Black Swan

Michelle Williams-Blue Valentine

Although I haven’t seen all the movies in this particular category, yet I have supreme confidence in my choice for best actress in leading role…..Natalie Portman……for her role in movie “Black Swan”…..after watching the movie its hard to imagine the kind of effort Natalie would have endured for the preparation of such a actress centric role, which requires demanding dancing abilities in proportion to the acting skills for portraying the character of “Nina”….

 

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Black Swan-Matthew Libatique

Inception-Wally Pfister

The King's Speech-Danny Cohen

The Social Network-Jeff Cronenweth

True Grit-Roger Deakins

Real competition will be between Wally Pfister(Inception) and Matthew Libatique(Black Swan)………

 

DIRECTING

Black Swan-Darren Aronofsky Share My PickShare to Facebook Share to Twitter

The Fighter-David O. Russell

The King's Speech-Tom Hooper

The Social Network-David Fincher

True Grit-Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

It would  be toughest to pick any one particular director from the above five nominees(so close is competition)and judges will surely have hard time choosing one…….so I have no particular favorite in this category…..

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Exit through the Gift Shop-Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz

Gasland-Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic

Inside Job-Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs

Restrepo-Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger

Waste Land-Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley

“Exit Through The Gift Shop”…..after watching this documentary one can realize that how there is sometime joke on art or how media hype and word of mouth can create significant buzz for not so significant things, this is funny yet intelligent documentary and fabulous direction by Banksy an street artist himself…..only rare chances are there that it’s director will attend the awards due to his secretive and hidden identity……anyway it will remain my favorite……

There are other categories also but it would to be too lengthy to discuss all of them…..but it’s easily predictable that this years awards will be dominated by movies like-

The King’s Speech...Inception ...Black Swan.....The fighter......The social network

I will keep my fingers crossed till 27^th……….

 

Gustavo Santaolalla

If you have listened and appreciated the OST of recently released movie “Dhobi Ghat”…than here I would like to mention some more movies whose soundtrack was by composed by Gustavo…….why he was the best choice as music director of Dhobi Ghat???.... Will be evident if you look closely at few of the movies he has done as music director….

21 grams, Babel, Amores Perros, Biutiful, Brockback Mountain, North Country, and Motorcycle Diaries are some of the names……Looking at first four name make it evident that all the four have different stories, interrelated to each other, hence it could be said that he has expertise in giving music in such movies…….

All the above mentioned movies are critically acclaimed and it may be easily stated that, the music of these movies has good amount of hand in their success….the unique thing about his music is that, it could be deeply intense as well as soothing at the same time…….visuals are not required when listening to his music, as one could imagine the scenario without any effort……good example is motorcycle diaries……….

Before ending this article it would be worth mentioning…..some of good tracks contributed by Gustavo in the above mentioned movies……

Motorcycle diaries

Apertura

La partida

De usuahia a la quiaca

Brockback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain 1

Brokeback Mountain 2

Brokeback Mountain 3

The Wings

21 Grams

Do We Lose 21 Grams?

When Our Wings Are Cut, Can We Still Fly?

Ameros perros

Chivo Groove

Tema Amores Perros

Zeitgeist Moving Forward

After watching this,i could not resist sharing my thoughts about such a wonderful documentary,so here is my impression about this one..... 

This one is third installation in Zeitgeist Series, which takes the legacy further by providing more in-depth analysis for issues like social inequality, consumption pattern, advertisement brainwashing, addiction, diseases, human behavior, genetics, childhood environment, market, stock exchange etc. and beautifully knit all these things together to answer problems related to current unsustainable n mindless consumption based economy with only finite resource availability.

                This documentary is divided into 3 parts, which are unique, at the same time closely related to one another and are priceless with regard to their content, depth, creativity, narration, uniqueness and above all relevance to current global scenario. By the time I finished watching this documentary I felt privileged and enlightened to share my thoughts about this enigmatic creation.

                Here I will try to give glimpse of issues discussed in respective parts:

PART 1

How some basic human childhood needs if not full-filled can affect our health, social behavior and Addiction during adulthood?

How we are moving towards formation of a more individualistic society and how this is depriving us of our basic human need of companionship, to be loved and to be accepted for who we are as a person. One who is not able to get access to these basic needs will seldom carry traits like compassion, cooperation and empathy towards fellow human beings.

Intellectuals like

Dr. Robert Sapolsky - Professor, Stanford University.

Dr. Gabor Mate - Physician, Author, Portland society.

Richerd Wilkinson- Professor, University of Nottingham.

Dr. James Gilligan- Harvard medical School.

argues on our current notion about Genetics.

They state studies which show certain relevant points in favor of their argument, like:

1. If a mother is starved during pregnancy than their children are more likely to have blood sugar related diseases during their adulthood.
2. If a pregnant woman is in mental stress, than their children are more likely to become addict.
3. Children who were severely abused during their childhood were more likely to show following traits- commit violence, have a tendency to be addicted to certain behavior or drug, not opening to new relationships, Keep them self away from intimate relationship, see world as unsafe place, having higher sense of rejection, have Suicidal tendency when they become adult.

How Human adulthood Health and behavior are related to our childhood environment, which is stored in our implicit memory which we can’t recall, since hippocampus which encodes recall memory is not full developed until child is 18^th month old and the irony is that most of our health n behavior during adulthood is determined by the environment we were in during that 9 + 18 month period of childhood which we can’t even recall.

                Overall in this part they discuss how biology of human being depends on their interaction with psychological and social environment.

PART 2

This part discusses our current monetary and economic policies with context to sustainability andcurrent and future harm and injustice.

Why 1 % of total population on earth owns 40 % of its wealth?

Why so much progress in the world with context of science, technology, prosperity etc. is unable to stop thousands of children dying of hunger and starvation?

Why social inequalities exist?

What is the reason behind endless and mindless consumption of finite resources?

How social inequality, false need creation through advertisement, endless consumption and desire to possess infinite materialistic things are products of current monetary and economic structure.

If these are some of the questions in your mind, than this part of documentary satisfy them all, with assuring facts and theories. This part very justifiably answers all these and many more questions.

PART 3

In this part all the intellectuals interviewed in this documentary suggest a solution to current problems and shows their concern about current economic and monetary structure, regarding its highly unsustainable nature which is deprived of any human concern.

Discussing this documentary any further will be disrespectful to the people involved in its making and also I don’t posses that much wisdom to discuss such a thought provoking and intellectual piece of documentary any further. So I will end my article here only, watch this one if you are curious about all the questions posed above. Have happy time…:)