Most years it’s been fairly predictable which titles would win their Oscars but this time there is something different. The main one being Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a children’s book adaptation by a legendary film maker, and The Artist, a back-to-form Black & White silent movie, both having the most nominations with 11 and 10 nominations each. The rules have also changed, mainly to strictly define that the Best Picture award should be nominated to films which are considered to be the Best Picture, and the Best Animated Feature award is finally being taken seriously.

So the rules are simple, for each award you list the nominees in the order of you probability of it winning, the top being the most likely and the bottom the least. Then when the ceremony announces the winners, you score yourself based on those results. You can score yourself in one of two ways: you can try and aim for the lowest score, meaning 1 point for every nominee you accurately predicted will win, and then it will go higher the lower you put it. Or you can aim for the highest score and the points will be reverse (e.g for an award with 10 nominees, the top would be 10 and the bottom would be one). You add up your score and compare it with the lowest/highest possible score. Any award you missed will automatically get you the lowest/highest score from that award.

Since I’m following from last year, I’m doing it for highest possible score. So now onto my predictions!

Best Picture
1. The Artist
2. Hugo
3. War Horse
4. Tree of Life
5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
6. Descendants
7. Midnight in Paris
8. Moneyball
9. The Help

Best Director
1. Martin Scorsese – Hugo
2. Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
3. Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life
4. Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris
5. Alexander Payne – The Descendants

Best Actor
1. Jean Dujardin – The Artist as George Valentin
2. Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as George Smiley
3. Demián Bichir – A Better Life as Carlos Galindo
4. George Clooney – The Descendants as Matt King
5. Brad Pitt – Moneyball as Billy Beane

Best Actress
1. Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady as Margaret Thatcher
2. Rooney Mara – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Lisbeth Salander
3. Viola Davis – The Help as Aibileen Clarke
4. Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn as Marilyn Monroe
5. Glenn Close – Albert Nobbs as Albert Nobbs

Best Supporting Actor
1. Nick Nolte – Warrior as Paddy Conlon
2. Christopher Plummer – Beginners as Hal Fields
3. Jonah Hill – Moneyball as Peter Brand
4. Kenneth Branagh – My Week with Marilyn as Laurence Olivier
5. Max von Sydow – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as The Renter

Best Supporting Actress
1. Bérénice Bejo – The Artist as Peppy Miller
2. Jessica Chastain – The Help as Celia Foote
3. Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids as Megan
4. Octavia Spencer – The Help as Minny Jackson
5. Janet McTeer – Albert Nobbs as Hubert Page

Best Writing – Original
1. The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius
2. Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen
3. A Separation – Asghar Farhadi
4. Margin Call – J.C. Chandor
5. Bridesmaids – Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo

Best Writing – Adapted
1. Hugo – John Logan
2. The Ides of March – George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon
3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan
4. The Ides of March – George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon
5. The Descendants – Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash

Best Animated Feature
1. Rango
2. Chico and Rita
3. Kung Fu Panda 2
4. A Cat in Paris
5. Puss in Boots

Best Foreign Language Film
1. In Darkness – Agnieszka Holland, Poland
2. A Separation – Asghar Farhadi, Iran
3. Footnote – Joseph Cedar, Israel
4. Monsieur Lazhar – Philippe Falardeau, Canada
5. In Darkness – Agnieszka Holland, Poland

Best Documentary Feature
1. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
2. Pina
3. Undefeated
4. Hell and Back Again
5. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Best Documentary Short
1. The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement
2. The Tsunami
3. Incident in New Baghdad
4. Saving Face
5. God Is the Bigger Elvis

Best Live Action Short
1. Time Freak
2. Raju
3. The Shore
4. Pentecost
5. Tuba Atlantic

Best Animated Short
1. La Luna
2. Wild Life
3. A Morning Stroll
4. Dimanche
5. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Best Original Score
1. The Adventures of Tintin – John Williams
2. War Horse – John Williams
3. Hugo – Howard Shore
4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Alberto Iglesias
5. The Artist – Ludovic Bource

Best Original Song
1. “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets – Bret McKenzie
2. “Real in Rio” from Rio – Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown and Siedah Garrett

Best Sound Editing
1. The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo
2. Hugo
3. Drive
4. War Horse
5. Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Best Sound Mixing
1. Hugo
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
3. War Horse
4. Moneyball
5. Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Best Art Direction
1. Hugo
2. The Artist
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
4. Midnight in Paris
5. War Horse

Best Cinematography
1. The Artist
2. Hugo
3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
4. War Horse
5. The Tree of Life

Best Make Up
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
2. Albert Nobbs
3. The Iron Lady

Best Costume Design
1. Hugo – Sandy Powell
2. The Artist – Mark Bridges
3. Anonymous
4. Jane Eyre
5. W.E

Best Film Editing
1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
2. Hugo
3. The Artist
4. The Descendants
5. Moneyball

Best Visual Effects
1. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
2. Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 2
3. Hugo
4. Real Steal
5. Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Good luck to everyone who’s playing and hope to enjoy a new year of film.

Deadman Wonderland

A middle school student, Igarashi Ganta, gets falsely accused for the mass genocide of his classmates after a mysterious man in red slaughters them all and impales him with a stone that grants him the power to manipulate his blood, known as the Branches of Sin. He gets sent to Japan’s only privately owned prison, known as Deadman Wonderland, where the most dangerous criminals are kept and are used for entertainment at the prison’s theme park. Ganta has to get use to his new surroundings and try to survive in order to understand his powers, why he was given them, and to claim back his freedom. When I saw the first few episodes, my initial reactions were either confused or annoyed because most of the characters feel very two dimensional and stuff are barely explained until much later in the series. Protagonists like Ganta and Shiro have an annoying first impression and only get complex more than halfway through the 12 episode saga and to start with the only antagonist is the Assistant Warden of the prison Tamaki, who is a terrible, no surprises, uncreative villain I’ve seen in an anime so far, and while other antagonistic people appear later, he is still the main villain of this whole thing. The thing I love the most about this anime though, the opening. It pretty much summarises the dark, goring, gritty nature of this anime, and one clip (0:40) of it alone pretty much describes the prison to such a symbolic level that I could just show you this one image and tell you “This is Deadman Wonderland!”

Baka and Test

The story follows an active, outgoing but very dimwitted student Akihisa Yoshii, a student of the Fumizuki Academy, where students are ranked by their performance, and their benefits related to their ranks. Battles also happen at the academy using a virtual reality system where students can summon Avatars to do battle. Hating the school’s ranking system, especially since one of his classmates, Mizuki Himeji, was assigned to the lowest class with Yoshii because she failed to complete the entrance exam due to a fever, he plans to form an army to fight a war against the higher ranked classes to claim more privileges. This is probably one of the funniest animes I’ve seen ever, since every time I watch an episode I’m literally laughing my ass off at something in the show, and because the anime is very colourful, vibrant, and uses a range of artistic and animation styles for comedic or dramatic effect, it’s also very visually appealing. The range of characters is large enough to have a good development range but not too large to make it easy to lose track of different characters. Its easy to find a favourite character since they all have a different range of personalities and no matter how exaggerated they are, you can relate to some of them. Best way to describe this show? Think of Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star after they took an overdose of suger pills. That or FLCL but with video games. You’ll get crazy experience.

Eden of the East

This is the only one I’ve seen in full, but the society is still showing it from start to finish so I’ve got to stay silent while the episodes play. A young Japanese man suddenly gets a case of amnesia in the most awkward and confusing of circumstances. He finds himself standing in front of the Whitehouse in Washington DC, naked holding only a gun and a phone which gives him up to 10 billion yen and a woman who could do almost anything he wants, with the mission to save the world.

This one is strange for me because after seeing it all the way through, I’m not really sure what impression I’m supposed to have. On one side it’s a comedy with a slowly progressing love interest, since the first episode where the main character Akira Takizawa literally walks in naked towards some US policemen and it is just hilarious, then as the story progress it hints at some commentary on politics and conspiracies in a story that doesn’t really centre around the subject. The progression where Akira slowly discovers who he really is and what the game is and why he’s in it is cleverly implemented in each episode so we want to know more, and the romance between him and Saki Moromi is sweet, but the story is very shallow. There isn’t even a defined protagonist, even when the series is finished and follows on into the film King of Eden, I’m not sure what the eventual goal is for these characters. Maybe the next film, Paradise Lost, will make these more clear to make a good conclusion, but that will need to wait. Also, Noel Gallagher performing the main theme (awesome!) but it doesn’t appear in the DVD (boo!).

Steins;Gate

A self proclaimed mad scientist Houoin Kyouma (real name Otabe Rintobou) works in his run down apartment that’s above a TV repair shop which he calls a lab along with his childhood friend Mayuri and Super Hacker Daru, claiming that an Organisation is constantly after his ideas. Normally the things he works on a purely crazy ideas, which he doesn’t show much care about other than making him stay in character, however when he witnesses a murder and a mysterious device, he suddenly finds himself seeing time in a whole new light. Him and Daru tinker with a microwave and from it, build a time machine that can send text messages to the past. He is able to explore time travel further with new Lab members such as Makise Kurisu, a tomboyish scientist who doesn’t take Otabe’s attitude too well. However, it seems that his group aren’t the only one after the ability to control time, as experiments get more and more dangerous and get to reaching fatal levels.

If Baka and Test is the best show for entertainment at the meets, then Steins;Gate is the best show for it’s story. It does start off mainly with humour but as the show goes on it gets more and more complex and dramatic. I think it’s like an extended version of “The Girl that Leapt Through Time”, except much darker, popular Japanese/internet culture and a twist in every episode. No really, almost every episode has a twist, whether you notice it immediately or not, and while they can be seen as really repetitive, I think because of the way they lay them out, it keeps you on your toes as when they occur can be unpredictable sometimes. The only thing I’m worried about now is that I’m gonna be let down at the ending, because this thing gets more interesting the more I watch it.

Well I’m enjoying the anime meets, it’d be cool to do some events with the guys there outsite the meets. I know they go to a games store for Magic the Gathering but I don’t play those games. Sorry for the lack of updates (for anyone who cares), I’ll try and get back into the routine sometime soon.

OK I really need to get back into updating this thing regularly, so here’s a new review. I’ve been curious about this film since the sequel randomly appeared in the 2010 animated film release list. All I could remember about the original was one joke from the trailer, and I try to explore many different kinds of animated films.

Well some time ago I got a chance to watch this film, so what did I think about it? Click the poster for the review.

Along with talking about student freshers, we will be talking about films showing next week and I’ll talk about one of the films I’ve previously reviewed.

I will also have my first written review for the site published sometime this week or next week.

Staffs OMG Website

Click here to go to the radio site

Hey guys! Sorry it’s been long overdue for a review, or an update, or something, I’ve been in University so I’ve been trying to get fully comfortable on campus, and now I am!

So here is a review of a little cult Disney film called The Brave Little Toaster, I know my European readers might have little knowledge of it, I couldn’t find a PAL copy to use to watch this. Check out my review by clicking on the film poster.

Also, I may have a film review segment on the local University radio, so if I’m lucky I might post a clip here of me talking!

EDIT: The link should be fixed now. For some reason WordPress is having issues.

Also, I have a review ready of Disney’s The Fox and the Hound but I’m having problems finding a high quality theatrical trailer of the film, if anyone can find or upload the video to a site with an embeddable player like Youtube that would be really helpful.