Christopher Nolan wins WGA award for “Inception”

On Saturday night, Oscar nominee Christopher Nolan came one step closer to winning an Academy Award when he took home the WGA’s prestigious Best Original Screenplay award for “Inception”. Whoo-hoo! Finally someone that I actually voted for wins the top prize. So cool!

Of course, Nolan will have a tougher fight at the Oscars, where he’ll square off in the Best Original Screenplay category with Academy-favorite Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” and David Seidler’s amazing script for “The King’s Speech”, which wasn’t eligible for WGA consideration. So, here’s hoping the sci-fi geeks in the Academy follow the WGA’s lead and give Nolan his due.

In fact, maybe I should hire someone cool like this to plant the idea in their heads right now. Hmmm…

Oscar Nominees 2011

I’m sure everyone will be talking about “The King’s Speech” and it’s very-well-deserved 12 Academy Award nominations today, but, the biggest surprise for me this morning was all the Oscar love for  “Winter’s Bone”! The fact that a gritty, totally-authentic independent film like that could score a whopping four Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) wow, that is just plain rad!

I mean, we expected a nod in the Best Actress category for the the film’s lead, the luminous Jennifer Lawrence, but the fact that her co-star, the always-amazing, John Hawkes snuck in there with a Best Supporting Actor nomination is like, over-the-top awesome! Yee-haw!

And speaking of Best Supporting Actor, holy crap…how do you chose between those five guys? There is literally no fat in that category this year, man. I’m pretty sure Christian Bale will take the golden guy home for his exceptional work in ‘The Fighter”, but, is it wrong to hope for a five way tie?

Also, very excited to see “Inception” score so many nods today as well. And even though Christopher Nolan got bumped from the Best Director category this morning, he was bumped by the Coen Brothers for their badasss remake of “True Grit”, so, that makes it a little easier to take. Plus, Nolan scored a producer and writer nod for “Inception”, so, wherever he is, I’m sure he’s smiling…

Was kind of surprised to see “Black Swan’s” Mila Kunis get bumped from the Supporting Actress category, but, that little upstart Hailee Steinfeld gave one of my favorite performances of the year in “True Grit”, so, sorry, Mila.

Also, was totally stoked to see “Toy Story 3” clean-up in so many categories and become only the third animated movie to score a Best Picture nomination. I have watched this movie with Greta literally dozens of times since it came out, and, trust me, it holds up beautifully. So, rock on, Woody and Buzz!

I was also thrilled to see Oscar co-host James Franco score his first Academy Award nomination for “127 Hours”. I don’t think he’s gonna win with Colin Firth in the mix, but, how cool would it be if he did? I mean, what does he do with his award, just stuff it in his pocket and keep on hosting? Crazy!

And finally, how cool is it that Mr. NIN himself, Trent Reznor, can now and forevermore call himself “Oscar nominee Trent Reznor”? So cool…

To see a full printable list of this year’s nominees, click here. Oh, and if you’re coming to our Oscar party, you best start hunting squirrels now, because our “Winter’s Bone” hillbilly stew recipe calls for lot’s of vermin!

WGA Screenplay Nominees (2011)

Most years, I have a hell of a time narrowing the nominated films on my awards ballot down to ten, but, this year…well…let’s just say it was a struggle to find ten worthy films to nominate.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some really great movies released in 2010, but, the good ones (“The Social Network”, “Inception”, “The Fighter”, “Black Swan”) were so good that the rest of the nominees felt like total filler.

And when you couple that with the fact that several of the biggest Oscar-bait flicks this year (“The King’s Speech”, “Winter’s Bone”, “Toy Story 3”) were considered ineligible for WGA nominations, well, the list of nominatable films was pretty damn slim this year.

That said, this was the first year since I can remember that almost every single movie I voted for got nominated (rock on, “I Love You, Phillip Morris”!!) so, that’s kinda fun for a change.

In any case, congrats to all the nominated writers and here is this year’s freshly-minted list of WGA nominated films. Enjoy!

Original Screenplay

Black Swan (Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John McLaughlin)

The Fighter (Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Keith Dorrington)

Inception (Christopher Nolan)

The Kids Are All Right (Stuart Blumberg & Lisa Cholodenko)

Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)

Adapted Screenplay

127 Hours (Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy)

I Love You Phillip Morris (John Requa & Glenn Ficarra)

The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)

The Town (Ben Affleck, Peter Craig, Aaron Stockard)

True Grit (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)

Documentary Screenplay

Enemies of the People (Rob Lemkin & Thet Sambath)

Freedom Riders (Stanley Nelson)

Gasland (Josh Fox)

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, Chad Beck, Adam Bolt)

The Two Escobars (Michael Zimbalist, Jeff Zimbalist)

Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)? (John Scheinfeld)

2011 Golden Globe Nominations

Whoa, talk about an eclectic bunch of nominees. I mean, three nods for “The Tourist” would be shocking enough, but the fact that they came in the Comedy/Musical category? Crazy!

And Johnny Depp is cool and all, but, two nods for totally lame movies in the same category? Yikes, if the Hollywood Foreign Press wanted him to show up that badly they shoulda just cut out the middle man and  given him an honorary award already. Jeez! But other than that bit of typical Golden Globe-cheesiness, it was sort of business-as-usual this year at the HFPA.

After dominating the LA and NY Film Critics awards this season, David Fincher’s rocking “The Social Network” is looking like the one to beat with a very well-deserved six nominations. I know it came out a while ago, but “Social” is still one of the best things we’ve seen, and I’m happy to say that after taking a detour into straight-up Robert Zemekis hokumville with his last effort, the vastly-overrated “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, David Fincher is back with a vengeance, baby!

Also was thrilled to see “Inception” score several major nominations yesterday. Like I said before, this movie seriously rocked our world, so, here’s hoping it does the same with the Globe voters!

We haven’t seen “The King’s Speech” yet, but, it looks amazing and we love everyone involved with it, so, kudos to them as well. If there’s any justice in this world, two of our favorite actors of all time, Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter will finally win awards this year for their work. Go, Brits!

I was also glad to see David O. Russell finally score a nomination (for directing “The Fighter”) of any kind after years of creating crazy-cool, fantastically-quirky movies. I know a lot of people hate it, but, I still “Heart Huckabees” to death. So, even if you are a big old a-hole in real life, congrats on joining the ranks of the nominated, Mr. Russell!

The TV side of things was pretty cool too, with many of last year’s nominees returning for a second chance at the gold. My favorite nomination though has got to be “The Walking Dead” for best TV Drama. That show is insanely-good, so, really glad to see it represented here.

Oh, and finally, how cool is it that NIN’s Trent Reznor scored a Best Original Score nomination for his dreamy “Social Network” soundtrack? Reznor’s thumping, trance-like music made the movie, man. So cool!

To see the full list of this year’s Golden Globe nominees, click here. And don’t forget to watch the big show on Sunday, January 16th, 2011. Ricky Gervais is back as host, so, you know it’s gonna be fun!

“Inception”

OK…I know we’ve only seen like three of this year’s big award-season contenders (“Toy Story 3”, “Hereafter” and “The Social Network”, which were all awesome, by the way) and therefore, we probably shouldn’t be making any broad, sweeping predictions yet, but, mark my words, amigos, Christopher Nolan will win an Oscar for “Inception”.

Whether it’s for writing, directing or producing is still to be determined, but, the mad genius behind “Memento”, “The Prestige” and the Christian Bale “Batman” movies has really outdone himself with “Inception”, and for that reason alone, I see many gold statues in Nolan’s future. And boy does he deserve them!

Taut, suspenseful, positively gorgeous to look at, and populated by the coolest indie cast this side of Sundance, “Inception” is the best movie we’ve seen this year. Yep, I said it, the best. Of course, most of you probably already know this since you saw the movie when it came out, you know, last summer.

But, babysitters being increasingly hard to come by, Christine and I didn’t get to see “Inception” on the big screen until last week at Warner Brothers and lemme tell ya, it blew us away. To say that our heads were swimming (in the best way!) for days afterwards is a serious understatement.

This was no mere movie, amigos, it was total immersion in a completely original and boldly realized new world. And we loved every crazy second of it!

I know I geek out over things a lot, and tend to overhype stuff that I really love, but, I kid you not, I haven’t felt this way about a sci-fi movie since we saw the first “Matrix” or “Terminator” flick way back when.

The dazzling technical elements aside, “Inception” is that rare breed of totally game-changing screen stories that will inspire whole generations of nerdy kids to wanna make movies. For me, it was “Star Wars”, for Generation Whatever, it’ll be Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”. Again, mark my words.

Anyway, I don’t wanna give anything away by going too much into the plot or anything, but, trust me, you don’t have to love sci-fi or even Leo DiCaprio to love this mind-bending little jewel of a movie. Simply put, if you like movies, “Inception” will knock you flat on your movie-loving ass. You have never seen anything like it. EVER.

So, you best get busy on that acceptance speech, Mr. Nolan. The clock is ticking…