26 February 2007

Oscars 2007

The Oscars for this year have been awarded. Congratulations to the winners. Here is a list of them (and the other nominees).

A few comments:
  • Best Foreign Language Film: Having seen each of them in the last 10 days I thought that Pan's Labyrinthwas a better film than The Lives of Others. IMO both were worthy nominees but the Spanish film had an emotional and imaginative richness which the German one lacked. The depiction of the captain in Pan's Labyrinth is a masterly portrayal of evil while the fantasy world into which Ofelia escaped was brilliantly realised. The German film explored the moral dilemmas faced by the main characters but I thought that the Stasi agent and central character Wiesler was just a little too good to be true (and his superior just a little too stupid to let him get away with what he did for so long).
  • After viewing The Queen and The Last King of Scotland I thought that it would be hard to beat Helen Mirren and Forrest Whittaker for the best actress and actor awards, and so it proved.
  • Martin Scorsese's Best Director Oscar was a fitting tribute to a craftsman with a substantial body of good work under his belt. Like may of his other films, The Departed features some excellent acting (eg Leonardo Di Caprio) though the whole is overlong and lacks the zippiness of its source Infernal Affairs.




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