It feels almost like we’re seeing the whole movie but edited for the duration of an elevator ride. You’ve been warned.

The Daily Helping would like to weigh in on it’s picks…not only who should win, but who deserves to win.

Best Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz, Nine
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Mo’nique, Precious

Mo’nique should win and will win. The role has elevated the comic and television star to the next level and it’s likely we will see her in more films down the road.

Best Supporting Actor
Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

This is another slam dunk. Christoph Walz has been collecting acclaim and acting awards for the past four months. He wins his oscar within the first 15 minutes of Tarantino’s incredible film.

Best Actress
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side (oy!)
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

This is the year that Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar with the great Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren among the nominees.  The Blind Side was a very popular movie and Streep and Mirren provided forgettable performances.  This is one of those times where the award rewards someone for what the film industry holds dear…box office. Bullock put a lot of butts in the seats and so expect to see her win.

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Jeff Bridges has won a few awards lately for his performance as a down and out singer/songwriter.  Having secured nearly every critical award as well as the SAG and Golden Globe; Bridges has momentum over the likes of Clooney and Renner.

Best Director
James Cameron, Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels, Precious
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

A lot of people believe this is a two horse race. Cameron has helmed an innovative blockbuster that took nearly a decade to make, if you believe the story that he needed to invent the technology in order to make his movie.  Challenging him for the top Director’s award is his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow who brought us the most effective and entertaining movie about the Middle Eastern conflict to date.  The Daily Helping anticipates Cameron will win this award in lieu of the Best Picture.

It’s also worth mentioning that the director who should win…is Quentin Tarantino, who provided a truly original and powerful film.  The Hurt Locker was suspenseful, but Inglorious Basterds was all that and more.

Original Screenplay
Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman, The Messenger
Joel & Ethan Coen, A Serious Man
Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, & Thomas McCarthy, Up

Tarantino should win this. It would be nice if the Coen’s were recognized for their incredible film, but Basterds is perhaps Tarantino’s best script since Pulp Fiction.

Adapted Screenplay
Neil Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell, District 9
Nick Hornby, An Education
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci, & Tony Roche, In the Loop
Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious
Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air

This may be the only award that Up in the Air wins on Oscar night.   For much of the year, this was considered a strong contender for Best Picture.

Foreign Language Film
Ajami (Israel)
El secreto de sus ojos (Argentina)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
Un Prophete (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)

The Daily Helping admits to seeing none of the nominees.  We won’t even guess.

Animated Film
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up

Up will win. It’s been a runaway critical success since the film opened many months ago.  After premiering at Cannes, all other animated efforts seemed to be respectable efforts.  Coraline is a distant second and Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox failed to find a much deserved audience.  The Secret of Kells has had limited release here in America and may surprise everyone.

Best Picture
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Like Jeff Bridges, The Hurt Locker has momentum. It was released last summer and so it stood the likelihood of being forgotten, but has enjoyed terrific word of mouth and after having just won Ms Bigelow the Director’s Guild award…it’s hard to imagine Avatar or Basterds taking the top prize.

The Daily Helping would like to be on the record as one of the few who could easily accept Tarantino’s revisionist war movie as the best of the year.  As powerful as The Hurt Locker may be….Inglorious Basterds will be a movie that will likely be considered over time to be the superior picture.  Kind of like the year (1980) when Ordinary People won best picture over Raging Bull.

Daily Helping had previously recommended the book back in January of ‘09.

It’s a brilliant novel by Alan Glynn (which up until recently, was his only published novel). A down-and-out writer (Cooper) procures a top-secret pharmaceutical drug from his old dealer who claims to have gone straight. The pill makes you smarter.  Really smart. Smart like you can learn Portuguese in the time it takes to read a phrase book, which in this case is about thirty-minutes.  He uses his new-found ability to obtain obscene financial and social success but eventually discovers that the drug has lethal and lasting side effects.  Then there are those who want the drug for themselves…

A year ago, news of the film adaptation started and then stopped with news that Shia Labeouf was lined up to play Cooper’s part.  The casting choice was nothing short of sabotage not to mention a shift in the lead character’s age by about twenty years.  Labeouf was filming “Transformers” at the time and found himself in a car accident which caused some fairly serious damage to his hand.  Shia was out of Dark Fields and a collective sigh of relief could be heard by the book’s devoted fans.

The Dark Fields is one of those novels that you can’t put down, once you give it a look. It’s also a novel that you envision as a film, while you’re reading it.

The Daily Helping says you need to find the book at your local bookstore or online vendor. It’s a fantastic reading experience and best read before the movie trailer dilutes your pleasure.

UPDATE: Robert DeNiro is scheduled to join the filming of Dark Fields in May.

A pitch for a horror movie may be something like…”Part Omen, part Jaws, part Bull Durham.”  The producer and studio will then sit back and digest the combination and see if it sounds marketable.

“It’s part Rambo, part The Sting!” A combination that sounds like money.

The Daily Helping loves a good pitch as much as the next blog, but there are certain pitches that sound too good to be true.  We think we found one that sounds pretty darn good.

“Middle Men” is an independent film that just found a home at Paramount following  lots of buzz at the recent Santa Barbara Film Festival.  What’s the pitch on “Middle Men”?  According to Variety’s Todd McCarthy, it’s “Boogie Nights” meets “Goodfellas”.

That sounds pretty good.

It has a fantastic cast.  Luke Wilson (“Royal Tenenbaums”, “Old School”), James Caan, Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht. In what is called the “true story” of  Jack Harris, a husband and father who helps re-organize struggling but potentially lucrative businesses. He goes to work on a company that launches one of the very first view for pay porn sites.  His clients (Ribisi and Macht) are geniuses who are suddenly flush with money, and up to their eyes in  women and drugs.  Harris (Wilson) must try to keep the business on the rails (not those kind of rails) and in doing so, becomes entangled with the Russian mob, a porn star, and the FBI.

Now that the movie has a distributor, a trailer has finally emerged. Take a look and see if this excites you as much as it does us.  It’s an extended trailer and we’re pleased to say, Not Safe For Work. (Look for great cameos by Kelsey Grammer (Frazier) and the great Kevin Pollack (Usual Suspects, A Few Good Men). Don’t ask when it’s going to be released because you won’t like the answer: Fall of next year.

He admitted he still wants “Avatar” to win Best Picture  for his “team”. This is a popular posture by many directors (and condescending ex-husbands).  If he wins, what a nice surprise. If he loses,  no big deal.

The Oscars may actually play out as he described, providing Cameron (and his team) a Best Picture award to recognize the incredible effort shown on the screen. (As Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the film a month ago, “Finally there’s someone in Hollywood who knows how to spend 250 to 300 million.”)

In the face of such a juggernaut, the critical favorite, Hurt Locker will bring Bigelow a Best Director award, the first female director to win such an honor.

Director Kevin Smith prior to being de-planed.

Director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Zack and Miri Make a Porno) has made some news recently, and it has nothing to do with the upcoming realease of his cop/buddy picture, “Cop Out“.

Over the weekend, Smith started Live-Twittering his removal from an Oakland to Burbank Southwest Airlines flight for being too fat.  He was told to leave the plane because he didn’t fit properly in the seat and thus considered a “safety risk”. Southwest’s “Customer of Size” policy requires larger passengers to purchase two seats if they cannot be comfortably accommodated in a single seat. It’s a policy that has been in place for the past 25 years.  Both Smith and the airline have acknowledged that he had bought two seats for his original flight from Oakland, where he had spoken at the recent Macworld Expo conference, but was flying standby in order to catch an earlier flight. There was only one seat available and the flight crew felt that one was not enough.

This embarrassing little escapade became a PR nightmare for Southwest because more people read Kevin Smith’s tweet account than see his movies. His Twitter account boasts over a million and a half followers and Smith was quick to report to his readers about his humiliation as soon as it was happening.

Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?

Shortly afterward, Smith kept his barrage flying.

Dear @SouthwestAir, I flew out in one seat, but right after issuing me a standby ticket, Oakland Southwest attendant Suzanne (wouldn’t give..last name) told me Captain Leysath deemed me a “safety risk”. Again: I’m way fat… But I’m not THERE just yet. But if I am, why wait til my..bag is up, and I’m seated WITH ARM RESTS DOWN. In front of a packed plane with a bunch of folks who’d already I.d.ed me as “Silent Bob.”

And this….

So, @SouthwestAir, go fuck yourself. I broke no regulation, offered no “safety risk” (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?). I was..wrongly ejected from the flight (even Suzanne eventually agreed). And fuck your apologetic $100 voucher, @SouthwestAir. Thank God I don’t..embarrass easily (bless you, JERSEY GIRL training). But I don’t sulk off either: so everyday, some new fuck-you Tweets for @SouthwestAir.

The Tweets from Smith kept up well into his inevitable flight home. His anger was fuel for a growing fire, as other people of girth voiced their own frustration at such treatment.

(1/2) @pigz “I know several people bigger then u who have flown on other airlines” I saw someone bigger than me on THAT flight! But I wasn’t (2/2) about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane as I’m being profiled. But he & I made eye contact, & he was like “Please don’t tell…”

On arrival in Burbank, Smith fires off a few more rounds.

Hey @SouthwestAir! I’ve landed in Burbank. Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised.

(1/2) Hey @SouthwestAir? Fuck making it right for me just ’cause I have a platform. I sat next to a big girl who was chastised for not buy-(2/2) ing an extra ticket because “all passengers deserve their space.” Fucking flight wasn’t even full! Fuck your size-ist policy. Rude…

A Southwest employee who had a Twitter account associated with Southwest was flooded with hate tweets.  The airline would find it necessary to responded with a full blog post of their own they entitled cleverly ” Not So Silent Bob” (a character played by Smith in his string of slacker movies.  It was in this blog that Southwest apologizes for the inconvenience, but also discloses what seems like confidential information about their passenger’s original two-seat purchase was disclosed.

It’s doubtful this is over.

The rants are in their original German, but the subtitles are in English and absolutely brilliant.  Here’s one that’s a favorite of DailyHelping.  Hitler responds to Apple’s recently released, iPad.

Quentin’s interviews about his own work and the film industry tend to be  exhilarating experiences.  His words rush forward almost as if in a race with his thoughts.  He’s very forthcoming, which is refreshing, regardless of the fact that he seems incapable of reflection or taking a breath.

The following are two excerpts from a Directors on Directing panel held in Santa Barbara this past weekend.  The first clip has Quentin sharing a conversation he once had with Brian DePalma about Martin Scorsese.

The second clip has Tarantino responding to a question from the audience. He’s asked about the impact Avatar might have on his future work.

Best Supporting Actor
Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Actress
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Best Director
James Cameron, Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels, Precious
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

Original Screenplay
Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman, The Messenger
Joel & Ethan Coen, A Serious Man
Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, & Thomas McCarthy, Up

Adapted Screenplay
Neil Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell, District 9
Nick Hornby, An Education
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci, & Tony Roche, In the Loop
Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious
Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air

Foreign Language Film
Ajami (Israel)
El secreto de sus ojos (Argentina)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
Un Prophete (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)

Animated Film
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up

Best Picture
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air