Category The Oscars

 

           ‘The King’s Speech’ won in the Best Picture category at the 83rd Academy Awards. It is an extraordinary period film, directed by Tom Hooper and starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham-Carter.

            The film depicts the early years of Prince Albert (Duke of York), the man who would be King George VI of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The movie follows his struggle with a severe speech impediment that kept him from carrying out public speaking engagements. His wife Elizabeth, Duchess of York (Bonham-Carter), enlists the services of a failed Australian actor turned speech therapist Lionel Logue (Rush) to help her husband. Logue’s unconventional methods do indeed begin to make some progress.

            At the Academy Awards, ‘The King’s Speech’ won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director (Hooper), Best Actor (Firth), and Best Original Screenplay (Seidler). The film had received 12 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in that year.

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            ‘The Hurt Locker’ is an American war movie, released in 2008. The movie is set in the second year of the Iraq War.

            Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the movie chronicles the lives of three US soldiers in Iraq: Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty).

            The trio makes up an Iraq war explosive ordnance disposal team, basically a bomb squad. The movie does not address the ever-controversial politics of the war, instead focusing on the day-to-day lives of the characters.

            For the film, Bigelow sought to immerse audiences into something clearly realistic and raw. It was nominated in nine categories at the 82nd Academy Awards, and won in six: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original, Screenplay, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing.

            Kathryn Bigelow also became the first female director to win Best Director.

            ‘The Hurt Locker’ received universal acclaim, with Jeremy Renner’s performance receiving praise from critics.

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            ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is a British dramatic film, released in 2008. The movie was directed by Danny Boyle. Set and filmed in India, the movie was loosely based on the novel ‘Q & A’ by Vikas Swarup. It’s a Western movie made in Mumbai. It does, however, have several references to Indian culture and Bollywood movies.

            The movie tells the story of Jamal Malik who is on the verge of winning 20 million rupees on the Indian version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’. There’s just one problem: he is living in a slum and working at a minimum wage job, and nobody can see how he knew any of the answers. As they go through each question, he shows how events in his childhood and life contributed to his knowing almost every single one.

            The movie won eight out of ten Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including the Best Picture and Best Director. Composer A.R. Rahman collected two Oscars for original score and original song. Gulzar shared the award with A. R Rahman for original song. Resul Pookutty also won the Oscars for Best Sound Mixing, along with Richard Pryke, and Ian Tapp

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            ‘No Country for Old Men’ is unique among the Academy Award winning movies. The movie was based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy. It was written and directed by the Coen Brothers.

             When a Vietnam veteran discovers two million dollars while wandering through the aftermath of a Texas drug gone horribly awry, his decision to abscond with the cash sets off a violent chain reaction in a stripped-down crime drama from Joel and Ethan Coen.

             The film was honoured with numerous awards: it received three British Academy of Film awards, two Golden Globes, and Academy Awards for Best Picture (Ethan and Joel Coen), Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (the Coen brothers), and Best Supporting Actor (Bardem). Many regard it as a masterpiece, as well as one of the classics.

            The American Film Institute listed it as an AFI Movie of the year, and the National Board of Review selected the film as the best of 2007.

 

            ‘The Departed,’ is a 2006 American crime-thriller film and remake of the 2002 Hong Kong crime-thriller ‘Infernal Affairs’. ‘The Departed’ was directed by Martin Scorsese, written by William Monahan, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nichoson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, and Alec Baldwin.

             This tense action thriller is set in Boston, Massachusetts, where notorious Irish kingpin Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) takes neighbourhood boy Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) under his wing. He grooms him to be his informant within the Massachusetts State Police. Colin rises through the rank and file to get himself placed on an investigation unit that is working to bring down Costello. At the same time, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is seeking to become a cop, despite the fact that he comes from a family that has a very disreputable past, and numerous ties to organized crime. Considering his background, he is recruited to go undercover to infiltrate Costello’s crew.

             The film was nominated for five Academy Awards of which it won four; Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

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            ‘Crash’ is a 2004 movie. This ensemble piece, directed by Paul Haggis, addresses racism affecting the lives of several Los Angelenos as they interact over several days time. The incident that begins it all is the carjacking of a couple, the Cabots, by two Afro-American carjackers, Anthony and Peter.

            ‘Crash’ was inspired by a real life incident, which was faced by the director himself. The story is narrated as two days in the life of its characters, and the stories are interwoven. The film deals with racism in a rather impartial way.

             The film features Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito and William Fichtner. ‘Crash’ was nominated for six awards at the 78th Academy Awards and won three, including the win for Best picture.

            ‘Crash’ was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Supporting Actor (Matt Dillon) and the other for Best Screenplay (Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco).

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