Critically Speaking Picks the 83rd Academy Awards – Part Two

Now for the awards you've heard of...

I issued 12 fake awards in the first half of this post, but now it’s time for the lead acting, director, and best picture awards… along with a little bit of filler. On with the show!

Critically Speaking Picks the 83rd Academy Awards – Part One

When will I be named a member of the Academy already?

In years past, one of my favourite posts to make was the Andy Awards, where I chose not only who I thought should win awards in the various movie categories, but also who should have been nominated in the first place. After all, why pick from a flawed list put together by Academy members influenced by various politics and what not? Plus, if you’re interested in reading my opinions, then you’d probably want me choosing from my own opinions, not from someone else’s.

But, now I have a son and a lot less time to watch movies. Gone are the days where I could compile unique choices of nominees from the dozens of qualifying films I’ve watched. Last year, I did a quick selection of winners tacked on to a year end list. This year, I’m giving in and picking from the Academy’s list of nominees; largely because I haven’t seen many movies from 2010 other than the ones that were nominated. Of the films to score major nominations, the one I haven’t seen yet but wish I had is 127 Hours. I’d be interested in seeing Rabbit Hole if I thought I was capable of handling it, but as a father of a young son, I don’t think I could. I almost watched Animal Kingdom the other night but didn’t, while I’m comfortable skipping Biutiful (Iñárritu films leave me cold).

To clarify: this is a post of who I think should win each award, not who I think will win. Oscar predictions are all over the net, and basically are no fun unless you’re in a pool. It’s become an annoying side business that distracts from the real discussion of what is worthy when all anyone wants to talk about is the various campaigns and tea leaf readings trying to predict the hive mind of members of the Academy. Also, I’m only going to be picking categories where I seen enough of the nominees to have at least a partial basis for an opinion (which probably puts me ahead of many members of the Academy).

Top 10 Albums of 2010

This is a list by Critically Speaking.

For the past three years, I’ve done a Top 20 Albums list. I could’ve easily done the same with this year, as there were double that many albums I was into this year. But as I was compiling the contenders for the list, I realized that there were only 15 I felt strongly about. If I took more time, I’m sure I’d feel that way about at least five more (especially ones released later in the year). But taking more time is something I really need to do less of on this blog (as followers of my top films of the decade list will attest. Only 12 more to go!). So a top ten with five honourable mentions made the most sense, but don’t take that as an indictment of the quality of music in 2010, which was generally high.