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I’ve had February 2nd marked on my calendar for a while now, and for a multitude of reasons.  It is, of course, Groundhog Day, one of my very favorite holidays.  Punxatawney Phil did indeed confirm that we’d have another six weeks of winter, but I really didn’t need him to tell me that.  Tonight is the debut of the final season of LOST, which I’ve been counting down to since last May.  But the thing I’m most excited about… the Oscar nominations were announced this morning.

I was more excited this year than I usually am because this year the Academy decided to up the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten.  Part of me assumes this is because there was nerd rage when The Dark Knight got snubbed last year.  It seems to me that us geeks will be pleased, and I’ll tell you why.  The noms for Best Picture are:

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
A Serious Man
Precious
Up
Up In the Air

I only saw four of those (Avatar, D9, The Hurt Locker, and Basterds), and really only wanted to see one other (the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man).  I didn’t hear about An Education at all.

Evicting some fookin' prawns

You already know my feelings on Avatar, so let’s get to the other pictures I saw this year, starting with the geek-vindicating District 9.  In many ways, this flick is like the anti-Avatar.  Whereas James Cameron had access to zillions of dollars, South African/Canadian director Neill Blomkamp scored $30 million from Peter Jackson and was left alone by studios to make a feature-length version of his spectacular short, Alive In Joburg. What you get is a film about alien-human relations that tackles some of the same issues, but does so in a half-documentary, half-action thriller.  It’s smart, it’s funny, it looks great, and although far-fetched, it’s much more terrestrial than Avatar.  The film is quite deserving of its R-rating, with plenty of profanity and incredibly over-the-top violence.  The final act is on par with Robocop as far as ludicrous amounts of bloodshed goes, and dare I say, just as much fun.  I’d buy that for a dollar!

I was most excited to see this as one of the Best Picture nominees because, as good as I thought it was, I didn’t expect to see it get picked out as one of the year’s best.  Part of that might have to do with the fact that it also made over $200 million worldwide with its modest budget, but maybe I’m just being cynical.

Hans Landa - Tarantino's most sinister character yet

Meanwhile, where Avatar was the ultimate pet project of Cameron’s career, Quentin Tarantino finally released his own long-in-production opus.  Inglorious Basterds is another film geek’s dream come true; QT’s vision of World War II as a Spaghetti Western, with all of the trappings you should expect from the original Video Store Director.  I’ve seen (and for the most point loved) his films up until this point, and I can safely say that this is his best.  Not as in “best yet,” either.  If you’re here for a serious account of WWII, then you’re sadly mistaken.  QT essentially uses the war as a backdrop, as a way to tell a new kind of story.  It’s rather difficult to really describe Basterds without recounting his whole career, so if you’re not a fan, it’s not for you.

If you are a fan, though, then you’re in for plenty of great Tarantino Brand dialogue, as well as some great characters, such as Brad Pitt’s Aldo “The Apache” Raine, Eli Roth’s Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz, and Melanie Laurent’s vengeful Shoshanna Dreyfus.  But without a doubt, the film’s best performance comes from Best Supporting Actor nominee Christoph Waltz, playing SS Colonel Hans Landa, known as “The Jew Hunter.”  Waltz plays the villain with true relish, making him at once engaging and repulsive.  Landa’s sinister nature goes beyond Nazism and into the realm of inhumanity.  Whereas some men wore the Nazi armband because they felt they had no choice, Landa is the kind of man who wore it because it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Seeing the competition, Waltz should have no problem winning.

Tearing a car apart has never been so exciting

When it comes down to it, though, I would vote for The Hurt Locker for Best Picture if I had the chance.  Not to mention Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow and Best Actor for Jeremy Renner (above).  Set in Iraq in 2004, we follow an Explosive Ordinance Division unit through the final month of their tour.  Their new team leader, Sgt. William James (Renner) is kind of like Mel Gibson in Leathal Weapon: brilliant, yet slightly unhinged.  Throwing protocol out the window, James would rather defuse a roadside bomb by hand than send in a remote-controlled robot that could spare his life and those of his squadmates.  Not to mention bystanders who like to hang out and watch the events unfold in the scorching Iraqi sun… and might be holding onto the detonator, too.  The film’s tagline says it all: “You don’t have to be a hero to do this job.  But it helps.”

What makes The Hurt Locker great is the suspense.  Think of your favorite bomb-defusing scene of all time.  Remember how exciting it was?  The suspense, the sense of doubt that the hero can render the device neutral in time, sweat rolling down his determined brow…  Now multiply that feeling about a hundred times and repeat it four or five times.  Now imagine a hero who’s genuinely likable, even though he’s a conventional anti-hero.  Just when you think that he’s a total jerk to his squadmates, he turns around and proves himself a true leader when the chips are down.  But The Hurt Locker doesn’t just deal with the heroics.  When Sgt. James returns home, he has trouble adjusting to civilian life.  Will he stay home after risking his life countless times in a hellish environment… or will he go back to the one thing he knows he’s good at?

If Bigelow wins for Best Director, it would be sweet: she was married to James Cameron from ‘89 to ‘91.  I’m unsure of who the winner will be, to be honest.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Avatar win, simply because of the fact that it’s topped Titanic as the all-time highest grossing film (although ticket prices were higher for 3D showings, etc).  Then again, Titanic wasn’t up against nine other films.  We’ll have to see come March 7th.

I know that it was only a few days ago that I listed James Cameron as a finalist for the Golden Troll Award, but the jury was still out.  Well, I’ve seen Avatar now, and I have to admit that it’s something special.  I’m not saying that it’s the best movie of the year, and I’m not saying that it does anything that we haven’t seen before in science fiction.  What I am going to say is that Avatar is a film that will probably have a very big impact on special effects, just as Cameron’s films usually are.

This poster is way cooler than the other one.

The Terminator was a landmark in makeup effects and also in minatures, just like Aliens.  The Abyss was one of the very first movies to feature CGI, and that technique was taken much further in Terminator 2 (effects that still look great to this day).  Titanic made big-budget effects movies legitimate when it won 237 Oscars (except Kate Winslet).  The impact that Avatar will have won’t be felt for a while, but in a few years we’re sure to see new strides taken in effects, and I’m very excited to see what’s up next on the big screen.

The story isn’t anything new.  If you’ve read and seen plenty of sci-fi, then you’ve gone down this road before.  In fact, my favorite Ain’t It Cool writer, Massawyrm, drew the comparison to Dune, and it is pretty much note for note the way the story goes.  You’ve got a far off planet being mined for a super-rare resource, a hero who comes from off-planet and becomes the savior of the indigenous people, and a climactic battle in which the natives ride on huge animals to fight the aggressors.  Good stuff in my book.

The point of it is the execution.  For one, I saw it in 3D, and I was both impressed and annoyed.  As neat as it was to see things as if they were right in front of me (the movie was shot on special stereoscopic cameras), wearing those glasses over my own glasses felt awkward at times, and I think it messed with how I saw some of the effects.  Call me old fashioned, but I like when my movies stay on the wall.  But everything just looked so cool that after a while you get used to it and I’m sure that when I get it on DVD, I’ll feel underwhelmed by how “flat” everything looks.

As for all of the performance-capture that we heard about, it was probably the one thing that thoroughly exceeded my expectations.  The performances of Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver as their Na’vi avatars were great, but dare I say, Zoe “New Uhura” Saldana was outstanding as Neytiri.  She was funny, exciting, and heartbreaking to watch throughout the picture.  Kudos go both to her and the effects masters at Weta Digital for bringing that performance to life.  My hunger for cool-looking sci-fi design was also sated.  Great vehicles, weapons, and computers were all on display, and as usual in a Cameron movie, everything looks like it would work if you got your hands on it.

I could go on, but in all honesty, I’d just be going on about the same things you’ve read in other reviews by more competent people who saw it before me.  Just go check it out, in 3D if you can.  It’s three hours long, but Jim did his very best to make sure that not a second drags on.  I shouldn’t have doubted him after all.