We kick the year of in the middle of the awards season. The big ones are of course the BAFTAs, the Oscars and the Golden Globes (although this year’s comedy nominations suggest that they’ve lost their minds there). Main contenders (apart from last year’s Inception, Toy Story 3 and A Winter’s Bone): 1) Darren Aronofsky’s ballet film Black Swan. 2) Horror based on a true story in Danny Boyle’s 127 hours. 3) British Royalty, handicaps and Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. 4) Coen Brothers Western remake True Grit. 5) Family drama with awards darling Nicole Kidman Rabbit Hole and 6) The Fighter, a boxing drama starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale.
There will be a trainload of mostly uninteresting comic book movies coming out. Captain America: First Avenger, The Green Lantern, The Green Hornet, Thor, X-Men: First Class are all completely uninteresting and instantaneously forgettable. Well, that’s the guess. The only one I am really looking forward to is Cowboys & Aliens, because it has cowboys. And aliens. And Daniel Craig. Finally I hold my heart for Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tin Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn, because the first pictures were, well, awful.
The Adventures of Tin Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Looking forward at this year’s comedy offerings one must not set one’s hopes too high. We get The Hangover 2 (bwerk)… Johnny English 2 (nooo!) And we get Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and a sweary alien in Paul (mwah) and if anything is to save the year it must be Your Highness, a medieval set comedy piece the trailer of which suggests that it is at least in the same league as Robin Hood: Men in Tights. In romantic comedy we see two films (No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits) about people having sex without having a relationship. Which is about as unfunny as, well, pornography.
Your Highness
BLAMs then. The original Big Loud Action Movies of this year are JJ Abrams super secretive Super 8 and Paul Bettany versus vampires in Priest. Sequel fare there is in Sherlock Holmes 2 (with the amazing Noomi Rapace joing Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law), Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (which is promised to be at least less dorky then its predecessors) and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, in which Jeremy Renner steps up as the pupil of Tom Cruise. Furthermore there are a gazillion films about aliens attacking earth (see also: Paul and Cowboys & Aliens)
Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon
Pixar has as yet its most unpromising offering in years, with Cars 2. Disney continues its classic track of the last two years with Winnie the Pooh and other animation hits might be Rango (which looks greatly odd) and Gnomeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare then: The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor (Titus) will be a real treat, but I am taking the airplane-in-an-emergency-landing-head-between-your-knees position for Anonymous, a Roland EMMERICH! Take on the Bard’s lifetime.
Stuff I need not mention: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II, Pirates of the Carribean: At Stranger Tides.
