Diary: March 2005

Reviewer news

timchuma has been a nofreelist reviewer for a little over six months now, but almost all of the reviews that we've been slowly adding to the site have been written by him about Hong Kong movies he's seen over the last five or so years; reviews that were first published on his own personal site.

As of today, all of these older reviews are now available on the site. Many of these reviews are mostly plot summary, but Tim has decided to re-write a number of them to fit more into the nofreelist style, so you can expect to see bigger, better reviews of those Hong Kong films from him in the coming months.

On top of this, we're now moving into a new era of Tim's reviews: those written specifically for nofreelist. With this, he'll be expanding from just the Hong Kong reviews, tackling some films recently seen at your local cinema, as well as some old sci-fi classics (and probably some not-so-classics).

I'm looking forward to seeing how Tim's new reviews stack up against the rest of our writers.

We're also welcoming to our little fray the wonderful philmc. Phil, along with his partner and blogger extraordinaire Claire are this year attempting a project they have entitled "100 in 365". In Phil's own words, this means "... to watch each film in the Village Voice's top 100 films of the 20th century", all during the year 2005. As well as putting the reviews onto his site, Phil will be replicating them on nofreelist, meaning they'll have handy links to other stuff done by the stars, and all the other great features you'd expect from a nofreelist review.

Being a couple of days into the the third month of the year already, and with only three reviews completed and another three watched but not yet reviewed, I have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to struggle with their aim, but it'll be fun to see how it progresses nonetheless!

by pearly on Thu 3 Mar 2005 at 13:49 PM — permalink / add a comment / view the 12 comments

2005 Oscar wrap-up

Congratulations to jud, who is simultaneously the slackest reviewer on nofreelist, as well as the most knowledgeable when it comes to all things Oscar. Yep, jud has won the second nofreelist Oscar poll, correctly guessing 14 of the 24 winners on the night, and being the only one to correctly guess all of the "big" awards. On the other end of the scale was philmc, who only managed to correctly guess five of the winners.

The least contentious award given out was for Best Animated Feature Film; all of us knew that this prize would go to The Incredibles (2004). However, less than half of us picked Million Dollar Baby (2004) as the Best Film, with the rest of our guesses being split between The Aviator (2004) and The Aviator (2004). Only one of us incorrectly guessed that Cate Blanchett would be Best Supporting Actress, but I'm pretty sure that's just because em_fiction thinks that Natalie Portman is hot. Not a single one of us guessed that Ray would win for Best Sound, or Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids (2004) for Best Documentary Feature.

Here's a handy list of all the winners, so that you can read up on why you should or shouldn't head out and catch these films at the cinema:

• Motion picture: Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• Actor in a leading role: Jamie Foxx for Ray (2004)
• Actress in a leading role: Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• Actor in a supporting role: Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• Actress in a supporting role: Cate Blanchett for The Aviator (2004)
• Directing: Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby (2004)
• Writing, screenplay written directly for the screen: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
• Writing, screenplay based on material previously produced or published: Sideways (2004)
• Cinematography: The Aviator (2004)
• Editing: The Aviator (2004)
• Art direction: The Aviator (2004)
• Costume design: The Aviator (2004)
• Music written for motion pictures, original score: Finding Neverland (2004)
• Music written for motion pictures, original song: The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) ("Al Otro Lado Del Río")
• Makeup: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
• Sound: Ray (2004)
• Sound editing: The Incredibles (2004)
• Visual effects: Spider-Man 2 (2004)
• Animated feature film: The Incredibles (2004)
• Foreign language film: The Sea Inside (2004)
• Documentary, features: Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids (2004)
• Documentary, short subjects: Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004)
• Short film, animated: Ryan (2004)
• Short film, live action: Wasp (2003)

Overall, a pretty awesome ceremony. It was pretty punchy, and they mixed things up a bit by presenting some awards out in the audience, and by having the nominees up on stage to save time. These little tricks worked really well. Chris Rock was pretty entertaining too, and none of the introductions or speeches were particularly painful. I did have to wonder what Beyoncé Knowles had done to get herself on stage so many times though.

Lastly, because I know everyone loves my fashion reviews, my picks for best-dressed were Natalie Portman (again - she's having a great fashion year), and Sophie Okonedo (her hair looked gorgeous). I really liked the colour combination in Cate Blanchett's dress, but I didn't like Hilary Swank's dress at all. What were your picks?

by pearly on Tue 1 Mar 2005 at 14:59 PM — permalink / add a comment / view the 2 comments

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