2011 Oscar nominations: the aftermath

That to follow and scrutinize the film award season is a pointless exercise has always been clear to me.  It is also an unrewarding one. The proliferation of Oscar precursors and the Academy's faint-hearted choices have rendered the Oscar prognostication game easy and predictable.

Looking at this year's Oscar nominations, which have been announced earlier today, one might argue that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary has really happened, at least in the main categories.

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Interview: Bafta nominee and Oscar contender Lesley Manville

Imitation of Life voted Lesley Manville best actress of 2010 for her performance in Mike Leigh's Another Year. I first saw the film in the Sarajevo Film Festival, where I had the opportunity to talk with Lesley Manville about the film, her longtime collaboration with Mike Leigh and the Oscar buzz generated by her extraordinary performance. Here's an extract of the interview:

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Best Films of 2010

Together with roast turkey and the It's A Wonderful Life TV rerun, there is no more ubiquitous Christmas feature than the Best of the Year lists.

For the last weeks we have been hearing about award nominations, film magazines' 2010 top choices and critics' rankings, but it's high time to announce the only list I am going to be fully satisfied with: my own

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Review: Another Year, a film by Mike Leigh

The object of Another Year, Mike Leigh’s latest film, is to make the viewer care about the joys and sorrows in the lives of a group of late-middle-aged friends and, for a film with no great deal of plot in the classical sense, Leigh’s endeavour is quiet an achievement. Weeks after you have seen the picture, its characters are still freshly and poignantly etched on your memory.

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