FIRST CLIP FROM THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel is set to premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, before a worldwide theatrical rollout beginning the end of the month and reaching the UK and the US on the 7th of March. Robert Yeoman is handling the cinematography and Adam Stockhausen the production design, and I'd say they've done a smashing job. This is a very nice clip and I'm looking forward to seeing the film.

DICAPRIO - SCORSESE TO RECEIVE SBIFF CINEMA VANGUARD AWARD

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival probably wouldn't exist if it couldn't draw in the big names, which is why they have a habit of throwing awards at them. The Cinema Vanguard Award is bestowed each year at the fest to those in the film industry who have forged their own path, taking artistic risks and making a significant contribution to film. Notice anything about their past winners? Amy Adams, Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin, Nicole Kidman, Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Stanley Tucci, Christoph Waltz, Kristin Scott Thomas and Ryan Gosling? I do! Looks like Scorsese and DiCaprio, who'll be receiving the award this year, fit right in!

GRAVITY AND EXARCHOPOULOS WIN BIG WITH CENTRAL OHIO FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

What I like most about the Central Ohio Film Critics Association is that they hew to their own course. They're not as influenced by general hoopla as many other critic groups, and seem comfortable in the knowledge that they can be relevant without holding undue influence. And so 12 Years a Slave doesn't rise to the top, as it has done so frequently this season with the critics, and films like Frances Ha and The Wolf of Wall Street excel instead. Adele Exarchopoulos and Brie Larson take first and second place in the two same categories, and Matthew McConaughey wins the Actor of the Year prize for the second year running. Their nominations, announced earlier in the week, can be found here.

Best Film

1.       Gravity

2.        Her

3.        American Hustle

4.        Frances Ha

5.        The Wolf of Wall Street

6.        12 Years a Slave

7.        Inside Llewyn Davis

8.        Before Midnight

9.        Upstream Colour

10.     Nebraska

Best Director

1.       Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)

2.        Spike Jonze (Her)

Best Actor

1.       Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)

2.        Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Actress

1.       Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Colour)

2.        Brie Larson (Short Term 12)

Best Supporting Actor

1.       James Franco (Spring Breakers)

2.        Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Supporting Actress

1.       Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

2.        Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)

Best Original Screenplay

1.       Spike Jonze (Her)

2.        Destin Cretton (Short Term 12)

Best Adapted Screenplay

1.       Terence Winter (The Wolf of Wall Street)

2.        John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)

REVIEW - LONE SURVIVOR

You might as well watch an American flag flying for two hours as watch Peter Berg's Lone Survivor, not least for the fact that both would be equally interesting. It undoubtedly is not the best advertisement for the US military, but it undoubtedly is the most zealous, and most sickening tribute to them. A crass, stupid, unimaginatively-made exercise in extreme jingoism, this sexist and racist enterprise features a number of sexist, racist and homophobic brutes getting into some perilous circumstances and suffering so that they might be lauded as heroes by a closing montage that made my eyes water with fury. Four young, white, tough, attractive men take to the Afghan mountains to murder some sand niggers - none of their victims are named in the film, nor presented as any more than brief brown blurs in front of the camera lens in the film's interminable gunfight sequences. I was not weaned, as a child, on violent video games, and so have no interest in elongated passages of gunfire and shouting on the soundtrack accompanied by various shades of greige whizzing past my eyes, and all for the purpose of watching state-sponsored massacre. These poor fellows are beatified by Berg's direction for grazing their cheekbones, and afforded grand, stoic demises at the hands of these faceless foreigners. Sure, this all happened, to some extent, though it's not only possible but also of greater value to the plot to produce a more balanced view on combat, rather than this aggressively pro-West, pro-violence stance (in a film whose very existence perpetuates the pro-male attitude of contemporary filmmaking, and the culture of intolerance that is unwittingly extolled at a number of points herein). And a slick studio production based on a novelised, subjective account of events some eight and a half years ago? How certain can one be that, indeed, this all happened?

OSCAR PREDICTIONS 9 - 2 WEEKS TO GO

After the lull between Christmas and New Year, awards season is just getting back into gear, with the PGA nominations earlier today. And now it's time for my weekly predictions, with just two weeks until Oscar nominations are announced. AMPAS members are currently voting - indeed, many have already voted, surely. This is how the race looks to me, currently, though that can (and probably will) change!

Best Picture

·          12 Years a Slave

·          American Hustle

·          Captain Phillips

·          Dallas Buyers Club

·          Gravity

·          Her

·          Inside Llewyn Davis

·          Nebraska

·          Saving Mr. Banks

Best Director

·          Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)

·          Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips)

·          Spike Jonze (Her)

·          Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)

·          David O. Russell (American Hustle)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

·          Bruce Dern (Nebraska)

·          Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)

·          Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)

·          Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)

·          Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

·          Amy Adams (American Hustle)

·          Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

·          Sandra Bullock (Gravity)

·          Judi Dench (Philomena)

·          Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

·          Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)

·          Daniel Brühl (Rush)

·          Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)

·          Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)

·          Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

·          Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

·          Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)

·          Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)

·          Octavia Spencer (Fruitvale Station)

·          June Squibb (Nebraska)

Best Original Screenplay

·          American Hustle

·          Blue Jasmine

·          Her

·          Inside Llewyn Davis

·          Nebraska

Best Adapted Screenplay

·          12 Years a Slave

·          Before Midnight

·          Captain Phillips

·          Philomena

·          The Wolf of Wall Street

SEVERAL MAJOR FRONTRUNNERS ABSENT FROM PGA NOMINEES

Nominations for the PGA awards were revealed today. Joining a previously announced slate of documentary nods (today's press release included credits for those features, for the first time) are five nominees for Best Animated Feature and ten for Best Picture. Missing from the Best Picture list is the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, one of the critical hits of the year - will it be the film this year that picks up major heat from critics but then gets dumped by the industry? And missing from the animated list is Miyazaki Hayao's The Wind Rises, a hilarious oversight which I saw coming, because it's the PGA, and nobody has worse taste than the PGA. Fact. Winners will be announced on the 19th of January, which is only 17 days away - a mercifully brief stretch. So have a good lol at these while they're still relevant.

Best Picture

12 Years a Slave (Dede Gardner, Anthony Katagas, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen and Brad Pitt)

American Hustle (Megan Ellison, Jon Gordon, Charles Roven and Richard Suckle)

Blue Jasmine (Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum)

Captain Phillips (Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca and Scott Rudin)

Dallas Buyers Club (Robbie Brenner and Rachel Winter)

Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón and David Heyman)

Her (Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze and Vincent Landay)

Nebraska (Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa)

Saving Mr. Banks (Ian Collie, Alison Owen and Philip Steuer)

The Wolf of Wall Street (Riza Aziz, Emma Koskoff and Joey McFarland)

Best Animated Feature

The Croods (Kristine Belson and Jane Hartwell)

Despicable Me 2 (Janet Healy and Chris Meledandri)

Epic (Jerry Davis and Lori Forte)

Frozen (Peter Del Vecho)

Monsters University (Kori Rae)

Best Documentary

Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story (Brad Bernstein and Rick Cikowski)

Life According to Sam (Sean Fine, Andrea Nix and Miriam Weintraub)

A Place at the Table (Julie Goldman, Ryan Harrington, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush)

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (Alexis Bloom, Alex Gibney and Marc Shmuger)

Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (James Brabazon and Nick Quested)

REVIEW - MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM

Making Nelson Mandela's 27 year imprisonment seem as short and sweet as a weekend in the Bahamas, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a long trudge to the end, a visual reenactment of the Madiba Cliff Notes only with extra added prestige value. It'd be tough to make your Mandela picture not come off prestigious, but Justin Chadwick has his iridescent flashback photography and sweeping score on hand to really drive home his film's key tenet - that Nelson Mandela was a real great guy, and that what the white South African government did to him was a real bad move. It's almost a relief he didn't have to suffer the injustice of witnessing this bloodless biopic. With a laboured sincerity that seeps all humour out from the character, Chadwick marches guilelessly through Mandela's life, chronicling a series of famous events and condensing many lifetimes of deep and difficult emotion into a few pat lines of trite dialogue, delivered adjacently for the sake of convenience. By now, you'd think someone would have realised that William Nicholson just can't write. And under Chadwick's obstinately artless direction, this wannabe epic, tastelessly tasteful, never gets off the ground. The distressing thing is that once this style of boring bio became commonplace, in spite of its thorough lack of artistic merit, there'll always be a market for it, and people will begin to write of qualities they deem it to have. Like if everyone started eating shit on toast, it'd become quite acceptable to follow suit, and relate of its piquant tang and firm texture. I sometimes say that I will only review a film for what it is, not for what it isn't, but alas even if no films like Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom had ever been made (and boy, have they), it'd still be not very much at all. Idris Elba gives a well-studied, committed performance under some grotesque makeup, which might explain why they didn't bother using any on Naomie Harris, who doesn't help by playing Winnie as if she were 30 years of age throughout.

BRAND NEW SUPERHERO MOVIE SNAPS FROM DISNEY

Disney is treating superhero fans this New Year with a first look at its upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy (above, released in several countries this August) and some new images from Captain America: The Winter Soldier (below, and after the cut, released in many through March and April).

OBIT - JUANITA MOORE

Beloved actor and trailblazer for African-Americans in Hollywood, Juanita Moore, has died today, the 1st of January 2014, at age 99. Most famous for her celebrated performance in 1959's Imitation of Life, for which she became one of the first African-Americans to be nominated for an Oscar, she was also known for roles in The Kid, The Singing Nun, and many television projects. A founder member of the Cambridge Players, her grandson Kirk Kelley-Kahn is the current CEO of the organisation. She leaves behind her two nephews also.

REVIEW - AMERICAN HUSTLE

American Hustle thrives on the coarsest fundamentals of drama, a loose, wayward lark very much consistent with the tone that its co-writer and director, David O. Russell, has cultivated in recent years. He's playing dress-up here, and what he has pulled together here amounts to little more than a big-budget am-dram project, albeit an extremely enjoyable one. Who would have thought that a filmmaker once of such ambition and audacity would have mellowed into such a master of the middle-brow? The collapse of a previous feature and the lure of awards nominations can do that to a person. It's the fine details which trip him up, and in fact even the not-so-fine details: scenes ramble on for far too long, lighting compositions are occasionally very shoddy, narrative focus is erratic, and detrimentally so. There are intermittent signs that the inventive director that once was remains even now, but the lack of control over so many points of so much vitality to the success of a film suggests either someone who (incorrectly) presumes that they are developing a new, creative cinematic style or someone who is very ignorant. Is there reason for this ignorance? Possibly, since the blinding glare of the sequin-and-velvet-clad A-listers hogging the screen is enough to divert the audience's attention, at least to some extent. Amy Adams, whose wobbly British accent must surely be intentionally bad, is the humblest of the principals, and also the best. Christian Bale would once again like everyone to know that he is ACTING, but then he is very good at it. Bradley Cooper has at long last been entrusted a good role for which he is a good fit. Jennifer Lawrence steals her scenes, since they shouldn't really be hers - what fun she has, and what fun we have watching her have fun, but her character and David O. Russell's treatment of her is a nuisance to the film as a whole.