Tom Salinsky

Doctor Who Series 5 Episode 2 - The Beast Below

Note: this review contains minor spoilers throughout.

All the hoopla and 65-minute razzmatazz of the season opener out of the way, we can now settle down and begin to get an idea of what this new Moffat/Smith/Gillan Doctor Who might be going to be like. And the answer, from me at least, is pretty good. Despite being slimmed down to a more manageable 45 minutes this didn’t seem rushed to me (although it did to some viewers). We even took the time to neatly bookend the adventure with a pair of TARDIS scenes – the first playfully contrasting our expectations as viewers with Amy’s expectations as the Doctor’s new companion, the second leading in to next week’s adventure in the manner of a Hartnell story.

Whereas last week’s episode consisted of a lot of very strong concepts but didn’t stay still long enough to explore any of them, this week we got a simple and straightforward mystery with an elegant resolution, the clue to which was in that very first TARDIS scene – loved that moment when Amy suddenly looks up and sees the Doctor on the scanner. Add to this the immense fun of having the Doctor and Amy thrashing around on a giant tongue, a wonderfully brash performance from Sophie Okenedo as Liz Ten and the genuinely scary image of Amy’s tear-stricken face suddenly appearing on the screen to warn herself off asking any more questions, and you have a really satisfying slice of modern-day Doctor Who.

Satisfying, but not perfect. You’ll notice that the smilers, for example, are not mentioned. Heavily featured in trailers, well-designed and a creepy idea, but they’re grafted on to the mind-wiping, thought police, crying children, spacewhale plot rather artlessly, look silly once they stand up and get out of their booths, and fall over as soon as Liz Ten blinks in their general direction. And, unforgivably, they flubbed what should have been a wonderfully creepy shot of David Ajala’s head swivelling round – we join the shot too late to properly see his face. And I’ll dock more points for the children’s function being slightly muddled. If you don’t do well at school we’ll feed you to the Space Whale, which none of knows exists, because we’ve all chosen to forget, and which won’t eat children anyway, but we will make use of you as slave labour despite the fact that we don’t know we’ve enslaved a Space Whale. Did I turn two pages at once?

However, the Doctor and Amy continue to delight. Amy’s journey from learning the ropes, to screwing it up, to saving the day, to that lovely heartfelt hug, really anchored the episode, and Matt Smith, while perhaps more obviously finding his feet here than when playing the “still-cooking” version of Eleven last week, is shaping up to be a truly excellent time lord.

We could have done without a repeat of the “you look Time Lord” gag from Planet of the Dead and the whale brain looked a little Oodish to me, but otherwise this was fine, fine stuff. I am a happy fan today.

Four and a half stars!

Doctor Who Series 5 Episode 1 - The Eleventh Hour

Note: this review contains minor spoilers throughout.

Rarely has 65 minutes of TV had so much to live up to. 18 months after Sir David Tennant announced he was stepping down, 14 months after Matt “who?” Smith was unveiled as his successor, ninety-odd days after his first handful of lines in the closing minutes of The End of Time, Matt Smith’s first full episode of Doctor Who is here.

But it’s not just Smith’s debut episode. For the first time in its history, the series continues but every one of the key creative people is new-in-role. New Doctor. New companion. New head writer. New producer. (Note for pedants, obviously every one was new in An Unearthly Child in 1963, and there was a similar clean sweep for Rose in 2005, but that was after a nine-year gap. When Barry Letts took over as producer in 1970, he inherited script editor Terrance Dicks, and his predecessor oversaw Jon Pertwee’s first story. Letts himself produced Tom Baker’s first story before handing over the reigns to Philip Hinchcliffe in 1974.) The big question, after the colossal popular success of the RTD stories, was how new would it be? How new should it be?

The opening sixty seconds is so 2005-2009 as to be almost self-parody. There’s Murray Gold’s bombastic score, there’s the TARDIS hurtling past London landmarks, there’s a bit of barely-necessary wirework. Then suddenly we get a weird, off-kilter version of the theme, accompanying titles which seem to move a bit too slowly (and be over with too quickly) and then suddenly everything has changed. The texture is richer, deeper, slower, darker. The phrase “fairy tale” has been enthusiastically bandied around by the production team and a definite hint of the Tim Burton’s pervades the whole piece.

Then, up pops Matt Smith, spouting a few rather Tennant-ish lines and suddenly the mix of old and new seems exactly right. Quick side-note. Almost as soon as David Tennant got into his stride, I suddenly realised how some of Eccleston’s more flippant lines should have sounded (especially in Rose, The Unquiet Dead, and – tellingly – The Empty Child). It struck me that Russell and co had been writing for Tennant since the off, whether or not they knew it. This makes SmithMoffat’s job even harder. David Tennant, in performance and writing, is the twenty-first century Who and the new version may be erring too much on the side of familiarity, whereas it might be better to establish some clear water first.

From this point on, the overall feeling was one of tremendous confidence, both in the swaggering Doctor recalling the deadly alien menace just to give it a proper talking to, and in the power and speed of the storytelling and reinvention of the series. Amy’s backstory is fascinating, a lovely blend of Russell’s emo-Who and Moffat’s timey-wimey games. Smith still sounds a little bit public-school but is authentically bonkers in a very refreshing way. There are jokes for adults (“get a girlfriend”) and jokes for kids – I’m apparently the only one who thought that the food scene was embarrassingly juvenile; sudden inexplicable changes of mind plus spitting out food will certainly appeal to six-year-olds but left me cold. And the new TARDIS is absolutely lovely, inside and out. And then, there’s blink-and-you’ll-win-a-Hugo clips of all the old Doctors to ensure total fangasm.

What leaves me slightly disappointed is the plotting – usually Moffat’s great strength over RTD. I appreciated the fact that we avoided the sometimes unsatisfactory forty-minutes-of-escalating-threat-followed-by-a-sudden-and-unlikely-resolution-in-the-last-five-minutes structure of so many stories in Series 1-4. Instead, Eleven is actively working to solve a clearly-defined problem from about a third of the way in. But my favourite of the self-contained episodes establish quickly what they are about and mine that key concept for all it’s worth – think Dalek, Father’s Day, Tooth and Claw, Blink, Midnight. The Eleventh Hour sprang giddily from concept to concept and badly needed a bit more focus, almost as if several different stories had been combined and put through a meat grinder – all the bits of a good story were there but (if you’ll pardon the horrible simile) in a pile of unrelated bits and pieces.

Okay… this is about the crack in Amelia’s wall and what lies beyond it. Oh, this about what you can see out of the corner of your eye. No, it’s about a ward full of coma patients chanting the same- wait, what’s Annette Crosbie doing there? Oh, it’s about Amy Pond and her imaginary raggedy Doctor friend. Oh, no, it’s a rerun of that Sarah Jane Adventures story with the Judoon. Or in fact Smith and Jones.

And that’s the last, slightly disquieting element of The Eleventh Hour – how familiar it all was. Where the feel and the cast were all shiny and new, many of the concepts were shopworn and second hand – not just the escaped convict from Smith and Jones but the laptop conference from The Stolen Earth, the relationship fractured through time from The Girl in the Fireplace, the “Earth is defended” speech from The Christmas Invasion (but without the sour punchline to give it dramatic weight), the coordinated global message to the sky from Last of the Time Lords, the hospital setting and chanting zombies from The Empty Child and the companion about to get married from – of course – The Runaway Bride. Doctor Who has always plundered other narrative forms, but Moffat stealing from himself and the previous five years this early in the run does not augur well.

For all that, I’ll give it four stars out of five. The story is only really good enough for three, but Matt Smith’s supple performance, Karen Gillan’s equally impactful presence, that gorgeous new TARDIS and those wonderfully scary CGI teeth combine to earn it one extra star. I assume and hope that the best is yet to come.

Next episode: The Beast Below.

10:26:26 PM: Twitter, Facebook and my blog will all be mashed-up in Oscarland from midnight GMT onward… Join me. #oscars

11:26:11 PM: Freshly-popped popcorn ready, red carpet coverage about to begin. Here we go. #Oscars

11:43:52 PM: “Oh my god, Claudia, it’s The Oscars!” (It’s the sheer professionalism of the Sky One presenters I respect) #oscars

11:59:11 PM: I gather Nick Park’s homemade bowtie is up for Best Adapted Neckwear. #oscars

12:26:49 AM: This Sky One bimbette needs to stop saying “obviously” in every sentence. She really needs to stop. #oscars

12:38:39 AM: Is George Clooney drunk already? Or tired? Or just tired of talking to Sky One bimbettes? #Oscars

1:22:48 AM: You’re not a presenter. You’re a stalker with a microphone. #Oscars

1:34:12 AM: What!? #Oscars

1:34:43 AM: Here’s our big opening. First all the acting nominees stand around awkwardly for 120 seconds…

1:35:17 AM: Then Doogie Houser sings inaudibly while 70s TV dancers spiral around him. It’ll be a smash! #Oscars

1:39:26 AM: Either there’s something up with Alec Baldwin’s mic or he can clap *really* loud. #Oscars

1:45:35 AM: Creditable gags rather than a barnstorming performance from Baldwin and Martin. What was up with George Clooney? #Oscars

1:45:58 AM: Surely Christoph Waltz? #Oscars

1:49:06 AM: Exactly so! #Oscars

1:50:54 AM: Eloquent, concise and generous speech from Waltz. #Oscars

1:51:41 AM: First of ten – fuck me, ten! – Best Picture nominees. The Blind Side, which I haven’t seen yet. Is it any good? #Oscars

1:59:17 AM: Wonderful Best Animated Feature nominees. Funniest – Up. Second funniest – The Princess and the Frog. Good predictor? #Oscars

1:59:43 AM: Up wins. Beautiful movie and well deserved. #Oscars

2:01:24 AM: “Our next two presenters are two young actresses who have no idea who we are!” #Oscars

2:03:13 AM: No production numbers for the Best Song nominees?? Shame. That always used to break up the show a bit. #Oscars.

2:07:42 AM: Crazy Heart wins and the girls here are swooning over Colin Farrell. #Oscars

2:13:24 AM: What does a writer look for in an actor? Memorizing. #Oscars.

2:15:10 AM: Hurt Locker’s only chance for a win without Avatar breathing down its neck. #Oscars

2:16:55 AM: Hurt Locker does it. This could be its only gong all night if Kathryn Bigelow doesn’t make it. Well deserved though. #Oscars.

2:18:26 AM: What the rubbery fuck has happened to Molly Ringwold? #Oscars

2:18:56 AM: “Hey Ferris, is it your day off?” Apparently Matthew Broderick never gets tired of that one. #Oscars

2:23:42 AM: The Brat Pack reassembled – now the Middle Aged Spread Pack. #Oscars

2:25:15 AM: If you think Up has a chance in hell of winning Best Picture, put your hands up in the air (which only has a slightly better chance) #Oscars

2:29:41 AM: Short films. Ah, who cares. #Oscars

2:32:50 AM: Nick Park fumbles it! Disaster! #Oscars

2:34:42 AM: At least we’re sprinting through the shorts in one compact package. Good-o. #Oscars

2:39:00 AM: Ben Stiller dressed up as a Na’vi FTW! #Oscars

2:42:54 AM: Best Trek wins Star Make Up. Getting tired now. #Oscars.

2:51:07 AM: Precious nicks its first statuette of the night. #Oscars

2:55:31 AM: Roger Corman and Lauren Bacall pick up their honorary awards. I’d love to see a film directed by him and starring her. #Oscars

2:56:56 AM: Everyone says its Mo’Nique for Best Supporting Actress. Even Penelope Cruz. #Oscars

3:00:08 AM: For once, everyone is right! #Oscars

3:07:09 AM: If Avatar doesn’t bag this, then we could be looking at a major upset. #Oscars

3:10:29 AM: Sarah Jessica Parker – a whore and a lightweight apparently! #Oscars

3:11:38 AM: Avatar not up for this one, so I don’t care. (I have a fiver on Avatar winning all nine Oscars it’s up for.) #Oscars

3:12:18 AM: “I already have two of these…” Just one step down from “Thank you for awarding me my first Oscar.” #Oscars

3:18:31 AM: Prefilmed Baldwin/Martin sketch. After the Morcambe and Wise-esque dance routine at the beginning, now they’re sharing a bed. #Oscars

3:21:53 AM: The Academy’s tribute to… movies in which scantily-clad women scream a lot. #Oscars

3:26:10 AM: That kills my 9/9 Avatar bet. Bollocks. Could be The Hurt Locker’s night though, which would be nice. #Oscar.

3:28:21 AM: And that kills my insurance bet on 8/9 for Avatar. Happy for the Hurt Locker, and I suppose for Paddy Power. #Oscars

3:35:45 AM: “Please welcome my dear friend – and by that I mean I’ve never met her – Sandra Bullock!” #Oscars

3:37:12 AM: Avatar finally gets its act together, but too late for it to even be exciting for me. #Oscars

3:38:56 AM: First the tribute to horror, now the role-call of the dead. Morbid much? #Oscars

3:39:24 AM: Sorry, that should have been “maudlin” – James Taylor is on stage. #Oscars

3:47:24 AM: Here’s our missing production number. Achievement in Irrelevant Dancing. #Oscars

3:48:44 AM: Is this the Los Angeles chapter of Diversity? #Oscars #Britainsgottalent

3:53:47 AM: Really, really tired now. Need some balloons to help me stay upright…. #Oscars

4:03:56 AM: Er, Food Inc probably? Don’t really care. Tired now. #oscars

4:11:00 AM: Hoo-ray for Hollywood! Boo for time differences! #Oscars

4:26:41 AM: The dude abides… #oscars

4:33:45 AM: Jeff Bridges, unless i’m having very predictable dreams. #oscars

4:46:13 AM: Somebody get Oprah a trowel so she can lay it on even thicker. #Oscars

4:47:58 AM: Why can we never hear Voice Over Announcer Woman properly? #Oscars

4:49:30 AM: Has Sandra Bullock come dressed as Anne Hathaway? #Oscars

4:56:40 AM: Bigelow’s done it! Yay! (zzz) #Oscars

4:59:27 AM: James Cameron = King of Nothing! #Oscars

5:01:20 AM: That’s it, folks. Analysis in the next few days. Night all.

This year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences attempted to up the excitement factor by giving us not just five nominees for Best Picture, but ten – divided neatly into five which are in with a shot (with two clear favourites) and five also-rans. Yay Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences!

I’ve (almost) succeeded in my mission to watch all ten before the ceremony, and here are my thumbnail reviews. For my predictions as to the Oscar winners, see my earlier post here.

AVATAR (wd. James Cameron; starring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana)
Synopsis: Paraplegic marine Jake Sully is dropped on alien world Pandora and given an “avatar” to control so he can better mingle with the 10 foot tall, bright blue natives. If you know the story of Pocahontas, you pretty much know what comes next.
Review: James Cameron creates a jaw-droppingly, eye-poppingly convincing world, populated with not just the slender yet muscular Na’vi, but a whole da-glo managerie of hexapod creatures, sentient trees and much else besides. The story is pretty much by-the-numbers, with a somewhat static middle third, but everything does pay off and there are even some grace notes in the script, and some bright performances – hello Giovanni Ribisi!
Fun facts: James Cameron’s first film since 1997’s Titanic, but he’s been talking about it pretty much since then.
Oscars: Nominated for nine and could win them all. Big favourite for Best Picture.

THE BLIND SIDE (w. Michael Lewis, John Lee Hancock; d. Hancock; starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Kathy Bates)
Synopsis: To follow
Review: To follow
Fun facts: To follow
Oscars: Also-ran, except for Sandra Bullock

DISTRICT 9 (w. Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell; d. Blomkamp; starring Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James)
Synopsis: In Jo’burg, a civil servant responsible for rounding up alien “prawns” eventually starts to see things from their point of view when he becomes accidentally infected.
Review: Probably my favourite film of the year – witty, fast-moving, exciting, satirical and intelligent. It gleefully steals from the very best to make something which feels entirely fresh, and the special effects are so good you forget they’re there.
Fun facts: First-time actor Copley improvised virtually all of his dialogue.
Oscars: Nominated for three more besides Best Picture, which it won’t win in a thousand years. In with a shot for Adapted Screenplay. Would have won for Effects in any field which didn’t include Avatar.

AN EDUCATION (w. Nick Hornby, book Lynn Barber; d. Lone Scherfig; starring Carey Mulligan, Emma Thompson, Peter Sarsgaard)
Synopsis: In 1961, 16 year old schoolgirl Jenny discovers that working hard to get into Oxford seems rather less glamorous next to her exciting new older boyfriend who whisks her off to Paris and pinches artworks from old ladies.
Review: Perfectly amusing, with a winning turn from Carey Mulligan, but entirely inessential and unextraordinary. A Channel 4 film which has been inexplicably nominated for an Oscar. Bizarre.
Fun facts: Screenplay by novellist Nick Hornby, based on Lynn Barner’s memoire.
Oscars: Also-ran. The kind of dull-but-worthy British film that won for Goldcrest in the 80s, but those days are over.

THE HURT LOCKER (w. Mark Boal; d. Kathryn Bigelow; starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty)
Synopsis: Under the command of a new and apparently reckless team leader, a three man bomb disposal squad goes about its work in Iraq.
Review: For the first three quarters, Bigelow and Boal trust that their characters and the episodes of their working lives will be strong enough, and they’re right. When a more melodramatic plot arrives, late in the day, it seems irrelevant and upsets the tone so masterfully maintained up till then.
Fun facts: Bigelow is James Cameron’s ex-wife, so it’s not just that Bigelow is only the fourth woman ever nominated for Best Director – this time it’s personal.
Oscars: Nine nominations, same as Avatar, and competing head-to-head in every category.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (wd. Quentin Tarantino; starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender)
Synopsis: Demented fairytale, set in something which looks an awful lot like World War II, but not quite enough like it to be mistaken for it.
Review: Far more about cinema than about warfare, Tarantino’s latest is also his most juvenile, but at the same time probably his most fun, mixing agonising suspense with bravura imagery and a shockingly devil-may-care attitude to history. Provided you aren’t looking for maturity, you are unlikely to leave the cinema disappointed, but let’s face it – Up has a better chance of winning Best Picture.
Fun facts: The soundtrack is compiled from other war movies, for which Jonathan Ross castigated Tarantino on his chat-show. Tarantino was forced to admit that because he doesn’t compose music himself he prefers to choose music from stock because otherwise he feels he’s handing over too much control to another artist.
Oscars: Will win exactly one, for Christoph Waltz.

PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE (w. Geoffrey Fletch, novel Sapphire; d. Lee Daniels; starring Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey)
Synopsis: Barely-literate, abused, single teenage mother Clarice Precious Jones struggles to rebuild her life with the aid of a sympathetic teacher.
Review: Deeply moving drama which transcends its movie-of-the-week logline due not least in part to a series of bravura directoral flourishes.
Fun facts: Mariah Carey was a last-minute replacement for Helen Mirren.
Oscars: Up for a staggering six Oscars, but only likely to win for one of the lead actresses or just possibly its screenplay. A long-shot for Best Picture, but not an also-ran.

A SERIOUS MAN (wd. Joel and Ethan Coen; starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Wagner Lennick)
Synopsis: In 1967, physics professor Larry Gopnik becomes a latter-day Job weeks before the his son’s barmitzvah as he faces the collapse of his marriage, questions over his professional ethics and the bewildering advice of a variety of Rabbis, old and young.
Review: The Coen Brothers on doggedly quirky form, for much of its running time this is original, funny and moving stuff, but the what-the-hell ending is a huge disappointment, even if it is somewhat in keeping with the overall message.
Fun facts: Lead actor’s first film after a substantial stage career.
Oscars: The slimmest of chances for Best Picture.

UP (w. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Thomas McCarthy; d. Docter, Peterson; voices: Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer)
Synopsis: Elderly Carl Fredricksen floats away from a grim retirement home in search of the adventures he and his late wife dreamed about.
Review: Beautiful stuff, as ever from Pixar, with humour, visual appeal, story and drama expertly balanced. The 3D is not instrusive and the characters beautifully rendered. Possibly not their very best – the narrative splits into three chunks fairly gracelessly (on the ground, travelling, fighting) – but the wordless opening sequence might be one of the best pieces of animation ever.
Fun facts: John Ratzenberger, Pixar’s lucky mascot, can be heard as a construction worker.
Oscars: Will scoop Best Animated, but that’s yer lot. An also-ran in the Best Picture stakes.

UP IN THE AIR (w. Sheldon Turner, Jason Reitman, book Walter Kirn; d. Reitman; starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick)
Synopsis: Ryan Bingham is happiest when flying across the United States and very good at his job – firing people who work for other companies. His life is upset by the presence of two women, one who admires his lifestyle and one who threatens to destroy it.
Review: A very near miss, full of smart touches and another breezy-yet-angsty performance from Clooney. It loses energy towards the end and the plot doesn’t quite serve the characters as strongly as it could.
Fun facts: Most of the firees were genuinely made redundant and asked to re-enact the moment on camera.
Oscars: Has a chance of picking up an acting or screenwriting award. Hardly an also-ran for Best Picture, but certainly not a favourite.

With only a week to go until the razzmatazz of the 82nd Academy Awards, I thought I’d share some predictions with you. I made these using the official iPhone app, and have tried to ignore what other pundits might say.

The Ones You Care About

• Best Picture: Avatar. Nothing the Academy likes better than success. It isn’t the best film of the year, it probably isn’t the best film of the month, but it will win.
• Best Actor: Morgan Freeman (Invictus). C’mon, he’s playing Nelson Mandela for chrissake.
• Best Actress: Gabourey Sidibe (Precious). Tokenism? Maybe, but they’ll want to give this film something and critics raved about her performance.
• Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds). He was practically given this award as soon as the movie opened. There’s nothing here I’m more sure about.
• Best Supporting Actress: Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air). Again, they’ll want to give this something and it doesn’t have a better chance in any of the other major categories.
• Best Original Screenplay: The Hurt Locker. It’s going to be the Hurt Locker’s night. The question is, how many prizes will Avatar pinch from it?
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Precious. This is the one I’m least sure about. It could easily be Up in the Air or even District 9
• Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker. Gotta be.

And now here are the others…

• Animated Feature Film: Up
• Costume Design: Nine
• Film Editing: The Hurt Locker
• Art Direction: Avatar
• Music (Original Song): Almost There, The Princess and the Frog
• Short Film (Live Action): The New Tenants. Pure guess. Never heard of it.
• Music (Original Score): The Hurt Locker
• Visual Effects: Avatar. But I’d love it if District 9 pinched it.
• Cinematography: Avatar
• Sound Mixing: Star Trek
• Short Film (Animated): A Matter of Loaf and Death
• Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker
• Documentary (Feature): Food, Inc.
• Makeup: Star Trek. NB Avatar’s not nominated, that’s all pixels, not slap and foam rubber
• Foreign Language Film: Un Prophète, France. See Short Film (Live Action).
• Documentary (Short Subject): The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. And again.

Using the iPhone app also means I can see what other people’s predictions are. The Wisdom of Crowds implies that the aggregate of hundreds of independent pundits should be a better guide than any one person’s guess, no matter how educated. So here’s the aggregate voting there, as of today 26 February. (I, of course, will be sticking with my own predictions. What’s the point in being a pundit if you can’t be overconfident?)

The Ones You Care About

• Best Picture: Avatar. (62%, Hurt Locker second with 13%)
• Best Actor: Morgan Freeman (31%, Jeff Bridges second and George Clooney third, practically nothing in it)
• Best Actress: Sandra Bullock (42%. My pick, Gadbourey Sidibe  is third after Meryl Streep.)
• Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds). (60%. Matt Damon second for Invictus)
• Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique (39%. Second is Penelope Cruz. My pick is dead last.)
• Best Original Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds (47%. I don’t buy it. Up is second – surely not – and my pick is third)
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air (37%, with District 9 and Precious a virtual dead heat behind it)
• Best Director: James Cameron (by a mile, 54%. Really surprised by this one. Bigelow second with 21%, Tarantino third).

And now here are the others…

• Animated Feature Film: Up (80%)
• Costume Design: Nine (36%)
• Film Editing: Avatar (57%, Inglorious Basterds second on 14%, then The Hurt Locker on 12%)
• Art Direction: Avatar (74%)
• Music (Original Song): The Weary Kind, Crazy Heart. (37%. Wish I could change my bet now. I’m just a sucker for Disney animation. Randy Newman is third on 18% after Take It All from Nine on 29%)
• Short Film (Live Action): The Door (35%. My – random – pick is third on 18%)
• Music (Original Score): Avatar (again on 46%. For the first time, my pick is dead last on 4%. Up is second and Sherlock Holmes is third)
• Visual Effects: Avatar. (93%!!)
• Cinematography: Avatar (61%)
• Sound Mixing: Avatar (55%, then Transformers on 18%, then the rest)
• Short Film (Animated): A Matter of Loaf and Death (46%)
• Sound Editing: Avatar (59%, all the rest essentially a dead heat)
• Documentary (Feature): The Cove (31%. Food Inc is second on 27%)
• Makeup: Star Trek. (63%)
• Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon (42%. Un Prophète is second on 23%)
• Documentary (Short Subject): China’s Unnatural Disaster (31%, then The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner on 21%, then the rest)

So, my guess is that it will be The Hurt Locker‘s night. I’ve put them on five gongs, with Avatar scooping only four. Users of the iPhone app are going for Avatar in a big way, however, handing James Cameron’s film nine Oscars (Titanic won 11) and not giving Kathryn Bigelow any!! Note that this requires Avatar beating The Hurt Locker every time they share a nomination, and therefore Avatar winning in every category for which it is nominated! I guess it could happen, but…

In the final count, I agree with the herd on only nine out of 24 categories, which makes me think that a career in punditry may not beckon. What might be interesting is to compare the iPhone app’s aggregations to the odds at the betting shop. The bookies, of course, are aggregating individual opinions in the same way, but – at least at first – they may be more swayed by punditry.

And what about YOU meanwhile? What do YOU think will happen?

UPDATED TO ADD: Paddy Power offers 10/11 on Avatar winning best picture, disagrees with both me and the iPhone and has Jeff Bridges favourite to win best actor at 1/6. They side with the iPhone and against me putting Sandra Bullock on 8/13 favourite to win best actress, and we all agree Christoph Waltz will win best supporting actor, the odds are 1/25. They side with the iPhone against me when it comes to best supporting actress, going for Monique at 1/16 but they side with me against the iPhone when it comes to best director, putting Kathryn Bigelow favourite at 1/4 with Cameron on 5/2. Putting a fiver on each of the favourites would win you a dismal £11.17 (plus your £30 stake back).

A much tastier bet is the total number of awards Avatar will win. You can get all nine awards at 20/1 or eight out of nine at 8/1. That might be worth a flutter.