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For those of you that know me, you’ve probably heard me speak (ad nauseum) about my awesome gig shooting at Bonnaroo, the multi-day, multi-stage music and arts celebration in rural Manchester, Tennessee.  Not only do I get to share the stage with musicians that I respect and enjoy, but I also get exposed to new bands and see shows I probably never would have gotten to see otherwise. This year was the festival’s 10th anniversary and was the first time in years that it reached capacity — something in the neighborhood of 90,000 people (!).

THURSDAY:

Typically, Thursday is considered “indie-rock” day at Bonnaroo, where up and coming bands get a chance to impress the early crowds and make a name for themselves. Many a band have started as a Thursday Bonnaroo act and gone on to bigger and better things. I was hired to shoot the entire day on Thursday, which was new for me since I usually only do the overnight shift. The day was exhausting, but really rewarding. The first band to take the stage at That Tent was Futurebirds. Their sound and showmanship owed more than a bit of a debt to the early work of festival co-headliners My Morning Jacket — not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m a sucker for any band that can pull off the classic-rock, guitar hero sound and not feel cheesy or derivative, and Futurebirds pulled it off easily much to the admiration of the early crowd. Next up were Freelance Whales, an indie band from Brooklyn. They were fine, but their polite, keyboard driven tunes didn’t really engage me.

School of Seven Bells were next. Former Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis brought the same type of Kraut-meets-shoegaze grooves with him into this group, though the presence of lead singer Alejandra Dehenza lent the show a far more feminine, ethereal presence than The Secret Machines ever had. As I shot her singing against the setting sun, I couldn’t help but develop a little momentary crush on her.

A very different male-female-male trio followed Seven Bells; the straight-up rockers Band of Skulls from England. They attracted the biggest crowd of the day thus far, and mesmerized the audience with their driving, Sabbath-y riffs and complex basslines. Brooklyn’s The Walkmen made for a slightly awkward follow-up to Skulls — their energy is very subdued and cerebral. Though I was never a fan of their records, shooting lead singer Hamilton Leithauser’s passionate vocal performance did get me into their headspace for a while.

The night finished with Deerhunter, whose records I admire more than love. That being said, their live performance was, for me, unquestionably the best that I shot on Thursday at Bonnaroo. Band mastermind Bradford Cox, with his tall, lanky frame and oddball vocals, isn’t your average leading man, but then again, nothing about Deerhunter is average. The band’s surreal amalgam of Kraut-rock, doo-wop, rock n’ roll and psychedelia were invigorating in a live setting, and Cox unleashed torrents of Hendrix-ish guitar solos toward the end of the show. After the band finished its set and house-lights came back on, the crowd continued to cheer until the band returned for a well-deserved, earned encore.

FRIDAY:

Though I didn’t need to be at work until around midnight, I went into Bonnaroo Friday as a fan at around 3pm in the afternoon. The festival grounds packed, and the heat and dust (it hadn’t rained at all leading up to the festival) were downright oppressive. In spite of this, the energy in the crowd was palpable. I started my day by heading to the de facto “metal” tent, where Georgia’s indie-metal workhorses Kylesa were warming up the devil-horn loving audience. I had seen Kylesa a few times before, and their show was definitely compromised by the heat and the early time slot. Good show, but not thrilling.

Next I worked my way into This Tent to watch Brooklyn heroes Matt & Kim. Their crowd was the biggest I had ever seen at a tent (in a rare miscue, the promoters really should have put M&K on the second stage). The affable, energetic duo worked the crowd into a quick frenzy with their buoyant synth-pop, and though I was digging their set, I had seen them several times and this point and the heat inside the tent was too much to bear.

To escape the heat, I headed backstage and emerged at the front of the What Stage for Grace Potter & The Nocturals. Though they were one of the first bands to play the mainstage, the Nocturnals thrilled the giant crowd with their high-energy rock n’ roll and Grace’s ethereal stage presence. The band couldn’t have picked a more obvious song cover than “White Rabbit,” but Grace and her band more than pulled it off with swagger. These guys will return to the mainstage in the future, mark my words.

From the main stage, I worked my way back to the “metal” tent to watch legendary black metal band Opeth. This show unquestionably had the most people in altered states that I had seen during a daytime tent show. Opeth were brilliant, but for me their show was undercut by a character having an extreme LSD moment right next to me. Dude was laying in the sand in the middle of the mosh pit, making a sand-angel, screaming “bury me! bury me!” So people buried him in the sand. Then he proceeded to roll around the ground making crazy eyes at people. It was pretty hilarious, but I decided that maybe seeing Opeth during the day wasn’t doing their show justice, so I decided to move on.

I moved to the main stage to catch the end of The Decemberists and I gotta say, they were pretty darn flat. I had seen them once before and enjoyed them, but they just weren’t bringing the needed heat to a main stage performance.

I decided to wait around at the main stage for My Morning Jacket, who were making their much deserved main stage debut. Perhaps no band’s name is more associated with, and career furthered by, their legendary Bonnaroo performances. This Friday night was no exception — I consider MMJ one of the top five live bands in the world, and their set this evening was great even by those standards. The set leaned heavily on the band’s (polarizing) record Evil Urges and its most recent Circuital. All the material from these records were ace, but their supersized renditions of previous favorites, from “Anytime” to “One Big Holiday” were just brilliant. Their version of “Steam Engine” from their seminal It Still Moves record was the best live version of that song I’d seen the band do — stretching well over 10 minutes, the song, and set as a whole, were simply transcendent.

After MMJ, I tried to plow my way over to the concurrent Primus show on the Which Stage. Now, I love Bonnaroo and all and generally think their set up is really great, but they’ve really gotta do something about the Which Stage. Bands on that stage regularly pull 20-30,000 people, and yet the sound is crap unless you’re right up by the sound board. That, and the sight lines are obscured by ill-placed lemonade stands and other such nonsense. By the time I worked my way close enough to hear Primus with any clarity, they were already wrapping up with (an awesome version of) “Tommy the Cat.” I wish that Primus was handed a primo overnight set rather than a conflicted evening set, but it was cool to catch a bit of Les Claypool’s antics.

After Primus, I had to go to a work meeting for my overnight shoot. After the meeting, I snuck out into the front where headliners The Arcade Fire were about halfway through their set. After being underwhelmed by their live performance a few years back in New York and particularly by their new album The Suburbs (I know, I’m in the minority) I didn’t have much expectation regarding their set. But, man, they really proved me wrong. With a eye catching light/video show reflecting the half-remembered nostalgia of their music, and an air-tight ensemble of performers, they more than convinced me they had what it took to be a Bonnaroo headliner. Hearing 60-70,000 people sing along to the band’s “Wake Up” was the most goose-bump inducing moment of the festival for me.

After The Arcade Fire I had to transition from fan to professional, so I headed over to the Which Stage to shoot Lil’ Wayne overnight performance. I ended up being the camera in the pit, which meant I basically was tasked with following Lil Wayne around, capturing the energy of his flow, his live band, and the multiple dancers he had on stage. And though the sound where I was was so loud that there’s no way I can give an objective opinion on the show, it was pretty exciting to capture Lil’ Wayne running back and forth on the stage and finally into the crowd. By 3:00AM, my epic Friday was over.

SATURDAY:

And at around 3PM Saturday, I headed back into Bonnaroo as a fan again. The weather was even hotter this afternoon, and the dust was in full effect. People seemed pretty burnt out — the grounds more resembled Mad Max than Bonnaroo. The heat was too much to bear for me, so I dipped back stage and half-watched Deer Tick, who were okay, but nothing that really caught my attention. I kind of wandered around in a daze, catching a bit of !!!’s early set at the tiny Sonic Stage before they headed to the tent for their evening show, and Alison Kraus on the Which Stage.

By 5PM, the heat was breaking and I headed back to That Tent to catch Portugal. The Man. I shot these guys down at SXSW and, along with this Saturday afternoon set, they’ve rocketed to near the top of my favorite current live band list. Despite the heat, the band just caught lightning in a bottle, thrilling the large crowd with their mind-boggling musicianship and showmanship. Their songs come across as somewhat traditional on record, but live, the band stretches the tunes into epic jams that pack more surprises into one song than most bands pull off their entire set. Aside from MMJ, this was my favorite show at Bonnaroo 2011.

From there I went to go check out the end of DeVotchKa, who, despite some fancy work by an acrobat that joined them on stage, fell completely flat in my eyes. I left their show feeling a little burnt and headed over to watch !!! for a little bit. I dug their set, but spent almost the whole time wondering why, with their incredible energy and compulsively dancable disco grooves, were not playing an overnight set. I left them early to catch Bootsy Collins — or at least, I meant to catch him. The legendary Funkadelic bassist was supposed to play at 7PM at The Other Tent and at 8:10PM had still not showed up. Feeling pretty pissed, I left to catch The Black Keys over at the main stage.

I was wondering how The Black Keys would hold a main stage, prime-time slot. Judging by the enormous crowd singing along to all of their songs, they were acquitting themselves just fine. That being said, though I dig their show, being near the back of the house watching their down-and-dirty garage rock just felt a little strange. When they finished, I headed over to check out the reunited Buffalo Springfield. Though I should have expected nothing less, the set was very heavy on the laid-back, old-school Springfield jams and less on Neil Young’s piercing guitar wails. In truth, I was bored by their set and, with lightning cracking in the sky, I decided it wasn’t worth risking electrocution over some Dad-rock.

When the storm passed, I headed back to the main stage to watch a bit of headliner Eminem before going to work for the night. I am not a fan of Eminem’s newer work (and his older stuff mostly hasn’t aged well) but I still had some high hopes since his reputation as a live rapper is pretty much unrivaled (this is the guy who got famous dismantling other MCs in rap-battles back in Detroit). But when Em took the stage in front of a giant, rather lame video show, it was painfully obvious how much he was relying on backing vocals and his hype man. It could have just been lousy sound, but really, the MC’s live mic should always be at least AS loud as the backing track, or else it just seems like he or she is lip syncing, which is exactly how it looked at Eminem’s show. As my friend Scott eloquently encapsulated Enimen’s set: “It’s just not what I expect from a Bonnaroo headliner” and, more to the point, “it’s mad cheesy.” Agreed.

Once again, it was time to transition from fan to professional, so I headed to That Tent to shoot Dr. John and the Original Meters. This was a highly buzzed about show around the festival, since the band was going to be playing Destively Bonnaroo, the record which lends the festival its name. Indeed, the band’s performance of the record was the exact old-school funk that the overflowing crowd was expecting. The downside is that the record is very short and that the band decided to redo its stage set-up halfway through its allotted time to bring in more performers. The set-change took almost 20 minutes and the second part of the set just seemed a bit to New Orleans-y mellow for a late night show.

After Dr. John and crew finished up the stage was reset for tweaker-fave, electro jammers STS9. After shooting The Disco Biscuits last year, I was dreading another long, long detour into this genre but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by STS9. Their undeniably catchy dance-rock and psychedelic light show was like catnip to the young, glow-stick clad crowd. Their set lasted around 2 hours, and I dug the entire thing… and then the band returned for an encore which lasted almost another hour. By the time they finished up at 5:45am, I was pretty sick of them, but the crowd was with them almost to the very end.

SUNDAY:

Sunday at Bonnaroo was my only day to be purely a music lover and not an employee, so in spite of getting almost no sleep, I headed back into the festival. The heat had finally broken and the mood inside the festival was much mellower, probably because the only people left standing were the folks who knew how to pace themselves throughout the weekend, and because super-hippies Widespread Panic were headlining the day.

First up I went to check out Swedish psychadelic folk rockers Junip, who turned out to be the pleasant surprise of the festival for me. Entertaining a surprisingly large crowd at The Other Tent, the band’s good vibes were contagious, and they seemed genuinely happy to see the audience clapping along and dancing to their head-bobbing grooves. Lead singer Jose Gonzalez thanked the crowd several times, and very likely walked away from Sunday at Bonnaroo with a lot of new fans.

From Junip I braved the large crowd at the Which Stage for Iron & Wine. I have already made my issues with the Which Stage clear, and the crappy sound and sight lines really compromised this set for me. That being said, Iron & Wine have made the odd transition from a Sam Beam-with-a-guitar folk outfit to a Sam Beam-fronting-a-15-piece-psychadelic-jamband in mostly successful fashion. Almost every song was almost unrecognizable from their recorded counterparts, and while not every new arrangement worked, it did lend the set an unpredictable energy. The nearly 15 minute version of “Wolves (Song of the Shepheard’s Dog)” was stunning. I had a great moment with some annoying, fratty bros standing next to me talking shit about the band during the slow, folky opening of the song. As the tune progressed into to an acid jazz bridge and a classic rock, guitar and sax solo-ing climax, the guys were pumping their fists and screaming “woo!” Who’da thunk, Iron & Wine would ever get that kind of reaction?

I ducked backstage and headed to the What Stage to watch the beginning of Robert Plant and the Band of Joy. I had shot them earlier this year for “The Artist’s Den” and really dug that show, but at Bonnaroo the former Zeppelin front man really brought the thunder. After opening with a few Zeppelin songs (which were intriguingly spun into galloping Americana versions) the band broke out some songs from their new record which played exceptionally well to the afternoon crowd. Of all the sets I left early, I really wish I could have stayed longer at this one.

The reason I left was to go check out Explosions in the Sky, the legendary Austin post-rockers who essentially invented the sound of music that I tend to enjoy the most. I had never seen these guys play, and it was every bit as epic as one would expect. Drawing a massive crowd outside the This Tent, Explosions unfurled many new tunes from their latest Take Care Take Care Take Care along with old favorites from earlier albums and the game-changing Friday Night Lights soundtrack. Really, it’s pretty impressive for an instrumental post-rock band to get the kind of ecstatic reception that Explosions in the Sky received. Though they finished 15 minutes early (as one of the members who came back to answer the audience “encore” cry, the band really enjoyed their time, but as good Texans, they had to go watch the Dallas Mavericks pummel the hated Miami Heat in the NBA finals), Explosions in the Sky were a fitting end to Bonnaroo for me.

I had to skip headliners Widespread Panic because I had to make it back to Knoxville before driving all the way back to New York on Monday, but this was probably my favorite Sunday of the three Bonnaroos I have been to.

MONDAY:

On the 14 hour ride home, I have to admit, I was already looking forward to next year’s Roo, fantasizing about the bands who would play and who I might get to shoot.

Sidebar: Never eat at a Waffle House and a TGIF’s on the same day. Awful, awful idea.

It seems a bit silly to get worked up over the Academy Awards. After all, it’s a relatively small group of film professionals voting on their favorite films, and who says their opinion is any more valid than the New York Film Critics or the Golden Globes or anyone else? But the fact is, there’s an undeniable prestige to the Award, even though their decisions are often perplexing to true film buffs. For me, it’s even more frustrating when, as they might this year, the Academy nominates a gaggle of truly groundbreaking films and then proceeds to shower much less ambitious films with Oscars. But I digress:

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Javier Barden in Biutiful

Jeff Bridges in True Grit

Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network

Colin Firth in The King’s Speech

James Franco in 127 Hours

Not a single weak performance in the group, but Colin Firth is a shoe-in for the Oscar: Not only did many think he deserved to win last year (myself included) for the heartbreaking A Single Man, but he’s playing right up the Academy’s alley this year by playing a British monarch — a monarch that overcomes a disability, to boot. Eisenberg’s astonishing performance in The Social Network is probably too intellectual, Bridges in True Grit too weird, Bardem in Biutiful too bleak. If voters could bring themselves to watch James Franco cut off his own arm in 127 Hours, I think he could have a legitimate shot, but I don’t think enough voters will dare.

Should Win: Eisenberg

Will Win: Firth

They Forgot: the funny and empathetic work of Robert Duvall in the wry Get Low

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right

Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole

Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine

An uncommonly strong field for this category (it’s about time!) but it really looks like it’s down to Natalie Portman vs. Annette Bening. Kidman, Lawrence and Williams will just be happy to be nominated to bring attention to their small films. Bening anchored one of the most successful indie-comedies of 2010, The Kids are All Right, with sharp wit and great empathy. But Natalie Portman simply blew the doors off theaters with her masterful performance in Black Swan – from its extreme physicality to its constant shifts in tone, Portman gives the best performance of anyone, male or female, period, in 2010.

Should Win: Portman

Will Win: Portman

They Forgot: Carey Mulligan is heartbreaking in the quiet science fiction tale Never Let Me Go

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Christian Bale in The Fighter

John Hawkes in Winter’s Bone

Jeremy Renner in The Town

Mark Ruffalo in The Kids Are All Right

Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech

It’s hard to deny that Christian Bale’s work in The Fighter is extremely impressive – he completely transformed his body, his vocal cadence, and his hairline. And though it pains me to say it because he’s one of my favorite actors, but Bale’s work in The Fighter is just the kind of broad overacting the Academy can’t resist. Bale’s been putting up brilliant work since American Psycho, and I’m happy that he’ll finally win an Oscar, but I’ll consider this a make-up award and be happy. Bale’s only real competition is Rush’s semi-leading role in The King’s Speech, but I think Bale’s a shoe-in. Mark Ruffalo put up what I thought was the best performance in this category, but I’m guessing voters will find his part too lightweight to consider.

Should Win: Ruffalo

Will Win: Bale

They Forgot: Ben Mendelsohn as the sociopathic, truly terrifying Uncle Pope in Aussie import Animal Kingdom

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Amy Adams in The Fighter

Helena Bohnam Carter in The King’s Speech

Melissa Leo in The Fighter

Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit

Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom

Though she has no chance, I love seeing Jacki Weaver here – Animal Kingdom was one of the best films of the year and hopefully people will check out the film on DVD and witness Weaver’s stunning work as a remorseless matriarch of a downtrodden crime family. Here’s my thinking in this most up-for-grabs category: Leo’s shrill overacting and Adams more subtle role will divide voters eager to reward The Fighter, Bohnam Carter will ciphon off die-hard King’s Speech fans even though her role in completely insubstantial, and newcomer (and, really, lead actress) Hailee Steinfeld from the very highly regarded True Grit will be the shocking winner.

Should Win: Adams

Will Win: Steinfeld

They Forgot: Keira Knightley was brilliantly icy and complex in the completely overlooked Never Let Me Go

Best Director

Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan

David O. Russell for The Fighter

Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech

David Fincher for The Social Network

Joen and Ethan Coen for True Grit

Allow me to gripe for a minute – it’s inconceivable to me that the Academy could consider Inception a nominee for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and a half-dozen tech awards and NOT consider Christopher Nolan one of the five best directors this year. Nolan is a big-picture visionary and this snub will be discussed similarly to the previous snubs of Hitchcock, Kubrick and Scorsese. I have a feeling that the Academy will further salt the wound by ignoring indie-provocateur David O. Russell, masochistic maestro Darren Aronosfky, spotless craftsmen Joel and Ethan Coen and the masterful conducting of David Fincher in honor of the distracting camera angles and maudlin direction of newcomer Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech. I hope I’m wrong and Fincher pulls it out for his mesmerizing work on The Social Network (seriously, think about that film without his guidance and how talky and static it could have been) but I think Hooper wins it this time.

Will Win: Hooper

Should Win: Aronofsky

They Forgot: Christopher Nolan for Inception; see above

Best Picture

Black Swan

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids Are All Right

The King’s Speech

127 Hours

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter’s Bone

People complained again this year about awarding 10 nominees for Best Picture rather than the more traditional 5. But let’s really examine the quality of the 10 choices and celebrate: the ripe, provocative horror/suspense masterpiece Black Swan; the quirky against-all-odds sports flick The Fighter; the insanely ambitious, instant classic blockbuster Inception; the sharply observed, laugh out loud progressive comedy The Kids are All Right; the inspirational, artistic, occasionally bloody survival tale 127 Hours; the zeitgeist nailing, fast talking, symphonic, intellectual The Social Network; the Bergman-meets-Great Escape trilogy capping Toy Story 3; the classically composed yet still Coen-y quirky Western True Grit; and the truly indie, wonderfully atmospheric Winter’s Bone. Of course, none of these films stand a chance next to the primo-Oscar-bait, British royalty/man overcomes disability/women in corsets/World War II softball The King’s Speech. (sigh)

Should Win: Inception

Will Win: The King’s Speech

They Forgot: No room for the masterful, Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom?

Best Original Screenplay

Another Year

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids Are All Right

The King’s Speech

The perception is that Another Year and The Fighter are both triumphs of acting over writing, and that Inception is more a technical than narrative feat (though I’d argue that it’s clearly the most well written of the nominees in terms of narrative propulsiveness). It will come down to the sharp, incisive The Kids Are All Right and the inspirational The King’s Speech. Given the verbal fisticuffs between the excellent Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth at the heart of the film, I think the King’s got this one handily.

Should Win: Inception

Will Win: The King’s Speech

They Forgot: David Michod’s consistently shocking, twisty crime thriller Animal Kingdom

Best Adapted Screenplay

127 Hours

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter’s Bone

I think The Social Network’s falling from front-runner status at the Oscars has the most to do with its lack of movie-star cast and epic scope. It’s perceived as a more talky, intellectual exercise. These qualities are exactly what have led the film to being seen as primarily a writing accomplishment, and I feel like the Academy will surely recognize Aaron Sorkin’s brilliantly quotable script. True Grit and Toy Story 3 could shock, but I don’t think so.

Should Win: The Social Network

Will Win: The Social Network

They Forgot: The cerebral, slow burning science fiction tale Never Let Me Go

Best Animated Feature

How to Train Your Dragon

The Illusionist

Toy Story 3

The surprisingly stirring and beautiful How to Train Your Dragon and the melancholy French hand-drawn The Illusionist will come no where near toppling Toy Story 3, a film many consider to be the finest of the beloved trilogy.

Should Win: Toy Story 3

Will Win: Toy Story 3

They Forgot: Those are my top three animated films of 2010, but Disney’s Tangled is also worth a look

Best Documentary Feature

Sometimes the documentary branch makes outlandish choices, but I don’t see how they ignore Charles Furgeson’s of-the-moment financial crisis doc Inside Job. There’s a chance voters could go for the utterly original and brilliant art-world (faux?) doc Exit Through the Gift Shop, but it’s doubtful.

Should Win: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Will Win: Inside Job

They Forgot: Some would say that leaving off Waiting for Superman was an oversight, but to me that preachy film deserves to be an also-ran

Best Cinematography

Black Swan

Inception

The King’s Speech

The Social Network

True Grit

Should Win: Wally Pfister’s big-screen compositions helped create the year’s most memorable visual imagery in Inception

Will Win: It’s a crime that Roger Deakins has never won an Oscar (look at his credits on IMDB if you don’t know him) and I think he finally will for True Grit

They Forgot: Mike McDonough’s minimalist landscapes were the strongest part of Winter’s Bone

Best Costume Design

Alice in Wonderland

I Am Love

The King’s Speech

The Tempest

True Grit

Should Win: If there’s one thing that The King’s Speech got right, it was its gorgeously details period costumes

Will Win: The King’s Speech, in a walk-away

They Forgot: Black Swan; the ballet outfits alone are stunning

Best Film Editing

Black Swan

The Fighter

The King’s Speech

127 Hours

The Social Network

Should Win: It takes a master to keep up with Aaron Sorkin’s words, Trent Reznor’s music and David Fincher’s direction – Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall are those masters for The Social Network

Will Win: It’s a squeaker, but in the end I think the Academy will recognize the integral strength of The Social Network’s editing

They Forgot: Inception: Really? If NOTHING else, Inception, especially it’s last 45 minutes, is a bona-fide master class in editing

Best Make-Up

Barney’s Verison

The Way Back

The Wolfman

Should Win: I haven’t seen any of the three, but supposedly The Way Back is stunning

Will Win: The late Rick Baker gets a lifetime achievement award for The Wolfman

They Forgot: The iconic make-up in Black Swan

Best Original Score

How to Train Your Dragon

Inception

The King’s Speech

127 Hours

The Social Network

Should Win: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross created an avant garde, propulsive, completely integral music experience for The Social Network

Will Win: I really, really want to believe they vote for Reznor, but my gut tells me they go for the more traditional score for The King’s Speech

They Forgot: It was deemed ineligible, but Clint Mansell’s score for Black Swan was an integral character in the film

Best Song

“Coming Home” from Country Strong

“I See the Light” from Tangled

“If I Rise” from 127 Hours

“We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3

Should Win: “I See The Light” is good, old-school Disney balladry at its best in Tangled

Will Win: Overall support for Toy Story 3 carries “We Belong Together” home

They Forgot: Any of the hilariously goofy songs by Sex Bomb-omb in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Best Sound Editing

Inception

Toy Story 3

Tron: Legacy

True Grit

Unstoppable

Should Win: The all-enveloping Inception

Will Win: Can’t see voters ignoring Inception

They Forgot: Black Swan was as much an aural experience as a visual one

Best Sound Mixing

Inception

The King’s Speech

Salt

The Social Network

True Grit

Should Win: The verbal and musical fireworks of The Social Network

Will Win: Guessing the old-school thrill of classical music playing over montages will net The King’s Speech this win

They Forgot: The brilliant, bombastic Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Best Visual Effects

Alice in Wonderland

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows

Hereafter

Inception

Iron Man 2

Should Win: Inception; rotating hallway

Will Win: Inception; Paris folds in on itself

They Forgot: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World; probably the most inventive use of graphic special effects ever put to screen

I haven’t seen any of the nominees for Best Foreign Film, Best Documentary Short, Best Live Action Short, or Best Animated Short, so I have no comment. Good luck to the nominees though and I hope the best in each category is recognized.

Top Ten Movies of 2010:

Honorable Mention:

James Franco is brilliant in Danny Boyle’s electric, inspiring 127 Hours; Robert Duvall and Bill Murray excel in the great-looking, wry Get Low; animation for adults in the somber, moving The Illusionist; excellent ensemble acting enlivens one of the year’s best screenplays in The Kids Are All Right; unique, spectacular special effects and incredibly creative direction by Edgar Wright in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

10.       How to Train Your Dragon

Though 3D backlash was in full effect in 2010, How To Train Your Dragon reminded us that, when wielded with creativity and verve, the technique can be breathtaking. And though the film’s remarkable flying sequences are alone worth the price of admission, the human/animal friendship at the heart of the film will touch anyone who has connected emotionally with a pet.

9.         True Grit

After the surreal, highly personal Jewish-suburban black comedy A Serious Man, no one was quite sure to expect from the Coen Brothers’ follow-up, a remake of the John Wayne western, True Grit. Would it be a hard-hitting revisionist version, a la No Country For Old Men, or would it be a comedic deconstruction – an oatier Big Lebowski. The answer is: Neither. True Grit is as straightforward a film as the Coens have ever done, but by coaxing great performances out of their cast, finely stylizing the period dialogue, and crafting gorgeous shot after gorgeous shot, the film sits comfortably within the team’s impeccable oeuvre.

8.         Never Let Me Go

Certainly one of the year’s most divisive films, veteran music video director Mark Romanek’s slow, stately drama allows its sci-fi revelations to dawn slowly, quietly, while always keeping a keen eye on the life-long relationship between three characters – Kathy (a deeply empathetic Carey Mulligan), Tommy (wonderfully wounded Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (played with icy fatalism by Keira Knightley). Rife with difficult moral questions and socio-economic undertones, Never Let Me Go would be a worthy companion to the handsome, underrated 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca.

7.         Exit Through the Gift Shop

Simultaneously a fascinating behind the scenes look at the street art movement and perhaps the ultimate hoax perpetuated on its behalf, Exit Through the Gift Shop, directed by anonymous street art superstar Banksy, turns the film’s questionable validity into a powerful statement on the meaning of art in the 21^st century. Did Thierry Guetta, a video artist with unprecedented access to the street art underground, actually become “Mr. Brainwash,” a painfully derivative artist who made millions copying Banksy’s work? Was it a hoax between Guetta and Banksy to expose the shallowness of the art gallery culture? Is Guetta even real? Is Guetta actually Banksy (who is only seen in silhouette)? The genius of Exit Through the Gift Shop, right down to its playfully subversive title, is that it’s slippery relationship with reality forces the audience to reevaluate its own perceptions of modern art, art reproduction, and documentary film.

6.         Blue Valentine

At first glance, Blue Valentine is another miserablist indie-flick where terrible things happen to Great Actors. But the film, directed in an auspicious debut by Derek Ciafrance, slowly gets under your skin, with the doomed relationship at its center taking on more compelling nuance that makes its dissolution all the more devastating. Shot in beautiful shallow focus with a slow-burning soundtrack by indie-darlings Grizzly Bear, the film flashes back and forth between the courtship and ultimate decline of Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy’s (Michelle Williams) romance. What makes the film unique, and ultimately sticks with you long afterward, is the slow dawning that in spite of their powerful chemistry, these lovers were never right for each other, that the house of cards was collapsing as it was being built. Gosling’s performance is at times purposefully irritating but ultimately thunderously powerful, and Williams fills the screen with the quiet dignity and poignant resignation.

5.         Toy Story 3

Twenty years from now, we’ll look back in awe at the incredible Pixar win streak, in which the animation studio reinvested its financial capital into increasingly risky and unusual projects that were massive hits that flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Because, of course, no one would see a movie about a rat that cooks (Ratatouille), or a depressing movie about death that also features a flying house and talking dogs (Up), or a near-silent slapstick comedy about the apocalypse (Wall-E), right? And there’s no way anyone would tolerate a three-quel where beloved characters face bleak questions of mortality and the nature of being that would be more at home in a Bergman film than a 3D animated family feature, right? And yet, Toy Story 3 became the studio’s biggest film to date, piggy-backing sharply tuned puns and a hilarious slapstick Great Escape into what ultimately amounts to a narrative of death and enlightenment. Toy Story 3 may be the studio’s greatest artistic coup, and with its ending that reduced many grown adults to sobs, could be a fitting farewell to an unprecedented run of highly successful and artistically ambitious projects.

4.            Animal Kingdom

A tiny Australian thriller that plays like a full-bodied 1970s crime epic, Animal Kingdom, of all the small indie movies I saw this year, was the one that most deserved a wider audience. Directing and co-written, pitch-perfectly and confidently, by newcomer David Michod, Animal Kingdom follows a family of bank robbers, but only after they’ve committed their crimes. The film takes place in the crucible of the family home, where tensions between brothers and their den-mother (Jacki Weaver, whose warmth conceals an ice-cold heart) are enflamed by an aggressive police force and the return of quietly sociopathic Uncle Pope (Ben Mendelsohn in an Oscar-worthy, genuinely scary performance). In the post-Tarantino/Michael Mann world, it’s hard to craft a crime film that feels new, but Animal Kingdom pulls it off in spades – no other film this year shocked me more consistently with its twisty plot, kept me so in the moment with suspense that each turn of events felt natural but somehow out of left-field.

3.         The Social Network

Without question the movie of the moment – has there been a recent film more analyzed, commented on, and praised than David Fincher’s epochal The Social Network? But here’s the movie’s dirty little secret, something that may not be evident in all the fawning overhype – The Social Network is a damn fun, a damn entertaining, movie-movie. Shepherded by Aaron Sorkin’s script, which is spring-loaded with cutting verbal daggers, and a uniformly brilliant cast (bonus points as casting the surprisingly excellent Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, the creator of music-industry killer Napster), The Social Network writs small the generational, social shift symbolized by the rise of Facebook, finding overarching meaning within the very small story of the friendship then rivalry between Mark Zuckerberg (tremendous Jesse Eisenberg, in the year’s best male performance) and Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). Of course, The Social Network is about the relocation of socializing to virtual space, about class conflict, about business and backstabbing, about sexual jealously, about soulless capitalists and lawsuits, and so on. But in the hands of David Fincher, with a huge lift from editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and especially music composers Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, The Social Network moves like a verbally charged thriller, charging forward with the force of a new social world, that moves forward as a fluid, unpredictable force that creates, and is created, almost simultaneously.

2.         Black Swan

Accusations by the scattered critics of Darren Aronofsky’s masterpiece have included misogyny, exploitation and campiness. As much as I believe everyone is entitled to their opinion, I think these people just didn’t understand Black Swan. Those blinded by the whirling, trashy surface of the film could completely miss what’s going on beneath the skin. By going head-first down the rabbit hole into the cinematic world of Z-grade psycho-sexual thriller, the film emerges as not only a sublimely artistic commentary on the genre, but also manages to be a shining example of everything those movies do right. Revolving around, and taking place more or less in the head of, perfectionist ballerina Nina Sayers (a fearless and brilliant Natalie Portman, the performance of 2010), Black Swan breaks down and shatters the invisible pressures, the societal-imposed neuroses, of the creation of the “perfect” female identity. But as rich and fascinating that the film’s gender politics are, Black Swan is first and foremost a thriller; at times, damn close to a traditional horror movie – there are images from Black Swan that still keep me up at night. Aronofsky, in his best outing as a director, conducts the chaos to a relentless, go-for-broke crescendo of formal virtuosity that mirrors the unconscious, sublime perfection that Portman’s character completely loses herself trying to achieve.

1.             Inception

A deeply personal art film in the body of a giant Hollywood blockbuster, Inception is the film writer/director Christopher Nolan has been building toward since Memento. Operatic in scope and dizzying in technical prowess, Inception maps the sturdy structure of a heist film atop a dense exploration of the persistence of memory, the epistemology of the dream world and an emotionally resonant dovetailing of love and loss. Nolan’s plot of a “subconscious security” team, led by an outstanding Leonardo DiCaprio, lucidly establishes an utterly unique, complex but user-friendly narrative and visual set of rules that Inception is going to play by in its first hour, and in its second hour lets loose a symphonic montage of instantly iconic set-pieces (Paris folding in on itself, Joseph Gordon Levitt’s gravity defying fight scenes) and exponentially complex storytelling. That the film never loses its emotional balance – the touching twin narratives of DiCaprio and his lost wife, played by Marion Cotillard, and the complex relationship of a dying mogul and his son (the late Pete Posthelwait and Cillian Murphy) reap satisfying dividends – is remarkable considering the epic scope and fortuitous action scenes that define the film’s surface.

And if that weren’t enough, Inception could also be read as Nolan’s ultimate thesis on the filmmaking process – the creation of a dream-scape by a cooperative group of technicians and artists to implant an idea, an emotion, deep in the mind of the audience. (Could that spinning top at the end be our collective totem? Think about it.) Inception is a shining example, like 2001, Blade Runner, and Dark City before it, of Hollywood science-fiction filmmaking at its most ambitious and transcendent, a new classic and by far my favorite, most rewarding and awe-inspiring, film of 2010.