Oscar Nominees: Good Work, Fellas

Not Oscar's nominees, no, per the photo - but then I know that AMPAS are protective of any and all reproductions of their famous statuette, whereas I do hope Sesame Street are happy to see Oscar the Grouch show up anywhere, as I certainly am and as I imagine those two tourists were too...
No, ordinarily this blog finds it best to yank down the earmuffs and the eyeshades round Oscar Nominations time - an announcement that only marks the end of one round of Drivel being talked across All Media, prior to the commencement of a fresh Drivel festival. But, having glanced at this year's noms list, with a special interest in one or two parties, I have to say I can't remember a year when so many of the Good Guys seem to have won (if you consider the taking-part as winning, which sadly most people don't...)
One can't but be pleased, for example, to see Werner Herzog and Peter Gabriel both getting recognised. Will they both go to the ceremony? They should ride in the limo together, talk about some stuff on the way... Elsewhere, good to see two pictures highly praised at Cannes - the gentlemanly Laurent Cantet's The Class, and Waltz With Bashir - go into the Best Foreign Film pot. I would imagine Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy and Anthony Dod Mantle will be a gang for the night as part of the Slumdog Millionaire set, and it seems to me they deserve all the praise in the world for their respective inspired inputs to that picture. This blog need say little more on the subject of Sean Penn and Milk save an extra hearty congrats to Gus Van Sant, who served a long stint on this project, and to Focus Features. And I imagine the 13 nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button must be close to some kind of record? I'll be writing about that picture at length elsewhere, but as with the others above, I think in this case the recognition and applause for the quality of the filmmaking is deeply, deeply deserved. As it so often isn't...

Archived Richard T Kelly film reviews for Sight & Sound

I first started reviewing movies for Sight & Sound magazine in the Autumn of 1998, just after my first book Alan Clarke was published. Actually I'd never much fancied the idea of reviewing: I just wanted to write a long piece about Warren Beatty's movie Bulworth which was due for release around then too. In order to do so at S&S (no other outlet would have me at that point) I had to first earn my spurs by synopsizing and commenting on a few other new releases that I was less keen on. So I did that, got to do my Bulworth piece (it was less than I hoped...), and carried on reviewing duties there for a further 9 years. As they say on CBBC's Me Too, where did the time go?
I see that some of those old reviews have been archived at the BFI site, and some of them still read ok. I include links as follows so you can decide for yourself. I speak of ones I did on the Brad Pitt version of The Iliad, Troy, Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday, Michael Winterbottom's In This World, Le Fils by the Dardenne brothers, and Like Father by Newcastle's Amber collective. Above all I'm glad I got to write about The Darkest Light by Simon Beaufoy and Bille Eltringham, which is an absolute treasure of a movie that ought to be far better known and celebrated.