Download a Whole Bunch of 2009 Screenplays

A very cool list of stuff from Movie Cultists, so head over there to see the entire list. How about almost 30 screenplays from the year's most heralded movies, most of which are hoping to be in the running for the Oscars. Won't work out that way, of course, because there are only ten available slots for the Academy Awards, five for original scripts and five for adapted screenplays. But there are other awards that night, of course, and you won't see a script on this master list that isn't being talked about in some category or another. This is a great thing the studios have done, though, and for free, hell, you just can't beat this deal. Again, because Movie Cultists did the legwork on all of this, I encourage you to visit them to browse the selection of a available scripts. But here are a few you might be interested in to whet your appetite. Avatar
An Education
The Hurt Locker
The Informant!
Moon
Where the Wild Things Are

BAFTA Nominees: 'Avatar', 'Hurt Locker', 'Education'

Is Precious better than Inglourious Basterds? Well, if "Best" means best, then according to BAFTA voters, yes. I would disagree for a number of reasons, although there's no denying the strength of the performances in Precious. But it received a Best Film nomination and Basterds did not, although the other four in the running for the main prize across the pond are not unexpected.

Avatar and The Hurt Locker will have another showdown, with Up in the Air and the homegrown An Education receiving nominations, as well. And An Education is not there simply because it's British. It will be a Best Picture nominee for the Oscars, too, and rightly so. Best Director contains Tarantino but not Lee Daniels, and you'll also find Education's Lone Scherfig there, plus Neill Blomkamp. There are a couple other surprises as we go down the list (for example, I was thrilled to see Christian McKay nominated for Me and Orson Welles), and you can read all of the categories at In Contention.

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Knightley Out, Mulligan In for 'My Fair Lady'?

Apparently because the project always seemed to be too far in the future, Keira Knightley has bowed out of My Fair Lady, according to London's Daily Mail. Even without this movie, Knightly will be plenty busy for a while. Keira is currently on stage in London in a new production of Moliere's The Misanthrope and she has two other movies going into production later this year.

But the movie is still moving forward. Emma Thompson wrote the script, the producers are anxious to get it in front of cameras, but now finding a new Eliza has to be added to the to-do list that until very recently also involved finding a director. After going down dead ends like Danny Boyle and Joe Wright, Shakespeare in Love director John Madden is now taking the job, and Daily Mail links Carey Mulligan from An Education to the part.

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Even if you're the kind who waits to see everything on DVD, you have no doubt heard a thing or two about these performances. No, it was not Hollywood's best year; several of the awards favorites released in November and December miss the mark a little bit, and it was already a weak year before that. But what is fascinating to me about the performances from the past 12 months are how many new artists we met along the way.

There's no Winslet, no Day-Lewis, no Depp in this year's crowd. Of the ten we've picked, six are names almost nobody knew a year ago and a seventh would have never been pegged to be anywhere near such a collection, much less leading it. There are, in fact, only three performers you'd immediately recognize, and even one of those hadn't touched his best work in a few years. Perhaps, though, I was looking for that. Perhaps I was avoiding the Clooneys and the Freemans and the Cruzes, but I don't think so, at least not consciously. I can say in all honesty that the top half of this list came to me immediately, and of the second five, they'd all been bookmarked somewhere along the way. So it's not an effort to shortchange the work of any of the actors in Up in the Air or Invictus or Nine. These performances just meant more to me.

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The Big Picture's Top Ten Films of 2009

What makes a great film? Or better yet, what makes one film greater than another? It's impossible to answer although we can all usually agree on a few things: The Godfather is better than Jane Austen's Mafia, Casablanca beats Gigli, and Toy Story is superior to Toys.

There's never one thing that we cling to (although, certainly, in the right or wrong hands, any one thing can shift 180 degrees), but a well-written, well-directed, well-acted film tends to stand out against the average, and there's more average every year in the movies than there is good or bad. But ranking them? That's a thankless task. This list may not be like yours. All I can tell you is that these are the films that resonated loudest with me, and some longer than others, a couple not even upon first viewing. Some of them add technical achievements to that appreciation, but that isn't mandatory unless the film itself can't exist without it. I will say that I didn't love 2009 at the movies as much as I did the previous two years, and I hope to see more of the documentaries and foreign language films that have not yet made it to our shores. Those are usually a staple of my top ten lists (30% last year), but none made the cut in 2009, I'm afraid.

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