While the Oscar ceremony, the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, etc already passed well, now comes the Jameson Empire Awards 2013 that will be taking place on Sunday, March 24.

And some of the nominees that appear on the list includes: The Avengers, Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises,  and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Here are the nominees:

Best Male Newcomer:

• DOMHNALL GLEESON- ANNA KARENINA
  
• RAFE SPALL- LIFE OF PI
• STEVE ORAM- SIGHTSEERS
• SURAJ SHARMA- LIFE OF PI
• TOM HOLLAND- THE IMPOSSIBLE

Best Female Newcomer: 

• ALICE LOWE- SIGHTSEERS
  
• ALICIA VIKANDER- ANNA KARENINA
• HOLLIDAY GRAINGER- GREAT EXPECTATIONS
• QUVENZHANÉ WALLIS- BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
• SAMANTHA BARKS- LES MISERABLES

Best Comedy: 

• 21 JUMP STREET
  
• MOONRISE KINGDOM
• THE PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS!
• SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
• TED

Best Horror: 

• DARK SHADOWS
• SIGHTSEERS
• SINISTER
• THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
• THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Best Thriller: 

• ARGO
• JO NESBO’S HEADHUNTERS
• SKYFALL
• THE RAID
• ZERO DARK THIRTY

Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy: 

• DREDD
  
• LOOPER
• MARVEL AVENGERS ASSEMBLE
• PROMETHEUS
• THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

The Art of 3D:

• DREDD 3D
  
• LIFE OF PI
• MARVEL AVENGERS ASSEMBLE
• PROMETHEUS
• THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Jameson Best Actor: 

• CHRISTOPH WALTZ- DJANGO UNCHAINED
• DANIEL CRAIG- SKYFALL
• DANIEL DAY-LEWIS- LINCOLN
• MARTIN FREEMAN- THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
• ROBERT DOWNEY JR.- MARVEL AVENGERS ASSEMBLE

Best Actress: 

• ANNE HATHAWAY- THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
• JENNIFER LAWRENCE- THE HUNGER GAMES
• JESSICA CHASTAIN- ZERO DARK THIRTY
• DAME JUDI DENCH- SKYFALL
• NAOMI WATTS- THE IMPOSSIBLE

Best Director: 

• CHRISTOPHER NOLAN- THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
• JOSS WHEDON- MARVEL AVENGERS ASSEMBLE
• PETER JACKSON- THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
• QUENTIN TARANTINO- DJANGO UNCHAINED
• SAM MENDES- SKYFALL

Best British Film:

• DREDD 3D
• LES MISERABLES
• SIGHTSEERS
• SKYFALL
• THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Best Film: 

• DJANGO UNCHAINED
• MARVEL AVENGERS ASSEMBLE
• SKYFALL
• THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
• THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Coming at you like a cross between ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ and ‘Fatal Attraction’ on the way to ‘The Terminator’, Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters is a lively Norwegian thriller that poses some interesting moral dilemma’s. It’s a classic hunter becoming the hunted yarn told with real panache and is further strong evidence of the rapidly growing power of mainstream European cinema. With a crisp look and a muted color palette, the film has the gravity of earthy authenticity on it’s side that sets it fresh aside from many off the Hollywood production line.

Leading the line is Askel Hennie as ‘Roger’, a recruitment specialist who sidelines in the theft of expensive art to fund a glamorous lifestyle with his stunning wife ‘Diane’ (Synnøve Macody Lund). Enter the fray ‘Game of Thrones’ star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, a unerringly confident man who’s recently left an organisation that specialises in ‘finding’ people and what begins with gentle probing, quickly escalates to a full on chase movie, and what a unexpected chase it is. In the lead role of Roger, Askel Hennie is quite remarkable and the journey you take with him is just as remarkable. While the film has it’s fair share of shocks, it also finds the time to be surprisingly witty making it quite unusual within it’s genre. Once Roger finds himself on the run, his survival skills are tested beyond the realms of what you might expect and as his desperation becomes increasingly frantic, his attempts to evade capture become equally more unconventional.

Morally, you might struggle to pick sides with any of the characters here. Everyone seems complicit in something and guilty of a certain level of wrongdoing and although the director does prompt you to choose allegiance in the end, this is still a smart thriller with a classy set of leading performances that feels fresh and strikes another stark reminder of the good time you can have with a subtitled film. Spare us the obligatory remake Hollywood. 4.5/5

I’ve been infuriated lately by language getting trapped in some Orwellian nightmare so here’s the first of three blogs that will dissect evasions and contradictions…
 
Headhunters
Trevor Johnston is something of a cult hero of Paul Fennessy and mine for his delirious ability to find some reason to watch even the most drivelling of films when he’s writing programme notes for them. But his take on Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters in the IFI programme this month infuriated me because of its internal contradiction, which seems to me to exemplify an entire system of thinking that is lazy and inherently ridiculous. “Aksel Hennie’s roguish, Steve Buscemi-like protagonist is about to have his life turned into a Coens-style ultra-black comedy, as confident director Morten Tyldum piles on the eye-watering moments. Head-spinning plot twists are not in short supply, yet we never lose sight of the story’s basis in male emotional fragility. A Hollywood studio has optioned it, but their version won’t be anywhere near as dark and sinewy as this.” (My italics) Um, mightn’t it? Suppose the evil Hollywood studio were to persuade actual Steve Buscemi and the actual Coens to actually make this film that so resembles their shtick? Would that film not be equally as dark and sinewy? Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo after all improves on the Swedish version by using his substantial clout to introduce more texture and a slower pace so that you watch a mystery with compelling characters rather than sketched-in characters dashing thru a thriller plot. Furthermore I’ve written extensively about how Let Me In improved on Let the Right One In by making it bleaker and removing the disingenuous happy ending and manipulative bogus ambiguity of the original film. The idea that Hollywood is one vast undifferentiated garbage machine has to be got rid of, as does the notion that anything filmed in a foreign language is instantly intelligent and brilliant. It’s a lazy generalisation, akin to the hilarious motto ‘Anything said in Latin sounds profound.’ But more than that a whole mind-shift needs to happen, because it’s ridiculous to speak in tongues and dream in Hollywood when it comes to discussing cinema. The shorthand that we use to discuss cinema comes mostly from Hollywood and the movies that people love for the most part come from Hollywood; and I mean this globally, not just in Anglo-American land, look at DVD stores’ catalogues in South East Asia. Johnston uses Hollywood movie-making as reassuring reference points for a good foreign movie; before slamming Hollywood’s tackiness. It makes no sense…
 
Anonymous
Some weeks ago Anonymous attacked the Vatican’s website and left a very confused message about their motives. I’ve been hunting about for a version of that statement that didn’t look like it was either written in Italian or translated into English by someone who was illiterate in two languages because I want to give Anonymous the benefit of the doubt. I finally pinned down a reasonably coherent diatribe purporting to be from Anonymous on the International Business Times website’s report on the incident. The Vatican was attacked for preaching absurd and archaic doctrines, they said, in a rant that covered everything and anything; “You have burned books of immense historical and literary value, you barbarously executed your fiercest detractors and critics over the centuries, have denied universally deemed valid or plausible theories, have led the unwary to pay to get access to paradise with the sale of indulgences”, and so on; before ending on the muted note that the attack was “not intended to target the true Christian religion and the faithful around the world” but was aimed at the “corrupt Roman Apostolic Church and all its emanations”. Hmmm. Well, no, that doesn’t really make sense. The Church is not a different entity to the Faithful, indeed the Church Militant on earth is only part of a wider church incorporating the faithful departed who make up the Church Triumphant. So, to attack the doctrines defined by the Vatican is to attack 1 billion Catholics as being utter idiots. Which is exactly what Anonymous meant to do, only it seems that having written the bolshy part someone thought better of calling over 1 billion people utter idiots, and put in a weak semi-retraction. But this is the conduct of a weasel…. If you have the courage of your convictions then say what you mean. If you want to say that Catholics are stupid beyond belief for what they believe then say it. Don’t savour hurting Catholics by ridiculing everything that they believe, and then weasel out of responsibility for the pain you gleefully inflicted by saying that technically your words didn’t apply to Catholics just the Church. If you want the benefit of hurtful words, admit that you used them hurtfully. I had no firm opinion on whether the cyber criminals were courageous crusaders or not before this attack, but now I think they must be classified as cowardly creeps.