There’s absolutely no rest for the wicked. The dust is barely settling on the 2008 Oscars (they represent the films of 2008, not 2009, people) and already people are already looking ahead to next year (the Oscars that take place in 2010 for the calendar year of 2009). Rope of Silicon’s list looks pretty good to us and includes a lot of films we mentioned in our 60 Most Anticipated Films of 2009 list. We’re posting his picks with edited/change parenthetical where applicable with a *.
* “Biutiful” (Alejandro González Iñárritu with Javier Bardem)
* “The Lovely Bones” (*Peter Jackson directs Mark Wahlberg, Ryan Gosling was “fired”)
* Broken Embraces (*Penelope Cruz with Pedro Almodvar, here’s the trailer)
* Nine (Rob Marshall’s new musical with a fleet of talent along for the ride)
* “Adam” (Max Mayer’s dramedy is already stirring some buzz)
* “The Ghost” (Roman Polanski won’t enter the U.S. but his films will)
* “A Serious Man” (*The Coen brothers directinga bunch of unknowns” character actors. Perfect!
*Up In the Air” (Jason Reitman has George Clooney along for his next trip to corporate America. Here’s our script review)
* “Whatever Works” (*Woody Allen and Larry David together. Comes out in the summer)
* “The Tree of Life” (*Terrence Malick with Sean Penn and Brad Pitt. Plenty of [vague] details here, but it appears that Penn plays Pitt’s father.)
Silicon does 10 more for “fun speculation too.
* “Julie & Julia” (Meryl Streep is in it, can’t ignore it)
* “Agora” (Alejandro Amenabar with Rachel Weisz)
* “Brothers” (*Jim Sheridan directs Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal – a film that seems to have been delayed and has been troubled)
* “Edge of Darkness” (*The return of Mel Gibson after some 6-7 odd years, WB just picked it up)
* “The Informant” (*Steven Soderbergh with Matt Damon, in a black comedy)
* Amelia (*A biopic about Amelia Earhart with Hilary Swank; one Playlist member already saw an early cut and said it needs work)
* “Cheri” (Michelle Pfeiffer is already getting early buzz)
* “An Education” (Early festival buzz, but sounds like an actor’s piece)
* “Shutter Island” (Martin Scorsese’s latest, but based on the book it’s going to be a close one)
* “The Men Who Stare at Goats” (Another George Clooney feature with “Good Night, and Good Luck” scripter Grant Heslov at the helm)
While he does mention Paul Greengrass “Green Zone,” Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” (the script is great), Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” “Sin Nombre” and “The Road” with Viggo Mortensen, he doesn’t seem to have as much faith in them which strikes us as a little odd. We are glad that “Inglourious Basterds” isn’t anywhere on his list. Anyone who thinks that movie is getting anywhere near Oscar gold is probably a naive fanboy.
We’ve pretty much have an in-depth look at all these films (save “An Education,” “Agora” and a few others) in our aforementioned Most Anticipated piece, so if you want a deeper-dive of info go there. In Contention’s got a long, in-depth piece too wish they would use some bolds or headers to break it up though.