FIRST LOOK AT THE 2008 OSCAR NOMINATIONS

By Graham Young on Jan 23, 09 12:34 AM

WARNING: As per my review of Frost/Nixon in today's Birmingham Mail, if you click on the link below you will read a 'spoiler'. I've tucked it away in case you want to see the film first, but it details how screenwriter completely made up the most key part of the film!

The movies can be a cruel world.

When today's Oscars were announced there was one name missing from the list. Again.

And that is our very own Michael Sheen.

For Frost/Nixon to be nominated for best picture and best director and for Frank Langella to (deservedly) get a best actor nod is to overlook the contribution made by the impressively-versatile Mr Sheen.

He was similarly ignored when it came to handing out prizes for The Queen, in which he was so brilliant as Tony Blair, yet Helen Mirren was the one to get all of the glory!

One assumes that the voters on the other side of the pond didn't realise just how good his interpretation of David Frost is in the film, since neither Sheen nor Langella are doing impersonations a la Mike Yarwood.

If this is true, then he's got no chance of making an impression with his forthcoming take on Brian Clough in The Damned United which is out this spring. But I reckon this could be his best performance yet.

Meanwhile, Kate Winslet has just got the one Oscar tilt, for The Reader, which has been given more heavyweight nods than her other film Revolutionary Road (out Jan 30) which I preferred.

At least she's in the best actress category this time after the nonsense of her being in the best supporting actress category for it at the Golden Globes, but it still doesn't take away the fact that a different actress altogether should have played her older character (just as she didn't play her older self in Titanic!).

Good to see that Mickey Rourke is up for best actor in The Wrestler.

As I said in my review last week, if he doesn't win you should ask for your money back at the bookies!

Keep reading this column for some more thoughts and views on this year's Oscar nominations which I'll be posting over the next few days.

Remember, if you'd followed just my winning tips in last year's Mail, you could have had odds of almost 40-1 with Ladbrokes.

Of course, I can't promise a repeat performance, but it'll be fun discussing the runners and riders over the next few days.

Milk and Frost/Nixon are both out today, Friday, so check out my reviews in today's Birmingham Mail to see why I've given them both four stars and not five.

Another film out today with a leading nomination is Rachel Getting Married - for which Anne Hathaway has deservedly been nominated for best actress.

But there's another reason for seeing this film. There's an actor in it throughout called Mather Zickel (he plays Kieran) who is the absolute double of BBC WM's star breakfast presenter Phil Upton.

The likeness is incredible and, if you know Phil, I defy you not to laugh every time Mather is on screen.

Now, click on the link below to read about Frost / Nixon taking liberty with the truth, but don't look if you want to avoid spoiling the film before you've seen it.

FROST/NIXON takes two major liberties considering it's a film based on taped interviews.
The first is that the Watergate element came in the middle of Frost's original interrogations. Fair enough to move that, perhaps, for dramatic reasons.
But the bit that screenwriter Peter Morgan has completely made up is... Nixon's phone call to Frost. This is such a pivotal scene that it spoiled the film for me when I found out shortly after watching it. I'd been completely taken in by it all, but I think it's wrong for Hollywood to play around with the facts like this. Hence I've given the film four stars and not five in my review in today's Birmingham Mail.