The last scattered bits of 2009 Oscar news are petering out over the Atlantic. The Guardian has Mike Leigh's Oscar week diary: Leigh, whose Happy-Go-Lucky star, Sally Hawkins, was robbed of the Best Actress nomination she was widely assumed to have coming her way, but Leigh himself somehow managed to nab a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. (This is typical of the Academy's sense of humor, since Leigh is known to develop his movies out of improvisational sessions with his cast and used to take a pass on giving himself official writing credits until he moved from television to theatrical-release films and the unions got involved.) Leigh reports that his Los Angeles cab driver "thinks that we're kidding when we say it's got only one nomination", but not because he thought that the movie deserved better: Travis Bickle had "never heard of Happy-Go-Lucky." A recurrent theme quickly develops. Told that Happy-Go-Lucky is "creeping up in the blogs and polls" and that "yesterday, the bookies' odds in London were 39-1", but Leigh can only shrug and confess that he's "convinced that Dustin Lance Black will win for Milk." His next day in town, he enjoys "breakfast in the patio cafe" with his sons, after which "we potter round Hollywood Boulevard with its stars on the sidewalk and its tacky gift shops - it feels familiar to my film-maker son Leo, who's just been shooting in Blackpool. The boys snap me with a plastic Oscar in a shop. We all agree that's the nearest I'll get to one."

Read More...