Hello and welcome to the all-new Loud And Quiet film blog. We know what you’re thinking: the internet needs another movie blogger like it needs more amateur porn. This however is the online sibling of the film column as featured in your friendly neighbourhood free music tabloid, so it’s an opportunity for us to post more up-to-date film reviews and news to peacefully co-exist with the printed version’s monthly movie catch-up. To kick off our inaugural post, we thought we’d buck the general trend and… talk about the Oscars: As we’re kicking off afresh, it’s perhaps most sensible to start with the post-Academy Awards period when the movie year resets itself to zero once again.

We can take no great pleasure from predicting five of the top six main awards in our Oscars preview in the mag last month, seeing as this year was perhaps one of the easiest selections to predict: The acting awards all went to the heavy favourites, and the Academy didn’t spurn their chance of an historic moment for the Best Director award. Perhaps on reflection we could have better anticipated the critical mass The Hurt Locker was accumulating in the run up to its Best Picture award – for all the talk about the movie’s hype waning in the run-up, it was actually Avatar that became old news. There was a sense that Avatar’s story has now been told – it’s been the ‘biggest movie ever’ (*yes, unadjusted for inflation, we know!) for several weeks now – The Hurt Locker’s against-the-odds triumph, particularly the ‘woman succeeeding in a man’s world’ (Hollywood and/or Iraq) angle, ended up making for a much better story. And in the end, the ’story’ is what makes an Oscar night linger longest in the memory. The multiple awards for the barely-rated, let alone overrated, A Beautiful Mind made 2002 a forgettable year in many respects, but the story that year was the long-overdue acknowledgement of African-American acting talent, with Denzel Washington (Training Day) and Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball) winning the lead acting categories, and Sidney Poitier the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement award. As with eight years ago, 2010 was the perfect time for Oscar to right some of its historical wrongs… If only for a year, before getting back to the usual business.

Predictably, there are now those queueing up to snipe at The Hurt Locker, just as they did with Slumdog Millionaire: ‘Kathryn Bigelow should have denounced Iraq’ (as if that really was necessary or in any way likely when her film had treated the audience with the intelligence to draw their own conclusions);that the movie is a ‘neo-con wet dream’ (clearly didn’t actually watch the movie, or at least pay attention to anything that happened); that the movie lacked a traditional narrative arc (as opposed to Avatar – the very movie those exact same critics were deriding as clichéd); or that the film took some liberties with the recreation of military procedurals for dramatic effect (Heaven forfend! Anyone would think it was an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a loose-cannon bomb disposal expert who played by his own rules…).

Then there’s of course the usual accusations of Hollywood insularity, clearly written prior to the event in the expectation of an Avatar clean sweep, and amended post-awards to overlook the fact that they’ve chosen an independent Best Picture that barely scraped back it’s budget at the worldwide box office – ahead of the biggest money-making*, game-changing studio movie ever made (*yes, Gone With The Wind, $4billion when adjusted for inflation, we know!). It’s as if anything other than a clean sweep for British talent every year is a damning indictment of American imperialism. Get over it – it’s an American awards ceremony: the BAFTAS are just as biased towards British talent, just as the Australian and Bollywood equivalents have every right to promote and celebrate  homegrown talent. It took 82 years for the Academy to recognise a woman Best Director, yet there were plenty of British actors, actresses, directors and production talent who were recognised in that time.

Lastly, perhaps the Academy needs rethink the expansion of the Best Picture category to 10 nominees. The show’s not known for its punchy brevity – giving over so much time to a profile on each nominee only makes the whole thing seem even longer and heightens its air of self-congratulation. More than anything though, it only serves to highlight the paucity of the 2009-10 season, far from a vintage year for cinema. Even the biggest fans of Star Trek – that includes us – have to admit that it’s far from Oscar-worthy. It would have to be another remarkable year – hello once again to 2007-08! – to make a ten-nominee category really worthwhile.

The next issue of Loud And Quiet is out on 20th March (stockists / subscribe), featuring previews of Kick-Ass and Clash of the Titans, and a DVD review of Sam Mendes’ Away We Go.