Hugo Nominations: Best Graphic Story

This is the fourth and final Hugo category I wanted to talk about, and it's the one I want to talk about the most. Hugo Awards, we need to have a talk. I think you know what it's going to be about, because we've had this exact conversation before. First, let's just quickly recap the five nominees for Best Graphic Story.

- Girl Genius, Volume 13: Agatha Heterodyne & The Sleeping City, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
- “The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who”, written by Paul Cornell, illustrated by Jimmy Broxton (Doctor Who Special 2013, IDW)
- The Meathouse Man, adapted from the story by George R.R. Martin and illustrated by Raya Golden (Jet City Comics)
- Saga, Volume 2, written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
- “Time”, Randall Munroe (XKCD)

The Best Graphic Novel intervention takes place under the cut.

Hugo Nominations: Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

This Hugo category is often a ridiculous one, because a particularly popular series might dominate the nominees and fans often get together and nominate some really ridiculous choices. Previous nominees in this category have included a joke song about having sex with Ray Bradbury and an MTV awards acceptance speech. With a pedigree like that it's a little hard to take this category seriously.

This year's nominees continue this trend, in that two of the five works listed aren't even science fiction. Of the two, An Adventure in Space and Time is probably the most worthy, however as with Gravity in the long-form category I find it hard to support a docudrama winning an award for science fiction. The same goes for Peter Davison's The Five(ish) Doctors, which is a video spoof made to coincide with Doctor Who's 50th anniversary. That leaves two episodes of Doctor Who, and one each of Game of Thrones and Orphan Black.

Hugo Nominations: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

Best Dramatic Presentation is one of the Hugo categories I always pay attention to: I'm actually fairly poorly read as a reader of science fiction, comparatively speaking, so in any given year I'm unlikely to have a clue what each nominated short story is like. Films, however: these I know. In this case I've seen all five nominees for the Long Form section. They are:

• Frozen screenplay by Jennifer Lee, directed by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee (Walt Disney Studios)
• Gravity written by Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (Esperanto Filmoj; Heyday Films; Warner Bros.)
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire screenplay by Simon Beaufoy & Michael Arndt, directed by Francis Lawrence (Color Force; Lionsgate)
• Iron Man 3 screenplay by Drew Pearce & Shane Black, directed by Shane Black (Marvel Studios; DMG Entertainment; Paramount Pictures)
• Pacific Rim screenplay by Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro, directed by Guillermo del Toro (Legendary Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney Double Dare You)

I think far and away the best film of the five nominees is Gravity, but I do question whether it qualifies as science fiction. Apart from a few bits of what I'm told are 'shaky physics', there's nothing in the film that wouldn't happen in the real world. I know that there is scope within the Hugo rules for 'or related' genre works, but that's the sort of catch-all with which I don't really agree. Truth is, from this shortlist I think it's almost a lock to win.

Hugo Nominations: Best Novel

The nominations for the 2014 Hugo Awards, which form a key part of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, have been announced. They're actually pretty interesting this year for a whole pile of reasons, none of which are exceptionally promising, but at least there's grist for a lot of late night conversations about the relative merits of what's nominated.

I don't read a huge number of short stories each year, so a lot of the professional categories aren't something I can speak to. I thought I'd post up some thoughts on categories where I do have an opinion, however, starting with Best Novel.

This is a very surprising shortlist to me. The oddest omission I think is Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Everyone had been praising it as the best work of Gaiman's in years, and yet it didn't even make the top five. The inclusion of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's The Wheel of Time saga is even stranger, however, taking advantage of an old rule about serialised novels to justify nominating all 14 novels published over the course of 23 years.

Oscar predictions: how did I go?

About two weeks ago I posted my predictions on who would win the Oscars today, so I figured it was only fair to see how many of the 24 nominations I got right. So here we go:

Best Picture:
What won? 12 Years a Slave.
What did I say would win? 12 Years a Slave.

Best Director:
Who won? Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.
Who did I say would win? Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.

Best Actor:
Who won? Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club.
Who did I say would win? Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club.

Best Actress:
Who won? Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine.
Who did I say would win? Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine.

Best Supporting Actor:
Who won? Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer's Club.
Who did I say would win? Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips.

Best Supporting Actress:
Who won? Lupita N'Ongo, 12 Years a Slave.
Who did I say would win? Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine.

Oscar predictions for 2014

I'm a big fan of the Academy Awards, and usually try to watch it each year - although it gets harder now that they only broadcast the unedited ceremony in Australia during the day, and I have a job. I don't think the Oscars in any way represent the authoritive voice on the best films, performances, scripts, etc, of any given year, but I do think they represent the changing political and personal landscape of Hollywood and the American film industry. Here are my predictions for what's going to win next month.

Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave.
Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.
Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club.
Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine.
Best Supporting Actor: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips.
Best Supporting Actress: Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine.

Wong Kar Wai's Oscar Woes

What is it that Wong Kar Wai has to do, precisely, to score an Academy Award nomination? His martial arts film The Grandmaster was Hong Kong's official selection for the Best Foreign Picture category, and indeed it was one of the nine short-listed films. When the nominations were announced earlier this morning, however, it was conspicuously absent. Wong has never been nominated, not for Best Director, not for Best Foreign Picture.

Part of the problem is the labyrinthine manner in which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) runs the Best Foreign Picture category. Each country's nominated film authority is tasked with selecting one feature to represent their nation, and the film has to have been released theatrically in its home country not in the immediate past calendar year - as is the case with the main Oscar categories - but between the start of October two years previously and the end of September in the immediate past calendar year. Once each country has submitted its film, a special AMPAS committee reviews them and selects a short-list. AMPAS members who attend special film screenings can then nominate from that short-list and subsequently vote for the winner. You're not allowed to watch the films on screener DVDs - you have to attend an official AMPAS theatrical screening to be qualified to vote.

The Pull List: 4 September 2013

Last weekend Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples' Saga was awarded the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. The graphic story category was introduced in 2009 to honour excellence in science fiction and fantasy in comic books and graphic novels, and over the past five years has been pretty roundly criticised by many (including myself) for the blinkered, non-representative choices made by the Hugo nominators. Some (again, including myself) have even been arguing that if the Hugo-voting community couldn't get its act together with recognising the best SF/F comics each year, it should probably drop the category completely rather than continuing embarrassing itself. Thankfully, in the case of 2013 I honestly think the best comic took home the prize.

So: assuming the Hugo voters are paying better attention these days, it's worth looking ahead to the 2014 Hugos and highlighting books that should probably be on the ballot by then. One example: Trillium, whose second issue drops this week. It's written and illustrated by Jeff Lemire in a beautiful abstract style that I have absolutely fallen in love with. It's also telling an intriguing story of hallucinogenic flowers, time travel, alien invasions and 1920s explorers. I'm not saying it should be guaranteed a slot in the Hugo nominations - we're only two issues in - but I am saying that if you're a person who generally nominates for the Hugo Awards, you should probably give Trillium a look. It's only two issues in and has been absolutely faultless. (5/5)

One last comment I would make about the 2013 Hugos: after the awards are announced, a full list of all nominated works are released, including the number of nominations each work received. When Carey and Gross' marvellous book The Unwritten didn't make the shortlist, I was surprised. It turns out that it received more than enough nominations to make the shortlist - had the organising committee not separated its nominations across two separate volumes and the comic in general. Poor form, Hugos. Poor form.

Under the cut: reviews of All-New X-Men, Batman, Daredevil: Dark Nights, Earth 2, The Flash, Forever Evil, Justice League Dark, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men Battle of the Atom and X-Men Legacy.

Oscar predictions: Part I

I have had a long-standing interest in the Academy Awards. They rarely give their awards to the most deserving candidates - they rarely nominate all of the most deserving candidates - but as an annual window into the world of how Hollywood thinks they're very addictive to watch. It's like a bitchy circus, with lots of insincere marketing, cynical "Oscar-bait" performances every December, and horribly unattractive ball gowns. Here are the first of my predictions for Sunday night's Academy awards, this time focusing on the four acting categories.