Who would get your vote? 2 of the nominees (the Coens and Tarantino) have won in this category before.
The Pixar nominees have previously been nominated for Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo and/or WALL-E but none have won.
The other 2 are first-time nominees.
They’re all good, but I narrowed it down to Inglorious Basterds and A Serious Man pretty quickly because they’re the most complex and involving, IMO. The Messenger is pretty straightforward, and it’s mainly all about the acting. The Hurt Locker was mainly all about the directing and editing. Up is all about the Pixar animators making you believe the characters, and the screenplay goes somewhat south after the initial husband/wife montage. I liked them all though.
I chose Inglorious Basterds, and I hope Taratino wins again.
Basterd, hands down. Tarantino delivered more tension and adrenaline with scenes of people just talking than any other movie of the year did with any amount of action. The use of multiple languages was also clever and intricate and mattered to the story (and is also one of the reasons Christoph Waltz is the biggest lock of the year in the acting categories).
The Hurt Locker was more about the direction and observation of the character than the screenplay. The movie wasn’t driven by story or dialogue, but by imagery and tone.
Up is a fucking cartoon. I cant take a screenplay for a cartoon seriously.
I haven’t seen A serious Man yet, and the Coen brothers are masterful writers, so I may be missing the boat on that one, but I’d be surprised if the pages were as good as the ones for Basterds
That is a funny point of view by someone who thinks Tarantino should win.
Much as I love Tarantino movies, they are all cartoons. I can’t recall one even vaguely real character that he has ever written.
Jackie Brown.
For those who know me, picking a Coen movie for original screenplay should hardly be a surprise…
Although, I may just watch Basterds right now, a great movie!
For me, the weakness of Tarantino’s script is in Waltz’s performance–he’s so good, that the moments without him show how slack the story often is. Make no mistake, there are some marvelously inspired setpieces, but for me, the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. The Coens may not deliver any bravura moments like Basterds does, but the film is a finely-tuned swiss watch of construction, and while its story still echoes and resonates with me months later, Inglorious virtually evaporated the instant I walked out of the theater. He’s good at finetuning moments, but I wished it was for something more substantial. As a fan of his early work, his WW2 pastiche feels like a monumental step down into irrelevancy.
bump
I’m going to have to give at least partial credit on that one to Elmore Leonard ;).