When not writing mobile phone reviews or aerating strangers on Call of Duty, I’m partial to the occasional cinema trip. Fortunately, I have seen the majority of the films nominated for the 2009 Oscars, and thought I would divulge my humble and honest opinions regarding potential winners of the various categories.

So without further ado, let’s get this show on the road!

Best Actor:

• Richard Jenkins - The Visitor
• Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
• Sean Penn - Milk
• Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler

Straight away, Brad Pitt’s nomination sticks out to me as a ‘fake nose’ nomination, a la Nicole Kidman in the Hours (and she won!). Benjamin Button is a great film and Brad Pitt is integral to its success, but as his physical form changes his is the only character that seems emotionally the same throughout.

More a feat for ‘computer technicals’ rather than acting gravitas, Pitt is simply outclassed up against the abrasive performance of Langella as Nixon, or Sean Penn’s deep and nuanced Harvey Milk.

The winner? Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, hands down. Defying the cries of stunt-casting as he plays a washed up star with one last chance to shine, he brings such an emotionally rousing and believable performance to this tale of a man who just cannot live without the cheer of the crowd. The film itself may be cliched and predictable, but is only Rourke’s brilliant work that allows it to be mentioned in the same breath as the four above.

That is why he deserves to win.

Best Supporting Actor:

• Josh Brolin - Milk
• Robert Downey Jr. - Tropic Thunder
• Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
• Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
• Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

First surprise, this is the only acting nod for Revolutionary Road! It’s got Jack and Rose back together, Mr. American Beauty directing, and the only nod is for Michael Shannon. Who? Oh, it’s because he’s “playing a mental”, leaving Kate’s Oscar tirade in Extras ringing in my ears…

For me, this is only between Ledger and Downey Jr. due to Doubt’s sensitive subject matter, and the fact they stole the show in their respective movies. Also, they were both utterly transformed. The Oscar clarion call has been ringing loud and clear for Heath’s performance as the Joker since release, and justifiably so.

The ability to take a single phrase like “Why so serious?” and cement it into cinematic history, as well as his untimely demise is testament to the depths he went to bring out such a memorable performance. He was an actor that exorcised the demons of his rom-com past, and had so much potential as a ‘real’ actor ahead of him.

Robert Downey Jr. in blackface for an Oscar? I was entirely ready to hate this performance for obvious reasons, but he is hilarious. Does the fact that his character Kirk Lazarus symbolises the crazy lengths method actors go to (see above?), and that he was the funniest thing this year make it justifiable? Not sure… Okay, I’ll give it to Ledger, but Rob deserves an honourable mention for sharing Kate’s opinion on how to bag an Oscar…

Best Actress:

• Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married
• Angelina Jolie - Changeling
• Melissa Leo - Frozen River
• Meryl Streep - Doubt
• Kate Winset - The Reader

Hathaway? Hasn’t paid her dues, still a Disney actress in many people’s eyes. People have never forgiven Mira Sorvino or Marisa Tomei for winning Oscars, and they were for Best Supporting Actress. Heads will roll if she takes it from under the noses of names like Jolie and Winslet.

As for Winslet, the irony if she wins for being in a film set during the Holocaust will not be lost on many (see above ‘Extras’ link)! I also felt her portrayal as a wife steadily broken down in Revolutionary Road was stronger than tram conductor Hanna Schmitz. But come on, six nominations and no wins? It’s about time…

However, I think Melissa Leo could clinch it with Frozen River. The relatively unknown film topped a bevy of end of year lists, and rightly so. Leo plays a hard up woman who tries to eke out a living by trafficking illegal immigrants from Canada to the US. The human aspect of this role, her turmoil between doing the right thing by her family and her fellow man against the right thing in the law’s eyes is truly moving.

As for Jolie in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling? I don’t know, it just felt like an Oscar vehicle /acting showcase rather than a truly great movie, something Million Dollar Baby didn’t have at all…hence the 7 nominations and 4 wins for that against Changeling’s 3 nods.

Best Supporting Actress:

• Amy Adams - Doubt
• Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
• Viola Davis - Doubt
• Taraji P. Henson - The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button
• Marisa Tomei - The Wrestler

I loved Penelope Cruz in VCB! In the midst of a love triangle, Cruz grabs the role of Juan Antonio’s artistically gifted yet tragically flawed wife Maria Elena in both hands, and proceeds to take over the whole movie. The narrative structure of VCB allows for the character to be steadily built up in our minds long before she appears, the constant references to her gifted nature as an artist and fiery temperament only serves to set the stage for her to chew up the scenery upon arrival. And boy, does she.

Marisa Tomei gives an equally moving performance in The Wrestler, mirroring Rourke’s character as a stripper just past her prime and looking for some kind of solace in a life she just isn’t happy with. This Supporting Actress nod, she deserves.

Taraji P. Henson gives a performance of a lifetime in Benjamin Button, a far more emotive performance as his surrogate mother Queenie. She is the one that goes through the journey I expected of the protagonist. The protectiveness over someone different, the unconditional love that transcended race, disability and even time, she gave all the love to Benjamin and I felt it just wasn’t reciprocated by Pitt’s character.

Cruz for the win!

Best Animated Feature:

• Bolt
• Kung Fu Panda
• WALL-E

Beauty and the Beast is the only animated film ever to have been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. WALL-E should have been the second.

Best Picture:

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Frost / Nixon
• Milk
• The Reader
• Slumdog Millionaire

The big one. All ensemble pieces, all films with strong performances as much as being brilliant at capturing slices of history. Both Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire deal with the passage of time in clever and interesting ways, telling the story of how chance encounters and circumstance can carve out peoples’ lives so strongly.

Frost / Nixon and Milk deal with pivotal moments in American political history, brilliantly coincidental with new milestones being created today.

The Reader deals with a pivotal moment in world history, events which are epic in scale but given intimacy and immediacy by being viewed through the eyes of individuals.

For the universal scope of the story, the excellent performances, the quality of the almost invisible special effects and the life-affirming ending, I’ll say Slumdog Millionaire The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the Oscar. Yes, definitely. Yup.

There is no denying that upon the announcement of the DS way back in 2003, people thought that Nintendo had actually lost the plot.

The Nintendo DS was a drastic departure, a new handset that was meant to compliment rather than replace their hugely successful GameBoy brand, a stylus and sound driven machine with two screens evoking the design of the original Game and Watch…

Nintendo had definitely lost it…or had they?

The history speaks for itself, and with 97.5 million DSes sold worldwide by the end of 2008, it showed introducing a device with innovative yet familiar input methods for non-gamers would have a far greater appeal, a tactic they have repeated with great success in the Nintendo Wii.

So, with over 3 million sold last month in the US alone, it means lots of new owners finding Nintendo’s handheld in their stocking this Christmas. Which games should they be playing into 2009?

So we at Invisible Hand have gone through many titles to pick out some of the latest, and greatest games to hit the little handheld that could….

1. Cooking Mama - £12.96 from Amazon.co.uk

As the name suggests, it is indeed a cooking simulator. The touch screen allows you to cut, chop, sautee and mash like a animated Jamie Oliver in this unique title. Cook over 70 dishes, and be ranked on your culinary expertise by the legendary Cooking Mama!

Winner of the “Most Innovative DS Design of E3″ award in 2006, Cooking Mama is both easy to get into but challenging enough to create a new generation of budding Blumenthals!

2. Nintendogs - £14.99 from Amazon.co.uk

Forget Tamagotchi (oh, you have?), the greatest virtual pet simulation of all time is for the DS! Nintendogs allows you to care for man’s best friend in every way possible! Pet them, bathe them, purchase toys and supplies to keep them looking their best, even teach them tricks and commands by speaking into the DS microphone. They seem a bit stubborn at first, but persevere and you can even win medals at local dog shows!

Choose from a variety of breeds from Labrador to Schnauzer, even set your DS to ‘bark’ mode to let your pet socialise with other Nintendogs (and their owners) if you bump into them in the real world!

3. New Super Mario Brothers - £24.96 from Amazon.co.uk

A…re-imagining rather than a sequel to the classic platforming adventures, New Super Mario Bros. brings back all of the classic enemies, levels and power-ups with a next-generation twist! New mushrooms allow Mario to balloon to the size of entire screen, whilst previously familiar foes may have a few new tricks up their sleeve! Great fun to play whilst a huge challenge to master, New Super Mario Bros. shows that sometimes they do make them like they used to…

4. Dr. Kawashina’s Brain Training : How Old Is Your Brain? - £16.99 from Play.com

The ‘game’ that started it all… This unassuming combination of mental puzzles, challenges and a strange self help guide catapulted the Nintendo DS into the public eye. Holding the DS vertically as though it were a book, you play through a set of brain teasers and at the end of each session the “age” of your brain is calculated. It’s all terribly scientific, and you can improve with frequent practice every day.

With the endorsement of famed neuro-scientist Dr. Kawashima and using a combination of the stylus for writing and the microphone for speech recognition tests, this title took the world by storm! Finally a game that could be enjoyed by the young and old alike and made you feel better, and smarter, for playing it!

5. 42 All-Time Classic Games - £14.96 on Amazon.com

Simple premise, really. 42 all-time classic games, 1 package, fun for all the family!

All of the ones you want are here including Chess, Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Solitaire, Bowling and Dominoes! Makes those family trips abroad a ton more fun when you have some board games…now they are all inside the tiny package of the Nintendo DS!

With the incredible success that Acer and Asus are enjoying in the netbook market (going as far as outselling the mighty iPhone this Summer!), many are expected January’s MacWorld Expo to be a place to show off a new mini-Macbook to get the masses excited.

However, the way that Cupertino’s finest has developed products up until now suggests a company that does not operate in knee-jerk reactions or follow industry trends…

These netbooks – small, low speed, low cost computers primarily for word processing and web browsing - have become far more popular amongst cash-strapped consumers in the face of a tumultuous economy.

Eschewing fancy features, massive hard drives and beefy graphics cards for a slimmed down, more practical machine has been the general trend, and bestseller lists on many technology retailers reflect this.
So, in a time when $99 iPhone rumours are doing the rounds, why wouldn’t Apple attempt to take a piece of this pie?

Simply put, Apple are currently in a position where they do not have to enter the netbook sector out of any kind of necessity, nor eagerness to not miss the boat. Apple product launches are calculated, well-orchestrated affairs, taking many years of planning, forecasting and research.

Their methodology seems to be one of re-interpretation rather than of invention. Despite not having come up with the first MP3 player or touch-driven mobile phone, you’d be hard pressed to challenge to ubiquity in the public conscious of the iPod and iPhone. They take existing products and simply provide a fresh perspective on things:

“Why do phones have to work the way they do? Why do phones even have to look the way they do?” they asked.

In doing so, they managed to redefine expectations of what a mobile phone could do, and subsequently the industry as a whole, with the iPhone outselling all Windows Mobile powered phones globally in the third quarter of this year.

Their devices act as replacements for current tech, but arguably more luxurious ones. The Macbook Air is lighter, thinner and more expensive than most laptops in the market, and their netbook would follow the same template.

Apple would still have to provide such additional value or merit to the concept of a netbook, however, that it would cause a seismic shift in the industry. Whether a novel interface, a huge multifunctional tablet replacing the keyboard, a super compact design, it will be sure to differentiate it and justify the higher price.

Rest assured, there would be a higher price point attached to it. Apple has an immediate association with reassuring expense, the premium you pay for having a phone that looks gorgeous, or a laptop that isn’t as susceptible to bugs and crashing on a daily basis.

Creating a netbook that manages to intersect ease of use, that sense of luxury and a low price will be a high hurdle to overcome. Apple’s integration of their operating system with their closed group of computers is something they are understandably protective over. It keeps their machines and software relatively bug-free, granted, but far more importantly it allows them to create a financial barrier to entry for enjoying the slick charms of Mac OS X, whilst also preventing resellers undercutting their prices with similarly specced machines.

The lawyer-inflicted assault on PsyStar and their ‘open’ machines which run Apple’s software (but not for much longer) are proof of this.

Apple’s maestros of manufacturing and marketing have already purported to have ideas for their own mini-Macbook. When it sees the light of day, they will undoubtedly have made a computer that is very small (although not so small as to tread on the iPhone’s toes), very sexy to look at, and very intuitive to use.

But it won’t be right now, and it certainly won’t come cheap.

Building on the success of their Aspire One netbooks, Acer hopes to release a larger screened version of the portable PC as early as February of 2009 according to the president of Acer Taiwan, Scott Lin.

The current model has enjoyed great success amid the netbook boom, with the cute stylings and 8.9 inch screen of the Aspire One series appealing to many.

Whilst the specifications of the new model are relatively scarce, the screen size will be increased to 10 inches, with the natural advancements of increased RAM and improved battery life and some 3G connectivity aren’t beyond the realms of possibility.

Whether this means an imminent price drop for the current Aspire One will be interesting to follow…or do you just wait until next year to get one?

Source: CNET News

Today is a huge day for games releases, as many of the year’s big blockbusters are released in the final stretch towards Xmas.

The epic Gears of War 2 was unleashed last week, but today brings a range of titles for all ages and on all formats.

Mirror’s Edge (PS3/Xbox 360/PC): Step into the shoes of Faith, an agile courier in a Utopian paradise with a seedy underbelly.

See the action through her eyes, become immersed in a groundbreaking first-person action adventure as Faith performs acrobatic movements to combat the urban jungle.

Discover who framed your sister for murder, fight for survival and uncover a conspiracy that leads all the way to the corridors of power!

Call of Duty: World at War (PS3/Xbox 360/PC): The sequel to the hugely successful ‘Modern Warfare’ takes the story back to World War II, shifting between the Pacific and European theatres.

The visceral experience of combat can be shared, as the main campaign can be tackled co-operatively with up to four players. Plan tactics and strategies, work as a team to advance.

The class and perk-based multiplayer is retained for World at War, with new maps, the addition of vehicles and new weapons sure to test even Call of Duty veterans.

Guitar Hero : World Tour (PS3/Xbox 360/Wii/PS2): This latest installment to the Guitar Hero franchise introduces drums and vocals to the guitar gameplay, enabling you to rock out with even more friends!

Guitar Hero : World Tour offers the biggest ever selection of on-disc music in a rhythm game, with an 86 master tracklist including artists like Nirvana, Foo Fighters and Metallica.

“You get a sample, loop it, ask somebody to shout “throw your hands up in the sky” over the top and that’s 80 per cent of it right there”.

Kanye West certainly seems to be bored with hip-hop as a genre, which goes a long way to explaining the radical departure with ‘808s and Heartbreak,’ his fourth studio album. Eschewing the grandiose orchestral soundscapes and conscious lyrics that catapaulted him to superstar status on ‘Graduation’, Kanye sees himself as able to transcend rap entirely, creating a new musical style he has branded “Pop Art” in the process.

This is the inner turmoil common to producers-turned-performers. Coming into the industry from a perspective of creating good music first causes their creativity to run amok once they are making it on their own terms. Does this result in better music, or just more self-indulgent?

With Kanye, this new aural style manifests itself as harsh, imposing drum loops (created on an 808 analogue synthesiser) drenched in pop overtones, with verbal dexterity placed to one side to turn his hand to crooning with the aid of Autotune.

Despite making both Cher and T-Pain (ask your daughter) millionaires overnight, vocal enhancements via this device has led to derision in the music industry at large, as formerly hardcore rappers attempt to warble melodic choruses with varying degrees of awfulness.

With this album due for release in late November, there is no rapping, save for two guest verses courtesy of Lil’ Wayne and Young Jeezy. All of the rest is digitally tuned and distorted to perfection.

As a hip-hop artist who convinced the world to become interested in rap music, Kanye West is probably the only person who can take vocal remodelling, 80s retro grooves and a unique taste in clothes and bring it straight into 2008.

With 808s & Heartbreak we will discover whether it is a remix too far, or if he convinces everyone to move to a new beat once again.