As his characters in The Fugitive, Men In Black and, um, Men In Black 2 have shown time and time again, Tommy Lee Jones is not a man to be messed with.

So when the producers of No Country For Old Men started to muck around with Tommy Lee Jones’ salary, it was always going to end up with one of two scenarios – either Tommy Lee Jones was going to chase them through the woods with a gang of fearsome US Marshalls until they’re forced to jump off a waterfall, or he’d just sue them.

So he sued them. Tommy Lee Jones has launched a lawsuit against the producers of No Country For Old Men because he says they paid him $10 million less than they said they would. $10 million is lot of money which, having seen No Country For Old Men, equates roughly to $5 million for every word that Tommy Lee Jones spoke in it, so no wonder he’s narked off.

No Country For Old Men was a phenomenal success. Not only did it win just about every movie award under the sun, but it also ended up taking hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, which is fairly odd for an almost-silent movie about a man with a funny haircut getting some kids to bandage him up with a T-shirt.

The success of No Country For Old Men has led to greater things for everyone involved – Javier Bardem got to have it off with Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz at the same time, Josh Brolin‘s getting to play the president in his next movie and it lent Woody Harrelson the authority to compare Wesley Snipes to a tree in official letters.

Yep, everyone’s done well out of No Country For Old Men, except for Tommy Lee Jones. He’s apparently been gypped out of $10 million by the movie’s producers, after he apparently signed a contract where they promised him all kinds of woolly fluff. BBC News reports:

Legal papers filed in California stated the 61-year-old had taken a lower fee than normal to appear in the film. But Paramount Pictures pledged “significant” bonuses to him if the movie was a hit and Jones did not receive these, the papers alleged.

Significant bonuses? No wonder there’s so much confusion – that doesn’t actually mean anything at all. Personally if we were the movie producers, we’d have tried to let Tommy Lee Jones keep the hat he wore and one of the dog corpse dummies from the film on the basis that they’re culturally significant. Plus, you know, he might have been able to get a couple of quid for them on eBay as well. What’s he complaining for?

Actually, in fairness, we’re completely on the side of Tommy Lee Jones here. It’s not nice to go unrewarded for work you’ve done, especially when you’ve already been rewarded for it and you’re quibbling over bonuses for your particularly easy, incredibly overpaid role in a movie that basically just asked you to play a quieter version of every single other character you’ve played in all other movies you’ve ever been in.

Honestly Tommy Lee Jones, we should organise a march for you or something.

The Oscars almost didn't happen this year, thanks to the Hollywood writers' strike, and some people said that was a bad thing.

However, when the strike ended, the producers of the Oscars had a brainwave. "What's better than The Oscars That Didn't Happen?" they reasoned, "Why, The Oscars That Nobody Cares About!"

And, as such, the big winners at last night's Oscars were No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, La Vie En Rose, The Counterfeiters and Michael Clayton – a selection of films whose combined box office grosses would just about stretch to buying you a particularly nice clothes peg. Oh, and Ratatouille won an Oscar too, but hopefully the tremendous oversight of giving an award to a popular film that people actually liked will be rectified by next year.

This year's Oscars had something of a traumatic birth, thanks to the writer's strike. As the Golden Globes and the People's Choice awards fell victim to the strike, no amount of wheezy rhetoric could ever fully convince anyone that the Oscars would really go ahead unless the writers went back to work. 

But the Oscars were saved by the bell when the strike ended in the nick of time, setting up the most talked about Oscars race in decades – who'd win Best Picture? Would it be that film that nobody went to see, that other film that nobody went to see, the other film nobody went to see that had George Clooney in it, Juno, or the film nobody went to see about British people bimbling sadly at each other?

Not a showstopping year for the Oscars, then, all said. In fact, the nominees for Best Picture were Michael Clayton – the 55th biggest movie of the last year – Atonement (the 53rd), There Will Be Blood (the 78th), No Country For Old Men (the 39th) and Juno (the 18th). More people went to see Alvin And The Chipmunks than any of the nominated movies, and that's a film about a shit-eating rodent for christ's sake. 

But still, the Oscars are becoming synonymous with high-end, deeply unpopular movies, so this wasn't really a surprise. But, hey, who won the Oscars this year?

Well, if you've been keeping an eye on awards season prior to the Oscars, you'll have noticed that the two frontrunners were No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, and that's the way it went last night, with No Country For Old Men winning four Oscars for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Directing, and There Will Be Blood scooping Best Actor and Best Cinematography.

Although hopefully there'll be some decent ridiculous Eddie Murphy-style controversy bubbling up from this year's Oscars in the next few days, the only really interesting things to happen during the ceremony were Steve Carell possibly saying the word 'shit', the three billion mindless clip montages and Helen Mirren doing something so preposterously actorly during her time on the microphone that we wanted to shatter her ankles. Oh, and if you missed the Oscars and have been looking for clips on YouTube, we should probably point out that Miley Cyrus wasn't the only person to turn up, despite what it looks like.

But, if not, this year's Oscars might just go down in history as the one that people cared least about. Perhaps next year a big Oscar could go to a film that's done well at the box office, just for a change. Yes, we're basically saying that Jumper deserves to win an Oscar. God help us all.

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Winners – Oscar 

Usually the most exciting thing about Oscar nominations day is knowing that all the months of  suffocating hype will soon be at an end, but not this year.

Because this year's Oscar nominations have just been announced – and, thanks to the writers' strike, nobody even knows whether there'll even be an Oscars this year. But if the Oscars do happen, then No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood should probably get their tuxedos pressed.

And so should Atonement. Even though it's bloody Atonement.

It's been a funny awards season, this one. Thanks to the neverending writers' strike, actors have been unwilling to cross picket lines to appear on televised awards shows like the People's Choice awards and the Golden Globes, leading to embarrassing clip shows and press conferences being hastily prepared instead of the glitz you'd usually expect.

And without anywhere to smarmily bluster about what an important job they do, several movie actors have been getting so bloated on their own trapped hot air that some of them might actually explode if the Oscars are cancelled as well.

That'll be a distinct possibility unless the writers and producers cut a deal before next month's ceremony, and even then it won't give Oscars host Jon Stewart much time to get a decent show going. But don't tell the Oscars that the Oscars might be cancelled, because the Oscar nominations have just been announced and as fas as the Academy is concerned it'll be business as usual right up until the bitter, face-losing last-minute cancellation.

So let's just assume that the Oscars are happening and see which films got nominated, shall we? As you'd expect, it's a big year for No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, with Michael Clayton emerging as the dark horse of the year. Here are the nominations for the main categories at the 2008 Oscars:

BEST PICTURE
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Notice there's a strong skewing towards really miserable, grim-looking films? Well don't be – because Norbit, the film that did so well in yesterday's Razzies nominations, has got an Oscar nomination too! Admittedly it's just for Best Make-Up – the Oscars equivalent of Best Kept Village – but it's another stone-cold reason why the Oscars shouldn't be cancelled this year.

After all, if Norbit loses and the Oscars are cancelled, what the hell is Eddie Murphy supposed to storm out of?

Read more:

Oscars 2008: And the Nominees Are… -

The history of cinema has given us many a bad haircut over the years.

Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich, Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code and Nicholas Cage in pretty much everything since the turn of the millennium. Never before though has someone with such a bad haircut been so terrifying and menacing than Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

We are introduced to him straight away, a man of few words and (in his mind) necessary actions. The plot revolves around a bag of stolen money that Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) runs off with after finding the aftermath of a Mexican standoff – with genuine Mexicans. This leads Chigurh hot on his trail and what happens next is a gripping cat and mouse tale full of the darkest wit and heart-pounding action.  

Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell bringing with him the good to balance against the bad and the ugly haircut. He grounds the film by playing someone who is horrified by the evils that unfold in front of him, asking himself what he can do against such violence and hatred. A great performance from Jones that stands out with his best and buries the turd that was Man About The House.

The whole film has great performances all round. Each character is so well-written and so rounded that it’s a joy to watch each one on the screen and even smaller characters – such as Woody Harrelson’s Carson Wells – come across with such screen presence and well-written dialogue that there is never a dull moment as the plot takes you to unexpected places.

It’s hard to fault this film at all, which has you on the edge of your seat throughout and as it builds up to climatic confrontation at the finale when…
 
Oh sorry, were we meant to finish that sentence? Well, this is what happens in the film, all the excitement builds up and then abruptly ends. It’s a shock for the viewer and certainly felt a bit awkward when the focus changes back to Tommy Lee Jones for the last act. The film shifts into a different tone and it didn’t quite work as well as we hoped. It was all acted superbly by the parties involved, but it just felt like it was a scratched DVD and just skipped over the exciting scene.  

Without spoiling too much, though, it's clear this film is more than just a heart-pumpingly fantastic thriller – it has more of a soul than that and in these later scenes Jones’ character really stands out as the centre of the three leads. We’d be surprised if he doesn’t get an award nomination come Oscar time.

Go see this film. It is fantastic – the best we’ve seen this year so far – and a great return to form from the Coen brothers, who have revisited their darker noir roots with fantastic results.

Just don’t be surprised if you get some nightmares, because this villain will send chills down your spine and we aren’t just referring to his haircut.

[story by David A. Scarborough]

Not that you'll care on the day – you'll be too busy wondering where Reese Witherspoon bought her wonderful shoes – but No Country For Old Men looks like the movie to beat come Oscar Night.

The New York Film Critics Circle yesterday announced the winners of their annual awards, and No Country For Old Men came out on top. As with all movie awards, industry experts are already analysing the results to see how the New York awards will influence the result of next year's Oscars, which already looks like a two-horse race between No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. That's at least until the East Surrey Association Of Women Who Get The Bus To The Supermarket On Thursday Mornings reveals that I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry is their choice for top movie of the year. Very influential bunch, them.

You know, if you're part of an organisation and you haven't managed to tell the world what films you like in a deliberately haughty way to make it seem like you're more important than you actually are, you should really get a wriggle on, because you're falling behind.

Awards season still has 11 weeks of mindless, endless backslapping to go as everyone from actors to producers to the illegal immigrant gardeners of the producers to the people who look after the illegal immigrant gardeners' poorly cats when they go and do gardening for the producers prepares their list of what films they did and didn't like this year in the hope that it'll somehow influence the results of the Oscars.

And already, in these inexplicably still quite dull early stages of awards season, two films are emerging as the movies to beat on oscar Night. There's There Will Be Blood, which won the LA Film Critics Association a couple of days ago, and there's No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers film that won the National Board Of Review prize last week and scooped the New York Film Critics Circle Best Movie Best Picture award, as announced last night.

No Country For Old Men didn't just win Best Picture – it also won Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem. Best Actor, as with the LA awards, went to Daniel Day-Lewis for his slow-speaking role in There Will Be Blood. The New York Film Critics Circle also continued the impressive run of wins for Amy Ryan, who so far hasn't managed to lose any Best Supporting Actress awards for her role in Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone.

Looking good, huh? So far the big award-winners are a movie that isn't being released in this country until next month, a movie that hasn't been released anywhere yet and a film that nobody in Britain will ever see because of that Madeleine McCann thing. Who knows, by the time the Oscars are revealed, we might have even watched one of the winning films. Let's hope not – we're not sure our hearts could take the strain.

Read more:

Coen brothers add to awards haul - BBC 

No Country For Old Men, the new movie by the Coen brothers, is quite good – and we know this because a bunch of dusty old historians just said so.

The National Board of Review yesterday voted No Country For Old Men as the best film of 2007, the first high-profile movie awards to be handed out in what's due to become a predictably tiresome three-month awards season. But that's not the only reason why the National Board of Review awards are significant – they've also ensured that everyone will be so sick of the babble surrounding No Country For Old Men by February that it doesn't even stand a sniff of a chance of winning an Oscar any more.

There's something uniquely depressing about awards season, you know. Over the next few weeks and months, about a billion groups and organisations will get together to decide what films were good in 2007, and each result will be pored over an analysed to see if it gives any indication of who'll win an Oscar. Then on Oscar night itself – bam – people just talk about what a lovely dress Keira Knightley is wearing.

Why are we rabbiting on about something that's not even starting for another few months? Because awards season is officially here, thanks to the National Board of Review dishing out its awards in front of everyone yesterday. Oh, don't pretend that you've never heard of the National Board of Review.

The National Board of Review is the perfect organisation to hand out movie awards, because its ranks are made up of historians, students, educators and a few other people who probably just turned up to escape the drizzle. Last year, the National Board of Review gave the best movie prize to that Clint Eastwood film about the war that you never got round to watch, but what about this year?

Well, this year the Best Movie award went to the Coen brother's No Country For Old Men – which also picked up Best Ensemble Cast and Best Adapted Screenplay – ensuring that it won't win an Oscar because the National Board of Review and the Oscars haven't agreed on what the best movie is for eight years in a row.

The National Board of Review also voted for its top ten movies of the year – which are The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bucket List, Into the Wild, Juno, The Kite Runner, Lars and the Real Girl, Michael Clayton and Sweeney Todd, or as we know them Dull Cowboy Film, Rah-Rah Britishness, Herky Jerky Action Film, Jack Nicholson's Got Cancer, Obligatory Sean Penn Nod, Teenage Pregnancy, Something About Kites, I Fuck Dolls, George Clooney Looks At A Horse and Sweeney Todd.

Finally, just in case you're interested, here's the full list of National Board of Review movie award winners. Alternatively you could just wait until the end of the week when the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle do exactly the same thing, or you could hide under a blanket until February when the Oscars are finished. Save us some room.

Best Film: No Country for Old Men

Best Director: Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd

Best Actor: George Clooney, Michael Clayton

Best Actress: Julie Christie, Away From Her

Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone

Best Foreign Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Best Documentary: Body of War

Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille

Best Ensemble Cast: No Country for Old Men

Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild

Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Ellen Page, Juno

Best Directorial Debut: Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone

Best Original Screenplay (tie): Diablo Cody, Juno and Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl

Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men

Read more:

Board Of Review Picks No Country – Los Angeles Times