It’s that time of year again. That special time of year when most people open up the Entertainment section of your local paper and check out the list of Oscar nominees and say, “I haven’t even HEARD of half of these movies, let alone SEEN them.” Yep, it’s true. Sometime in the mid-to-late 90’s, right around the time that Shakespeare In Love amazingly (and ludicrously) beat out Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Oscar®, the Academy Awards turned into a showcase of art house/indie/low-budget fare. Look at some of the films that have won Best Picture ever since the mega-blockbuster Titanic took home the crown in 1996; Shakespeare In Love, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Million Dollar Baby, Crash. And now it seems like a film that gets a huge wide release can’ even get nominated. This year’s nominated films include Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men. Only ONE of these films made $100 million at the box office (amazingly, Juno). None of them even finished higher than 2nd place for weekend gross when they opened up at the box office (Juno finished 2nd in its opening weekend).That being said, I don’t feel that smaller films being up for the Award is a bad thing. If anything, it has to do with how Hollywood operates this day in age. It’s rare for a super-budget film to be a crowd-pleasing blockbuster and also a very well-made film, such as the case with Titanic. Granted, I didn’t very much like the movie, but I understood why it won. I had much bigger issues when Gladiator (a summer action hit, albeit a pretty good one) beat out the likes of Traffic and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Now that my preamble is over, onto my Oscar picks. I provide the typical “will win”, “should win”, “dark horse”, and “who got screwed out of a nomination”. Pretty standard. If you’ve got an idea of how to spice up Oscar predictions, I’m all ears.
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
Will Win: BLANCHETT
Should Win: RYAN
Dark Horse: DEE
Got Screwed: JULIA ROBERTS, Charlie Wilson’s War
This one comes down to the well-respected veteran (Ryan) against the matriarchal sentimental favorite (Dee) against the most interesting casting choice of the year (Blanchett). Ryan probably turned in the best dramatic performance as the grief-stricken mother in Gone Baby Gone, but Blanchett will definitely get votes for morphing into an incredibly credible Bob Dylan.
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
Will Win: CHRISTIE
Should Win: PAGE
Dark Horse: COTILLARD
Got Screwed: ANGELINA JOLIE, A Mighty Heart
Opinions on this race range between “very wide open” and “extremely wide open” depending on what you read. My guess is that Christie will win it because her performance is evidently astonishing as an Alzheimer’s patient (I haven’t seen the film). I think Page could win, but voters stuck between her and other nominees may vote for the latter, figuring that Page will probably be up for a few more of these awards before all is said and done. And the more I think about it, the more I think Blanchett may steal this one because she pulled off the rare feat of being in an absolutely dreadful movie and STILL being nominated.
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
Will Win: BARDEM
Should Win: BARDEM
Dark Horse: HOLBROOK
Got Screwed: ROBERT DOWNEY JR., Zodiac
Don’t see any way that Bardem loses here. He has virtually swept every major and non-major award in this category leading up to the Oscars. His work as the unstoppable Anton Chigurh in NCFOM is so good it’s frightening. Chigurh will never be as iconic as Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lechter, but he should be. The only possible upset possibility is Holbrook, who has momentum and a bit of sentimentality on his side. The veteran has been around a long time without ever being nominated. Downey’s performance as a newspaper reporter driven to his own self-destruction by the case of the Zodiac killer was a marvel, and certainly deserved a nod from the Academy.
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
Will Win: DAY-LEWIS
Should Win: DAY-LEWIS
Dark Horse: JONES
Got Screwed: CHRISTIAN BALE, Rescue Dawn
All you need to know is that the odds of Daniel Day-Lewis winning this award are currently at 1:3. That means you need to bet $3 on him in order to win $1. In other words, it’s a forgone conclusion. Nothing else worth talking about here, other than the fact that Christian Bale (Rescue Dawn) was robbed of a nomination for the second time in his career (the first being in 1999 for American Psycho). The only possible upset here would be Jones, who will get votes from those who consider his work in No Country for Old Men, as well as those who found Day-Lewis’s performance a bit too ham-fisted.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
-PERSEPOLIS
-RATATOUILLE
-SURF’S UP
Will Win: RATATOUILLE
Should Win: RATATOUILLE
Dark Horse: PERSEPOLIS
Got Screwed: THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
Surf’s Up getting the nomination here over The Simpsons Movie is one of the Academy’s glaring fuck-ups this year. Simpsons was pure joy. It represented all that made The Simpsons (arguably) the greatest American sitcom of all time. I’m still pissed about this. Surf’s Up??? Are you freakin kidding me??? Damn the Academy for depriving us all of a Homer Simpson acceptance speech!
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
-THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
-ATONEMENT
-THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
-NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
-THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Will Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Should Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Dark Horse: THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Got Screwed: INTO THE WILD
I really see No Counry for Old Men pulling a Titanic-like sweep at the Oscars. It’s THAT good of a film. And the cinematography by Roger Deakins, a Coen Brothers’ regular, is stellar as always. There isn’t a scene in the entire film that isn’t memorable for one reason or another.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
-ATONEMENT
-AWAY FROM HER
-THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
-NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
-THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Will Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Should Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Dark Horse: ATONEMENT
Got Screwed: INTO THE WILD
It’s not often that I end up reading a book before it’s turned into a movie. Usually what happens is I see a movie I really like, find out that it’s based on a book, and then read it. More often than not, it ends up that the book was better than the film (Friday Night Lights, Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, The Beach, ANY Stephen King book-to screen adaptation), with only a few exceptions (Field of Dreams, Sideways). I read No Country when it was first released in hardcover and loved it. It was frightening, bleak, violent, exciting and depressing all at once. I devoured it in one sitting. The Coen Brothers’ film is an incredibly faithful to Cormac McCarthy’s novel; everything from the settings to the characters to the chase scenes to the somewhat anti-climactic climax. Great work.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
-JUNO
-LARS AND THE REAL GIRL
-MICHAEL CLAYTON
-RATATOUILLE
-THE SAVAGES
Will Win: JUNO
Should Win: JUNO
Dark Horse: RATATOUILLE
Got Screwed: SUPERBAD
Juno turned in a rare feat; a small independent critical darling crowd pleaser that found a mass audience mainly through word of mouth. It was basically 2007’s version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, only a better film. I can’t see it losing this one. But seriously, the Academy couldn’t throw Judd Apatow a bone here? The guy has basically re-invented what had become a somewhat stale comedy genre and released two very intelligent coming-of-age films this year. They could have at least awarded him with a nomination for either Knocked Up or Superbad.
BEST DIRECTOR
-JULIAN SCHNABEL, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
-JASON REITMAN, Juno
-JOEL AND ETHAN COEN, No Country for Old Men
-PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON, There Will Be Blood
-MICHAEL GILROY, Michael Clayton
Will Win: JOEL AND ETHAN COEN
Should Win: JOEL AND ETHAN COEN
Dark Horse: ANDERSON
Got Screwed: JOE WRIGHT, Atonement
This is the year that the Coens finally get their due. Some people say that they finally grew up with No Country For Old Men. I think that’s blasphemous (Blood Simple, anybody???), but I can understand why they would make a knee-jerk assessment after seeing No Country. “Wait a minute. The same guys who made Raising Arizona made this movie?” But anybody who knows anything about the Coens knows the scope of their genius. This is the same brain trust that created an American classic (Fargo) and the perhaps the greatest modern cult classic (The Big Lebowski). Their recognition by the Academy is long overdue. As for Joe Wright, it’s always tough when your film is nominated for Best Picture but not Best Director. All that does is guarantee it won’t win in either category.
BEST PICTURE
-ATONEMENT
-NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
-JUNO
-THERE WILL BE BLOOD
-MICHAEL CLAYTON
Will Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Should Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Dark Horse: JUNO
Got Screwed: THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
It’s a two-horse race. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Two films that are similar in a lot of ways, but also very different. Both are set in the dusty Southwest, but 80 years apart. Both feature characters that are the embodiment of pure evil, but one is a homicidal psychopath (Bardem’s Chigurh) and one is a maniacal sociopath (Day-Lewis’ Plainview). Both films have very bleak and cynical endings, but one conclusion is unexpected and a darkly humorous (Blood) and the other is exceptionally depressing and open-ended (No Country). Where they differ the most, in my opinion, is that NCFOM is a 5-star movie with several terrific performances by all those involved, whereas There Will Be Blood is a 4-star movie with an otherworldly performance by its leading man, Day-Lewis. Taking both films as a whole, No Country for Old Men is more deserving.
