Oscar Predictions
OK, it’s time once again to outguess the aggregate consciousness of that most particular of electorates, the motion picture academy.
Best Picture: This should be a fun year for viewers who actually care what wins, as the biggest award is also the hardest to call. Anyone who picks a winner here is going out on a limb. In close-fought years, the film that wins is the one that picks up a groundswell of fuzzily zeitgeisty affection from academy members. Last year’s win for Crash, which I failed to call, won the love because apparently that mess of overblown clichés and coincidences really hits home if you live in L.A. and are afflicted with liberal guilt. Despite its nanny agonistes sequence, I’m guessing that the same psychosocial factors won’t result in a win for Babel. Despite its big acting moments, its pace and tone are a bit too art-house to inspire the love. I’m further guessing that The Departed will squeeze out a loss because it’s a guy movie, and Oscar runs more on estrogen than testosterone. (Case in point: Shakespeare In Love vs. Saving Private Ryan.) Set in the present, it does not qualify for the historical epic exemption to the guy movie rule (Gladiator, Braveheart.) Instead, I predict that the winner of the instinctive affection sweepstakes will be Little Miss Sunshine. Its dysfunctional/depressive elements cancel out the usual prejudice against comedies, and, as an indie hit straight out of Sundance, has a Cinderella quality going for it.
Acting: I’m backing the conventional wisdom in all four categories: Mirren, Whitaker, Hudson, Murphy. The apparent tastelessness of the latter’s Norbit might have been a factor if it hadn’t made a boatload of cash at the box office.
Animated Feature: Happy Feet. People love penguins.
Art Direction: Normally one bets on the prettiest period (pre-20th century) film, but Pan’s Labyrinth forefronts its Rackhamesque art direction so thoroughly that I think it will take it.
Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond is overdue but The Black Dahlia is too unloved. Usually awarded for prettiness, but voters will confuse the two period magician movies, racking up another win for Pan’s Labyrinth.
Costume Design: Marie Antoinette is not just a movie with pretty period costumes, it’s a movie about pretty period costumes.
Directing: They’ve got to give it to Marty this time. They can’t screw him again, can they? I need to cancel my karmic debt for winning a giant television by betting against him the last time he was the presumed favorite.
Documentary: An Inconvenient Truth. No hanging chads in Hollywood. This constituency’s voting for Al.
Documentary Short: Traditionally awarded for worthiest subject matter. I’m thinking being an AIDs orphan trumps poverty in Mexico or a classical pianist compensating for the loss of a hand, so let’s say The Blood Of Yingzhou District.
Editing: Often awarded for flashiest editing, in which case we might be looking at Blood Diamond, but I’m betting the crosscutting between multiple narrative threads racks up a statue for Babel. (The same thing might be said of United 93, I suppose…)
Foreign language: When a foreign flick makes bank, it wins. And the director works in Hollywood making comic book movies when he’s not working in Spanish making personal comic bookish movies. Pan’s Labyrinth it is.
Make-up: Four words: sewing your mouth back together. Oh yeah, and the satyr and the eyeball hand dude. Pan’s Labyrinth.
Score: Another toss-up, but since this is usually awarded to the most traditional score, I’m going to unconfidently choose The Good German.
Song: I predict that my ears will bleed during the performances of the nominated songs.
Animated Short: The Danish Poet. Fear the NFB. Fear it!
Live Action Short: Have to punt on this one.
Sound editing: Dueling Clint war movies cancel out, allowing the blockbuster to waltz up the middle: Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Sound mixing: No second Clint war movie to cancel out the other, so Flags Of Our Fathers takes it.
Visual effects: Goes to the blockbuster people sorta liked. Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Adapted screenplay: The Departed’s screenplay famously adds an entire dimension not found in the original. An Americanization that works.
Screenplay: Screenplay awards skew more art house than the rest of the slate, so I’m thinking Babel. Don’t count out Little Miss Sunshine, though, and look for it to take the big enchilada if it wins this.