The Hurt Blogger - 2009 Oscar Predictions

Last year wasn't a banner year for the Academy Awards.  Several great and beloved films wound up shut out of the major categories despite getting a slew of nominations otherwise (most notably "The Dark Knight" with 8 noms and "Wall-E" with 6 noms, but neither being in the running for Best Picture).  Meanwhile, films that no one had seen ("The Reader", anyone?) or weren't particularly fond of ("The Reader", anyone?) wound up stealing those said nominations.  Ratings haven't been good, critics haven't been fond of the broadcast, and generally the moviegoing public has been getting a bit jaded with the Academy pretty much liking everything that "we" don't.




So a few changes were made by the Academy.  Some have been reviled, some have been praised, some have been a little of each.  The biggest change is without a doubt that this year, we have TEN films nominated for Best Picture.  This is believed to be a direct result of last year's situation where the more popular films amongst the public were ignored.  The Academy, naturally, spins it otherwise.  Whatever the case, I personally don't mind this.  If you look back to the very early days of the Oscars, they nominated 10 films for Best Picture.  I don't think it diminishes anything.

The Academy also made changes to the way certain films are nominated and/or voted upon for the award.  Some of those changes really don't mean anything to any of us so it's not even worth going into, but there's a change to how the voters choose Best Picture, and that warrants an explanation here.  Instead of just picking one movie, the voters are ranking the 10 nominees from 1-10.  After all the votes are tabulated, the film with the least votes for #1 gets eliminated from the running, and any voters who picked that film see their #2 pick from the ballot being counted instead.  This process continues until one film has over 50% of the vote, and that film will be crowned Best Picture.  What this ultimately means is that the film that gets the most #1 votes won't necessarily win the Oscar.  I find that quite interesting and I do think that is going to directly affect this year's ceremonies, as I'll explain a bit more later.

On March 7, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin will co-host the event.  This year there are several races that are pretty much sewn up, but many others that are clearly not, and that includes the big one.  This is easily the most exciting Oscar battle in years for Best Picture, as there are two films that really have a shot at it.  I think right up to the moment the envelope is opened, we're going to be wondering who wins.

So let's get cracking with the crap-shoot categories first.  These are my picks based solely on buzz and what little I've been able to learn about any of them, because most of us don't see these anyway, not to mention the nomination/voting process for these are pretty off-the-wall.

Best Live Action Short Film:  Kavi
This is a story of a boy trying to break free of slave labor in India.  Sounds like something that would resonate with the voters, plus I'm throwing in some leftover Bollywood love from last year's "Slumdog Millionaire" winfest.

Best Animated Short Film:  A Matter of Loaf and Death
It's made by the Wallace and Gromit folks.  The voters like them.  Case closed.

Best Documentary Short:  China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
With all the earthquakes making news and affecting our emotions recently, this tale of the 2008 quake that wiped out the Sichuan province in China seems like the right choice.

Best Documentary Feature:  Food, Inc.
It's the most known of the choices, this look into the food industry that is rather unflattering, but exactly the kind of stuff we love to see.  Fellow nominee "The Cove" is also a favorite, a documentary that looks at abuse of dolphins in a remote area of Japan.

Plus, with the recent occurrence in Sea World, the Cove people have been in the press lambasting the fact that these killer whales are being held in captivity anyway.  However, the votes are all in by now so that Sea World situation came too late to sway any voters.  Just the same, and I don't think I've ever said this, but this award could go to one of two documentaries that are hot discussions right now.

I said in last year's blog a line that I really loved, and I've been keeping that line in view.  Some people say that the reason the Oscars ratings are down is partially because most people don't care about the technical awards.  I say to those people, screw you.  MOVIES ARE IMPORTANT, AND EVERY ELEMENT OF THEM SHOULD BE RESPECTED.  These awards belong and I want to see who wins them.  So here are my picks.  We'll start with those technical awards.

Best Makeup, as usual, only gets 3 nominations.  This year we have "Avatar", "Star Trek" and "The Young Victoria".  In other words, it's a two-horse race (sorry, "TYV").  "Avatar" is more about CGI, so I'm giving this one to "Star Trek".

Best Visual Effects, also with only 3 nominated films.  "Avatar", "Star Trek" and "District 9".  Those are actually great choices.  "Avatar" was CGI and special effects on the absolutely highest scale, so I'm going with that film here.

Best Art/Set Direction.  "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"?  Ummmm...no.  "The Young Victoria"?  Could be, but those films usually do better in another category that's coming a bit later.  "Nine", the big crazy musical that bombed but still has a shot here.  I'm thinking it will come down to "Sherlock Holmes" and "Avatar".  Again, I'm wondering if the fact that the latter is CGI-heavy will weigh on the minds of the voters, so I'm going with "Holmes" here.

Best Costume Design.  Doesn't even matter what the other nominations are, go with "The Young Victoria".  Royalty and/or period pieces always win here.  ALWAYS.  "The Duchess" last year, remember?

Best Sound Mixing.  Usually both sound categories have the same winner, although last year wasn't the case.  "Avatar" takes this one.

Best Sound Effects Editing.  Last year "The Dark Knight" won this over "Slumdog Millionaire", which won Sound Mixing (and every other category it was nominated in, in fact).  This year, I think normalcy resumes and "Avatar" wins both sound categories.

Best Film Editing.  More often than not, the film that wins this wins the big one too.  I pick "The Hurt Locker" here.  We'll see what that means later though.

Moving on, here come the second-tier categories, not quite the major ones but a step above the technical ones in the eyes of many...I'm going to start right off with Best Animated Feature, because I'm really interested in this year's race.

We have nominated "Up" (which is also UP for Best Picture), "The Princess and the Frog" (a return to old-school Disney, although reviews and box office were kinda middle-of-the-road), "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (critically-praised but largely moviegoer-ignored) and "Coraline" (a typically Neil Gaiman-level of dark-but-enjoyable animation).  There's a fifth nomination as well, and just that fact deserves mention because this is only the second time in the decade of this award being in existence that the Academy nominated 5 films.  To that, I'm thrilled, because it pisses me off royally seeing only 3 films get nominated every year when I know goddam well there are plenty of others to choose from out there each year.  Worse, of those 3 nominations, you always have the Disney/Pixar film, the most commercially-popular non-Disney/Pixar film of the last year, and the third nomination goes to a mediocre usually-Disney film that is the one most people have heard of so they nominate it ("Bolt"?!).  Animation had a BOOM this past year, and 3-D made that even more of a BOOM.  So good for the Academy and good for animation, because we have quality nominees this year.  Oh, and the fifth nominee?  "The Secret of Kells".

Don't worry, I'd never heard of it either.  As it turns out, it's a little production from a company in Ireland, and they did absolutely NO promotion for the Oscars at all until 3 days before the nomination deadline.  The level of promotion pretty much consisted of one screening and some internet advertising.  They reached the right people, because Miyazaki's "Ponyo" wound up getting bounced out of contention and "Kells" found itself amongst the elite.  I checked YouTube later that day and found the trailer for the film.  The story is quite unusual, but the animation is amazing and the trailer completely made me want to see this film on every level.  "Kells" will hit the art houses in early March, and it just may be the film that should win here.  However, "Up" has a BEST PICTURE NOMINATION.  The rest of these don't.  "Up" wins here.

Best Original Score.  The consensus is that this is between the whimsical score for "Up" and the James Horner power-package for "Avatar".  I'm thinking whimsical.  "Up" takes this one.

Best Original Song.  This category has turned into such an abomination that, frankly, I don't even give a shit what's nominated.  With all the songs that have come out in 2009 from movies, many of which were chart-toppers, you're telling me that the best five songs they could nominate include TWO from Randy Newman?!  Do you need further proof that something is really wrong with this category?  How about this?  Say this out-loud as often as you have to.  THE ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING THREE 6 MAFIA.  Let's just move on.

Best Cinematography, technically a technical award but the award that basically says, "Your film just LOOKED the best."  Interesting choices here too.  "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker", plus "Inglorious Basterds".  Then we have "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (that film's only nomination) and German film "The White Ribbon", which is up for Best Foreign Language Film.  I have a feeling the grittiness of Iraq will win out over the fictional Pandoran landscapes.  "The Hurt Locker" takes this one.

Best Foreign Language Film.  "The White Ribbon" has gotten the most buzz.  Plus, for what it's worth, the fact that it scored two nominations (here and for Cinematography) seems to indicate the Academy is a little more aware of that film than other foreign films, so I think "Ribbon" is a safe bet here.

Well, that brings us to the top-tier.  There's a lot of heated battles, close races, nailbiting finishes...oh, hell, who am I kidding?  The acting prizes are locked up to the level of swallowing the keys.

Best Supporting Actress.  Mo'Nique for "Precious".  She's won everything so far.  Literally.  And the performance has been raved about since Day One.  Literally.  This is about as sure a thing as there's ever been in Oscars history.  And yes, this is a category that's notorious for upset victories (see Marisa Tomei and Juliette Binoche).  Just the same, any Oscar pool that doesn't have this one right should just be disqualified right then and there.  Mo'Nique.  Period.  Cut.  Print.

Best Supporting Actor.  Christoph Waltz for "Inglorious Basterds".  This is almost as sure a thing as Mo'Nique for all the same reasons.  On a personal note, when my lady and I watched this film we were both just bowled over by Waltz's performance.  This isn't even taking into account that he spoke 4 or 5 languages throughout the movie, sometimes bouncing between one and another in the same breath.  His character was a cold-blooded jerk, but he exuded moments of borderline-whimsicality as well.  This was the best casting by director Quentin Tarantino in years.  At the recent nominees breakfast during a Q&A, fellow nominee Woody Harrelson pretty much told the press that Waltz was winning this.  He isn't saying that because he peeked at the results.

Best Actor.  Jeff Bridges for "Crazy Heart".  I have to admit, I have zero interest in this movie.  It came out in late 2009 very quietly, and almost immediately all the talk of Best Actor was on Jeff and his performance.  This is his fifth nomination and it appears like it will be his first win, having already taken most of the awards leading up to this point.  George Clooney's "Up in the Air" was very good but Clooney makes it look so damn easy all the time that you wonder if he's actually having to act.  Colin Firth's "A Single Man" just seems too unknown.  Morgan Freeman's "Invictus" was my sure pick months ago, but the film's lacklaster box office and low award-count thus far seems to have sealed the fate of anything for that film on March 7.  The one potential spoiler is Jeremy Renner for "The Hurt Locker", but to me even that is a long shot.

Best Actress.  Sandra Bullock for "The Blind Side".  Like all the other acting winners this year, she's pretty much won every award up to this point.  However, if there is one category that I sense could be an upset, it's this one.  The film only got two nominations, and oddly enough the other one is for Best Picture.  It's a popular film that has raked in tons of coin but critically it was mostly thumbs-in-the-middle.  Everyone in Hollywood LOVES Sandra, and so does the public.  However, we have some competition amongst the nominees.  Meryl Streep, nominated almost automatically at this point, for "Julie and Julia", a film that got no other nominations.  Gabby Sidibe for "Precious".  I think Helen Mirren and Carey Mulligan are out of the running.  Bullock is my pick, but the guard is up for a surprise here.

Best Original Screenplay.  Quirkiness tends to win out, so I'd say it's between the animated "Up" and Quentin's rewriting-of-history "Inglorious Basterds".  Animated films have done well here lately.  "Up" wins.

Best Adapted Screenplay.  I'm having a harder time with this category than any other this year.  We have "District 9", "An Education", "In the Loop", "Precious" and "Up in the Air".  I don't think "An Education" has enough going for it, and "In the Loop" was a complete out-of-nowhere nomination that apparently is for a film where every third word is some form of "fuck", so I'm taking those two out.  Of the three remaining, it's really anyone's guess.  "Precious" and "Up in the Air" both have gotten a lot of industry love from the awards leading up to here, but it's actually possible that both of them will be shut out of the Oscars win total.  "District 9", on the other hand, wasn't really winning anything but suddenly found itself right in the thick of the Academy Awards with a number of unexpected nominations.  All three of these films have several Oscar noms.  I have a feeling the Academy really will want to give "Up in the Air" something, because when the Oscar race began back in November this was the film getting the most Best-Of prizes.  Plus, everyone loves Clooney.  So I'm picking "Air" here.

Two awards left.  Both highly interesting.

Best Director.  Even though we have 10 films up for Best Picture, still only 5 directors.  James Cameron for "Avatar", Kathryn Bigelow for "The Hurt Locker", Quentin Tarantino for "Inglorious Basterds", Lee Daniels for "Precious" and Jason Reitman for "Up in the Air".  Hmmmm...Cameron and Bigelow...

In case you're not aware, they used to be married.  However, this is not a case like with Cameron and ex-wife Linda Hamilton.  James and Kathryn are still close friends and they're rooting for one another here.  So that means no tabloid element to this year's ceremony.

Bigelow is the fourth or fifth woman in history to be nominated here.  No woman has ever won.  Daniels is the second African-American ever to be nominated here.

I think history gets made on March 7.

Actors and executives all throughout Hollywood have raved for months and months about how Kathryn Bigelow put this film together.  I think that is not lost on the Academy.  Bigelow wins.

Finally...Best Picture.  Here's the list of nominated films.

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

OK, if your film is a non-animated film that did not get a nomination for Best Director, please have a seat.

That takes care of the also-rans.

Yes, sorry to say, but "An Education" and "A Serious Man" are two films that most people when they read the list of nominations just replied with something along the lines of "Huh??"  While we're glad to see "District 9" getting the Oscar love it wasn't expected to get, reality now sets in.  Finally, "The Blind Side", two nominations total.  No chance here.

So we have our six legitimate contenders now.

"Avatar".  James Cameron's biggest work since that movie about a boat in 1998 that made jillions of dollars and set records for soundtracks and ticket sales and Oscars and anything else remotely related to the film.  One specific record "Titanic" set is that that year's Academy Awards broadcast was the most-watched in history, a record that still holds today.  People had a vested interest in that film.  As luck would have it, just after the Academy makes a few changes and vows to get people watching again, along comes a film that has made more than any other in history, and the film is actually GOOD in that it deserves and gets a bunch of nominations, and people LOVE it.  The Academy could not have dreamed a better scenario than this.   Believe me, that's not why the film GOT all those nominations either.  The question is, will the Academy vote what they really believe, or will they just give this film the big prize to satisfy the audience (not to mention the advertisers)?

"The Hurt Locker".  Not a huge commercial success in theaters, but a film that is doing well on DVD/PPV and has gotten nothing but praise from anyone who's seen it.  This looks to be the first film to deal with Iraq that has connected with people rather than turn them off angrily or scarily.  Plus, from all accounts it's just gripping as all hell.

"Inglorious Basterds".  Tarantino's first film since "Pulp Fiction" to be up in this category.  A film made in classic QT fashion, filled with disturbing language and violence but also humor and flat-out great storytelling.  When you can write a movie that completely rewrites how WWII ended and get nominated for it, you're doing something right.

"Precious".  The early favorite, but most of the buzz has left the building.  Nonetheless, everyone continues to talk about this movie, and that is a good sign.

"Up".  This is only the second animated film in history to be nominated for Best Picture.  1991's "Beauty and the Beast" was the first one.  In my opinion, that was a better film than this is.  Nonetheless, Pixar has truly reached the level of MAJOR with this movie, being the first animated film to open up the Cannes Film Festival and all.

"Up in the Air".  As I mentioned earlier, the start of the Oscar race in November had this film winning all the top prizes.  It's an easy film to follow, keeps you interested, has humor and tells a story that connects with all of us in this economical environment we're in.

So what wins?  Of the ten films nominated, I've seen five of them.  "District 9", "Avatar", "Inglorious Basterds", "Up" and "Up in the Air".  I will be watching "The Hurt Locker" before the weekend's over.  Combining all of this with the information I told you earlier about how the Best Picture voting is being tabulated this year, I am officially projecting this film to win Best Picture:

A combination of factors brings me to choose this, even though I'm not sure on a personal level that it is MY Best Picture.

First, James Cameron's "Titanic"-level ratings.  The Academy has people interested in this year's ceremony.  They will want to reward those people.

Second, the film's just good.

Third, and most importantly, I think the tabulating of the votes this year completely go in this film's favor.  "Avatar" is getting a good number of first-place votes.  So is "The Hurt Locker".  However, as the films are whittled away via the method of tabulating, it makes me wonder which film is likely to have the most SECOND-place votes?  To me, "Avatar" would be that film.  Now, it's possible that the second-place votes will never have to come into play, but if ultimately they are counting up votes and wipe out 4 or 5 movies before having one film get over 50%, I just feel that more people would have this film at or near the top of their ballot than would have "Locker".

So those are my picks.  The show is on March 7.  I'll likely keep a Facebook stream going during the show, but you know that on March 8 or 9 I'll have a long and detailed POST-Oscars blog for ya too.  Thankx for reading.  Leave comments.  Spread the word.  And remember what I said:  TWO from Randy Newman?!?!