2009 Oscar Predictions

Article posted – 12/20/08

Article by Zach Saltz

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Unlike Todd, I don’t really give a shit about the Academy Awards.  Not too long ago, I really did: I can remember being completely distressed that You Can Count on Me was snubbed a Best Picture nod in 2000 (in favor of Chocolat, no less – in retrospect, I had reason to be upset), and that Catch Me If You Can was the Academy’s favorite Spielberg film in 2002 (over Minority Report – are you kidding me?)  No, I don’t keep up on the “award buzz” the same way Todd does – meaning, I don’t religiously convene online with the pimple-faced bloggers on Awards Circuit who live in their mother’s basement reciting lines from their favorite Bette Davis movies and discuss how her Oscar-winning performance in Dangerous (1938) wasn’t nearly as good as her statue-less role in All About Eve (1950).  So because I am bored and because every devil needs an advocate, here are my fearless Oscar predictions (along with a noticeable category Todd has ignored):

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Doubt

Frost/Nixon

Revolutionary Road

Slumdog Millionaire

Best Original Screenplay

Happy Go Lucky

Milk

Rachel Getting Married

Tropic Thunder

Wall E

Predictions: Revolutionary Road and Milk

I don’t really give a crap about these categories, just as long as the following people are not allowed onstage to accept an award: Diablo Cody, Larry McMurtry, Ben Affleck & Matt Damon, the queer-as-a-one-eyed-parrot British dude who wrote Gosford Park, any immediate member of the Coppola family, Roberto Benigni, the ’73 streaker, Rip Torn.

Best Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Viola Davis, Doubt

Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married

Kate Winslet, The Reader

Predicted Winner: Viola Davis, Doubt

Everyone is picking Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona . . . just like everyone was picking Cate Blanchett for I’m Not There.  Plus, do you really know of anyone who actually saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona (besides Todd)?  Winslet’s winning Best Actress, so count her out.  Winger’s too old, and Henson is getting nominated for the same reasons as Shohreh Aghashloo in ’03, Sophie Okonedo in ’04, and Rinko Kikuchi in ‘06 (unpronounceable name, strong turn out of left field).  That leaves Davis, whose has a Harry Dean Stanton-like distinction of being good in every single film she’s ever been in (see Far From Heaven and Antwone Fisher).  Her ten-minute confrontation with Meryl Streep is supposedly the strongest, richest ten minutes of cinematic acting this year (besides climatic sex scene between Jess Weixler and John Hensley in Teeth – that pain on Hensley’s face is real, man!) and look for Davis to pull a Beatrice Straight and essentially take home the statue for strength of that one scene.

Best Supporting Actor

Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder

James Franco, Milk

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

Bee Vang, Gran Torino

Predicted Winner: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Now this is what I’m talking about: A goofy, fun race.  Downey continues the Academy’s tradition of honoring brilliant comic performances in this category (from Peter Ustinov in Topkapi ’64, to Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda ’88, to Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine in ’06, to Javier Bardem’s haircut in No Country for Old Men ’08) and Hoffman, in his quest to become the male Meryl Streep, will get yet another nomination because he’s Philip Seymour Hoffman and he rocks balls.  Franco has the thankless, nevertheless rich angry gay lover role (think Cher in Silkwood in ’83 and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback in ’05), and I’m picking Bee Vang as Clint’s protégé in Gran Torino in the same spirit as Alec Baldwin for The Aviator in ’04 and William Hurt for A History of Violence in ’05 – the “Totally Arbitrary, Completely Unexpected, Wholly Unnecessary Random-Ass Supporting Actor Nomination” (the Golden Globes tried with moderate success to replicate this beloved honor with their nomination of Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder).  Plus, Bee Vang – now that’s just as kick-ass name!  Maybe he can present the award for Best Makeup alongside Abigail Breslin and Will Smith’s son.  But who are we kidding, why am I seriously wasting my time analyzing this category.  This was Ledger’s trophy since last January (not to be macabre), and he earns it, transcending a fairly ordinary action sequel to the second highest-grossing picture of all time. 

Best Actress

Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Sally Hawkins, Happy Go Lucky

Melissa Leo, Frozen River

Meryl Streep, Doubt

Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road

Predicted Winner: Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road

Winslet’s indeed the favorite, but she appears to be more the product of weak competition than a legitimately great performance (see Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line in ’05); Hawkins takes the Imelda Staunton/Brenda Blethyn award for “Mike Leigh Actress Nominated With 0% Chance”; Streep is, well, Streep, and they sure as hell can’t nominate her for Momma Mia (after all, in the immortal words of Warren Beatty, “The Golden Globes are fun.  The Oscars are business.”) Hathaway is superb in Rachel, but the film is too small; same problem with Leo, who gets the Janet McTeer for Tumbleweeds/Felicity Huffman for Transamerica Award for “Little-known Actress in Even Lesser-Known Film Made for $24 in Nebraska.”  Revolutionary Road, my pony, has to pick up at least one major acting award, and it won’t be Leo (DiCaprio that is, not Melissa).

Best Actor

Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road

Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino

Frank Langhella, Frost/Nixon

Sean Penn, Milk

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Predicted Winner: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino

If this actually happens, people will line the streets shouting, “It’s Paul Newman for The Color of Money in ’86 all over again!”  Older Oscar viewers will be screaming, “It’s John Wayne for True Grit in ’69 all over again!”  And I’ll be shouting, “Todd, I beat you in my Oscar picks again – just like every year!”  Well, they are not too far from the truth.  Gran Torino appears to be Eastwood’s swan song to acting, and though each of the four performances he’s going up against are stronger, more complex, and all around better films, you gotta love the Academy’s warship of this guy.  This is the prototypical Eastwood role, minus any lovable orangutan sidekicks, with a beaming hot rod and a bunch of minorities his curmudgeonly lovable old crankster can bemoan.  I can’t legitimately state why I think this should happen, but somehow, it would just feel fitting if it did (the same words spoken by Academy members as they gave Denzel the statue over Russell Crowe and Tom Wilkinson in ’01).

Best Director

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road

Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight

Gus Van Sant, Milk

Predicted Winner: Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road

OK, gotta a confession to make – my five choices here all line up with those from the Awards Circuit website, and all but one align with Todd’s picks.  But you can’t really have fun with this group. Boyle’s and Nolan’s films won’t get Best Picture nods, and I’m predicting that Button won’t be as well received as everyone is saying – I’m calling a Cold Mountain to all but the sacred Best Picture nomination.  I’m sorry, it just looks too ridiculous to be considered an odds-on favorite.  Milk is about Sean Penn more than it is Gus Van Sant, leaving Mendes, who already has a statue, but whose film will take top honors.  And lest we forget, the only time the Best Picture-Best Director awards are not attached at the hip is when the director is not well-known enough (see John Madden, Rob Marshall, and Paul Haggis).

Best Picture

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Doubt

Frost/Nixon

Milk

Revolutionary Road

Predicted Winner: Revolutionary Road

Technically, Benjamin Button is the favorite . . . but in the way that Babel was technically the favorite in 2006.  In other words, this is an unpredictable group.  Button is too much like a Tim Burton film to be taken seriously (remember Big Fish?), Frost/Nixon is the prototypical historical/political piece adorned by the liberal Hollywood elite (think Good Night and Good Luck in ’05 and The Insider in ‘99), and Milk is the performance-driven single-word-titled biopic that doesn’t have a chance (Ray in ’04 and Capote in ’05).  That leaves Doubt and Revolutionary Road, two motion pictures probably too artsy and sophisticated for the same group of people who named Gladiator and Lord of the Rings Best Pictures over Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lost in Translation.  Gotta give the nod to Revolutionary Road though, since the Academy has been correct in its divvying out of its top prize since 2005, and this picture looks like the unequivocal best of the bunch. And let’s face it, there is no way in hell John Patrick Shanley’s getting nominated as Best Director (although it is interesting to note that the last film to win Best Picture without its director getting a nomination was Driving Miss Daisy in ‘89, which, like Doubt, was adapted from a Tony-Award winning play dealing with race relations in the 1960s).

SPECIAL OSCAR PREDITION: EXTRA CATEGORY

Best Song

“Rock Me Sexy Jesus,” from Hamlet 2

 “Right Here Right Now,” from High School Musical 3: Senior Year

“Zydrate Anatomy,” from Repo! The Genetic Opera

 “O Saya,” from Slumdog Millionaire

“The Wrestler,” from The Wrestler

Predicted Winner: “Right Here Right Now,” from High School Musical 3: Senior Year

The Academy has this thing about Best Songs: It’s always the most frustrating one that wins.  I mean, think about it: Eminem in ’02, 36 Mafia “Hard Out Here For a Pimp” in ’05, Melissa Etherage thanking her wife for the song in the Al Gore powerpoint presentation, er, movie in ’06.  It’s gotta go to a movie like High School Musical 3, I mean, who wouldn’t want to hear the words, “From the Academy-Award winning creators of High School Musical 3” the next time they watch the coming attractions?  Side note: I chose the song from Repo! only because the movie sounds fantastic.  Listen to this: According to IMDB, the film adaptation chronicles tumult in the year 2056, when organ donors “who miss their payments are scheduled for repossession and hunted by villainous Repo Men.” Starring Paul Sorvino, Alexa Vega, Sarah Brightman (as Blind Mag), and Paris Hilton (!), the film features some 58 memorable numbers, including “Happiness is Not a Warm Scalpel” and “Who Ordered Pizza?”  Can anyone say, “Best Picture snub?”

So there you have it, ladies and gents, the 2008 Academy Awards in a nutshell.  Now just wake me up in six hours, after the ceremony has ended . . .

Percent of Acceptance Speeches Thanking the Following People

George Clooney: 74%

Heath Ledger: 100%

Plaxico Burress: 1 % (a lone shout-out from Charleton Heston)

People from New Zealand: 12%

Clint Eastwood: 53%

Clint Eastwood’s Tenacity: 79%

Barack Obama: 96%

Harvey Milk: 100%

Joe the Plumber: 13%

Jake Plummer: 23%

Anyone who’s ever been given a second chance: 100%