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2009 Oscar Predictions
Article posted – 12/20/08
Article by
Zach Saltz
Go to Oscar Grid
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%
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