2011 Oscar Predictions

Article by Zach Saltz

Posted - 2/24/11

Has there ever been a year where I cared less about the Oscars?  The most likely time would have been back in the 90s, when I was just beginning to follow movies and the Academy Awards, but couldn’t see the majority of nominees because they were R-rated.  The kid-friendly films I rooted for during Oscar night (Apollo 13, Babe, As Good as It Gets, Life is Beautiful) always seemed to lose, and I was forced to hide my admiration for Titanic when it came out or else my classmates might mistake me for a 13-year-old girl.  I pretended to be happy when The English Patient won Best Picture, but that was because the only thing I knew about the film was that it starred the British guy from Quiz Show and had a cool scene of an airplane crashing in the desert.

Despite the dearth of films I liked (or saw) winning Academy Awards, I still watched them because I liked movies and more often than not the hosts were funny (Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg).  Taking a cue from the recent string of Super Bowl halftime entertainment duds, the Academy has decided to invest in younger, fresher talent to host the awards in recent years (Jon Stewart in ’05, Hugh Jackman in ’08), and frankly, none of them have been funny.  Stewart had one of the most golden opportunities for a David Niven-like iconic Oscar ceremony quote after the 36 Mafia won Best Song for “It’s Hard Out Here for A Pimp,” but instead, the best he could come up with was some unfunny jab about the 36 Mafia getting into a rumble with Itzhak Perlman’s posse.  Ha ha.  Queen Latifah’s comment about why they hadn’t asked her to be in the musical number was, in contrast, hilarious. 

(P.S. The best Oscar host of the last decade was Chris Rock, and the 36 Mafia winning in 2005 was the single most memorable moment in Oscar history I’ve ever witnessed.  Ever.  Better than Christopher Reeve in ’95, Woody Allen in ’02, Adrian Brody, Halle Berry, and Todd correctly predicting that The Secret in their Eyes would win Best Foreign Film last year.  And why haven’t they asked Queen Latifah to host the Oscars?  She would be hilarious. This may be too much of a no-brainer for the dim-witted Academy members to handle, like nominating a single African American performer this year to avoid the backlash they’re currently receiving or taking back Slumdog Millionaire’s Best Picture award in 2008 Reggie Bush- Heisman style.  Racists.)

Anyway, James Franco and Anne Hathaway are hosting this year, and judging by their Rocky-style commercials, they will suck worse than Hugh Jackman’s opening dance number (and yes, Terry, I know you liked it.  But you also liked Slumdog Millionaire.) 

Here are my predictions for the Oscars this year.  As I wrote a few years ago in an Oscar column, I really don’t care who wins or what happens, just as long as the ceremony runs under five hours, Jack sits in the front row, and there are gratuitous close-ups of Penelope Cruz.

Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Fighter
John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech

Everyone seems to think this is one is locked up for Christian Bale.  This leads me to my first rant about the Academy Awards: Since when have the Oscars been about who’s been around the longest without winning an Oscar and less about the performance itself?  People love Christian Bale.  Stupid mainstream audiences like him because he seems cool, transgressive underground people like him because he does subversive roles like American Psycho and The Machinist and his Terminator rant on YouTube is now the stuff of legend, and women love him because he’s hot and has a British accent.  The rest of the nominees are astoundingly unremarkable.  I don’t even remember John Hawkes in Winter’s Bone (or maybe I remember him, but since I don’t know who the hell John Hawkes is, I really don’t care), and Mark Ruffalo wins the Jonathan Demme 1991 Best Director Acceptance Speech for the most use of “uhhs” without viewers going into epileptic shock.  Christian Bale’s two great roles were Rescue Dawn and the Terminator rant.  Combined, those were worthy of a lifetime’s worth of Oscars.  I guess I can’t complain too much.

Will win: Christian Bale
Should win: Well, Hawkes’ inexplicable nomination meant that Andrew Garfield wasn’t nominated for The Social Network, and that was the role that merited praise in this category.  So the best choice wasn’t nominated (a recurring motif in this year’s awards . . . and last year’s, and the year before, etc.)  I guess my choice would be Beethoven (the composer, not the St. Bernard), because without the use of his 7^th Symphony during King George VI’s titular speech, the climax of the movie would have sucked.
Who will be thanked in speech:  The prick who he wants off the f***ing set, Bruce (who won’t shut the f*** up), the person who walks up behind Bryce in the middle of the f***ing scene, the guy who somebody should be keeping a f***ing eye on, the guy who doesn’t give a f*** about what’s going on behind the camera.  And to the real Dicky Eklund, “OHHH GOOOD FOR YOUUUU!”

Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helena Bonham-Carter, The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Everyone talked about how great Hailee Steinfeld was in True Grit, but because the Academy looks down on child performances (pun kinda intended), children usually don’t win.  This seems unusual, since the Oscars have a long list of giving awards to actors with the intellectual equivalency of children (Goldie Hawn, Mo’Nique, Charleton Heston), people who look like children winning (Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously, Joe Pesci, and Ron Howard), and people who act like children when they win (Roberto Benigni, anyone involved in the making of Slumdog Millionaire, that stupid woman that interrupted the one documentary filmmaker’s acceptance speech during last year’s ceremony).

So if everyone is convinced that Steinfeld really did give the best performance but they can’t give it to her on account of being a child, who will win instead?  It seems to be between Melissa Leo and Helena Bonham-Carter.  If we do a quick breakdown Dr. Jack-style, we can deduce the winner:

Hotness? Leo’s older and looked ugly in The Fighter, but Bonham-Carter’s weirder looking in real-life, and it’s very difficult to get out of your head the way she looked in Planet of the Apes.  There’s at least a 10% chance that someone in the world will be blinded by whatever her outfit is.  And she’s married to Tim Burton.  Case closed.  Leo 1, Bonham-Carter 0.

Movie they’re nominated for?  Bonham-Carter’s in the movie most likely to win Best Picture, although her performance is a throwaway “wife of the protagonist” role.  Those have resulted in wins, though (Jennifer Connelly, Reese Witherspoon, and Marcia Gay Harden, to name a few.)  Leo plays a crazy mother, but in a movie that received an inexplicably high number of nominations and has no chance of winning Best Picture.  Plus, remember which former Miramax producers have The King’s Speech’s back.  Point goes to BC.  Leo 1, Bonham-Carter 1.

Body of work?  Leo was previously nominated for Frozen River, hardly a film Oscar voters remember well.  BC was nominated for Wings of the Dove back in ’97, but has since been in a remarkable string of overrated movies from the last decade, including Fight Club, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Harry Potter and the Third to Last Film You Have To See Before They Run Out of Books.  Academy loves to mix the phrases “overrated” and “Weinstein.” Point and match, Bonham Carter.

Will win: Helena Bonham-Carter, by a nose.
Should win: Hailee Steinfeld. 
Who will be thanked in the speech: Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Jim Jarmusch, freaky people everywhere who haven’t showered in three days and look and smell like a homeless shelter, George Clooney, and Arduinna, tutelary goddess of the Gaulish Ardennes and protectress of wild boars.

Actor in a Leading Role

Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

What was once an interesting race between Eisenberg and Firth has morphed into a one-sided affair favoring portrayals of British royalty over portrayals of American capitalistic royalty.  In retrospect, Firth winning the Oscar makes complete and utter sense: He’s in a Weinstein film, he’s British, he’s portraying royalty, his character is disabled, he’s in a Weinstein film, it’s a historical film, he is considered “long overdue” for an Oscar to many, and he’s in a Weinstein film.  Bardem and Bridges have already won, Franco is receiving the substitute for his award by hosting, and Eisenberg is still that kid from The Squid and the Whale. 

The only thing that you can say about Firth that is remotely funny is that if you go to his Wikipedia page and look over the films he’s been in, there is a stunning amount of chick flicks and women’s-themed pictures: Pride and Prejudice, Circle of Friends, A Thousand Acres, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually, Hope Springs, What a Girl Wants, The Accidental Husband, and Mamma Mia!  Like Christian Bale, women love this guy, although not because he’s necessarily a sex symbol.  He’s one of those actors who women faun over girlishly for seemingly irrational reasons – “Ohhhh Colin Firth, I love him, he’s so adorable!”  He’s like a post-Divine Brown version of Hugh Grant.  His subplot in Love Actually is every girl’s favorite subplot, every woman picks him over Hugh Grant in the Bridget Jones movies, and, I dunno, girls think a British accent and a not-too-debilitating stutter are turn-ons. 

Is there a non-movie equivalent to Colin Firth?  I would maybe submit the Green Bay Packers.  Women who don’t watch football or pay attention to professional sports in general still insist they love the Packers, and rooted ceaselessly for them in Super Bowl 45 (it helped that they were facing a quarterback named Rape-lisburger).  If you don’t believe me, ask any woman you know who couldn’t care less about sports; somehow, she will still insist that she loves the Green Bay Packers.  Maybe it’s the color scheme of the uniforms, I’m really not sure.  Women who have not seen The King’s Speech will still root for a Colin Firth victory because they love him unconditionally.  But hey, it’s not like Marisa Tomei and Penelope Cruz didn’t have the overwhelming support of most men regardless of the artistic merit of My Cousin Vinny and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  It makes me shudder to think that, according to this logic, in five years Justin Bieber will win Best Actor.

Will win: Colin Firth.
Should win: Jesse Eisenberg.  Awk-berg!
Who will be thanked in the speech: Don’t know and I don’t really care, except it would be really funny if Firth accepted the Oscar like King George VI and thanked someone named “K-K-K-Ken!”  Somewhere, Michael Palin would be turning in his grave.

Actress in a Leading Role

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Nice to see that the whole notion of a hot actress getting ugly to win an Oscar does not exist with this group of fine-looking women.  Even the ageless Bening, playing a bitchy, intoxicated, middle-aged lesbian, still racks up some major hottie points.  In fact, the heavy favorite (Portman) was shown in a well-publicized hot lesbian sex scene with Mila Kunis; normally the idea of a lesbian sex scene for Best Actress winners would involve the words “gender-bending Hilary Swank” and “serial killer Aileen Wuornos.”  Yikes.

I guess I’m OK with Portman winning, except there has been a bit of flack about how much of her performance in Black Swan was seriously aided by special effects, weird camera angles, and the fact that she is able to make it through a surprising amount of the movie without breaking into tears and crying out, “Anakin, nooo!”  Actually, not so much on the crying restraint.  But let’s remember who we’re dealing with.

Honestly, looking back on it, I can’t even remember the last time there was an exciting Best Actress race.  In 1999, Annette Bening was considered the early favorite for American Beauty for playing Kevin Spacey’s wife, but then Hilary Swank won for playing a transgendered girl.  In 2004, Annette Bening was considered the early favorite for Being Julia for playing a strong-willed actress, but then Hilary Swank won for playing a boxer.  In 2010 Annette Bening was considered the early favorite for The Kids Are All Right for playing a butch lesbian, but Natalie Portman will win for playing a dancer.  See the correlation?  As Bening’s roles become gradually less feminine and traditional, her victorious opponents’ roles become more feminine and mainstream.  I’m sorry if you just read this last paragraph expecting to gain some nugget of substantial and important information. 

Will win: Natalie Portman.
Should win: Michelle Williams. Crazy good in Blue Valentine, trust me.
Who will be thanked in the speech:  All of the perverted older men who have lusted for her in her movies: Jean Reno, Timothy Hutton, V, Jude Law (in two movies), Vincent Cassel, and most male American viewers.  Darren Aronofsky, George Lucas, the inspirational King George VI, vegans and Zionists everywhere, Vladimir Nabokov, Gandhi, God, and the White Stripes.

Best Picture

127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

Here’s where the Oscars get interesting.  For the first time since 2006, it’s virtually a toss-up for Best Picture coming down the stretch.  The similarities are worth noting: Back in ‘06, you had the critically-lauded British drama fueled by Miramax cash (The Queen and its 2010 incarnate,The King’s Speech), the feel-good independent summer comedy about a dysfunctional family (Little Miss Sunshine and The Kids Are All Right), the big-budget feature that opened slow but soon racked up a ton of money (Babel and True Grit), and the iconic film from a Oscar-less director which people soon realized was actually better than all the other nominees but for some reason couldn’t really be considered the favorite (The Departed and The Social Network).

Now The Queen was never a serious threat to win Best Picture like The King’s Speech is this year.  If there is a preferred pick, it’s The King’s Speech, but something just doesn’t feel right about calling it the odds-on favorite.  The shrewd Oscar campaign has helped garner support (with the absurd Rocky-like commercials declaring it the “feel-good story of the year,” as if plush British royalty could ever be considered an “underdog”), and it will probably win the most overall awards of any film on Oscar night.  But if there has been any trend over the past two decades, it’s been that the stuffy British film rarely beats out the superior American film for Best Picture.  Think about it: The Crying Game, Howards End, The Remains of the Day, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sense and Sensibility, The Full Monty, Gosford Park, The Hours, The Queen, The Reader, and An Education.  All losers. The two exceptions were in 1996 and 1998, when Harvey Weinstein ensured that The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love beat much better, generation-defining American competition (Fargo and Saving Private Ryan; interestingly, Colin Firth starred in both British films).  The Academy didn’t fall for this crap again . . . at least until 2002, when Chicago beat a much-better The Pianist.

Like the other Miramax films, The King’s Speech isn’t a bad movie, it’s just . . . well, it’s just not as interesting or relevant or compelling as The Social Network, True Grit, or Black Swan.  It’s a fairly underwhelming movie about a speech impediment affecting some rich white people as the importance of the monarchy is questioned.  The climax of the movie is a radio address given by a historical figure who was, for all intensive purposes, as irrelevant as any historical figure ever thrust at the center of a widely-seen motion picture.  This was a man who preferred Lord Halifax as British Prime Minister to Winston Churchill, got offered hot dogs by the first lady during his visit to America, and fought against Gandhi and Indian independence.

Like The Departed in 2006, The Social Network has the added benefit of having a more well-known, overdue director (David Fincher) who is likely to win the Oscar over the barely-known Tom Hooper (although again, John Madden and Rob Marshall didn’t win Best Director either).  The film performed well at the Golden Globes, but it is worth noting that only once in the last six years has the the eventual Best Picture winner won top prize in either the Drama or Comedy/Musical category (the only film awarded by both the Oscars and Golden Globes: Stupid Indian Movie, of course).  But both of these ignore the bottom line, which is that The Social Network, is the better movie, and everyone with an opinion that matters seems to recognize that.  Sure, the BAFTA, Director’s Guild, and Screen Actor’s Guild have bought into the gift baskets and excessive self-promotion, but American critics and audiences know that The Social Network is the more forward-thinking, innovative, original, satisfying movie.  Oscar voters were once thought of as old, behind the times, and conventional, like The King’s Speech; looking at the last few years’ top choices (Crash, No Country for Old Men, The Hurt Locker) indicates anything but.

Last year, I wrote a too-long treatise on all the reasons why The Hurt Locker was obviously a superior film to Avatar, and if the Academy failed to recognize that, it would mean that evil would have taken over all of humanity.  This year, I’ll spare the hyperbole (knowing full well that Let Me In was the year’s best film, and Inception is the best film nominated for Picture) and state that The Social Network is the better movie, period.  I think Academy members will recognize that.  If they don’t, I may join Natalie Portman in a crying orgy.

Will win: The Social Network
Should win: Inception, but I’m fine with The Social Network.
Who will be thanked in the speech: Mark Zuckerberg, the Winklevii, Charlie Sheen (“for selflessly volunteering to throw the after-party at his house”), Justin Timberlake, Lawrence Summers, Justin Bieber, the people of Egypt, and all the neglectful and technologically ignorant parents everywhere.

Other Awards No One Cares About Except the Creators of This Website

Original Screenplay: The King’s Speech
Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network
Foreign Film: Incendies (Canada)
Documentary: Exit Through the Gift Shop
Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
Art Direction: Inception
Cinematography: Inception
Costume Design: Alice in Wonderland
Editing: The Social Network (NOTE: The film winning Best Editing has won Best Picture six of the last eight years.  No change this year.)
Makeup: The Wolfman (2010’s candidate for the Ghost and the Darkness Award for “Least Memorable Oscar-Winning Film of All Time”)
Original Score: The King’s Speech
Original Song: “We Belong Together,” from Toy Story 3
Sound Mixing: Inception
Sound Editing: Inception
Visual Effects: Inception
Number of Slumdog Millionaire hatred references in this article: Less than last year.
Number of unfunny Franco/Hathaway jokes: Too many to count.
Number of more years of stupidly nominating ten films for Best Picture: Too many to count.
Realistic guesses at the way Banksy looks in real life: Too many to count.
Fans upset Justin Bieber won’t win an Oscar this year: Too many to count.
Minutes spent wasted writing this article: Too many to count.