Oscar Predictions - Ignorant Cynic's Edition

[tealin]

The shortlist for the Academy Awards was released this week, and I'm going to see Benjamin Button tonight, so I thought I should do my picks before my judgment was tainted by actually having seen any of the main contenders.



I'm only doing categories most people care about ... I'm sure there are people who care about Documentary Short Subject but I don't think they visit my blog.

If you are new here or perplexed, visit last year's Oscar blog for more on the Best/More theory.

Apart from the Best/More theory, my reason basically follows a subjective points system. I believe most Oscar votes are cast keeping in mind how your vote reflects on you as a person. It doesn't matter that no one sees what you voted for; you watch yourself cast the ballot so there's always an audience. People in the movie biz want to be thought of as artistic, profound, progressive, and politically sensitive, so your vote will earn you points in one or more of three categories: Politics, Humanism, and Art. The more categories a film can tick off, the higher chance it has of winning. It also gets bonus points for references to WWII, which could be chalked up to Politics + Humanism but is so much of a trump card that it really deserves a special category all of its own.

Visual Effects
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man

Benjamin Button probably has the best effects, but both The Dark Knight and Iron Man had more and bigger ones. I pick Dark Knight because it was less of a popcorn movie, the effects were slightly more like performance art, and it's friggin' Dark Knight. Woe betide any movie that is not Dark Knight this year.

Sound
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Iron Man
Wanted
Slumdog Millionaire
Wall-E
The Dark Knight

I don't know much about the difference between editing and mixing sound, so I'm putting the nominees for both categories in one list and picking two. The Dark Knight for many of the same reasons as Visual Effects, and Wall-E because it's bold and experimental and uses sound in place of dialogue 2/3 of the time. Voting for Wall-E gives you +5 Art Points.

Best Animated Short Film
La Maison en Petits Cubes
Lavatory - Lovestory
Oktapodi
Presto
This Way Up

Not many people care about this category either but I've actually seen two of the nominees so I feel obliged. La Maison en Petits Cubes was cute and poignant and about aging and the human experience, but we've got Benjamin Button filling that niche this year. It would give you more Art Points than Presto, but Presto was a loving wink at Old School cartoons which carries some weight as well. The clincher is that it was attached to Wall-E and gets extra Politics Points by association. Interestingly* the film I thought would be the best contender for this award, Skhizen, isn't on the list. Perhaps it didn't meet distribution requirements. I am prepared to be wrong on this one; Presto only has a 51% chance against Petits Cubes in my head, and it has the disadvantage of being upbeat and entertaining. All that said, though, my usual rule of thumb is 'the ugliest short wins.' Petits Cubes is way uglier than Presto but it's possible one of the others is even uglier!
*okay, probably not

Make-up
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Again, Benjamin Button probably has better makeup, but Hellboy definitely has more. That movie is makeup central. And it's actually really good. It's good enough to earn the Oscar as well as get it, and I say this even though I know that some of the makeup in Dark Knight was on Heath Ledger's face. So I may well be wrong.

Film editing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Again, don't know much about editing, but Dark Knight is my pick on account of a)being an action movie, which is a great place to show off your flashy editing skillz [see Best/More] and b)it's friggin' Dark Knight.

Costume design
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Australia
Milk
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road

I really liked the costumes in Australia, especially at the beginning where they contributed to the cartoony feel of the film. On the other hand The Duchess had pretty dresses and Keira Knightley, who is an excellent clothes horse, especially if the movie includes corsets in the wardrobe. Plus movie people seemed not to like Australia much.

Cinematography
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Changeling
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
The Reader

I know I'm going against Dark Knight here, but my theory is you can sit back and see the cinematography in Benjamin Button. This may have been a bad judgment.

Art Direction
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Changeling
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road

I am voting against Dark Knight again, but Changeling is a period piece and, judging by the trailer, involved a lot more image manipulation through filters and such in post-production.

Best original song
Down To Earth - Wall-E
Jai Ho - Slumdog Millionaire
O Saya - Slumdog Millionaire

It may feel good to vote for ethnic music but even that cannot defeat the combined force of environmentalism and Peter Gabriel. Also the title can be taken two different ways, how cool is that?

Best original score
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Defiance
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Wall-E

Thomas Newman has been nominated for an Oscar 10 times and has never won. Add that sob story to being the go-to guy when you want your audience to cry (the Academy loves crying at movies) and the Midas touch of Wall-E and I think this may be his ticket to the little golden man. He might even have earned it, too, as the music carried the story almost as much as the sound effects ... which means it has a better chance of being noticed in the first place.

Best Adapted Screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

F Scott Fitzgerald. He's famous and respected in the literary community. That the movie is generally well-liked by people who might have read the original gives it 50% more Art Points. To a lesser degree we've got some Best/More going on as well; the original was a short story and they turned it into a movie that's over two and a half hours long – that's a lot of adapting! I'm not so sure if that applies to this category, though; I suspect there might be some small value placed on faithfulness to the original.

Best Original Screenplay
Happy-Go-Lucky
Milk
Wall-E
In Bruges
Frozen River

Voting for writing on a movie which doesn't have any dialogue until halfway through is bold and experimental (but in this case also accessible!) and wins you Bonus Art Points. (Wait, why isn't Dark Knight in this category? Could it be you actually didn't like the story that much?? You've blown your cover, Academy!)

Best Animated Feature Film
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
Wall-E

The only way this would have been a toss-up is if Wall-E had landed a nomination for Best Picture. Since it didn't, it has to win here.

Best Foreign Language Film
Revanche - Austria
The Class - France
The Baader Meinhof Complex - Germany
Departures - Japan
Waltz With Bashir - Israel

It's not about WWII but it is war + Israel, which almost = WWII's poor cousin. Also it is stylized (Art Points!), is personal, delving, and dreamlike at times (Humanism Points!), and challenges our prejudices regarding the conflict in the Middle East (Politics Points!). In a shocking and profound twist, the last few minutes are live-action archive footage! Double Art Points!

Best Supporting Actor
Josh Brolin - Milk
Robert Downey Jr - Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

Is this even a question.

Best supporting actress
Amy Adams - Doubt
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis - Doubt
Taraji P Henson - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei - The Wrestler

Amy Adams may get it if Meryl Streep does not get hers, and Marisa Tomei if Mickey Rourke doesn't win, but to the best of my judgment this one's a mystery ... I decided to play the race card as tiebreaker.

Best Actress
Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Melissa Leo - Frozen River
Meryl Streep - Doubt
Kate Winslet - The Reader

Hollywood loves scandal and has a perverse fascination with the religious. If the priest in Doubt turned out to be innocent, Kate Winslet's chances improve, but if it's left open-ended, or Meryl Streep's character continues in her certainty to the end even in the face of evidence, or is so shaken by the result that she quits the Catholic church and at the end of the movie faces an uncertain world and/or a loss of identity, she's more or less got it in the bag.

Best actor
Richard Jenkins - The Visitor
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler

Voting for Sean Penn is like voting no on Prop 8 again! +5 Politics Points! Second place would be Mickey Rourke, +3 Humanist Points for an identity crisis and the human experience. I don't think anyone could watch themselves vote for Brad Pitt, even if Best/More is on his side.

Best Director
Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry - The Reader
David Fincher - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard - Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant - Milk

This is closely tied to Best Picture – whoever wins that category could throw off Director, either in their favour or against. It's like a crazy tilt-o-wheel of Hollywood politics! I'm going with Danny Boyle here because I'm not confident Slumdog will win Best Picture, and I've heard his name in connection with his movie more than any of the other directors' with theirs (though that may be the influence of the BBC).

Best picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

My theory is that Benjamin Button and Slumdog will split a large percentage of the vote, leaving The Reader's voters with a majority. It has something to do with the Holocaust, which is always a good sign, and is also about guilt, national identity, love, coming to grips with your past, and other human experience stuff. If it's depressing, that's even better! Its only drawback is that it hasn't gotten much publicity and they're trying to make the Oscars more 'accessible' to the masses by voting for movies the masses have actually heard of, so ... who knows? Milk also has a chance for the same reasons as Sean Penn, but I think chances are higher in the Best Actor category.

Can I just mention how glad I am Dark Knight wasn't nominated for Best Picture? Thanks.

2:17 am
Having now seen Benjamin Button, I hope it wins everything, even categories it's not nominated for. The end.

Comments

[ks-claw.livejournal.com]

Here's to hoping that Dark Knight at least gets *one* of the rewards and Wall-E the rest! Because damnit, they both deserve it!

[mellifluous-ink.livejournal.com]

Well, they changed the rules so that an animated film can't possibly ever be nominated for Best Picture ever again, so Wall-E would only be able to win Best Animated Picture, which is the Academy's way of giving animation patronising attention.

I don't watch the Oscars anymore--they're not about which movie is best, anymore. After last year, I completely gave up on them.

No, I'm not bitter about Beauty and the Beast, why do you ask?

[mellifluous-ink.livejournal.com]

Also I'm not too pleased with Wall-E, as a story. Call me paranoid, but it seems a little fat-phobic.

[brennildandd.livejournal.com]

I was pretty conflicted about the fat message in that movie. On one hand, the movie says fat = indolent and mentally stunted. But on the other, when the chips come down, it's the Captain who saves the day, and everyone down on the promenade help each other and generally act like decent human beings and show that they aren't the lazy, self centered beings that the machines have trained them to be.

On the third hand, there's a lot of visual gags that rely on laughing at the fat folks because look, they can't get up! And so on. So yeah, conflicted.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. The first third of the movie was brilliant. The next third was pretty good. The last third was not good. There were just too many story ideas that were not thought through. I mean, how does a plant survive in outer space, even if if is just for a few seconds? Did the people learn anything? They were still using Wall-whatever robots to dispose of their trash; compacting it up and throwing it away. It was, however, oh so very PC and superbly animated. I enjoyed Bolt a lot more. Kung Fu Panda was better too.

I gave up on Oscars about five years ago.

[trutitipudlian.livejournal.com]

Being the dorky all around AI fan that I am,* and a hopeless optimist I rather think that the ending credits meant that humanity and their creations were working together to replenish the planet. These people of the Axiom clearly lacks the Frankenstein complex that Asimov writes about. They seem to be willing to accept the robots as fellow life-forms, and it is probably less of a servant-master relationship.

As for the plant's survival, I could care less. I'd like to know how the thing grew in the first place in a fridge. Surviving space is hardly anything compared to a green (and thus clearly requiring sunlight) that grows healthy in a dang-gummed fridge. Indy surviving a nuclear explosion in a fridge is nothing to this use of a fridge. I suspect that any plant that can grow in a fridge, and latter grow into a freaking tree, has nothing to fear from exposure to space.


*To the point where I'm actually a little bit more disturbed at the deaths of robots and the like in movies than human deaths. In fact, I once upon a time liked Superman, but then I saw The Mechanical Monsters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBvDuK-N3aQ I'm not such a fan of Supes now.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU. The fridge thing is the single biggest problem I have with the movie, because it's the most important thing and the entire plot rests on its shoulders and it is entirely implausible. The worst part is that it would not have been that difficult to make it plausible, but somehow no one on the crew thought of doing that. :[

[trutitipudlian.livejournal.com]

What you mean like put somewhere other than a refrigerator? Or maybe have a big ol' hole somewhere in it that lets little things like light and water in? Or if maybe have it be a different sort of plant?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

See? You came up with three perfectly valid and easy solutions and (presumably) you haven't even fought your way up the industry ladder to be in a position of influence at Pixar.

[trutitipudlian.livejournal.com]

Admittedly the third opinion probably isn't as workable, since plants that are dark growers don't exactly scream, "I'M A PLANT!" At least not as much as the Wall-e plant does. The confusion probably would have been great.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

But think how educational it would have been!

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

It's not completely impossible that the plant grew inside the fridge with the door open, and the door just blew shut in one of the sandstorms.

[(Anonymous)]

You've never seen plants sprout up through a sidewalk? Not just growing in a crack in the sidewalk, but breaking up through the actual pavement, or growing around it to come out from underneath?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

They don't get green and leafy until they reach sunlight, though, and at least moisture can get to the dirt under a sidewalk, as opposed to inside a sealed metal box.

[ledygrey.livejournal.com]

IMO the greatest moment of WallE was the credits and how they showed the re-civilizing of humanity through major art movements in history, and how the art reflected the sophistication-izing of their culture for the second time around

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

It has a lot more problems as a story than just insensitive handling of the overweight.

I'm pretty sure they didn't actually change the actual rules – Wall-E was actively campaigning for a Best Picture nom this year and I don't think they would have spent all that time and money on it if it had absolutely no chance.

In the grand balance of things I end up liking that there's now a Best Animated Feature category, though I may be alone in this. For most of my life the best an animated movie could hope for was Best Song, which encouraged films to be musicals even when they didn't have to be and resulted in a lot of horrendous pop songs on the credits that had little or nothing to do with the movie. I love animated movies but I am perfectly willing to admit most of them don't deserve to contend for Best Picture, so it's nice for them to have an award that recognizes them for what they are and makes people think about the genre past the soundtrack. And it might be the first step towards both respect from the broader movie-making community one on side and animated movies that aspire to be award-worthy on the other.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh come on. Fat is the natural result of sitting on your butt all day eating and watching TV and doing absolutely nothing else. The message clearly wasn't "everyone more substantial than Keira Knightley is a disgusting hambeast." It was about getting up and getting involved in endeavors deeper than easy instant self-gratification. Those people literally had trouble walking about sitting up on their own...

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Well, that and the bone loss from living in supposedly reduced gravity (though that scientific fact was only brought up when explaining the human characters' physical state, not when animating weight or after the ship landed...). Even fit humans would look like blobs if you dissolved half their skeletal structure.

[jesskat.livejournal.com]

I didn't know they changed the rules like that. I suspected creating the "Best Animated Feature" category was just a good excuse to stuff animation into a neat category of its own and not ever have to consider it on par with "real" movies, but I didn't know they actually changed the rules. That blows.

I didn't think WALL-E was fat-phobic (for the record, I'm not exactly a fairy myself). The whole theme was more about laziness and yes, fat is a good symbol of laziness in a future where no-one bothers to do anything anymore except eat and surf the web. It's scarily accurate in portraying the direction I've seen the world heading for the last 10-15 years, little by little. Letting technology take care of more and more things and making our food proportions bigger and bigger. Everything's being made easier, and part of making things easier is letting big corps like fast food chains make our decisions for us. If they say it's okay to eat this much this often, well, it can't be all that bad. If it was dangerous for our health, surely someone would complain, right?

Re: the visual jokes in WALL-E, about fat people not being able to get up, etc. The whole point of the movie was to say "this is what we might become in the future if we don't watch out", i.e. so pampered and helpless we don't even know how to take care of ourselves anymore. Not to point and laugh at fat people in general. Although I must say that if there are people out there who were offended because they recognized themselves in those scenes, well, maybe it's a good time to start thinking seriously about their health.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE ICON i love you. :D

[mellifluous-ink.livejournal.com]

GMD FOREVER!

I'm a special kind of Disney geek. I think about half my icons are obscure characters.

Look! Terpsikore!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure that Wall-E will win something, but I do hope that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button gets everything else. I saw it on Christmas Day, and it is just Awesome in sound and story!

[sydpad.livejournal.com]

Skhizen was one of the best shorts I've ever seen-- I'm absolutley shocked it wasn't nominated. Perhaps it was too oblique?

This list is making me realize I've hardly seen any movies this year!

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

All I can figure is that it didn't meet some sort of arbitrary requirements ... it's made for the Oscars as far as I can tell. Maybe it'll be up next year ...? I was a little surprised that only two of the nominees this year had been in the Show of Shows.

There just haven't been that many exciting movies this year ...

[sydpad.livejournal.com]

I dunno.. I saw it at Annecy which is the usual qualifier, same festival as Petit Cubes, where it won the Audience Award. It also got the short prize at Cannes. Someone's been very careless if it was a qualification problem.

Yeah, last year was a bit rubbish.. Iron Man and Helvetica I think were what I enjoyed most! Hoping for good things this year, though sadly the prospect of a new Holmes movie is crappified by the involvement of Guy Ritchie.

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Aw, your icon makes me miss my little mousie girl, Emily, who sadly left this world late last year.

[tony-cliff.livejournal.com]

I will say only this about Benjamin Button, because I'm not sure how to articulate it any better:

It was a lovely piece of Hollywood Movie Magic, and I enjoyed watching it, but it left me feeling extremely dissatisfied and almost angry. What's up with that?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I don't know; I enjoyed watching it, liked it even more an hour later, and am harbouring pleasant thoughts about it even as I type. But then No Country made me viscerally angry while nearly everyone else loved it, and you aren't the only one to have come away from Benjamin Button feeling that way.

[bevinbaka.livejournal.com]

I realized a long time ago that the Oscars are more about politics than actually awarding "the best" movie/performance, etc., but admittedly, the nominees are typically worthy of recognition, at least. I can always think of more films I wished would have been recognized, or even better than some that made the list, but it's pretty rare that I look at the list and go 'wtf is that doing in there??'.

Having said that, I have to admit that I haven't seen any of the movies being nominated in the Best Picture, Director, Actor, or Actress categories this year. I'm interested in seeing "Milk", "Frost/Nixon" and "Vicky Christina Barcelona", and have a passing interest in seeing "Doubt", "The Reader", and "The Wrestler", primarily because of performances and not plot or directing. But I'm actually far more interested in seeing "Waltz with Bashir", and "Departures" than any of those, just because of personal interests of my own. And while I enjoyed "Wall-E", I don't feel it's Pixar's strongest film, and I felt "Kung Fu Panda" was more consistent (I haven't seen "Bolt" yet). "Wall-E" is a lot more ambitious and as always, the technical aspects of the animation are amazing, and I don't doubt that it'll win in that category, and maybe it deserves it. But I saw "Wall-E" once, and I haven't had much of a desire to watch it since, and I've watched "Kung Fu Panda" about six times, and I still surprise myself with how much I enjoy it. The main message is nothing new, to be sure, but I honestly enjoyed watching it more, and was so pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, that I do like it more than "Wall-E".

Of course, admitting that will probably get me ostracized from a lot of animation circles, but if there's one thing I've learned from studying film, it's that it, like any other artistic medium, is subject to personal interpretation, and I can no more attempt to convince myself to like "Wall-E" more than someone else could try to convince themselves to like KFP more. That's the main problem I see with awards for this stuff; art is so subjective, that it's kind of egocentric to proclaim one work "the best" whatever. Of course, it's also incredibly egocentric to put on a big, overblown self-congratulation party once a year, too.

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Wow, I don't think I've seen any of these movies. What was the last movie I saw? Oh, yeah, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," because I remember saying that Keanu Reeves looks like an alien.

My brother saw Benjamin Button on New Year's Eve, and he said the guy who wrote it must have been a genius--which is incredibly high praise coming from him (he usually communicates his thoughts with a shrug and an, "It was okay."), so I guess it must be good.

[missuscarroll.livejournal.com]

F. Scott Fitzgerald? 8D

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Well, that goes without saying, but my brother didn't know Fitzgerald wrote it.

[raddishh.livejournal.com]

Why didn't Benjamin die as an old man that looked like a baby instead of being born a baby, then later dying a baby? This made no sense. I suppose this happened in the original, but the original makes more sense on the whole.

But even if that hadn't happened, I don't think you could get me to really LIKE Benjamin Button. I mean, I cried, and I always used to think that crying equaled liking the movie, but Benjamin really proved me wrong there. I don't know.

[missuscarroll.livejournal.com]

I need to find someone to bet against me that Ben Button won't win Visual Effects.

Come on people, the odds are spectacular

[missuscarroll.livejournal.com]

And perhaps TDK was nominated for the Mayor's makeup?

[phonixa.livejournal.com]

I just watched the Duchess last night. And well. I'm not entirely sure if I like it or not. I just don't know.

And Oktopodi is adorable.