Sunday, February 21, 2010

Oscars 2009 Picks and Predictions

Mimicking Entertainment Weekly's thing, here I go. I may not do the "detailed analysis" I did last year (Nick's Flick Picks is neglecting them entirely), but to leave the predictions completely... eh, non.

Best Picture:

The winner will be... Avatar

The winner should be... A Serious Man

The nominees, in order of preference:

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

Best Actor:

The winner will be... Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

The winner should be... Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Nominees in order of preference:

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Colin Firth, A Single Man
George Clooney, Up in the Air

Best Actress

The winner will be... Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia (one out-on-a-limb pick per year, people; I predicted her last year and it was unsuccessful, but maybe this time?)

The winner should be... Helen Mirren, The Last Station

Nominees in order of preference:
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Gabby Sidibe, Precious
Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia
Carey Mulligan, An Education (I'll give the praisers their due, this is a "Hepburn-esque," interesting performance. It's kind of cool that kind of thing got a nomination)
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side (maybe this is a little low, but I agree with the people who said that it was kind of "annoying acting".)

Best Supporting Actor

The winner will be... Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

The winner should be... Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds (is it a first that Cannes Best Actor and an Academy winning performance are one and the same?)

The nominees, in order of preference:
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Matt Damon, Invictus

Haven't seen: Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones

Best Supporting Actress:

The winner will be... Mo'nique, Precious

The winner should be... Mo'nique, Precious (simply the best performance nominated this year)

Nominees, in order of preference:

Mo'nique, Precious
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart

Haven't seen: Penelope Cruz, Nine

Best Director (just my luck I saw two of the directors in person in NYC)

The winner will be... Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker (I see a BP/BD split going on)

The winner should be... Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Nominees, in order of preference:

Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
James Cameron, Avatar
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels, Precious
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air


Best Original Screenplay

The winner will be... Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker

The winner should be... Joel and Ethan Coen, A Serious Man

Nominees, in order of preference:
Joel and Ethan Coen, A Serious Man
Q
uentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, The Messenger
Bob Peterson and Pete Doctor (w/Tom McCarthy), Up

Best Adapted Screenplay

The winner will be... Shelton Turner and Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

The winner should be... Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, and Tony Roche, In the Loop (this will finally make amends with Joezeph Zukö)

Nominations in order of preference:

Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious
Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, District 9 (the ideas in this movie are admittedly good, even though the movie never really started)
Nick Hornby, An Education
Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air

Best Animated Feature

The winner will be... Up

The winner should be... Fantastic Mr. Fox (it'd be nice to see Wes Anderson win an Academy Award, because this is probably the only time he's ever going to have the chance)

Nominees in order of preference:

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Up

Haven't seen:
Coraline
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells

Art Direction:

The winner will be... Avatar

The winners should be... either Avatar or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (which I haven't seen but looks good in terms of art direction)

Nominees, in order of preference:

I've only seen one of these movies, Avatar

The other nominees:
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria

Best Cinematography

The winner will be... Avatar (but The Hurt Locker has a definite chance)

The winner should be... (as people like my friend said) The White Ribbon or The Hurt Locker (both of these movies achieved a look with two vastly different styles, as NFP commented)

Nominees, in order of preference:
The White Ribbon
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Avatar (I think it's a matter of separating Effects from Cinematography, like NFP sort of did last year; the camerawork in this movie was kind of regular)

Haven't seen: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


Costume Design:

The winner will be... Nine (because of Colleen Atwood, and because they want to give this movie and Harvey Weinstein at least something)

The winner should be... Bright Star (amazing costumes, period)

The nominees, in order of preference:
Bright Star is the only one of these that I've seen

The other nominees:
Coco Before Chanel
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
The Young Victoria

Documentary Feature

The winner will be... The Cove

The winner should be... I've seen two, The Cove and Food, Inc., and while both were good, I wasn't as blown away as last year. Maybe Burma VJ will be good or something. Otherwise, these films both had their ups and downs, so I'd rank them about the same. NO PREFERENCE

The nominees:
Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsburg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home

Documentary Short: No preference

The winner will be... China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province

The nominees:
China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardener
The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant
Music by Prudence
Rabbit á la Berlin

Film Editing:

The winner will be... Avatar

The winner should be... it's a little obvious and (as a friend said) "new-school", but The Hurt Locker

The nominees in order of preference:
The Hurt Locker
District 9 (I dunno, I guess it's pretty good)
Inglourious Basterds
Avatar
Precious

Foreign Language Film

The winner will be... A Prophet (France)

The winner should be... (I haven't seen it yet, but) A Prophet (France)

The nominees (since I've only seen The White Ribbon)
Ajami (Israel)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
A Prophet (France)
The Secret in His Eyes (Argentina)
The White Ribbon (Germany)

Makeup:
The winner will be... The Young Victoria

The winner should be... I saw like the first 5 minutes of Il Divo, and I think it had good makeup

The nominees (I've seen only one all the way through, Star Trek)
Il Divo
Star Trek
The Young Victoria

Music (Original Score):

The winner will be... Up

The winner should be... If you want to talk about integrality to the movie (like wpk914 on Itunes), then it should be a split between Fanastic Mr. Fox and Up. Most interesting to listen to: Sherlock Holmes.

The nominees, in order of preference:

Sherlock Holmes
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Up (I guess it's "pleasant," but it has that annoying Pixar feeling to it)
The Hurt Locker (I guess its interesting in some ways, and though someone said it's all "clangings," etc., it's still pretty good)
Avatar (so stereotypical, but sound)

Music, Original Song:

The winner will be... "The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart

The winner should be... "The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart

The nominees in order of preference:
"The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart
"Down in New Orleans," The Princess and the Frog
"Almost There," The Princess and the Frog
"Loin de Paname," Paris 36
"Take it All," Nine (it's presence is kind of annoying)

Animated Short Films (no preference)
The winner will be... A Matter of Loaf and Death

The other nominees:
French Roast
Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
The Lady and the Reaper
Logorama

Live Action Short Films (no preference)
The winner will be... Miracle Fish

The other nominees:
The Door
Instead of Abracadabra
Kavi
The New Tenants

Sound Editing (no real preference; I can't really remember that much from these movies):

The winner will be... Avatar

The other nominees:
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Up

Sound Mixing (same as above)

The winner will be... Avatar

The other nominees:
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek

Haven't seen (actually I saw half): Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

And finally,

Visual Effects

The winner (obviously) will be... Avatar

The winner should be... Avatar or possibly District 9

The nominees in order of preference:
Avatar
District 9
Star Trek (I berated these heavily in my review, so there you go).

Ha. Took a while, but here I am.



8 comments:

Adelaide Dupont said...

Lots to talk about here!

Now that I have seen Precious, I think I agree with you in regard to Mo'Nique. She played such a good Mary: convincing and well-rounded.

And Christoph Waltz was good as the supporting actor for Basterds.

Jozeph Dukö said...

I will admit I have not seen and have no opinions about many of these movies, but I will disagree with you on one thing. No matter what the year Meryl Streep is always the best actress.

Nick Duval said...

That's really not necessarily true. Last year it wasn't, and neither is it this year, in fact.

Unless you mean she's the most accomplished every year, meaning she always has the best body of work of anyone in the field. Obviously. But if you're saying she's always the best performance, it's a stretch.

Denise Powell said...

What a great, exhaustive list, Nick. Love your blog!!
Denise

Nick Duval said...

Thanks. :)

Nick

aspergiansarah said...

My family now has cable, and I used it for the first time to watch the Oscars. I couldn't catch all of it, though, cause my sister kept screaming.

I guess it was just your comment about 'annoying acting,' but I was surprised Sandra Bullock won- I've not seen "The Blind Side" but I've watched a couple of her movies, mostly mediocre. Were you disappointed?

I'm rather ashamed I haven't caught hardly any of these. Our Blockbuster and access to the rent-it-now mainstreams has inexplicably gone kaput, complete with cleared shelves and a 'For Sale' sign.

How could you have possibly of skipped "The Half-Blood Price?" No offense to you, I just thought about %99.9 of society has seen every HP at least once.

I haven't read all the books, which sets me apart from many. I like the movies ("The Goblet of Fire" was best,) but they come out crammed and disjointed plot-wise, I think, since the books are like 600 pages.

Having read half of the book before trailing off, I'm amazed by Tomas Alfredson's ability to adapt a huge book like "Let the Right One In" and not make first-time viewers feel as if they're missing something.

He successfully cut out so many plot lines- a lot of book adaptations can't do that. It reminds me of a lot of superhero movies, where they panic and screw the whole thing up by sticking two many villains, too many climactic battles.

But "Half Blood Price..." I must say, your failure to have watched it is happily unconventional. Seems to be what a lot of people talk about on and on. They don't realize there are other films that make up a good cinematic repertoire.

Nick Duval said...

This was an odd year: to be honest, due to my "living arrangments" I didn't actually watch the Oscars. Weird, right? I could have, but I decided to just get some sleep. If some things had been worked out sooner than later, however, I probably would have watched them.

Sandra Bullock's win was disappointing but expected. "The Blind Side" is the classic case of "subject matter over style" where everyone gets all hyped up over a below-average movie with an "emotionally manipulative" (as the phrase goes) story.

I didn't see the "Half-Blood Prince" as a testament of my dislike of the fifth film, "Order of the Phoenix." That movie was terrible, and I don't want to keep pouring my money into such a franchise.

You can't call me an Anti-Potter since I read every one of the books, and I was massively disappointed that "Order of..." was so bad, since it was my favorite book (save maybe seven) in the series. I've also seen all the movies, with Number 4 being the best, I agree. The only reason I would go near the Half Blood Prince movie would be because of Bruno Delbonnel. I almost saw it once, but I didn't.

I really liked "Let the Right One In," too, especially that "last scene."

------ Nick

P.S. Speaking of "good cinematic reportoire," if you haven't seen "The Son," "Syndromes and a Century," and "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," check them out. They're not all equally good, but all three directors (and two of these three films) were on the Sight and Sound Top 30 of the Decade poll, as well as Syndromes being number 8 on the Film Comment Top 50 of the decade.

aspergiansarah said...

Hold on... wouldn't C- or less count for a below-average rating? I though you gave "The Blind Side" C+. Maybe you oughta change that tag.

I've liked all the Harry Potter films, but I can definitely see how you could find them over-rated. It's nearly impossible to like a series and find a film adaptation satisfying.

I personally think that any film that can provoke human emotions can't be all bad- but Hollywood's got the 'aaaww' factor wrapped around it's little finger.

I like my emotional films spiked with a little morbid, so the directer gives me a choice with how I'm going to react to the miserable characters and disaster plot. Makes it go down so much easier.

Modern dramas don't give a lot of breathing space nowadays. In fact, a LOT (especially the money-mongering ones with celebrities playing a PC special person) wallow in their own cuteness. God forbid you make a handicapped (or not) character any less than lovable.

By the way, I put "The Son" and "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" on the to-see list. I hope to get the blog updated soon, but there isn't a whole lot of motivation when a total of 5 people regularly visit.