Six days ’til the Oscars (which will be happening in all their unexpurgated glory, praise be to the end of the strike). Can I be honest? I can’t make myself care. I mean, obviously I care a little or I wouldn’t be writing this, but whereas last year I was still kind of energised, this year the unfathomable botch that was Crash beating Brokeback Mountain two years ago finally got to me. These awards are a mental exercise, nothing more. How much do I not care? This year, Joel & Ethan Coen – as a team, one of my favorite filmmaking forces active anywhere in the world – are up for four Awards. That has only happened three times: Orson Welles for Citizen Kane, and Warren Beatty for Heaven Can Wait and Reds. Moreover, the Coens are very likely to win all four, and that has never happened at all. And I can’t get even a little worked up over that. Ask me how I feel on the 25th.
Anyway, here are my nominations predictions, a mixture of following the precursors, cribbing from people smarter than I, and in a couple places guessing wildly.
(Wondering if you should use me to win your office pool? Don’t. Last year I was right on just 13/24 overall, and 6/8 on the big awards)
Best Picture
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Will/should win: No Country for Old Men
Spoiler: Michael Clayton
If I had just woken up from a coma this morning and was given the list of nominees, I would almost certainly think that Michael Clayton was going to win, and here’s why: Atonement is clearly out of the running – no Director nomination. If being a comedy weren’t enough to kill Juno, then being a teen comedy would do the trick. There Will Be Blood is too depressing, and No Country is too depressing and too violent. Although it wouldn’t have taken that much work, really; Michael Clayton is a very sensible movie of extremely solid craftsmanship with an uplifting but serious message and the most gorgeous movie star alive. Golden!
But I didn’t just wake up from a coma, and I therefore know that No Country has won just about every precursor award that could possibly matter. Which doesn’t always guarantee an Oscar win, but since there are no gay cowboys in No Country to siphon off the bigot vote, I think I’m going to go for the safe bet.
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Will/should win: Joel & Ethan Coen
Spoiler: Tony Gilroy
No such quandary here – it’s not as blindingly obvious as Marty’s win last year, but the Coens are the only nominees who have been previously nominated, and they’re modern American masters who haven’t ever won in this category and there’s a building consensus that No Country is their best film (eh…). It does get into the tricky area that picture/director splits have become increasingly common this decade, but even then I think this is the category that No Country has fully locked up.
If I HAD to pick a spoiler, it would be Tony Gilroy, believe it or not. He’s a good craftsman, they’d get to reward a writer who came up through the ranks, and Schnabel and Anderson just don’t fit right (Schnabel’s film didn’t get nominated, and doesn’t PTA just seem too hip for the room?).
How Jason Reitman got a nomination is something I will die without knowing.
Best Actor
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Should win: Viggo Mortensen
Spoiler: none
If the evening has a lock, it is Day-Lewis for the win in this category. And for good reason: his performance, in all its operatic melodrama, is the backbone of one of the year’s best films. Personally, I did like Mortensen just a touch more – his performance was more about the mechanics of acting, if you will, and to a certain degree that’s alienating; but it was also much more intellectually exciting. I guess that’s what it comes down to in my mind: an emotional sucker-punch versus a precise intellectual study.
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away from Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno
Will/should win: Julie Christie
Spoiler: Marion Cotillard
Any one of these five ladies would be satisfying – yes, even Blanchett, who gave the overripe Elizabeth: Gowns and Armadas exactly the lead performance it deserved. But for my money, the grande dame of the race is the best, breaking your heart and making it look easy (though I was sorely tempted to put Linney for the “Should”, because she is, after all, Laura Linney). I think Christie’s built-in army of admirers from a 40 year career in the movies ought to make her victory pretty easy; yes, Oscar loves a good mimic and Cotillard was a great mimic, but she’s outclassed. A lot.
Best Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Will win: Javier Bardem
Should win: Casey Affleck
Spoiler: Hal Holbrook
Actually, I do not think that Affleck should win Best Supporting Actor; he shouldn’t have even been nominated, given that he was the lead in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. But category fraud has ever been and will ever be with us. And whatever the case, he does things with that role that would have made him a movie star in a more just world.
For the win? No contest. Bardem has picked up almost every possible award to this point, he dominates his movie (always a plus in the supporting categories) and he plays an already-iconic villain.
Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Will win: Cate Blanchett
Should win: Saoirse Ronan
Spoiler: Ruby Dee
I was torn by the “should win” here: Blanchett was so much fun (though not even the best supporting actress in that film), Ronan was the living heart and soul of the over-literate Atonement, and Swinton is one of those actresses that I’m just head over heels for. But ultimately, I must go with my first biases, and those are that if a child actor can steal a film away from everybody else, I must love them for it (see: Osment, Haley Joel, Oscar-nominated roles of).
Who will win? A nightmare. It’s not so hard to whittle it down to Blanchett (Oscar loves a mimic), Ryan (critics’ darling) and Dee (old vet, never won). But after that, this becomes possibly the hardest category of the night to predict (Cinematography, I think, runs it a close second). The argument that Blanchett’s 2004 win in this category seals her out is one that tempts me very much, but Oscar loves a mimic, and it was a gender-bender to boot. That latter fact is pretty much the only reason I’m leaning her way and not Ryan’s.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Atonement, by Christopher Hampton
Away from Her, by Sarah Polley
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Ronald Harwood
No Country for Old Men, by Joel & Ethan Coen
There Will Be Blood, by Paul Thomas Anderson
Will win: No Country for Old Men
Should win: Away from Her
Spoiler: There Will Be Blood
The story goes that Donald Ogden Stewart once said of his award for adapting The Philadelphia Story, “It was the easiest Oscar I could have won. All I had to do was stay out of the way.” I feel something much the same about the screenplay for No Country, which is no doubt exactly perfect in respect to the flawless film that it produced, but virtually every last line is already in Cormac McCarthy’s original novel – the order is shuffled a tad. And a few bits are cut out. All done very smartly. But it’s like giving a screenplay Oscar to a Shakespearean adaptation. It’s not going to matter, of course: I cannot conceive of what it would take for one of the other nominees to unseat it, especially if I’m right about Picture and Director.
Personally, I thought that Polley’s script, written when she was all of 27 and capturing the essence of what it means to age and die, might have been just a tiny bit more of a stretch.
Best Original Screenplay
Juno, by Diablo Cody
Lars and the Real Girl, by Nancy Oliver
Michael Clayton, by Tony Gilroy
Ratatouille, by Brad Bird
The Savages, by Tamara Jenkins
Will win: Juno
Should win: Ratatouille
Spoiler: Michael Clayton
It’s a crazy thing that the presumed frontrunner is the film which, out of the nominees, succeeds in spite of its screenplay, and not because of it. I do think that Cody has a very interesting future ahead of her, and I look forward to her next project; but the dialogue in Juno clangs like a jet engine stalling.
Even if that weren’t the case, it’s still not the best nominee, by a long shot. My two favorites here are Jenkins and Bird; Jenkins for nimbly balancing hilarity with pathos and two of the most realistic protagonists in any film in 2007. But my love must go to Bird, and his jerry-rigged rescue of a floundering project, creating a truly inspiring work about the need to create art, the need to appreciate art, and how silly the French are. Plus, dude: Anton Ego’s review. It still strikes me as a little weird that Brad Bird of all people needs to take the piss from critics, but that speech is worth mounting on a bronze plaque. Remember, kids: “not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”
I’ve heard more and more rumours that the Juno backlash might enable the night’s only win for Michael Clayton in this category, but I don’t think the backlash started early enough, and to not give Original Screenplay to a quirky indie would at this point take more imagination than I’ll credit the Academy with having.
Best Foreign Language Film
12 (Nikita Mikhalkov, Russia)
Beaufort (Joseph Cedar, Israel
The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky, Austria)
Katyn (Andrzej Wajda, Poland)
Mongol (Sergei Bodrov, Kazakhstan)
Will win: The Counterfeiters
Spoiler: 12
One of two categories where I’ve seen none of the nominees, so this is admittedly a huge guess. Especially because of the dark magicks kept 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days from making the cut. Seriously, what the hell was that about?
Anyway, I’d love to see Wajda get the win – and Poland too, for that matter. That country has the second-worst record in this category: now with its 9th nomination, it has never won. Only Japan can top that (that’s right, the home of Kurosawa never won a foreign film Oscar). But I don’t know why that would happen, and anyway, only one of these countries (Russia) has ever won before. My sense is that it’s between 12, a remake of a certain American film, and the WWII picture from Austria. I don’t know, doesn’t it feel like we’re due for a WWII picture in this category?
Best Animated Feature
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud)
Ratatouille (Brad Bird)
Surf’s Up (Ash Brannon & Chris Buck)
Will/should win: Ratatouille
Spoiler: Persepolis
When Persepolis lost out on a nomination for Best Foreign Film, I briefly wondered if that increased its chances here. I doubt it; Ratatouille is too beloved and too popular, and I see less than no reason to assume that Brad Bird will fail to become this category’s first repeat winner.
Best Documentary Feature
No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson)
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (Richard E. Robbins)
Sicko (Michael Moore)
Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney)
War/Dance (Andrea Nix & Sean Fine)
Will win: No End in Sight
Should win: One of several films which were not nominated
Spoiler: Sicko
Usually, only one or two of the nominees in this category are well known at all, and everybody flocks to that one or two as the frontrunner, but there’s a wrinkle: in order to vote, one must have seen all five films. So at least theoretically, the best film ought to win in this category. Theoretically.
This year, that means that everyone’s saying No End in Sight, with Michael Moore’s Sicko as the spoiler. But I’ve seen all five – the first time I’ve ever done that, I’m proud to say – so I think I can be a bit more reasonable than Joe Typical, and I’ve concluded…No End in Sight, with Sicko as the spoiler. But at least I got there fairly.
Step one: War/Dance isn’t going to win. It’s about Africa. We Americans feel guilty about Africa, and this category isn’t about guilt, it’s about being noble. (This is, however, the only option for a Bush supporter. There must be at least a couple of them in the Academy).
Step two: the three Iraq/Afghanistan films are going to cannibalise each other, though they shouldn’t. No End is the Very Serious And Insightful Study, Taxi to the Dark Side is the most emotionally invigorating film of the five, and Operation Homecoming is the humanist – but still angry! – film that is also the only one of the five to do anything even vaguely interesting as cinema. This award is typically Very Serious, which means that the three-way battle will fall in favor of No End. Although the fact that Operation Homecoming is both very humane and actually an interesting movie almost led me to call it the spoiler, except-
Step Three: This is the Year of Health Care. Admittedly, that was more over the summer, but with the Democratic primary in full blossom, and the candidates’ health plans being much on the lips of the politically engaged, I do think the issue has been reborn a bit. Thus does Sicko hold onto its place as the film that made America aware of The Issue, just like that global warming picture last year.
Step Four: Michael Moore is easy to hate. Even on the left, which I’m not convinced that the Academy really is. So Sicko can only be a spoiler.
Anyway, this category was a fucking hatchet job anyway. Let me try this on you:
In the Shadow of the Moon
Into Great Silence
The King of Kong
Lake of Fire
My Kid Could Paint That
Be honest, now – which list is better?
Best Cinematography
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Roger Deakins)
Atonement (Seamus McGarvey)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Janusz Kaminski)
No Country for Old Men (Roger Deakins)
There Will Be Blood (Robert Elswit)
Will/should win: No Country for Old Men
Spoiler: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
I’m stealing from a cinematographer friend of mine: Assassination of Jesse James is much more conventionally pretty (and probably took more effort), but in No Country, Deakins does a better job using the visuals to augment the story, and isn’t that what it’s all about? There’s really no other competition for my preference, though all five are well-shot films, and Elswit, like Deakins, turns in his career-best work. He just didn’t do it twice.
But as far as the Oscar goes, this one is ludicrously hard. It’s down to an obvious three: Deakins, Deakins and Elswit. The ASC award went to Elswit, but that’s not a terrific predictor: in the last ten years, they’ve matched up four times, or just enough to be almost but not quite completely useless. Fun wrinkle this year: it’s likely that the ASC voters split on which Deakins film to reward, and Elswit came up through the middle (that Deakins has already won the ASC award is, I’m certain, not a minor thing either). Will that happen at the Academy? I’m not sure. The tech awards don’t usually work on a “name recognition” basis. That does raise the question: which Deakins film, the prettier but much less popular one, or the less obvious work in the Best Picture frontrunner? In the past decade, no film has won this award without several tech nominations or a Best Picture slot (or both), and Assassination… has neither, so with great reluctance I’m going to go for the Deakins film that people actually saw.
(The BAFTA win somehow makes me feel better in this prediction. It should not).
Best Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum (Christopher Rouse)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Juliette Welfling)
Into the Wild (Jay Cassidy)
No Country for Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
There Will Be Blood (Dylan Tichenor)
Will/should win: No Country for Old Men
Spoiler: The Bourne Identity
I’m going to pretend that it’s impossible to see this going to a film that isn’t up for Best Picture, which slashes our list to two. I see no reason not to keep predicting that No Country will be better-liked by the Academy than TWBB (though, for what it’s worth, I do love me some Tichenor). It would be nice to know if the editors’ names are actually on the ballot – I can see where voting for the Coens for the fourth time might dissuade people.
Best Art Direction
American Gangster (Arthur Max, Beth A. Rubino)
Atonement (Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer)
The Golden Compass (Dennis Gassner, Anna Pinnock)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo)
There Will Be Blood (Jack Fisk, Jim Erickson)
Will win: Atonement
Should win:Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Spoiler: There Will Be Blood
I am torn. Sweeney Todd had the pretty Gothic sensibility that just positively scream “I WAS DESIGNED!” but it’s apparent that the Academy didn’t have much use for the film. Atonement has that period thing that they tend to like going on, it got a boatload of nominations, and only a psychopath would deny that the designers did a really good job evoking the era. It’s very difficult for me to see the others winning: American Gangster and There Will Be Blood are both too low-key, and I can’t imagine that enough people liked The Golden Compass.
But lo! What is this late breaking news? Why, There Will Be Blood has won the designer’s guild award! Could this mean that it will win the Oscar? I genuinely don’t think so, but it has to be regarded as a strong spoiler now.
Best Costume Design
Across the Universe (Albert Wolsky)
Atonement (Jacqueline Durran)
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Alexandra Byrne)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Colleen Atwood)
La Vie en Rose (Marit Allen)
Will/should win: Atonement
Spoiler: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
It pleases me that this category means that Across the Universe will forever after be “Oscar-nominee Across the Universe, but the costumes there really aren’t all that interesting.
Anyway, the win: so clearly going to be Atonement, and here’s why: That Green Dress. It’s already just about as iconic as movie couture can be, for entirely good reason, and it appears in a film set during the 1930s, one of the time periods that the Academy loves to give this award to. That’s also true of Renaissance England, and there’s no doubt that Byrne’s designs are elaborate and evocative, but also – like so much of 2 Elizabeth 2 Furious – overbearing and melodramatic. How can costumes be melodramatic, you ask? See the film.
It would not do to miss pointing out that Atwood’s work in Sweeney Todd probably did more work to help the movie than any of the other nominees, particularly the simultaneously gaudy and ratty gowns she kept stuffing Helena Bonham Carter into.
Best Makeup
Norbit (Rick Baker, Kazuhiro Tsuji)
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (Ve Neill, Martin Samuel)
La Vie en Rose (Didier Lavergne, Jan Archibald)
Will/should win: La Vie en Rose
Spoiler: none
A truly inexplicable set. I cannot begin to imagine the chain of events that will lead to a Norbit win, and between the other two…I mean, Lavergne and Archibald made the gorgeous Marion Cotillard look really old and ugly. That’s not only impressive, it’s very much what wins the Oscar.
Best Score
3:10 to Yuma (Marco Beltrami)
Atonement (Dario Marianelli)
The Kite Runner (Alberto Iglesias)
Michael Clayton (James Newton Howard)
Ratatouille (Michael Giacchino)
Will win: Atonement
Should win/spoiler: Ratatouille
Those now-famous typewriter clicks in the Atonement score are pretty damn awesome, and the rather free way that Marianelli shifts from major to minor keys just sweetens the deal. But then again, it’s all very heady music, where the Ratatouille score is just so…nice. Not to mention the orgasmically glorious “Le Festin,” a better song than four of the Best Song nominees.
Meanwhile, damn the technicality that allowed them to disqualify Jonny Greenwood’s epochal There Will Be Blood score. Damn that technicality right to hell.
Meanwhile, pt 2: who knew that Michael Clayton had a score?
Best Song
From August Rush, “Raise It Up”
From Enchanted, “Happy Working Song”
From Enchanted, “So Close”
From Enchanted, “That’s How You Know”
From Once, “Falling Slowly”
Will/should win: “Falling Slowly”
Spoiler: “That’s How You Know”
Yes, I know that this category is particularly notorious for rewarding the best nominee about once every 30 years, but I simply don’t trust a system that could possibly fail to reward a song as good as “Falling Slowly” used as well as it’s used in Once. A reminder.
On the other hand…I don’t trust this system.
Best Sound Mixing
3:10 to Yuma (Paul Massey, David Giammarco, Jim Stuebe)
The Bourne Ultimatum (Scott Millan, David Parker, Kirk Francis)
No Country for Old Men (Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, Peter F. Kurland)
Ratatouille (Randy Thom, Michael Semanick, Doc Kane)
Transformers (Kevin O’Connell, Greg P. Russell, Peter J. Devlin)
Will win: Transformers
Should win/spoiler: No Country for Old Men
Again, I am torn. The conventional wisdom is “the biggest sound wins,” and that it surely Transformers. But No Country for Old Men is a rarity, a film with such self-evidently amazing sound design that people who have no clue what “post-production” means are noticing it: the hotel room scene contains what might be the most celebrated use of sound since the talkies ceased to be a novelty. And the whole film is full of moments like that.
But picking the loud movie doesn’t usually fail me, and there’s a hidden component to this race: Transformers‘s Kevin O’Connell, who is semi-famously the losingest man in Oscar history, going 0 for 19 in this category since Terms of Endearment in 1983. That might make it seem like his presence is a sure-fire sign that Transformers will lose out, but I’m choosing to be optimistic that the twentieth time will be the charm.
I don’t mind saying, this is the category where I feel most likely to be wrong, given that Cinematography and Supporting Actress are such clusterfucks as to be wild guesses anyway.
Best Sound Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum (Karen M. Baker, Per Hallberg)
No Country for Old Men (Skip Lievsay)
Ratatouille (Randy Thom, Michael Silvers)
There Will Be Blood (Matthew Wood)
Transformers (Mike Hopkins, Ethan Van der Ryn)
Will/should win: Transformers
Spoiler: The Bourne Ultimatum
My misgivings about the justly famous No Country sound aren’t so significant here: this is even more the “loudest movie wins” category, and that gives it to Transformers in a walk. I’m inclined to agree, if only because the team had the decency to include the vintage transforming noise.
Best Visual Effects
The Golden Compass (Michael L. Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris, Trevor Wood)
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (John Knoll, Hal T. Hickel, Charlie Gibson, John Frazier)
Transformers (Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl, John Frazier)
Will/should win: Transformers
Spoiler: none
I see no reason to waste time this late in the post explaining something self-evident, though I’d like to note that if I am right about the last three categories, Transformers will be the only film of the year to win every Oscar it was nominated for.
Best Animated Short
“Even Pigeons Go to Heaven” (Samuel Tourneux)
“I Met the Walrus” (Josh Raskin)
“Madame Tutli-Putli” (Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski)
“My Love” (Aleksandr Petrov)
“Peter & the Wolf” (Suzie Templeton)
Will win: “My Love”
Should win/spoiler: “Madame Tutli-Putli”
So here’s how this category goes: there are three stop-motion films made with puppets, (“Pigeons,” “Tutli-Putli,” “Peter”), one ink-on-paper (“Walrus”) and “My Love.” Which is, in a word, astounding. It looks like an animated oil painting; how it was actually achieved, I don’t quite know at the moment.
My sense is that “Madame Tutli-Putli” is the frontrunner among the stop-motion films, having the most expressive puppets and most ambitious narrative. Meanwhile, “Walrus” is a conundrum, having the edgiest style with the safest theme – John Lennon sure liked peace! If the shorts were voted on by the Academy at large, that would be my pick to win; it’s candy for boomers and manna for art fans. But they aren’t, and the animation as such in the Russian “My Love” is much more impressive than the others – it’s the only film here that doesn’t look like anything else out there.
This is a basically great set of films – the strongest category this year.
Best Live-Action Short
“At Night” (Christian E. Christiansen)
“The Mozart of Pickpockets” (Philipe Pollet-Villard)
“The Substitute” (Andrea Jublin)
“Tanghi Argentini” (Guy Thys)
“The Tonto Woman” (Daniel Barber)
Will/should win: “Tanghi Argentini”
Spoiler: “The Mozart of Pickpockets”
This is not a basically great set of films. I will not pick them apart, for that would be mean. But as far as the award goes: “At Night” is just upsetting and sad. “The Substitute” is extremely zany, but it has the least “content” of any of these. “The Tonto Woman” is very well-crafted, but emotionally remote. It is the only English-language film here, but that doesn’t mean jack in the short categories.
That leaves us with “The Mozart of Pickpockets,” (a sweet little homeless deaf boy moves in with two hapless French pickpockets) and “Tanghi Argentini” (a bumbling Belgian office worker wants to learn to tango and impress a woman he met on the internet, and somewhere in there he teaches everybody the True Meaning of Christmas). The last of these is the only one of the five I honestly liked (though I wanted to like “The Tonto Woman”), but I’m trying not to let that influence me: I genuinely think that it has more of a resolution than “Mozart”, and that the cute kid factor will be somewhat negated by the fact that “Tanghi’s” protagonist is a lovable everyman.
Best Documentary Short
“The Crown” (Amanda Micheli & Isabel Vega)
“Freeheld” (Cynthia Wade)
“Salim Baba” (Tim Sternberg)
“Sari’s Mother” (James Longley)
Will win: “Sari’s Mother”
Spoiler: “Freeheld”
The other category in which I’ve seen not one single film. Here’s what I know about the content:
-“The Crown”: a beauty contest in a Spanish prison
-“Freeheld”: a dying policewoman fights to leave her pension to her same-sex partner
-“Salim Baba”: the life of an volunteer film projectionist in India
-“Sari’s Mother”: an Iraqi mother looks for health care for her 10-year-old son with AIDS
What can I say? They had me at “10-year-old son with AIDS”.