It is but one week from tonight that the Oscars will be handed out, though by that point I imagine that only a handful of people will actually care, besides the nominees themselves. But this is not the place for me to complain and whine about the low quality of the Academy’s choices this year. This is just the cursory and grumpy predictions for what I expect will win.
Best Picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win/Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Alternate: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Obvious, but I do feel like I should defend saying that Slumdog should win: of the five, it’s the only one that I’ll ever feel inclined to watch a second time, although I’d probably stop for Milk if it were on cable.
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
Will Win: Danny Boyle
Alternate: David Fincher
Should Win: Gus Van Sant
Fairly obvious again. Boyle, unlike Van Sant and Fincher, didn’t see fit to hide his natural style in an obvious go at Academy-baiting, but more importantly, his film is the mondo-super-uber frontrunner. Though for my tastes it was pretty much “Boyle-lite”, and if I found Van Sant’s work to be much weaker than his recent heights, at least he did a few unusual things here and there.
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
Will Win: Mickey Rourke
Alternate: Sean Penn
Should Win: Richard Jenkins
Easily the hardest to call of the Big Eight. It’s a hair’s breadth separating two actors who both gave tremendous performances, close to a career-best in each case. I’m running with the Mickey Rourke Comeback Story, especially given that Penn won a scant five years ago.
Fuck You For Snubbing Sally Hawkins, Assholes
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader
Will Win: Kate Winslet
Alternate: Meryl Streep
Should Win: Melissa Leo
Widely seen as the Kate vs. Meryl showdown, but I don’t see it: Streep has lost many times for better performances than Sister Aloysius, and Winslet has all the momentum. I’m a bit sad that her first Oscar should come for such a run-of-the-mill performance (by her altogether exalted standards) in such a bad movie, but there you go. My preference teeters between Hathaway and Leo, but I ultimately find the latter woman to have a more satisfyingly exhausting presence.
Best Supporting Actor
Josh Brolin, Milk
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road
Will Win/Should Win: Heath Ledger
Alternate: Dark Knight fanboys burning down the Kodak
I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the Academy for breaking out of their box with RDJ’s nomination, even if he was better in Iron Man.
Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, Doubt
Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
Will Win: Penélope Cruz
Alternate: Viola Davis
Should Win: Marisa Tomei
The “anyone can win it!” category of the evening, except that they can’t: Amy Adams has no hope in hell, and I’d be vaguely stunned to hear Henson’s name called out, or even Tomei’s. Leaving this again a two-way race, almost as hard to call as Best Actor, but I’m going to side lightly with Cruz, both for being the first frontrunner and for residual Volver love.
Best Original Screenplay
Frozen River, by Courtney Hunt
Happy-Go-Lucky, by Mike Leigh
In Bruges, by Martin McDonagh
Milk, by Dustin Lance Black
WALL-E, by Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon & Pete Docter
Will Win: Milk
Alternate/Should Win: WALL-E
A better set of films by far than Best Picture, thus fulfilling the age-old curse that the writing categories are where the real best of the year films are to be found. I’m predicting Milk for two reasons: otherwise, I’d be predicting it for no Oscars at all, which is ludicrous; and it is the sole Best Picture nominee. Meaning that for the second year in a row, I’m expecting the award to go to the only film in the batch that I thought was good in spite of its clumsy writing (last year it was Juno). Choosing between Happy-Go-Lucky and WALL-E as my favorite was a hard, hurtful thing.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by Eric Roth & Robin Swicord
Doubt, by John Patrick Shanley
Frost/Nixon, by Peter Morgan
The Reader, by David Hare
Slumdog Millionaire, by Simon Beaufoy
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Alternate: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Should Win: Frost/Nixon
I’ll kill the suspense now: I’m basically assuming a Slumdog sweep, though in some places it’s closer than others. This isn’t one of the close places. Frost/Nixon is my “should win” only by necessity. Anyway, this was a crappy field in the year at large.
Best Animated Feature
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E
Will Win/Alternate/Should Win: WALL-E
THE lock of the night.
Best Foreign Language Film
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)
The Class (France)
Departures (Japan)
Revanche (Austria)
Waltz with Bashir (Israel)
Will Win: The Baader Meinhof Complex
Alternate: The Class
I’ve only seen one of these (The Class, but I’ll be seeing Waltz with Bashir before the ceremony), which does kind of make it hard to predict, not knowing what the films are like. I can say to a certainty that the Waltz vs. Class fight that everyone’s seeing is the result of those being the only films yet released in America. But this category doesn’t work that way.
Whatever the case, my logic is: Waltz is animated, and this is a conservative category; Departures is by all accounts quite hard and alienating, and Revanche is – apparently – an artsy sex picture, and those haven’t been in vogue for many years. Of the remaining two, I hear that Baader Meinhof is Important and Timely (it’s about terrorism), and I know for a fact that The Class goes out of its way to avoid the handholding and “this is what everything means” moralizing that the category likes. QED.
Best Documentary
The Betrayal – Nerakhoon
Encounters at the End of the World
The Garden
Man on Wire
Trouble the Water
Will Win: Trouble the Water
Alternate: Encounters at the End of the World
Popularity doesn’t matter in this category if it’s not a flat-out blockbuster, which is why I don’t buy the Man on Wire buzz – it’s an “unserious” movie in a category that tends towards the Very Serious Indeed. Which is why I’ve been favoring the hand-hewn Katrina doc ever since the nominations were announced; but of late, I’ve been wondering whether there’s a good chance that they’ll want to give Werner Herzog an Oscar while they have the chance. Not that he particularly gives a damn, I’d imagine. I’m still leaning Trouble, but not very solidly. Of course, I know nothing about The Betrayal or The Garden, so maybe one of those is obviously the winner, once you’ve seen all five (and the voters must, in order to vote).
Best Documentary Short
“The Conscience of Nhem En”
“The Final Inch”
“Smile Pinki”
“The Witness from the Balcony of Room 306”
Will Win: “The Conscience of Nhem En”
Alternate: “Smile Pinki”
Hard always, harder still when you don’t know what any of them are about. “Conscience” sounds like a very serious drama about some kind of deadly event, while “Smile Pinki” is probably a heartwarming story about a child.
Best Cinematography
Changeling (Tom Stern)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Claudio Miranda)
The Dark Knight (Wally Pfister)
The Reader (Roger Deakins, Chris Menges)
Slumdog Millionaire (Anthony Dod Mantle)
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Alternate: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Should Win: The Dark Knight
I still can’t entirely believe that Harris Savides missed out on the best shot for a nomination he’d ever had, with Milk, which I’d argue was better shot than any of the nominees. At any rate, Slumdog is super-flashy, and the movie is obviously well-loved. A tiny part of me thinks that Deakins could win as a career achievement, but to quote a friend, it would be terrible if he got his only Oscar for shooting half of The Reader. Sticking with the Best Picture frontrunners for safety’s sake, though without question, Pfister’s adventures with IMAX represent the great technical achievement of the category. Congrats to Tom Stern for finally getting nominated on the only one of his collaborations with Eastwood that left me cold.
Best Editing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall)
The Dark Knight (Lee Smith)
Frost/Nixon (Daniel P. Hall, Mike Hill)
Milk (Elliot Graham)
Slumdog Millionaire (Chris Dickens)
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Alternate/Should Win: The Dark Knight
When in doubt, go for the Best Picture frontrunner, always (not that there’s much here that could be considered “doubt”). Though The Bourne Ultimatum proved last year that they’re not above rewarding action films with editing that made a lot of people very angry. Frankly, I don’t understand how people can complain about the cutting in The Dark Knight being so incoherent – I literally do not comprehend this complaint. Even when someone very smart like Jim Emerson spends many paragraphs explaining it. It’s like complaining about the nudity in The Wizard of Oz.
Best Art Direction
Changeling (James J. Murakami, Gary Fettis)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Donald Graham Burt, Victor J. Zolfo)
The Dark Knight (Nathan Crowley, Peter Lando)
The Duchess (Michael Carlin, Rebecca Alleway)
Revolutionary Road (Kristi Zea, Debra Schutt)
Will Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Alternate: The Duchess
Should Win: Changeling
With 13 nominations, Benjamin Button has to win somewhere, and it’s around-the-world recreations of the 20th Century is certainly ambitious, but I have a giant feeling of “meh” to all of these nominations. If I feel marginally less “meh” towards Changeling, it’s only because I feel the very ’20s movies-inflected look of L.A. in the ’20s was probably the most visually interesting part of the film.
Best Costume Design
Australia (Catherine Martin)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Jacqueline West)
The Duchess (Michael O’Connor)
Milk (Danny Glicker)
Revolutionary Road (Albert Wolsky)
Will Win/Should Win: The Duchess
Alternate: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Insofar as The Duchess had any purpose, it was to put Keira Knightley in an unending line of giant, gorgeous period costumes. Mission accomplished!
Best Makeup
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Will Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Alternate: The Dark Knight
Should Win: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hard to say whether they amount of CGI that went into the aging makeup of Benjamin Button himself will be a sticking point, but there were plenty of other cast members who had to be aged the old-fashioned way. Or I guess, the medium-fashioned way, since the old-fashioned way would be to film the actors over a 40-year period, and the film would still be 38 years from release. And that would have been a gift. At any rate, nothing in either movie can hold a candle to the best effects in Hellboy II, some of which I incorrectly assumed must include some digital augmentation just because they were too convincing to be real.
Best Visual Effects
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Will Win/Should Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Alternate: Iron Man
Assuming that I’m right, that The Dark Knight simply didn’t have enough effects, that leaves it a battle between the film with the giant piles of really well-done traditional CGI, and the film with the brand-new, never-before-seen approach to creating digitally-augmented makeup. Whatever its other faults, Benjaming Button is tremendously convincing on that front.
Best Score
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Alexandre Desplat)
Defiance (James Newton Howard)
Milk (Danny Elfman)
Slumdog Millionaire (A.R. Rahman)
WALL-E (Thomas Newman)
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Alternate/Should Win: WALL-E
To my mind, this is Slumdog‘s weakest category where I’m predicting a win. Thomas Newman has been nominated a great many times, and those of us who like more adventuresome film scores have nowhere else to turn. Benjamin Button is a snug second alternate.
Best Song
From Slumdog Millionaire: “Jai Ho”
From Slumdog Millionaire: “O Saya”
From WALL-E: “Down to Earth”
Will Win: “Jai Ho”
Alternate/Should Win: “Down to Earth”
The Slumdog supporters have obviously consolidated around the great end-credits Bollywood number, and I’m okay with that. Though I distinctly prefer Peter Gabriel to cod-Bollywood in just about every situation you can name. I prefer Bruce Goddamn Springsteen to either of them, but you can’t always get what you want.
Best Sound Mixing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted
Will Win: The Dark Knight
Alternate/Should Win: WALL-E
The sound categories, rather than Makeup, are responsible for this year’s “you didn’t really make that a nominee?” nominee: Wanted. Anyway, I’m gingerly going with The Dark Knight despite what I consider to be some so-so mixing, simply because the sound categories tend to like action, but not asinine action that nobody saw.
Best Sound Editing
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted
Will Win/Should Win: WALL-E
Alternate: The Dark Knight
The category where they usually like LOUD MOVIES, but I can’t shake the feeling that WALL-E is the film of all films in history to really drive home what sound effects can do for a movie: in this case, create an entire character. Maybe they’ll swap the two sound categories, or give both the The Dark Knight (both to WALL-E would be lovely, but almost beyond imagination). And there’s always the possibility of a Slumdog sweep, but they don’t typically throw away the sound categories like that.
Best Live-Action Short
“Auf der Strecke”
“Manon on the Asphalt”
“New Boy”
“The Pig”
“Spielzeugland”
Will Win: “Spielzeugland”
Alternate/Should Win: “The Pig”
The easy route is to assume that WWII is like catnip to voters, and “Spielzeugland” certainly counts as the frontrunner. “Auf der Strecke” is much too hard, and I suspect that “New Boy” is too light (I thought the same thing about last year’s winner, though). Let us say that I see a three-way race leaning towards the Nazi picture, because “Manon” is kind of pretentious, while “The Pig” is a bit too thrilled with its own snottiness to be the Right Kind of political movie.
Best Animated Short
“Lavatory – Lovestory”
“La maison en petit cubes”
“Oktapodi”
“Presto”
“This Way Up”
Will Win: “La maison en petit cubes”
Alternate/Should Win: “Presto”
Over the past few years, I’ve hit upon a pattern: if I have seen more than one nominee prior to the ceremony, it’s my least favorite of those I’ve seen that wins. By that logic, “La maison en petit cubes” shall be crowned victorious come Sunday.