It’s that time of year again: Oscar weekend! If I were a brave man, I’d have gotten these published more than three days before the ceremony, but I wanted, among other things, to see as many nominated films as possible, and only just wrapped up the documentary films yesterday.
Thinking about using my predictions to win your party pool? I wouldn’t – last year I had a fairly excellent 20/24 predictions right, but historically I’m much more in the 16 or 17/24 range. And last year was kind of goddamn easy to predict, though I nailed the Best Animated Short category that tripped up a lot of people.
Best Picture
127 Hours
Black Swan
Inception
The Fighter
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone
Will Win: The King’s Speech – WINNER
Spoiler: The Social Network
Should Win: Toy Story 3
It’s clear enough to anybody paying attention where the big prize is going; I’d actually rather devote some thoughts to the first runner-up. Honestly, only habit and the secure knowledge it doesn’t actually matter lead me to slot The Social Network in the spoiler position; given how chilly the industry seems to be towards the film (its icy SAG reception is, I think, telling), I’d imagine that True Grit and its 10 nominations, or the familiar inspirational arc of The Fighter, might leave those films in a better spot. Honestly, I’d probably be less surprised at this point if Toy Story 3 took the big prize than if The Social Network did.
Kudos to the Academy, by the way, for one of the strongest BP slates in recent memory: in the last 20 years, I’d say it only competes with 2007 for having nothing that seems tremendously out of place, and if 127 Hours had been dropped, it would in the blink of an eye become my favorite year in the category since the 1970s.
Best Director
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit
David Fincher, The Social Network
Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
David O. Russell, The Fighter
Will Win: Tom Hooper – WINNER
Spoiler: David Fincher
Should Win: David Fincher
A very different cast than BP: this category is a definite two-man race, with Aronofsky dancing at the sidelines. The Coens won too recently, and Russell is a thorny figure; so is Fincher, but there’s no denying the scale and totality of his work.Still, it takes a lot for a BP/BD split, and this year doesn’t feel like any of the four times it has happened in the last 20 years: in 2000 and 2002, there was no clear Best Picture frontrunner, and in 1998 and 2005, the clear Best Picture frontrunner won Director and lost Picture; which theoretically makes Hooper safer than The King’s Speech itself. Still, I’ll admit to being uncomfortable with this pick.
(To anyone still wishing to force the 1998 comparison, another year that Harvey Weinstein rode a British period pic to victory: Steven Spielberg directing a WWII film is self-evidently a different beast altogether than David Fincher directing a cynical character study).
Best Actor
Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours
Will Win: Colin Firth – WINNER
Spoiler: None
Should Win: Jesse Eisenberg
If only Colin Firth had won for A Single Man last year! By the end of this month, he and Jeff Bridges would both have one Oscar each, and they’d have both won for a better performance than the reality. But that’s just a little mental exercise that means nothing. This is the easiest-to-predict category of the night.
Best Actress
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
Will Win: Natalie Portman – WINNER
Spoiler: Annette Bening
Should Win: Michelle Williams
A propos of nothing, I’m inclined to call this the strongest acting category of the year, and maybe the second-strongest category overall (behind Animated Feature). Anyway: it’s tremendously obvious who this comes down to: two well-established names, neither of whom have ever won (Lawrence and Williams both fall into the “you’ll be back here” trap, while Kidman’s nomination is her reward for having stopped doing whatever it was that made the Academy hate her for eight straight years). Portman has the momentum and the showier part; Bening’s performance, I’d say, is actually stronger, but it still feels like she’d be winning mostly because she’s “due”, while Portman (who is exactly the right age to win in this category) gets that whole “major dramatic role for a young actress coming to maturity” thing. And since she is a pretty white woman, the Eddie Murphy/Norbit rule doesn’t apply to her.
Best 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
Will Win: Christian Bale – WINNER
Spoiler: Geoffrey Rush
Should Win: Mark Ruffalo
It’s Bale’s in a walk – he’s got more momentum than the other four combined, what with the “I’m sorry for being a troublemaker” seasonal narrative, the “edgy artist in a friendly movie” narrative, and Batman raising his profile into the stratosphere. Only a King’s Speech sweep can stop him, and that would have to be one motherfucker of a sweep to reach this far.
Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helen Bonham-Carter, The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
Will Win: Hailee Steinfeld
Spoiler: Melissa Leo – WINNER
Should Win: Jacki Weaver
An agonizingly hard category to predict (it typically is). Start with the easiest part: Weaver isn’t going to win. She might be the best here – by a lot – by the movie’s too obscure. Leo is pretty clearly eating up all the energy from The Fighter, so Adams is a long-shot, and Bonham Carter only makes it in if The King’s Speech sweeps.
Leaving us with a 14-year-old (a plus) who was the lead of her film (a big plus) by just about every possibly definition except for the unofficial one where you can’t be a lead until you’re 20, and the woman who rather spectacularly shot herself in the foot with an overreaching FYC campaign paid for out of her own pocket. The big, and perhaps only question, is: did Melissa Leo’s tremendous error in judgment start early enough to wreck her Oscar chances? I’m going to say, “yes it did”, with the caveat that this was, for me, the hardest choice of the year.
Best Original Screenplay
Another Year, by Mike Leigh
The Fighter, by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson & Keith Dorrington
Inception, by Christopher Nolan
The Kids Are All Right, by Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumber
The King’s Speech, by David Seidler
Will Win: The King’s Speech – WINNER
Spoiler: The Fighter
Should Win: Another Year
I don’t buy Inception as a spoiler: the film missed out on two important nominations that would have demonstrated more than lukewarm affection for it amongst the Academy at large. But it’s not really important, this was any easy get for The King’s Speech even before the sea change in momentum in its favor of the last month.
Best Adapted Screenplay
127 Hours, by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy
The Social Network, by Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3, by Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich
True Grit, by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Winter’s Bone, by Debra Grainik & Anne Rosellini
Will Win: The Social Network – WINNER
Spoiler: Toy Story 3
Should Win: The Social Network
Given how much The Social Network isn’t just cooling off, it’s encased in ice, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pixar’s first-ever writing win for a rapturously-loved movie (it would also be the first writing win for an animated film generally), nor for the Coens to pick up their third win. But I still imagine that the general rule that the best dialogue wins this award will hold out, and that The Social Network can’t possibly go home empty-handed.
Best Cinematography
Black Swan (Matthew Libatique)
Inception (Wally Pfister)
The King’s Speech (Danny Cohen)
The Social Network (Jeff Cronenweth)
True Grit (Roger Deakins)
Will Win: True Grit
Spoiler: Black Swan
Should Win: True Grit
Let’s pick off the low-lying fruit: Inception is not nearly as showy as work that Pfister has lost for in the past, and he’s surely coming back for The Dark Knight Rises in a couple of years; and both he and Cronenweth are anyway working in a style that is rather more loved by professional cinematographers and other photography junkies than by the Academy, which usually opts for the most outwardly pretty nominee in this category. Which is, by a mile, True Grit, a film that also has the loudest “overdue!” narrative of the year for the 0-for-8 Deakins. I think those two facts, plus True Grit‘s healthy nomination total and the apparent fact that this is its easiest win, all add up to a lot of pluses. Libatique will be the choice of voters looking for something a bit more “edgy”, but historically there are not many of them; all that Cohen has in his favor is a sweep, and I have a profoundly hard time seeing how a sweep gets this far.
Best Editing
127 Hours (Jon Harris)
Black Swan (Andrew Weisblum)
The Fighter (Pamela Martin)
The King’s Speech (Tariq Anwar)
The Social Network (Kirk Baxter & Angus Wall)
Will Win: The Social Network – WINNER
Spoiler: The King’s Speech
Should Win: The Social Network
Ever since Lee Smith lost out on a nomination here – the biggest upset of nomination morning, I think, even above Nolan in Best Director- I haven’t known what to make of this category. So let’s sound it out together: 127 Hours, though the most-edited film here (which is often a good thing), is self-evidently not liked very much. Black Swan is the most stylish of the remaining set of four, but the fact that the movie is deliberately jarring will not help it here, I don’t think. The Fighter is a boxing picture, which surely doesn’t hurt – this was one of the only categories where Raging Bull was able to get traction. The King’s Speech is the evening’s frontrunner, and this is a sweep-friendly category. Lastly, The Social Network is generally assumed to be the first runner-up in Best Picture, and it has a chronologically-fractured narrative, which has helped many a film to a nomination, but only a few to a win. With great reluctance, I think I’m going to with the more obviously “made” film instead of the sweep. The recent ACE win helps cement that choice.
Best Art Direction
Alice in Wonderland (Robert Stromberg; Karen O’Hara)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (Stuart Craig; Stephanie McMillan)
Inception (Guy Dyas; Larry Dias, Doug Mowat)
The King’s Speech (Eve Stewart; Judy Farr)
True Grit (Jess Gonchor; Nancy Haigh)
Will Win: The King’s Speech
Spoiler: Alice in Wonderland – WINNER
Should Win: Harry Potter &c
One of two craft categories that nearly broke me. Basically, my thought process goes like this: I think Alice in Wonderland is probably going to beat The King’s Speech in either costume or art direction, but I can’t figure out which one. And maybe I’m completely wrong about that. My gut tells me that Alice has a better shot here than the other category, but I can’t quite pull the trigger. Maybe it’s just my innocent hope that the unpleasant, ugly train wreck of a massive international blockbuster can’t possibly walk away with an Oscars under its belt.
Confidential to everybody whining “I didn’t see Harry Potter, but why are they giving that team a nomination for the exact same work they’ve already done six times?!”: because it isn’t the same work they’ve done six times, which is exactly the point. Almost every location in this film is brand new, and one of them (the Ministry of Magic) is pretty much the most imaginative single piece of design in the entire franchise. Arguing from ignorance is a bad habit.
Best Costume Design
Alice in Wonderland (Colleen Atwood)
I Am Love (Antonella Cannarozzi)
The King’s Speech (Jenny Beavan)
The Tempest (Sandy Powell)
True Grit (Mary Zophres)
Will Win: The King’s Speech
Spoiler: Alice in Wonderland – WINNER
Should Win:I Am Love
See above, with the addendum: Atwood doesn’t win for her fantastical work, which makes me feel a bit more comfy here. Also, in a fun bit of trivia, Atwood, Beavan, and Powell have all now received 9 nominations; Beavan has 1 Oscar, Atwood has 2, and Powell has 3.
Best Makeup
Barney’s Version
The Way Back
The Wolfman
ACTUAL WINNER: The Wolfman
Will Win: Barney’s Version
Spoiler: The Way Back
Should Win: Haven’t seen all of the nominees
The only category of the night where it really feels like any of the nominees could win. I’m going to look to the past – specifically to the shut-out Transformers received in 2007 – as proof that the Academy doesn’t like to give Oscars to shitty films when it doesn’t have to, and of the remaining pair, Barney’s Version has that aging thing they love so much.
Best Score
127 Hours (A.R. Rahman)
How To Train Your Dragon (John Powell)
Inception (Hans Zimmer)
The King’s Speech (Alexandre Desplat)
The Social Network (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)
ACTUAL WINNER: The Social Network
Will Win: The King’s Speech
Spoiler: Inception
Should Win: The Social Network
Twice now, Desplat has been nominated in the right year for the wrong movie: in 2006 it was the pleasantly forgettable music of The Queen over his luminous work in The Painted Veil, and now the ubiquitous The King’s Speech over an extraordinary score for The Ghost Writer. So when he wins, which he will do both because of the love for the movie and individual problems with the competition, we can all pretend he’s actually getting a win for his work in both pictures. And throw Harry Potter 7.1 on the pile, too, why not.
Those “individual problems”: Powell’s Dragon score, though great, simply can’t compete with four BP nominees; Rahman won too recently and the score is atypical for the category (though so was Slumdog Millionaire), and, though I know most everybody thinks that The Social Network is the obvious spoiler, I simply refuse to credit the Academy with being brave enough to embrace something that dour and tonally unconventional. The nomination was the reward, I suspect. Inception is more user-friendly while playing in roughly the same sandbox, and seems to me the perfect combination of familiar and aggressive to take the win from Desplat, if anything can.
Best Song
From 127 Hours: “If I Rise”
From Country Strong: “Coming Home”
From Tangled: “I See the Light”
From Toy Story 3: “We Belong Together”
Will Win: “I See the Light”
Spoiler: “We Belong Together” – WINNER
Should Win: “I See the Light”
A rough collection even by the standards of a category that misses more than it hits. Speaking personally, I can’t recall the 127 Hours song even a little, “Coming Home” and “I See the Light” are far from the best numbers in those films, and “We Belong Together” would get my vote for Randy Newman’s worst song in any Pixar film. I think that the two animated films have the advantage, and the Tangled song in particular hits two sweet spots: it’s used in a specific way within the film’s narrative (during what I suspect has already become the film’s most beloved scene), and it gives voters a chance to celebrate Alan Menken for the first time since 1995 (and yes, they could have done that with Enchanted in 2007, but that film split its own vote, and “Falling Slowly” was a phenomenon). But in this I go against conventional wisdom.
I’ll confess that “I See the Light” has only grown on me these last three months, though “Mother Knows Best” or “When Will My Life Begin” would have been much better nominees.
Best Sound
Inception
The King’s Speech
Salt
The Social Network
True Grit
Will Win: Inception – WINNER
Spoiler: The Social Network
Should Win: The Social Network
If The King’s Speech wins here, it goes 12-for-12. Ain’t happening. Beyond that, Salt is the obvious red-headed stepchild of the lot, and while The Social Network has a very aggressive and apparent sound mix, Inception is an effects picture, and this is the kind of award that effects pictures win, especially if they’re also Best Picture nominees.
Best Sound Editing
Inception
Toy Story 3
TRON: Legacy
True Grit
Unstoppable
Will Win: Inception – WINNER
Spoiler: Toy Story 3
Should Win: TRON: Legacy
Customarily the award that goes to the noisiest film, but TRON: Legacy isn’t leaving an Oscar-winner. Same deal as the other sound category, if you’ve got an effects-driven movie that’s also a BP nom, it’s really hard to see how it gets derailed.
Best Visual Effects
Alice in Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Hereafter
Inception
Iron Man 2
Will Win: Inception – WINNER
Spoiler: Alice in Wonderland
Should Win: Inception
Hereafter might have impressed the VFX artists, but it’s obviously too small and un-showy for the Academy at large (and that leaves aside the open question: was that tidal wave actually a good effect? Because I, for one, thought it was kind of shaky). Harry Potter is almost certainly headed for a Return of the King-style win in this category next year, and Iron Man 2 is just so much of the same. The splashy colors and sheer excess of Alice in Wonderland help it out a lot – unlike a lot of people, I wouldn’t actually be shocked if it won, just disappointed – but the work in Inception is just so much more iconic, don’t you think?
Best Animated Feature
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3
Will Win: Toy Story 3 – WINNER
Spoiler: How to Train Your Dragon
Should Win: The Illusionist
I don’t know if better animated films are getting put out or if the animators’ branch at the Academy is getting savvier, but this year and last year in this category have been its best by a huge margin. And to nobody’s surprise, this is my favorite slate of the year. To business: the argument that the Academy is going to get Pixar fatigue at some point persuades me enough that I can’t quite allow Toy Story 3 as a dead certainty, but it’s surely the second-most locked category of the night after Best Actor: though they’ve rewarded the studio with five of the nine statues given in this category’s existence, they’ve never rewarded a Toy Story before, and pretty much nobody alive expects the winning streak to continue through Cars 2 in 2011.
Best Foreign Language Film
Biutiful (Mexico)
Dogtooth (Greece)
In a Better World (Denmark)
Incendies (Canada)
Outside the Law (Algeria)
Will Win: In a Better World – WINNER
Spoiler: Incendies
Should Win: Haven’t seen all of the nominees
Flying totally blind: like most Americans, I’ve been unable to see most of these, and what I’ve seen only serves to clarify that Dogtooth is the fifth-place loser by an epic margin: a masterpiece it may be, but dysfunctional, explicit sex has never been Oscar’s favorite. For the longest time, I’d been leaning towards the Canadian film, with its Middle East theme, but I’ve been slowly persuaded that the Danish film is the most Serious and Artistic of the batch. Canadian soap opera about terrorism, or arch Scandinavian film about suffering in Africa? I think I’ve been convinced that In a Better World is more in line with Oscar’s pet obsessions, though again, that’s sight-unseen.
Best Documentary, Feature
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Gasland
Inside Job
Restrepo
Waste Land
Will Win: Inside Job – WINNER
Spoiler: Exit Through the Gift Shop
Should Win: Restrepo
This category virtually never goes for anything at all fun, and even if it did, Exit Through the Gift Shop is really fucking hipster. I know a lot of people are predicting it, but I’d be frankly stunned, despite a somewhat awesome FYC campaign of street art(though I gave it the “spoiler” slot upon remember that I held exactly the same belief about Man on Wire). Inside Job is the film most “of the moment”, with Gasland following it up; Inside Job is also the most slickly-made of the lot. That said, Exit winning is by far the likeliest of all the things I can’t possibly imagine happening all night.
Best Documentary, Short
“Killing in the Name”
“Poster Girl”
“Strangers No More”
“Sun Come Up”
“The Warriors of Qiugang”
Will win: “Strangers No More” – WINNER
Spoiler: “Killing in the Name”
Should win: Haven’t seen any of the nominees
In order: a man fighting to end Islamic terrorism after his wedding was attacked; an Iraq War veteran dealing with PTSD years after she was featured on the cover of Army Magazine; children from many countries going to school in Israel and learning to celebrate unity; people forced to relocated from their island home in the face of rising sea levels; Chinese villagers fighting for better environmental standards. At least, this is what I have gleaned. Kids and globalism seems like too potent a mixture to lose, but one never can really tell.; my next best thought is that “Killing in the Name” sounds the most serious, and that plays well here, though not as well as sentiment. I do suspect that the two environmentally-themed films are going to cancel each other out: it’s not longer a sexy topic, and that is unfortunately a major consideration in this category.
Best Animated Short
“Day & Night”
“The Gruffalo”
“Let’s Pollute”
“The Lost Thing”
“Madagascar, carnet de voyage”
ACTUAL WINNER: “The Lost Thing”
Will Win: “The Gruffalo”
Spoiler: “Madagascar, carnet de voyage”
Should Win: “Day & Night”
In the past several years, I have stumbled across an infallible trick for predicting this category: my least-favorite nominee always wins (since 2005, anyway). But I absolutely cannot fathom the path that leads “Let’s Pollute” to the Oscar. And “The Lost Thing”, my next least-favorite, seems a hell of a lot pokier than just about anything that wins here – I suspect it ends up in fifth place. Which brings us to “The Gruffalo”, a film that seems a likely winner anyway: lots of famous people in the cast, a sweet story, told with an expansive running time. “Madagascar” is the animation lover’s pick of the lot, but it feels a bit too chilly of a stylistic exercise; “Day & Night” suffers, I bet, from the certainty that Pixar is picking up the Best Animated Feature award, and there’s no point in doubling up. In fact, Pixar has never won here since 2001, the first year Animated Feature was awarded – to DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek.
Best Live-Action Short
“The Confession”
“The Crush”
“God of Love”
“Na Wewe”
“Wish 143”
ACTUAL WINNER: “God of Love”
Will Win: “Na Wewe”
Spoiler: “Wish 143”
Should Win: “Wish 143”
Let us quickly recap the nominees, in order: a tremendously dour British film about a child crippled by Catholic guilt; a tremendously dour Irish film about a child with sexual neuroses; a blessedly non-dour American student film about a quirky hipster Cupid; a tremendously dour Belgian treatise on the arbitrary face of racism in Rwanda; and a moderately dour comedy of manners about a cancer-ridden teen. I assume that you, like everyone else with a brain, first guessed that the Rwanda film had it all sewn up, though the short categories are weird about that sort of thing: sentiment often wins out over seriousness. The problem is that sentiment is in low supply this year; the mordant sense of humor in “Wish 143” is actually more in keeping with the category’s tastes, though I’d feel more inclined to predict it if the cancer-ridden kid were two or three years younger. But sometimes you have to go when your gut, especially when your gut it screaming “IT’S A HANDSOMELY MOUNTED FILM ABOUT THE ABSURDITY OF RACIAL VIOLENCE THIS ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE” through a goddamn megaphone.
Incidentally, with 12 nominations, The King’s Speech is undoubtedly winning the most awards; but shall it sweep? It largely depends on your definition of that word; I think 6-8 is the likeliest range, with five representing a bad night and 10 being the fairly absolute ceiling. If a gun were at my head, I’d rank its chances from most likely to least likely victories as follows: