With little more than a week until the Oscars are announced (Sunday, 5 March), I have taken it upon myself to do as all amateur film geeks must, and predicted every last damn award, down to the techs and the shorts. I’ll never again match my amazing run last year, in which I correctly guessed every winner except Best Live Action Short, but hopefully I’ll do better than 2002, where I missed every one of the big eight awards except for Best Supporting Actress.
Key: *will win ^should win
Best Picture
*^Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Munich
The best-reviewed by far of the nominees, winner of every major award to this point, Brokeback is an absolute lock.
Best Director
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Paul Haggis, Crash
*^Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Bennett Miller, Capote
Steven Spielberg, Munich
Half make-up, half because he’s turned in some of the best work of his career. If there’s an upset, it will be actorly support for Clooney, but that’s a slim chance at best.
Best Actor
*^Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Oscar loves a good mimic, and Hoffman has been around for long enough that he could win just for the epic scope of his career as a character actor. Ledger is too young, Howard’s film is too small, Phoenix was overshadowed by his costar, and Strathairn didn’t have a “bait” moment.
Best Actress
Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
^Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice
Charlize Theron, North Country
*Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Discarding the three placeholders – Knightley’s never been better, but she’s here for the writing and not the performance, Dench does nothing she can’t do in her sleep, and Theron recently won for a better-received film – it comes down to Witherspoon’s scene-stealing and largely effective performance vs. Huffman’s indie masterwork. Although this is the one category that “small” movies can win, I think that Witherspoon’s much flashier performance will trump the under-seen Huffman.
The rest after the jump.
Best Supporting Actor
*George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
^Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
William Hurt, A History of Violence
Hurt won’t win. With that out of the way, we have a veteran of dubious talent from a well-loved ensemble piece (Dillon), last year’s shocking snubbee (Giamatti), the co-lead of the year’s big film (Gyllenhaal), and an actor-turned-director who people love personally. Sideways guilt isn’t enough to help Giamatti in the face of Clooney’s personal appeal and Gyllenhaal’s BAFTA win; that said, I think said BAFTA is too little, too late.
Best Supporting Actress
^Amy Adams, Junebug
Catherine Keener, Capote
Frances McDormand, North Country
*Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain
The size and importance of her role all but guarantees this for Weisz. McDormand and Keener got their award just by getting this far. Williams has the difficulty of playing the wife in a gay cowboy movie (and let’s be fair, not very well), and newbie Adams has yet to prove that she’ll ever act again.
Best Original Screenplay
*Crash, by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
Good Night, and Good Luck. by George Clooney & Grant Heslov
^Match Point, by Woody Allen
The Squid and the Whale, by Noah Baumbach
Syriana, by Stephen Gaghan
With Clooney winning in Supporting Actor, the spread-the-wealth impetus will give Crash its only big award here. Match Point and The Squid and the Whale, much the best of the five, won’t win on their only nomination, and Syriana is far too confusing.
Best Adapted Screenplay
*Brokeback Mountain, by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana
^Capote, by Dan Futterman
The Constant Gardener, by Jeffrey Caine
A History of Violence, by Josh Olson
Munich, by Eric Roth and Tony Kushner
A no-brainer. Larry McMurtry is the most pedigreed writer in the bunch (sorry Kushner fans), and the film is a lock to win Best Picture.
Best Animated Feature
Corpse Bride
Howl’s Moving Castle
*^Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Just about the best-reviewed film to receive any Oscar nomination, and one of the only films that everyone loved, W&G takes it in a cakewalk.
Best Foreign Language Film
Don’t Tell, Italy
Joyeux Noël, France
Paradise Now, Palestine
Sophie Scholl – The Final Days, Germany
*Tsotsi, South Africa
I’ve seen none of these. And ordinarily, I would have said Paradise Now in a heartbeat – but that was before Hamas won the election. The Academy loves to go warm and humanist in this category, but they’ve also begun abandoning Western Europe – so between Joyeux Noël and Tsotsi, I’m going for the latter.
Best Documentary Feature
Darwin’s Nightmare
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
*March of the Penguins
Murderball
Street Fight
Again having seen none of these, I cannot think of a single example of an abnormally popular film losing, although Murderball is the sort of politically correct fuzzy thing that usually does well in the shorts. Wither Grizzly Man?
Best Cinematography
Batman Begins, Wally Pfister
*Brokeback Mountain, Rodrigo Prieto
Good Night, and Good Luck., Robert Elswit
Memoirs of a Geisha, Dion Beebe
^The New World,Emmanuel Lubezki
For the first time ever, I’m happy with all five nominees. The film with pretty vistas almost always wins, so I’ll lean to Brokeback, although Lubezki had probably the hardest job of the year, and shot on 65mm. I think his film just lacks the broad support it needs here.
Best Editing
Cinderella Man, Mike Hill and Dan Hanley
^The Constant Gardener, Claire Simpson
*Crash, Hughes Winborne
Munich, Michael Kahn
Walk the Line, Michael McCusker
The BP frontrunner isn’t nominated? Shocking. Because this traditionally goes to the film with the most interesting story structure, rather than with the best actual editing, it’s between Crash and The Constant Gardener, and the former has more support across the board.
Best Art Direction
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
King Kong
*Memoirs of a Geisha
^Pride & Prejudice
The “exotic” or “period” film always wins. Always. If the first three Harry Potters didn’t win, this one won’t either, the “art direction” in King Kong is CGI, and GN&GL is far too prosaic. P&P could sneak in, and to be honest the set design was my favorite part of the film, but I think it’s an uphill battle against the tech-favored Memoirs.
Best Costume Design
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
*^Memoirs of a Geisha
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Pride & Prejudice
Walk the Line
All those kimonos…I can’t name another category where the other nominees are so clearly placeholders.
Best Makeup
*^The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Cinderella Man
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
What a strange set of nominees…Star Wars is clearly not going to win, and Cinderella Man doesn’t have a whole lot of “pizzazz.” QED.
Best Score
^Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santolalla
The Constant Gardener, Alberto Iglesias
*Memoirs of a Geisha, John Williams
Munich, John Williams
Pride & Prejudice, Dario Marianelli
Yo Yo Ma = Oscar. The Brokeback score is already iconic, but there’s so little of it; Williams voters will clearly go Memoirs over Munich, and I don’t even remember the other two.
Best Song
*From Crash: “Into the Deep”
^From Hustle & Flow: “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”
From Transamerica: “Travelin’ Thru”
As much as I was suprised and thrilled at”Pimp’s” nomination – I was sure they would nominate the much safer “Keep Hustlin'” from the same film – nothing suggests to me that the song from the much more popular Crash won’t win.
Best Visual Effects
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
*^King Kong
War of the Worlds
Please. We all know that Kong is the best CGI effect in history.
Best Sound
^The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
*King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
Walk the Line
War of the Worlds
Usually goes to a musical but Ray and Chicago had much more support than WtL. I will therefore give a tiny edge to King King, as it is a) loud and b) a movie people didn’t hate (WotW). Memoirs is the kind of solid nominee that people who don’t “get sound” don’t understand, but having done sound work myself for the first time in 2005, I’ve taken on a whole new respect for it, and this was quality. That said, I loved the battles in Narnia, but if it goes to an effects film, this ain’t the one.
Best Sound Editing
*^King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
War of the Worlds
Usually goes to the “loudest” film, or a film with lots of battles, and that’s WotW. But nobody really liked it, and people kinda did like King Kong. Again, Memoirs is a strong candidate, but nobody’s going to notice that.
Best Documentary Short Subject
“The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club”
*”God Sleeps in Rwanda”
“The Mushroom Club”
“A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin”
Best Live Action Short Film
“Ausreisser (The Runaway)”
“Cashback”
*”The Last Farm”
“Our Time Is Up”
“Six Shooter”
Best Animated Short Film
*”9″
“Badgered”
“The Moon and the Son”
“The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello”
“One Man Band”