"The Oscars: Who Will Win and Who Should Win"

Despite the glitz and the glamour of the red carpet, there are some people out there (I hope) who actually care about the awards themselves, and are concerned that the films and people who really deserve statues are the ones that receive them.  There is nothing that can be done about the nominations anymore (click here to read my reaction to them), and by the time of the broadcast most animosities will have been tempered, and everyone who screamed "I am never watching the Oscars again" after last year's telecast will inevitably be seated in front of their televisions once again at 6pm pacific time.  As the final motion picture awards program of 2011, usually the Oscars are pretty much all sewn up well before the first presenter takes the stage, but those breathtaking moments before the winners are read still remain, upsets never outside the realm of possibility, I'm looking at you Crash.  This year the battle for most Oscar wins, and certainly for Best Picture, will be between Martin Scorsese's Hugo, with eleven nominations, and Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, with ten nominations.  Both films share a passionate nostalgia for classic, silent-era films.  One of them, in fact, IS silent, while the other one is actually good.  Oops, here I am getting ahead of myself.  In the interest of any last minute changes you might wish to make to your office betting pools, or if you just want to amaze your friends with an uncanny prescience, or most importantly for the fulfillment of vanity and satisfaction of my own ego, the following are my predictions for what will win, and what should win on Sunday evening, February 26th, when the 84th Academy Awards will be broadcast on ABC.

Best Picture

Will Win

Should Win

Buzz for The Artist just keeps spreading and spreading.  It has already won Best Picture from nearly every major critics association, is present on countless top ten lists for 2011, and has grossed around thirty million dollars, despite being black and white, silent, and square (in shape).  Don't worry though, this film is going to do absolutely nothing to change the stigma surrounding black and white and silent films.  Not to dog on The Artist, if you want to read my thoughts on the film in detail click here, but the film is so safe it's barely even there, and as much as Hollywood loves itself, it would never pass up the opportunity to recognize something so overtly self-reflexive, even if it is a forgery.  But if you want to feel the real power of what film can do, The Tree Of Life is easily the best of the nine nominees.  Terrence Malick's fifth film in thirty-eight years is never the same thing each time you watch it, because you are never the same person each time you watch it.  A continuation of his late-career trend of direct address, existential musings over immaculately photographed scenes and images that tend aggressively toward the non-diegetic, the "story" that so many viewers complained was missing from the film, was actually missing from themselves, or perhaps they just weren't willing to listen.  If you open yourself to this film, at the very least, you will find a five minute segment that will open a door for you to either change your life, or the way you see the world.  And this thing is 140 minutes long.

Best Director

Will Win

Should Win

There is a little voice inside me screaming "Martin Scorsese" as loud as it possibly can.  How in the world can someone who is considered by many to be the greatest director alive, with a wealth of genre and generation-defining films to his credit, and also the man behind Hugo, the film with more nominations this year than any other film, lose this award to a man whose previous films have been obscure French comedies nobody has heard of?  Ask the Director's Guild of America, who already gave Michel Hazanavicius their Best Director award, an award that has only been unsuccessful at predicting the Oscar winner four times in sixty-two years. I'm not a betting man, but even I can't deny those odds.  But mark my words, if there is going to be an upset Sunday night, it is going to be in this category.  Terrence Malick, however, is one of cinema's truly dedicated auteurs, to borrow a French word.  The Tree Of Life is as much a moving poem as it is a moving picture, and Malick is its mad architect.  It might not be easy all the time to see why one particular scene follows another, but it's clear that the man's heart and soul went into every aesthetic decision.

Best Actor

Will Win

Should Win

In no way was George Clooney's performance in The Descendants the best male performance of the year, but he's the best of the what we've got, and a shoe-in to take home the award.  There has been some last minute buzz about Jean Dujardin as a dark horse possibility, but at some point the fact that The Artist is a silent film has got to catch up with it.  George Clooney is a consummate professional, a veritable institution in Hollywood, and probably the most liked, and likable actor in mainstream cinema today.  The moral center of Alexander Payne's career peak The Descendants, and present in every single frame, Clooney is invaluable to the film, continually grounding it at times when the airtight structure of Payne's narrative threatened its credibility.  If I ever watch this film again it will be for his performance.  While many of his roles are only a few tics removed from Danny Ocean, in the character of Matt King he has finally achieved the humility we all knew he was capable of.

Best Actress

Will Win

Should Win

Ditto for Michelle Williams's performance in My Week With Marilyn, but she's also the best of the nominees.  This is her third Oscar nomination, she has already won the Golden Globe, and in a year when Hollywood is feeling nostalgic and looking to honor itself, expect Michelle Williams to ride the wave of sentiment to victory.  Oh, and she is amazing too.  Nothing short of a revelation, not one of her previous roles prepared me for what she accomplishes in this film.  My Week With Marilyn is certainly not a great film, it has quite modest ambitions, but that ultimately only serves to help Williams, because she becomes the primary focal point.  This Marilyn Monroe is a jumble of contradictions and complications, and Williams effortlessly validates any opinion one could have of the icon, many times in the same moment, and same breath.  With her affected line readings and body language, Williams creates a Marilyn Monroe that I cannot imagine any other actress doing.  There are some murmurings that Viola Davis from The Help will take home this award.  But where she was good in a film that was not, Williams was great in a film that was better.

Best Supporting Actor:

Will Win

Should Win

Over eighty years old, and with 191 acting credits according to IMDB, Christopher Plummer has never won an Academy Award.  Ok, so Max von Sydow is also over eighty years old, also has never won an Academy Award, and has 145 acting credits according to IMDB, which include many Ingmar Bergman films like The Seventh Seal; but Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was a terrible film, a sentiment echoed by critics and audiences alike.  There may not be many opportunities remaining to reward Plummer, and his role in Beginners as Hal Fields, a man who openly acknowledges that he is gay after his wife dies, is respectably solid.  But for my money, the extremely talented Kenneth Branagh, criminally underappreciated over the years for his work in comedy, and who has also never won an Oscar, almost stole the show as Sir Lawrence Olivier in My Week With Marilyn...almost.  It certainly wasn't the best performance of his career, but after looking at his fellow nominees, that seems to be the theme of the category.

Best Supporting Actress

Will Win

Should Win

Probably the weakest category of the evening, expect Octavia Spencer to take home the Oscar, since she won the Golden Globe and just about every other Supporting Actress award from various critics associations.  I didn't like The Help, but I liked her in it.  The role of Minny Jackson was tailor made for this type of recognition; relieved of the burden of having the character arc and gravity of a lead role, she alone is the source of most of The Help's comic relief, and Spencer brings more to the role than it has any right to, easily a stark contrast to the scenery chewing of Jessica Chastain, who is also nominated, in the same film.  The Help will need to get some love Sunday night, and Octavia Spencer is the perfect way for the Academy to do it.

Best Original Screenplay

Will Win

Should Win

Woody Allen's best film since 2005's Match Point, but if we're talking about traditional Woody Allen comedies, we would have to go all the way back to 1979's Manhattan to find an equal.  Midnight In Paris is that good, and audiences clearly agree, helping it achieve a Woody Allen record of $150 million at the box office, on a budget of seventeen.  The screenplay categories are usually the Academy's way to recognize quirky Best Picture nominees that have no chance of winning the top prize, like Pulp Fiction, or The Usual Suspects.  Considering Allen's disdain for award shows, he probably will not be in attendance, but it won't affect his chances of winning.  This is a lock, as there is really no other award it can win.  Perhaps Art Direction, but that really won't honor Woody. 

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will Win

Should Win

The Descendants also has no chance of winning Best Picture, but considering throughout Alexander Payne's career he has consistently delivered critically lauded, script-centered, resonant dramas, like About Schmidt and Sideways, Adapted Screenplay is his to lose.  I found the film ever so slightly overwritten, which is why my pick goes to Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan's adaptation of John le Carre's seminal spy novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  You need to eat your Wheaties before watching this, as its mosaic structure, its wealth of characters and foreign names, and insistence upon using archaic spy terminology warrant multiple viewings, which the film rewards handsomely.  A work of staggering genius, the adaptation of such an immense tome in this risky fashion could have backfired and didn't, and is the most exemplary of the five nominees of what this category should be all about.

Best Animated Film

Will Win

Should Win

The backlash against Cars 2 ruined Pixar's chance to once again dominate this category.  But even if it had been nominated, it certainly wouldn't stop this existential masterpiece starring Johnny Depp as the titular lizard who fancies himself a thespian.  With scene after scene drenched in irony, Rango nearly takes the methodology of crafting an animated film for adults first and children second off the deep end, and parents should be prepared to do a lot of explaining.  But it is never pretentious, as Depp's brilliant voice acting helps consistently maintain humility.  It's rare to see a director of live action films so comfortable with animation, but helmer Gore Verbinski, director of the Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy, might have finally found his calling.  Rango is literally bursting at its splices with more style and technique in one reel than what can be found in the entire Pirates trilogy, evident after the second instance of deep focus photography.  Two of the films nominated are completely obscure, and Puss In Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2 are basically sequels, which leaves Rango, a completely original, jaw-dropping and mind-bending experience.  It's not only the best animated film of the year, but also one of the best films of the year period.

Everything else will pretty much be divided between Hugo and The Artist, with the former taking most of the technical awards like Best Sound and Best Cinematography, and The Artist taking the ones more suited to a Best Picture, like Film Editing and Original Score.  Although an argument could be made that turning the sound off completely is the most creative use of sound all year, I do not expect such a metaphysical sense of humor from the Oscars.  What I do expect is to be 100% correct with my picks, even though I secretly hope I am not.  Those are my breathtaking moments.  I have no problem being wrong if the Academy crowns the right film.  And if not, well I will just never watch the Oscars again.