This has been the most difficult Oscar season in recent memory for predicting who and which films will take home the coveted statues. Gone are the days when a single film would emerge to sweep every major category, like The Silence Of The Lambs. It seems these days the Academy has taken to spreading the wealth, as it were, among all the nominees. Thanks in part to expanding the Best Picture category to include up to ten nominees, pictures are still able to garner many, even double digit nominations, as Lincoln and Life Of Pi have done this year, but don't expect either of them to win half of those. And this year it seems the nominations have taken a step even farther away from those olden days, by the fact that the current frontrunner for Best Picture does not even have a major acting nomination or directing nomination to support it. Last year The Artist, quite shockingly won Best Actor, Jean Dujardin stealing it from George Clooney, which made it feel as if the film had a mini-sweep, but by the time the Oscars were broadcast The Artist had become such a juggernaut it was inevitable. Because of Argo's lack of nominations that cannot happen this year, even with support rising exponentially for the film from just about every major award circle. That's why I wait until the last possible moment to share my predictions. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe my first impressions way back in January when the nominations were announced shall prove more accurate. Maybe I get caught up in the groundswell of media noise, and overlook an obvious choice staring me straight in the face, or one of those rare times the Academy bucks convention and actually surprises. Those are the best moments, and though rare, are certainly moments that I hope for as I set in stone my picks for who will win and who should win at the 85th Academy Awards broadcast on Sunday, February 24th.
Best Picture
Will Win
Should Win
Believe the hype on this one. When a director wins his Guild's award and is not even nominated for an Oscar, you can be sure his film is poised to win the big prize on Oscar night. And that's just one reason why Argo is one of the few sure things that should be on all Oscar pools. Gosh darn it, the film might not have the best acting of the year, or the best direction of the year, or even the best writing of the year, but according to people IN THE INDUSTRY, it is clearly the best picture of the year. Uh huh. My disdain for the film is no secret, but at this point I almost feel it would be breaking tradition if the Academy ever crowned a film Best Picture that I thought deserved it. No, instead I would give the award to Ang Lee's Life Of Pi. No other film nominated this year excels on quite as many levels, or production values as Lee's adaptation of Yann Martel's book of the same name that has been called unfilmable. Technically speaking, Life Of Pi has the best visual effects I have ever seen in any motion picture, and Lee embraces the 3-D technology in a way that nearly erases all doubt about the format. For most of the film it is just lead actor Suraj Sharma, trapped on a boat with a CGI Bengal tiger, interacting with nothing tangible, and the film doesn't suffer in the slightest because of it. Ang Lee takes a potentially polarizing idea, the existence and nature of God, and opens it up as a metaphor for the art of storytelling itself, reflecting on the relationship of a creator and his/her creation, which offers a safe haven for those who can't get beyond a literal bias against the film's subject matter. Life Of Pi is a wonder to behold, and gave me one of the most moving cinematic experiences of my life.
Best Director
Will Win
Should Win
Historically the winner of the Director's Guild award has consistently been a predictor for who will win the Best Director Oscar. But again, Ben Affleck is not nominated, which pretty much makes Steven Spielberg a lock to pick up his third trophy for his wonderful return to actual filmmaking with Lincoln. For me, the greatness of Lincoln is inextricably linked with the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis, much more so than the film's direction, which, while flawlessly executed, does not elevate the film beyond its play-like feel. I could watch Day-Lewis, and listen to him speak screenwriter Tony Kushner's words, all day long, but when it comes to the question of whether Spielberg's direction was the best example of the craft all year long, for me he comes up a tad short. Ang Lee on the other hand, has throughout his career proven himself adept at genre hopping, and has always been the key factor in the greatness of all his films, even the ones that ultimately are not great themselves. I cannot imagine any other director accomplishing what Lee does in Life Of Pi. The film is such a massive production no matter how you look at it, seamlessly mixing animation and live action, using actual 3-D cameras, juggling the weighty, metaphysical issues explored in the novel with a consistent tone of childlike wonder, and timeless storytelling. Life Of Pi is the best film Ang Lee has ever made, and he is the reason it excels on as many levels as it does.
Best Actor
Will Win
Should Win
I almost don't even care. Daniel Day-Lewis was absolutely perfect as Lincoln. The man is one of, if not the greatest actor alive today, and with every performance he gives, he literally transforms himself. A win this year will give him more Best Actor trophies than any actor in film history, and he deserves it. To watch Lincoln, is to see a master class in acting unfold before your eyes. Day-Lewis projects more just sitting quietly in a creaky wooden chair, than most of his peers do in their most emotional scenes. In real life he is very soft-spoken, shy almost, a vessel waiting to be inhabited by whoever he is playing next. Expect him to acknowledge fellow nominee Joaquin Phoenix, who delivered, in my eyes, an even better performance as Freddie Quill, in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, a film criminally ignored by the Academy. Quill is the performance of Phoenix's career, and I believe he deserves the Oscar for the simple reason that the character was created out of nothing, rather than an historical figure. In Freddie Quill, Phoenix has created an iconic character, who ranks up there with the greatest in film history. With The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson tackled serious issues like the nature of human identitiy, the cult of personality, and questions our potentially tenuous relationship to religion. But he couldn't have done it without Phoenix, and his performance undergoes such an incredible range of emotion, and his investment is so deep inside Quill I have no idea how he could ever go back to just being Joaquin Phoenix again.
Best Actress
Will Win
Should Win
I can't do it. I cannot type the words "Jennifer" and "Lawrence" and actually believe that the Academy will award her with the Best Actress trophy over everyone else that is nominated. She seems to be the frontrunner, and for the life of me I cannot understand why. I hope it is possible for the Academy to come to their senses and cast their votes for someone who truly deserves to win based on their performance. That's why I think when it comes down to the wire, they will acknowledge Emmanuelle Riva's heartwrenching performance in Michael Haneke's Best Foreign Film favorite Amour, who plays a victim of several strokes, which leaves her basically catatonic, requiring around-the-clock care by her husband, a criminally ignored Jean-Louis Trintignant. Both of them are living cinematic legends, albeit French, but if it's anything last year's Oscars showed, Hollywood has no fear of the French. Riva is 85, quite interestingly will turn 86 on Oscar Sunday, and has starred previously in one of the most influential films ever made, Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour. I suspect this will be too much for the Academy to overlook, even with their zeal to prematurely reward Lawrence. But while Riva was certainly excellent and unforgettable in Amour, she did spend half the film in bed, much like Naomi Watts in The Impossible. I would give the Oscar to Jessica Chastain, for the effortless way she became the glue that held together Kathryn Bigelow's fantastic docu-drama Zero Dark Thirty. Spanning over ten years time, Chastain's was the only consistent face throughout, humanizing the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden without sentimentalizing it. Without her strong performance the film could have easily appeared episodic.
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win
Should Win
Thirty-one years ago Robert De Niro won an Oscar for his performance in Raging Bull. Thirty-six years ago Robert De Niro lost the Oscar for his performance in Taxi Driver. Let me be the first person to say that Pat Solitano Sr., the father of Bradley Cooper's bi-polar character in Silver Linings Playbook, is nowhere near the same league as those former roles. In fact, "raging bull" might be put to better use in describing De Niro's cinematic output over the last fifteen years, and "taxi driver" would be what any actor consistently putting out such dreck should be doing right now. But not De Niro. He's been campaigning hard for this win, dipping his hands in cement and crying in front of Katie Couric, all in aid of winning an award for a lesser version of the same stuff he's been doing in the Meet The Parents films. If the Academy wants to acknowledge a cinematic legend they are in the wrong category. Instead, the Oscar should go to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, for his portrayal of the Master in The Master. Christoph Waltz and Tommy Lee Jones were both terrific in their respective roles, but Hoffman's presence was felt throughout Paul Thomas Anderson's film, as a cult leader whose phoniness peeks through his facade of moral and intellectual superiority, whenever he feels threatened. He played the perfect foil for Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quill.
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win
Should Win
Anne Hathaway sang the best song in Les Miserables, played a character who had to give up her child, and then died. If you think she isn't going to win then you should be locked in a room with Helen Hunt while she speaks to you in her Boston accent.
Best Animated Film
Will Win
Should Win
There are really only two contestants in this race, Pixar's Brave and Disney's Wreck-It Ralph. For the first time in the history of Pixar Animation Studios they have been bested. Brave is not a bad film, but Wreck-It Ralph is a great one. Through its endlessly inventive story and seamless integration of plot and character development, Wreck-It Ralph hearkens back to a Disney when screenplays actually mattered to them. For all its posturing Brave failed in the very same places where Ralph excelled. Although maybe Pixar will get the last laugh after all, since John Lasseter was an executive producer on Wreck-It Ralph.
Best Original Screenplay
Will Win
Should Win
If everyone is to get a prize, that leaves the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Quentin Tarantino. When I think of his best films, the screenplay never jumps out as the most important reason. To him screenplays are all dialogue, and blueprints for elaborate set pieces which he usually intends to draw out for as long as possible. Django Unchained is no different, except perhaps that its dialogue is not quite as great as peak Tarantino; most of the greatness of its lines are in how Christoph Waltz and the other actors deliver them. Historically the Best Original Screenplay award goes to the fringe film that is critically acclaimed, but which is not really Best Picture material. Tarantino won this award for Pulp Fiction previously. Wes Anderson is another director on the fringe of Hollywood, who gets tons of respect that never translates into Oscars. Normally I would have jumped at the chance to give the award to his Moonrise Kingdom, the best film of his career, but this year Michael Haneke's Amour is just a whole lot better. Haneke has made a career out of toying with his audience, and although Amour is easily his most accessible film, stopping the story to watch Jean-Louis Trintignant chase a pigeon around his apartment for about ten minutes, I would say, is still the sign of a film very much preoccupied with challenging conventions. Amour is a perfect film, and every aspect of it contributes to its greatness. But before there was anything else, there was the screenplay.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will Win
Should Win
Quite simply, and ridiculously if you think about it, should Argo not win either Best Editing or Best Adapted Screenplay then Best Picture will remain its only award. Some frontrunner. So it is based on that alone, that I believe Argo will take Best Adapted Screenplay. Does it deserve the award? By no stretch of the imagination. It was adapted from a newspaper article, which is pretty much one step above being adapted from an idea. Without question the Oscar should go to Lincoln. Adapted from a non-fiction book, Tony Kushner's screenplay is a thing of wonder, bursting with very literate nineteenth-century dialogue that crackles with poetry and intensity, sometimes with both in the same line. And the way its crystal clear focus on the thirteenth amendment is so perfectly used to inform and develop Lincoln's character could be dissected and studied over the course of an entire semester of a university level screenwriting class. Day-Lewis and Kushner are the real reasons for Lincoln's greatness.
The rest of the categories:
BEST FOREIGN FILM:
Will win: Amour
Should win: Amour
BEST COSTUME DESIGN:
Will win: Anna Karenina
Should win: Anna Karenina
BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
Will win: Skyfall
Should win: Skyfall
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Will win: Life Of Pi
Should win: Life Of Pi
BEST DOCUMENTARY:
Will win: Searching For Sugar Man
Should win: I have not seen enough of the nominees
BEST DOCUMENTARY (SHORT):
Will win: Open Heart
Should win: I have not seen any of the nominees
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING:
Will win: The Hobbit
Should win: The Hobbit
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN:
Will win: Les Miserables
Should win: Lincoln
BEST FILM EDITING:
Will win: Argo
Should win: Zero Dark Thirty
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Will win: Life Of Pi
Should win: Life Of Pi
BEST SOUND EDITING:
Will win: Zero Dark Thirty
Should win: Zero Dark Thirty
BEST SOUND MIXING:
Will win: Les Miserables
Should win: Skyfall
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
Will win: Life Of Pi
Should win: Life Of Pi
BEST SHORT FILM (ANIMATED):
Will win: "Paperman"
Should win: "Fresh Guacamole"
BEST SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION):
Will win: "Curfew"
Should win: I have not seen any of the nominees
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