OSCAR Predictions - Despite the fact that I will Still Boycott!

[MaineWriter]

Hopefully not. Do you think she'll win? The Academy rarely gives an Oscar to new comers. I just hope she doesn't become another cokehead a la Lindsay Lohan. Given the fact that she's overweight for Hollywood standards, she migh be pressured into doing the hollywood diet (i.e. snort coke).

Well, if you read my prediction from a few days back, I said that three of the four top prizes could go to African-Americans, which would let the Academy pat itself on the back for their embracing "diversity."

Whether she wins or not, I think Ms. Hudson's challenge will be finding good roles. Hollywood can't seem to figure out what to do with talented black women. Look at the crap Queen Latifah has been in lately. Wasn't she nominated for an Oscar for Chicago? Did she win?

L

[opinionista]

Look at the crap Queen Latifah has been in lately. Wasn't she nominated for an Oscar for Chicago? Did she win?

She was nominated for best actress in a supporting role but lost to Katherine Zeta Jones, who was also nominated for this award for her performance in Chicago.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299658/awards

But yeah, she does a lot of crappy movie. That's true.

[ednbarby]

Very interesting article.  Come to think of it, what has Adrien Brody done that was worth watching lately?  I went to see Hollywoodland for him and ultimately found Ben Affleck way more affecting in a much shorter, albeit pivotal, role.

As much as I like to think they're mature and well-adjusted and smart enough not to let it become a curse, perhaps it's just as well that neither Heath nor Jake won last year, as much as we all know they richly deserved to.

[MaineWriter]

As much as I like to think they're mature and well-adjusted and smart enough not to let it become a curse, perhaps it's just as well that neither Heath nor Jake won last year, as much as we all know they richly deserved to.

The same thing occurred to me as I read it. Michelle, too.

L

[Lynne]

Thanks for posting that article, Natali!  I like this part:

"Sometimes people win because the stars are in alignment and the perfect actor found the perfect role at the right time, but that doesn't guarantee a lifetime of follow-ups to what may be serendipitous circumstances," said Leonard Maltin, film critic and historian with entertainment news program Entertainment Tonight.

Forget the Oscars - it describes Brokeback Mountain perfectly.

 

[Kd5000]

Well after Halle Berry got nominated for a Razzie in the worst actress category for CATWOMAN, she said having won an Oscar is no guarantee your going to get good roles.

Has Jamie Fox really turned out any outstanding performances since he was nominated for Best Actor (RAY) and Best Supporting Actor (COLLATERAL) in the same year.?  Personally, I didn't what was so special about his performance as a taxi driver kidnapped by an assassin.  Still a good film.

[ednbarby]

I actually liked him better in Collateral than I liked him in Ray.  I thought the latter was just a run-of-the-mill parlor trick impression.  I thought he turned in a very subtle and nuanced, as they say, performance in the former.

And Eric, my dear - it's almost worth it for me to watch just to get you to come down here. 

But I promise you won't have to.  And as much as I adore you, not because I think I owe it to you or anyone else.  I owe it to myself.

[kirkmusic]

First a few random notes.

I don't think Queen Latifah deserved the nomination she got.

There's a picture of Daniel Craig in a current gay magazine (I forget whch one) from Casino Royale.  It's very similar to the much used one of him coming out of the water at the beach, but in this one he's full on grabbing his package.  Hot!

Many of the comments in this thread talk about "the Academy" like it's a small group of people who communicate with each other to decide who they're all going to vote for.  In truth, in regards to this years nominations, they pretty much fell in line with all of the other award giving organizations.  There's a website wherein this guy has come up with a mathematical equation to predict the Oscar nominations in the major catagories based on all of the precursors.  The formula didn't do so hot with the screenplay nominations this year but it usually works pretty well.  Check it out.

http://www.geocities.com/ps971100/

I'm surprized so many folks here didn't like Babel.  Hands down, it's my favorite fiction movie this year, second only to the non-fiction Deliver Us from Evil.  To me it's about how we all go through our tragedies, some external, some internal, we hit bottom, we come back out the other side, some the worse for wear, some stronger, life goes on, and most importantly, we're all in it together.  Love the subtlety of the acting and how the point wasn't told to the audience but shown, similar to BBM which is why I'm so surprized.

Anyway, here's what I think will win the major categories and what my favorites were.

Picture: I would like to see Babel take the Oscar as it did the Globe, but I could see any one of these five winning so I don't have a prediction here.  Incidently, that's what could make this year particularly intriguing: outside of the acting catagories and a couple of others, most of the races are pretty open.

Director: I'll predict Scorsese and hope for Greengrass for United 93.  Incredible film and I'm the only person I know who's seen it.  Pity.

Actor: Whitaker will get it.  I liked Gosling.  Seeing Venus tomorrow so I may be editing this.

Actress:  Mirren will get it.  None of these nominees really jumped out at me with the acting skill displayed, so I'm going to root for Penelope Cruz for having the most engaging presense in her role. (Update 2/2: Saw The Queen again and I take it back.  Mirren was pretty great.)

Supporting Actor: Murphy seems most likely, and he entertained the hell out of me so I hope he gets it.

Supporting Actress: I'm guessing that having seen Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls might be similar to having seen Streisand for the first time in Funny Girl in '68.  Just wow.  I similarly predict that, if Hudson does more films, we will see that while she certainly has an incredible talent for expressing emotion through song, like Streisand, we will see that every character she plays is some variation of the basic Hudson persona, like Streisand.  She deserves this one and she'll never be as good in anything else.  Hope she enjoys a great recording career.

Adapted Screenplay:  I'm going to predict the Departed, also my favorite in this category.  I was riveted by every turn of the plot.  The script was the strongest thing about this movie.

Original screenplay:  Babel's my favorite movie but Little Miss Sunshine is my favorite script.  Hope it wins and I think it will. (Update: I enjoyed The Queen much more the second time.  Now I'm not sure who I want to win or what I think will.)

It's interesting to note that not one of the Best Picture nominees is up for art direction or cinematography.  I don't know if that's ever happened before.

One more public service link:  Here's the moviecitynews.com critical concensus page, a chart which takes over 200 top 10 lists and totals them up.  There's another site that's even more inclusive (over 600 critics in 2005!) but or some reason it's not up this year.

http://www.moviecitynews.com/awards/2007/top_tens/00_index.htm

[Lynne]

I'm surprized so many folks here didn't like Babel.  Hands down, it's my favorite fiction movie this year, second only to the non-fiction Deliver Us from Evil.  To me it's about how we all go through our tragedies, some external, some internal, we hit bottom, we come back out the other side, some the worse for wear, some stronger, life goes on, and most importantly, we're all in it together.  Love the subtlety of the acting and how the point wasn't told to the audience but shown, similar to BBM which is why I'm so surprized.

Hey there, Kirk!

I'm in the camp of really liking Babel, but you're right that there hasn't been a great deal of discussion about it here.  There's a small thread in Movie Resources where a few of us were talking about the score and cinematography:

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,5458.0.html

I think I've already posted this elsewhere, but I went into Babel not knowing anything about the director, purely wanting to see Gustavo and Rodrigo work again.  I loved those aspects, but came away with much more than I expected.  I was completely impressed with Brad Pitt's acting.  I guess all the media hype he's been enduring and a series of let's say, not very worthy roles, caused me to forget his talent.

I like your interpretation and agree that Babel is a work worthy of analysis.  I should see it again in a more analytical frame of mind (I saw it NYEve!)  I have not yet seen Deliver Us from Evil, so I cannot compare.

Lynne

[ednbarby]

Kirk, I think your point about Jennifer Hudson is spot-on.  And your predictions sound pretty plausible, too.

And I saw United 93, for what it's worth.  I know what you mean, though - no one I see regularly from day to day has seen it but me, either.  And you're right again that that's such a pity - it was by far the best-made and most powerful movie I saw all year.  So much so that I don't know if I can ever watch it again - it's all etched upon my psyche, kind of like Schindler's List.

I appreciated the subtlety of Babel, but I think the biggest problem I had with it was the dialogue.  Maybe it was a language difference thing - I thought the Mexican characters' dialogue was excellent, but I found the Americans' trite and forced.  I realize we were looking at a couple with a very strained marriage, but I still thought they said things to each other in a way that no one would ever say them.  Nothing kills a movie for me, after overly gratuitous violence, like dialogue that doesn't ring true.  I also thought that each of the three stories were worthy of being their own movie.  The least of all three was actually the Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett one.  Again, maybe the dialogue and the terrorism paranoia there just didn't play out in quite a realistic enough way to me.  I understood what he was going for, but it just didn't get all the way there with me, I guess.

If United 93 had been nominated instead of Letters From Iwo Jima, I *might* be tempted to watch.  But it didn't, so I have no interest whatsoever in what wins Best Picture, other than just hoping that it's *anything* except the latter.