Oscar Picks and Predictions: A Year of Few Surprises
It’s official — I’m clairvoyant.
Early this morning, on NBC affiliate KWQC-TV, yours truly successfully identified all 10 Best Picture nominees.
Before I get too puffed up with pride, I have to acknowledge that it was not too difficult to come up with this list, which is sort of a sad statement. Truth be told, I’d have liked to be wrong on one or two of these picks. I’d have been intrigued to see a “wild card” selection.
Perhaps this presages a year of few surprises at the Oscars, after a year of mostly lackluster movies.
I was never a fan of broadening the field of Best Picture nominees to 10 titles: at a time when many will acknowledge that fewer outstanding movies are seeing the light of day, it seems downright counterintuitive.
Although Oscar history offers plenty of examples of inferior movies getting the top prize, this field of 10 really illustrates how movies that would once have been judged solid or even just serviceable, are now, in a sort of perverse creative inflation, praised to the skies.
To my mind, the Best Picture nominees that meet the historical standard (discounting those glaring instances when Oscar gets it wrong) number five: The King’s Speech, The Social Network, 127 Hours, True Grit, and Winter’s Bone.
The other five may be wildly successful commercially (some even critically), but hardly Best Picture calibre.
Black Swan may be the most overrated of the bunch, in my view — a psycho-sexual thriller which offers only cheap thrills — though admittedly Natalie Portman executes a demanding role effectively.
The Fighter is a solid, highly diverting boxing picture, but let’s face it — no Raging Bull. Toy Story 3 is fun, but it’s a franchise that’s getting milked, with diminishing returns for the viewer.
Inception is a visually impressive but otherwise pretentious and incomprehensible sci-fi entry, while The Kids Are All Right is a smart, hip comedy — admittedly a rarity these days — but hardly in the realm of the few comedies that have taken Best Picture in the past (think 1934’s It Happened One Night or 1977’s Annie Hall.)
Some thoughts on the acting nominations:
Colin Firth should win Best Actor, and I think he will. As runner-up and potential dark horse, I would favor James Franco (his fearless turn in 127 Hours will make him a BIG star, I predict), over Jesse Eisenberg. Jeff Bridges certainly deserves the nod, but I doubt he’ll get it a second time.
For Best Actress, I vote for Annette Bening, whose heartfelt, pitch-perfect performance elevates Kids to a movie worth seeing. She will get heavy competition from Portman, who’s obviously blazingly talented. (I myself have yet to come down with the Portman bug, though I hear it’s catching.)
For Supporting Actor, I dearly hope Geoffrey Rush gets it — he underplays so beautifully next to Firth’s more showy portrayal of King George VI. Still, I think Christian Bale will likely take it for The Fighter, a role in which I thought he was miscast ( you see folks — as good as he was, I could feel him acting).
For Supporting Actress, I’m rooting hard for Melissa Leo — she did for The Fighter just what Bening did for Kids.
For Best Screenplay, I think either The King’s Speech or The Social Network will prevail, and you can bet Inception will clean up on awards relating to visual effects and sound.
And what about Best Picture? Personally, I hope it’s The King’s Speech, but I believe The Social Network will take it. It powerfully captures the Zeitgeist of our times, while Speech will inevitably strike some voters as a first-rate but somewhat dusty period drama. I do hope I’m wrong.
I’ve enjoyed being clairvoyant for this short period. Now that I’ve raised the stakes on myself, I fear I’ll be brought back down to earth very soon — because in the end, no one can totally understand the mysterious ways of Oscar.
But it sure is fun trying.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-farr/oscar-nominations-few-surprises_b_813604.html
Random thoughts on Oscar Nomination
The actual ten Best Picture nominees were pretty much as predicted a couple months ago (eight of the ten films made either my Best of 2010 or Overrated of 2010 lists). You have two mainstream blockbusters (Inception and Toy Story 3), two mid-summer arthouse favorites (The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone), the one Oscar-bait critical darling that didn’t quite catch fire at the box office (127 Hours), the presumptive front-runner (The Social Network), and the four uber-popular, audience-pleasing bits of late-year Oscar bait (Black Swan, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, and True Grit). It’s a solid cross-section of nominees and proof that the ten-nominee gimmick is a pretty great idea. Not only did the best damn film of the year get in (Toy Story 3), but five of the ten films were released prior to the official Novemeber/December Oscar-bait season. I’m still pulling for a Pixar upset, but right now the four front runners (the films with Picture, Director, Acting, and Editing nods) are The Social Network, Black Swan, The King’s Speech, and The Fighter.
I could spend a column whining about what shouldn’t have been nominated (everything about True Grit save Halee Steinfield), and I won’t mention that I see not a single minority in any of the major nominees lists. But I will only make mention of the fact that Helen Bonham Carter, having spent the last two decades playing all manner of weird and unique characters, gets an Oscar nom for playing the cliched ‘supportive, nurturing, stand-by-your-man wife’, a character with little to do and almost no dialogue. But let’s move on to positive developments. Melissa Leo is now a two-time Oscar nominee and I can’t wait to be able to type the sentence: “Melissa Leo is an Oscar-winning actress”. Christian Bale received his first (!) Oscar nomination for The Fighter, and he’s still the front-runner (only Geoffrey Rush can beat him). Natalie Portman of course was nominated for Best Actress for Black Swan, and at this point she still seems unbeatable (barring a ‘career-award’ upset from Annette Bening).
John Hawkes pulled off a somewhat surprising (and completely pleasing) Best Supporting Actor nomination for Winter’s Bone. Best Actress nominee Jennifer Lawrence justifiably got most of the media buzz, but Hawkes’s supporting turn truly dominates the third act of the terrific little drama. Jackie Weaver snagged a Best Supporting Actress nod for Animal Kingdom, which means the DVD I have from Blockbuster is will probably be watched this evening. Javier Bardem got a somewhat surprising Best Actor nod for Best Foreign film nominee Biutiful and Michelle Williams snuck in for Blue Valentine. Nicole Kidman got a deserved nod for Rabbit Hole, as it’s nice to see people talking about her acting instead of her alleged botox treatments, and/or the shocking fact that films like Rabbit Hole don’t play like Happy Feet or Batman Forever. Whatever my issues about The Social Network (its truthfulness, its alleged cultural impact), Jesse Eisenberg gives a genuinely brilliant performance, so I’m happy he was not lost amidst the press given to director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin.
The Illusionist made the cut in the Best Animated Film Category joining Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon while beating out more mainstream releases like Despicable Me and Tangled. I sincerely hope that the voting block doesn’t engage in Pixar-backlash and deny Toy Story 3 the Best Animated Film win that it so clearly deserves, but that’s certainly possible. There were few surprises in the various technical categories, although I’m somewhat happily surprised that Tron: Legacy missed out in the Best Visual category. Good on the terrific action picture Unstoppable getting a deserved Best Sound Editing nomination, and yay for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I getting notice for its often-invisible Visual Effects and its moody Art Direction.
That’s all I have for the moment. I’ll offer my predictions for who or what will win in what categories when time permits, but that’s enough ranting for now. Who do you think got robbed and/or undeservedly nominated? Which nominations made you happiest? Feel free to check in. Oh, and full nomination list is below.
Scott Mendelson
Scource: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson/oscar-nominations-mostly-good-news_b_813620.html
ma LiFe ma Blog 