February 28, 2010
FNB Editorial: The Much Anticipated Oscar Preview!
Well, it’s here, the column to which you’ve all been anxiously looking forward, yes, it’s our big, nay huge, Oscar preview edition here at FNB, the one in which we somewhat confidently predict who will win at the Academy Award ceremony six days hence. In last year’s edition, we nailed all eight of our prognostications, but to be fair, we think that had as much to do with the predictability of the event than our own genius. Still, it’s a heady bar we’ve set for ourselves, and thus, with a little trepidation but without further ado, we’re going to get to it.
Let’s knock out the easy ones first. Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress are going to go to Christoph Waltz for “Inglorious Basterds” and Mo’Nique for “Precious,” respectively. Sure, there’s the slight chance that Christopher Plummer might pull an upset for his brilliant career, but we tend to doubt it. Also, Kathryn Bigelow (of whom we have, admittedly, never been a huge fan) will deservedly become the first woman to win the Best Director prize for her astonishingly brilliant job helming our favorite film of the year, “The Hurt Locker.”
Likewise, we think Mark Boal will beat out Quentin Tarantino for Best Original Screenplay (also for “The Hurt Locker”), and Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner will take home the Best Adapted Screenplay trophy for “Up in the Air” (for a fairly by-the-numbers script but, by all accounts, an amazing translation of a tough to translate book).
We’ll add a couple other semi-random thoughts here, because it’s our space and because we can: Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett will win for “The Weary Kind,” the theme song from our second favorite film of the year, “Crazy Heart” (and more about that in a moment), Chris Innis and Bob Murawski will take the trophy for editing “The Hurt Locker,” and we’re going to go out on a limb in a category we would otherwise never touch, Best Costume Design. We’ll quote our sister-in-law (who used to work in the fashion industry): “Saw ‘Young Victoria,’ loved it, the costumes were scrumptious and it’s totally going to win an Oscar for that.” Good enough for us.
“Up” seems a sure bet for Animated Feature and “Avatar” for Visual Effects, but since we’re not completely mental, we’ll skip Cinematography, the two Documentary categories, Short Film, Foreign Film, Make-up, Score and the Sound categories (though we kinda think “The Hurt Locker” is a front runner for the last two), though we will assume that the Wallace and Gromit film will take Best Animated Short, because, come on, it’s Wallace and Gromit.
The Best Actor race seems like a pretty sure thing, too. In fact, if Jeff Bridges doesn’t win, then we’re going to start throwing things. To say that his performance in “Crazy Heart” is one of the greatest we’ve seen in our recent memory is understating just a bit. It’s like he inhabits Bad Blake, so the viewer isn’t really sure where the character begins and the actor ends. It’s just brilliant, and as good as George Clooney, Morgan Freeman, Colin Firth and especially Jeremy Renner all were, they don’t really hold a candle to Bridges, who should finally win an award he’s deserved for years.
That leaves two, and they’re the only ones that really give the night at the Kodak Theater any drama: Best Actress (which is essentially between Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock), and Best Picture (“Avatar” and “Locker”). Actress first. There has been a lot of discussion about why one woman or the other will win, why one or the other should win, how each has won a certain number of awards leading up to Sunday night’s extravaganza, and so on, but we think it’s actually a fair bit easier than that. The lovely Ms. Bullock said it herself on “Late Show with David Letterman.” When Dave asked her about her fellow nominees, she named them, then said, “Meryl should just have her own category every year, because every year she’s amazing in something and gets a nomination.” Yup. Exactly right. Which is why we’re picking Sandra Bullock to win the Oscar. Confused? Don’t be. It’s simple. While it’s true that Meryl Streep hasn’t actually won since “Sophie’s Choice” in 1982 — and what’s up with that, by the way? — she’s a perennial nominee and almost certainly will be back in this category (or Supporting Actress) again soon, if not next year. We think most people will figure that this is going to be Sandra Bullock’s only chance to win, and because she’s a movie star who had a great year at the box office (both “The Blind Side” and “The Proposal” were MONSTER hits, and we won’t mention “All About Steve”) and because everyone loves her, that’ll be enough.
Finally, there’s the Big Prize. We’re not going to argue the merits of one film over the other because, quire frankly, we don’t think that has a lot to do with it. A friend of ours whose film opinion we greatly respect insists “Avatar” is going to win because of its box office prowess, but we continue to think the exact opposite. The more money the film makes, the less chance we think it has to win Best Picture. The things we’ve read and the people to whom we’ve spoken (and, as it happens, we actually know a couple of Academy voters) lead us to believe that the more time passes, the more people think of James Cameron’s film as a technological triumph and a grand achievement of personal vision, rather than an actual work of art. On the other hand, the second life that “The Hurt Locker” has found on DVD has only deepened the appreciation for it, and gotten more and more people to talk about the film and how amazing a piece of work it is.
It’s for that reason, not because it’s easily our favorite film of the year (have we mentioned that before? Because it really, really is), that we’re going with “The Hurt Locker” for Best Picture. Seriously, we’re going with our heads over our hearts, here, and we’re sticking by it, completely, totally and absolutely (though we are going to drop ten bucks on “Avatar,” just to be safe).
Posted in: Academy Awards, All About Steve, Avatar, Bob Murawski, Chris Innis, Christoph Waltz, Christopher Plummer, Colin Firth, Crazy Heart, David Letterman, George Clooney, Inglorious Basterds, James Cameron, Jason Reitman, Jeff Bridges, Jeremy Renner, Kathryn Bigelow, Kodak Theater, Mark Boal, Meryl Streep, Mo'Nique, Morgan Freeman, Oscar, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, Quentin Tarantino, Ryan Bingham, SAndra Bullock, Sheldon Turner, Sophie's Choice, T Bone Burnett, The Blind Side, The Hurt Locker, The Late Show With David Letterman, The Proposal, The Weary Kind, Up, Up in the Air, Wallace and Gromit, Young Victoria