Who Will Win? My Predictions For the 84th Annual Academy Awards

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The Shorts

I failed this category miserably. I haven’t seen a one of them. As of right now, you can see 9 of the 10 live action and animated shorts via iTunes or OnDemand with most cable providers La Luna is Pixar’s entry in the animated category this year, but it won’t screen for audiences until June 22nd as a pre-show short in front of Brave.

Since I still need to make my picks, I’m just going to go with some guesswork here based on what I’ve read about each of the nominees. I’ll leave out my “should win” section here.

Documentary Short Subject

  • The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement
  • God Is the Bigger Elvis
  • Incident in New Baghdad
  • Saving Face
  • The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Barber sounds like a slight take on the civil rights movement and the Bigger Elvis just sounds slight. I’m guessing Iraq War fatigue will keep New Baghdad out. That leaves Saving Face, about a doctor who returns to Pakistan to help reconstruct the faces of women who’ve been attacked by having acid thrown at them, and The Tsunami, about the aftermath of the disaster in Japan last year as locals prepare for cherry blossom season. They seem like the likeliest winners, so I’ll flip a coin and get:

Saving Face

Short Film (Animated)

  • Dimanche/Sunday
  • The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
  • La Luna
  • A Morning Stroll
  • Wild Life

None of these sound particularly interesting, with the exception of Fantastic Flying Books. It’s also got an awesome title, so let’s just get right to it and call it the winner.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Short Film (Live Action)

  • Pentecost
  • Raju
  • The Shore
  • Time Freak
  • Tuba Atlantic

Raju and The Shore seem to be the front runners in this category. Raju regards a German couple who’ve gone to India to adopt a child, only to immediately lose the child. The Shore is about a couple of boyhood friends in Northern Ireland who’ve been estranged for 25 years because of The Troubles. It’s a tough call with little to go on, so I’m just going to say:

The Shore

The Technicals

Visual effects really need no explaination, but here’s a quick refresher on the difference between sound editing and sound mixing:

Sound in film is generally comprised of three elements: dialogue, effects and music. The sound editor is responsible for the middle of those. He selects the sound effects that will be used in the final mix to accurate reflect the images on screen. The final mix of those three elements? That’s the sound mixer.

These categories tend to be won by action heavy films, with one small exception: musicals (or music heavy films) have done well in the Sound Mixing category over the past decade, but that genre is absent from this year’s nominees.

Also worth noting is that while critically panned films often show up as nominees in these categories, they don’t usually win.

Note: I haven’t seen Transformers or Real Steel.

Sound Editing

  • Drive
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
  • Hugo
  • Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon
  • War Horse

Films with a lot of “busy” action set pieces tend to do well in this category. Unfortunately, Drive doesn’t really fit that bill, though the sound effects are pretty amazing. That’s where my vote would go because it’s an amazing film that was undeservedly snubbed from every other category. Probably not how most voters will go.

War Horse

Sound Mixing

  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
  • Hugo
  • Moneyball
  • Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon
  • War Horse

Swapping out Drive for Moneyball, we’ve got basically the same list of nominees for mixing. In the past couple of years, the winner of one category went on to win the other. I don’t have a particularly strong opinion here for who I want to win, but I think we’ll get another double win for sound this year.

War Horse

Visual Effects

  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
  • Hugo
  • Real Steel
  • Rise of the Planet of the Apes
  • Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon

Leading up to the nominations, there was a lot of buzz about Andy Serkis getting an acting nomination for playing Caesar, the alpha chimp who will presumably go on to lead the apes to eventual victory over the humans. It’s a genuinely towering performance, but the process of acting with motion capture really isn’t commonly understood enough at this point by a wide enough audience to push Serkis into the acting nominations circle. As a sort of consolation, I have a feeling that’s where this category will go, and I’m okay with that.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The Artists

Ah, the pretty things we see on screen at the movies! These are the people responsible for them, from the art direction to the costume design to the makeup. The director of photography rounds out this quartet since he’s the one that captures it all on film.

Note: I haven’t seen three of the costume design nominees: Anonymous, Jane Eyre and W.E.

Art Direction

  • The Artist
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
  • Hugo
  • Midnight in Paris
  • War Horse

Aka, the Tim Burton Prize. Alas, he didn’t direct any of these pictures. Period or fantasy tend to win this category year after year. This year, there’s one nominated film that is both of those things.

Hugo

Costume Design

  • Anonymous
  • The Artist
  • Hugo
  • Jane Eyre
  • W.E.

I can’t really make any choices here. Of the two I saw, neither particularly blew me away in temrs of costume design. The Artist could snag this for the sheer sentimentality of dressing everyone up in silent era Hollywood style. That said, period pieces tend to rule this category and it doesn’t get much more period than who I think will win.

Jane Eyre

Makeup

  • Martial Corneville, Lynn Johnston and Matthew W. Mungle, Albert Nobbs
  • Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight and Lisa Tomblin, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
  • Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland, The Iron Lady

Not a lot to say here except that one of these films was more or less carried entirely by the makeup on screen. The Academy always seems to be impressed when they make people look old, too.

The Iron Lady

Cinematography

  • The Artist
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
  • Hugo
  • The Tree of Life
  • War Horse

There’s really no question of who should win. Emmanuel Lubezki’s photographry in The Tree of Life is simply stunning. Words can’t begin to describe how beautifully shot every second of that film is. I’m pretty sure the Academy will vote the same way. The film was liked enough to get a Best Picture nod, though divisive enough that it won’t win that category. What everyone can agree on, however, is the cinematography.

The Tree of Life

The Musicians

Music (Original Score)

  • John Williams, The Adventures of Tintin
  • Ludovic Bource, The Artist
  • Howard Shore, Hugo
  • Alberto Iglesias, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
  • John Williams, War Horse

My hands down favorite here is Alberto Iglesias’ jazzy, moody score for Tinker Tailor. Alas, there’s no way it pulls out a win here, so I’ll just have to get over that. The likely winner will be Ludovic Bource’s score for The Artist. It’s a noble score and well composed, but I’m also left a little cold with the fact that the most powerful musical moment in the film is set to a piece from Bernard Hermann’s score for the Hitchcock film Vertigo. It bothers me a little that Bource would get the win here in light of that, but I don’t think the Academy will care.

Ludovic Bource

Music (Original Song)

  • “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets, Bret McKenzie
  • “Real in Rio” from Rio, Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown and Siedah Garrett

I have no opinion about this category. Let’s go Muppets.

“Man or Muppet

The Others

Documentary Feature

  • Hell and Back Again
  • If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
  • Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
  • Pina
  • Undefeated

I’ve seen Hell and Tree Falls and thought both were entirely average. It seems like the Academy left a lot of excellent documentaries out of the nominations this year. My guess is it will come down to Paradise Lost 3 (given that it’s the culmination of a really well loved series of documentaries about the Robin Hood Hill murders) and Undefeated, which plays somewhat like a real life Blind Side. Hollywood loves a good underdog story, so that’s where my guess goes.

Undefeated

Best Foreign Feature

  • Bullhead
  • Footnote
  • In Darkness
  • Monsieur Lazhar
  • A Separation

A Separation should run away with this category, but history tells us that the foreign film that seems like it will win quite often doesn’t. Think of Amelie losing to No Man’s Land, Pan’s Labyrinth losing to The Lives of Others and The White Ribbon losing to The Secret In Their Eyes. That’s not to detract from the films that ultimately do win (they’re quite often also very good), but it does make the category a tough one to predict. Buzz says that outside of A Separation, Monsieur Lazhar is the likely favorite, but I’ll go ahead and stick with my gut here and say:

A Separation

Best Animated Feature

  • A Cat in Paris
  • Chico & Rita
  • Kung Fu Panda 2
  • Puss in Boots
  • Rango

I haven’t seen a one of these, but smack between the populist kids movies and the artsy foreign affairs sits the likely winner.

Rango

The Storytellers

Best Original Screenplay

  • Michel Hazanivicius, The Artist
  • Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids
  • Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
  • J.C. Chandor, Margin Call
  • Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

It’s been a long time since Woody Allen has made a film that was so widely beloved. There’s some strong stuff in this category (and I’m delighted to see A Separation show up with a nomination), but this year it’s Woody’s to lose.

Midnight in Paris

Best Adapted Screenplay

  • Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants
  • John Logan, Hugo
  • George Clooney, Beau Willimon and Grant Heslov, The Ides of March
  • Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin, Moneyball
  • Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Another strong set of nominees. I’d love to see Moneyball win this, giving Aaron Sorkin consecutive wins for adapting really uncinematic material. I don’t think it’ll happen. Instead, my least favorite nominee will probably take the win.

The Descendants

Film Editing

  • Anne-Sophie Bion and Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
  • Kevin Tent, The Descendants
  • Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
  • Thelma Schoonmaker, Hugo
  • Christopher Tellefsen, Moneyball

It’s often said that a movie is made in the editing room. Given the fact that The Artist is a silent film, the editing becomes even more important as the way to tell the film’s story. It’s a beloved movie and it will do really well tonight. Put your money on it.

The Artist

Best Director

  • Michel Hazanivicius, The Artist
  • Alexander Payne, The Descendants
  • Martin Scorsese, Hugo
  • Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
  • Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see Terrence Malick win this award. The Tree of Life is an absolute masterpiece that deserves recognition as such. Alas, The Artist train will roll on.

Michel Hazanivicius

The Players

Supporting Actress

  • Berenice Bejo, The Artist
  • Jessica Chastain, The Help
  • Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
  • Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
  • Octavia Spencer, The Help

This is a category that’s prone to surprises. Melissa McCarthy, while a popular choice, would still be a big surprise. It could happen! That’s not how I’d vote, though. It’s a really tough vote because the other four nominees are all really excellent and deserving, but I’d probably vote Bejo. She really won me over with a couple of key scenes and I found her effortless charming throughout. The Academy, however, will likely go with one of The Help.

Octavia Spencer

Supporting Actor

  • Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
  • Jonah Hill, Moneyball
  • Nick Nolte, Warrior
  • Christopher Plummer, Beginners
  • Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

The old guy category. The lifetime achievement category. Call it whatever you will, it’ll come down to Plummer or von Sydow. I loved the former a lot and I’m pretty positive the Academy did, too. Probably the closest to a sure thing we’ll see all night.

Christopher Plummer

Best Actress

  • Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
  • Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
  • Viola Davis, The Help
  • Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
  • Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

The second closest sure thing we’ll see all night, put your money down on Viola Davis. She turns in a huge performance, elevating mediocre material and making Aibileen Clark a character with tremendous depth. Meryl Streep could have stolen this, but unfortunately, The Iron Lady is simply a bad, bad movie. I’m going to agree with the Academy here.

Viola Davis

Best Actor

  • Demian Bichir, A Better Life
  • George Clooney, The Descendants
  • Jean Dujardin, The Artist
  • Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
  • Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Gary Oldman gives a tremendous performance by doing very little and I’d love to see him win. He deserves it and his work as the understated and inscrutable George Smiley would be a good way for the Academy to show their appreciation. Brad Pitt comes in a close second. Sadly, neither of them will win. It’s Artist time again and I can’t deny that Jean Dujardin deserves all the praise that’s been heaped on him. He was born to play this role and he’ll be honored justly.

Jean Dujardin

The Grand Prize

Best Picture

  • War Horse
  • The Artist
  • Moneyball
  • The Descendants
  • The Tree of Life
  • Midnight in Paris
  • The Help
  • Hugo
  • Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

You may have caught my praise of Tree of Life above. It deserves Best Picture so much that it literally pains me to not put it down on my prediction ballot. Alas, the favorite seems to be The Artist. It’s a safe bet on a fluffy feel good film. It’s neat that it’ll be the first silent film to win Best Picture since the very first Academy Awards ceremony, but neat doesn’t beat amazing. Life moves on, right?

The Artist

The Artist

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I guess I’m supposed to love The Artist. It’s a movie about movies. About silent movies and the transition to sound movies and how that destroyed the lives of the silent film era stars who refused to jump on board with the newfangled invention of talking pictures.

Oh yeah. The Artist is a silent film. But you probably already knew that.

Thing is: I didn’t love it. It’s fine. Cute, even. Jean Dujardin is handsome and charming and oh so expressive (an essential quality to making a silent performance work) as the movie star George Valentin who bucks the talkies by directing himself in one last silent film. That personal project bankrupts Valentin and his world crumbles around him.

Berenice Bejo plays Peppy Miller, an adorable actress whose star rises in the age of talkies as Valentin’s falls. Peppy gets her big break because of Valentin, however, and she never forgets that. She’s clearly in love with him, a fact she reveals in a Chaplinesque bit where she convincingly embraces herself with one arm through Valentin’s jacket. She’s one of the few people in the audience when Valentin’s last film opens, while next door her breakout movie debuts to a sell out crowd. Despite her success, she never forgets what Valentin did for her. She supports him from a distance as he spirals further and further into despair. Eventually, he hits rock bottom and she’s there to pick him up again. It’s all very jolly.

The Artist is certainly well made and there are really brilliant scenes interspersed throughout. A particular favorite is a sequence where Valentin’s just been informed of the advent of talkies. Up until that point, the film has played out in completely silent fashion, the only sound that of the (theoretical) orchestra playing along with the images. Valentin looks in the mirror and takes a drink of water. When he sets the glass down, it makes a diegetic sound, the first of the film. Valentin is surprised so he picks up the glass and puts it back down again. Another sound effect. Around him, everything starts to make noise, but when he speaks to himself in the mirror, he’s silent. It’s a wonderfully executed scene and my favorite in the film.

Unfortunately, nothing else really lives up to that moment. The ending eventually comes along and the final sequences inexplicably play to the sounds of Bernard Hermann’s glorious score from Vertigo. Beside the fact that it’s a beautiful piece of music, I can’t really figure out why it’s here. As the film comes to a conclusion with Valentin’s redemption at the hands of Peppy Miller’s persistence, the inevitable happens: silence becomes sound and the transition is complete. Talkies are the new norm and that age of the silent film artist vanishes forever as the credits roll.

Here’s a fun fact: The Artist is the first silent film to be nominated for Best Picture since 1928. That year, The Patriot was nominated in the second annual Academy Awards ceremony. If the Artist wins Best Picture, it’ll only be the second film to do so. The first was Wings in 1927 at the first Academy Awards ceremony.

OMG The Oscars Are Coming!

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The nominees are out. That means it’s time to start reviewing all the movies I’ve missed in 2011 and making a plan to see as many of the nominated films as I can before the winners are announced on February 26th.

That’s not a lot of time. I get myself into this mess every year (minus 2010, which I sort of took off). You can see my similar lists from 2009. I kept my lists of movies to see private the past couple of years, but they’re back!

It’s admittedly silly, but my goal is to see as many nominated films as I can. Not just the big nominees… ALL of them. The foreign films tend to be tough to pick up (oftentimes they don’t appear in theaters until after the awards are given) and documentary shorts tend to never be seen (at least the animated and live action shorts usually find release on iTunes and in theaters through the efforts of Shorts International. Then there’s the movies I simply do NOT want to see. (I’m looking at you, Transformers, you piece of shit!)

Without further ado, here are the 61 nominated films. The ones I’ve seen as of today have been struck through:

  1. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
  2. Albert Nobbs
  3. Anonymous (DVD on 2/7)
  4. The Artist
  5. The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement (short)
  6. Beginners (DVD)
  7. A Better Life (DVD)
  8. Bridesmaids (DVD)
  9. Bullhead
  10. A Cat in Paris
  11. Chico and Rita
  12. The Descendants
  13. Dimanche / Sunday (short)
  14. Drive (DVD)
  15. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
  16. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore (short) (Free on iTunes!)
  17. Footnote
  18. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
  19. God is the Bigger Elvis (short)
  20. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (DVD)
  21. Hell and Back Again (Streaming on Netflix)
  22. The Help (DVD)
  23. Hugo
  24. Ides of March (DVD)
  25. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Streaming on Netflix)
  26. Incident in New Baghdad (short)
  27. In Darkness
  28. The Iron Lady
  29. Jane Eyre (DVD)
  30. Kung Fu Panda 2 (DVD)
  31. La Luna (short)
  32. Margin Call (DVD)
  33. Midnight in Paris (DVD)
  34. Moneyball (DVD)
  35. Monsieur Lazhar
  36. A Morning Stroll (short)
  37. The Muppets
  38. My Week With Marilyn
  39. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
  40. Pentecost (short)
  41. Pina
  42. Puss in Boots (DVD on 2/24)
  43. Raju (short)
  44. Rango (DVD)
  45. Real Steel (DVD)
  46. Rio (DVD)
  47. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (DVD)
  48. Saving Face (short)
  49. A Separation
  50. The Shore (short)
  51. Time Freak (short)
  52. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
  53. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (DVD)
  54. The Tree of Life (DVD)
  55. The Tsumani and the Cherry Blossom (short)
  56. Tuba Atlantic (short)
  57. Undefeated
  58. W.E.
  59. War Horse
  60. Warrior (DVD)
  61. Wild Life (short)

For those of you counting, this means I’ve only seen *seven* of the nominated films. In 2009, I had 42 films to catch and last year it was in the upper forties. Now I’ve got one month to catch 54 flicks.

Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. But I’ll do my best to get as close as possible!

Wish me luck.

Updated 1/30: Marked The Help, The Artist, The Descendants and Rise of the Planet of the Apes as seen. Down to 50! Also added links to Netflix or iTunes for films you can watch at home, along with some notes about streaming or DVD availability.

Updated 2/3: Since the last update, I’ve seen two of the documentaries (Hell and Back Again and If A Tree Falls, the two available on Netflix streaming), as well as Warrior and A Separation. That brings me down to a total of 46 flicks left to see! My weekend plans include Hugo and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for sure. Might also suck it up and go get War Horse out of the way. Speaking of which, I can’t think of the last time there was a Best Picture nominee I wanted to see less than War Horse. I really hope it’s not actually as torturous as it feels like it will be.

Go Giants!

Updated 2/10: An amazing victory for the Giants in the Super Bowl seems to have foreshadowed a slowed pace in movie watching this past week. Only saw 5 more films: A Better Life (awesome), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (terrible), Hugo (average), Ides of March (also awesome) and My Week With Marilyn (underwhelming), which brings me down to one less than the Meaning of Life movies to see (i.e. 41).

Rihanna Samples The xx

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I keep hearing about this Rihanna lady and I guess I’ve heard a song or two, but I never really paid much attention. Can’t say that this will necessarily change that, but it’s a pretty damn good step in the right direction. I’m hard pressed to think of a more terrific song to sample (with a sort of not terrific name that’s actually still kind of terrific) than the lead track from The xx’s eponymous debut album, “Intro.”

The Rihanna track is called Drunk On Love and there’s short little clip that’s worth a listen. I don’t love it, but I far from hate it.

Celebration Time!

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I’m not usually one to pat myself on the back for a job well done, but I’m far too elated to concern myself with modesty right at this moment.

What has me so pleased, you ask? Today, for the first time in my adult life, I am debt free. Without debt. Zero dollars owed. My credit cards are goose-egged and I owe nothing!

This screen capture doesn’t really tell the whole story, of course. I pulled it from Mint and that only has my data going back as far as March 2009. The truth is that I owed upwards of $30,000 as recently as early 2008, steadily accumulated from the time I got my first credit card as a college freshman in 1996. Poor spending habits and spending well outside my means really bit me in the ass for a long, long time.

I suppose that at the end of the day, getting out from under a mountain of debt like that isn’t a particularly heroic act. It’s a little like setting fire to your neighbor’s house and wondering why they didn’t thank you with a nice zucchini bread after you saved them from the flaming wreckage. That said, it’s still a satisfying personal victory. Seeing your debts totally outstrip your income is an imposing sight. It’s scary and it feels like the process of getting rid of that debt will never end, that you’ll just be paying it off well into your golden years. No matter how much you pay (or can afford to pay), it always feels like the process is going too slow. Just keep at it and don’t lose your cool.