02/24/11
What's that you say? The Oscars? Yep, that's right, the only awards show still worth watching. Sure, it's a bit contrived and the idea of rich beauties celebrating themselves is a bit sickening. But hey man, this is America! We love our cinema and, in our opinion, the Oscars remain the most exciting and, we suppose, accurate of the awards shows. There have been some serious cred-killers over the last few years (Christopher Nolan not getting a Best Director nomination for The Dark Knight and Sandra Bullock winning a Best Female Actor award for a pseudo-Hallmark Movie of the Week), but plenty of great things happen at the Academy Awards show every year. Here are our thoughts/predictions/rants about this year's upcoming show on Sunday, February 27:
Best Lead Actor (Female): In our book, this race is between Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) and Natalie Portman (Black Swan), but all the old fogies out there who think The Kids Are All Right is actually an above average and culturally relevant movie of its time have been pushing for Annette Bening. Don't get us wrong, we love Annette very much … but Portman was a powerhouse in Darren Aronofsky's Swan, giving what will likely go down as her signature performance and one of the great female performances of her time. If she doesn't win, we might just become one of those Oscar Hater types, as we feel that Bening's work was slightly above that of any great soap opera performance out there. (Seriously, is Kids better than movies like Please Give or June Bug, neither of which came close to the acclaim Kids has seen? The answer is no.) Also nominated are Nicole Kidman and Michelle Williams. Prediction: Portman. Complaint: No Noomi Rapace? No Amy Ryan?
Best Lead Actor (Male): Lots of great nominees this year, including Jeff Bridges for True Grit. He was great, but he always is. Also, he won last year, and repeats at the Oscars are almost unheard of. ScreenTime favorites James Franco (127 Hours) and Javier Bardem (Biutiful) are also nominated but wont win. This year's race comes down to Colin Firth as a king with a stutter in Tom Hooper's The King's Speech and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. It was a toss-up until Firth won the Golden Globe a few weeks ago, not it feels like a lock. Me? Well, I've seen both movies multiple times and feel that Eisenberg's performance was more nuanced and understated than Firth's very theater-influenced performance. Firth should've won last year for A Single Man, so I suppose I'm okay with him winning this year. Prediction: Firth. Complaint: Our biggest complaint, easily is that Ryan Gosling didn't get nominated for Blue Valentine. Seriously?!
Best Supporting Actor (Female): Aside from Best Picture, this might be the closest call of this year's awards. We have Hailee Steinfeld, a very young and intelligent actress who had a career-making performance in True Grit; Helena Bonham Carter's beautiful work in The King's Speech; and, ScreenTime's two favorites of the folks nominated this year, Melissa Leo and Amy Adams' performances in David O. Russell's The Fighter. The gal who gave our by-far personal favorite supporting female performance of the year, Lesley Manville in Mike Leigh's excellent Another Year, was snubbed in favor of Jacki Weaver's very small (but stellar) contribution to a great film called Animal Kindgom. Prediction: Adams, finally, in an upset over Leo. Complaint: No Manville!
Best Supporting Actor (Male): One of ScreenTime's favorite working actors, Mark Ruffalo played himself perfectly in The Kids Are Alright; the win for him was scoring the nomination, as was it for John Hawkes (Winter's Bone) and Jeremy Renner (The Town). The real competition this year, we think, is between Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech) and Christian Bale (The Wrestler). Rush plays an eccentric speech therapist in a period piece about a person trying to overcome built-in circumstances. Sounds like Oscar bait, huh? Bale plays a junkie trying to overcome addiction and, in a way, save his family. Both are the types of roles that win awards and both men knocked them out of the park. To us, Bale is the clear winner, giving his best performance since The Machinist. Really, we think the guy should've already won a couple of these statues by now, so … Prediciton: Bale in the no-brainer of the night. Complaint: No John Ortiz for Jack Goes Boating.
Best Screenplay (Original): ScreenTime favorite Mike Leigh won't win, and he doesn't quite deserve to, even if his script for Another Year was perfect. There's a chance that Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) will take home the award as something of a consolation prize for not getting a director nomination or her film winning Best Picture. We think the statue will go to The King's Speech, unfortunately. To us, it's all about Christopher Nolan's go-for-broke Inception script, which is said to be one of the most difficult and detailed shooting scripts to ever be made. Also nomination was The Fighter, which might be a little too pedestrian to come close. Prediction: David Seidler for The King's Speech.
Best Screenplay (Adapted): As good as the Winter's Bone adaptation was, I won't even discuss this category, as I don't feel there's any competition. Repeat viewings reveal writer Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network adaptation as one of the all-time best written scripts. Not only did the writer put together a tough puzzle, but he made it better, tighter, funnier and as brilliant as can be. Also nominated were Toy Story 3, True Grit and 127 Hours, all good. Prediction: The Social Network. Complaint: No Animal Kingdom or Blue Valentine.
Best Direction: As mentioned above, Inception was one of the biggest and most complex productions to not only make it to a screen, but be both successful and pretty damn great. Movies with such ambition usually turn out to be flops, laughs or incredibly compromised pieces of cheese (that usually do quite well). That Nolan pulled off such grand ambitions - both artistically and commercially - make him the ScreenTime winner for Best Director. Buuuut … he wasn't even nominated. Bah. Regardless, this year's batch is a pretty amazing group of fellas: Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan); The Coen Brothers (True Grit); David Fincher (The Social Network); David O. Russell (The Fighter); and Tom Hooper (The King's Speech). Many are saying that the late-year fogie excitement for Speech (you old cats will regret this, just as your parents did with Stanley Kubrick!) is what did Nolan in. Also, where are the ladies at? How about Debra Granik for Winter's Bone or Cholodenko for Kids? Sexist pigs! Prediction: Fincher, who is maybe the best straight Hollywood director alive, not once making a bad picture. Complaint: No Nolan and no ladies!
Best Feature-Length Documentary: This is the category I'm looking forward to most this year, as this year sees a far-better-than-average crop of movies. That said, there's one that we believe is a new all-time classic of the genre, and that's Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop, a film that will forever stand as a poignant, timeless and inventive critique on the commercial art world. But no, we don't think it'll win. In fact, we think any of the other nominees - GasLand, Inside Job, Restrepo, and Waste Land - probably stand a better chance. We're just happy that the overly formulaic Waiting For Superman didn't get a nomination. Prediction: Inside Job. Complaint: No I'm Still Here!
Best Picture: Who can really say? For a while there, over the popular Christmastime rush, the momentum favored Black Swan and The Fighter. If you think back to the summer there were countless people saying that Inception was a lock for this award. Now the momentum favors The King's Speech and True Grit, both huge financial successes in the new year that also offer widespread appeal. All along two movies, Toy Story 3 and The Social Network have been part of the conversation. To us, The Social Network is the choice that would stand the test of time the best. In our hearts we want Inception, because it's such a magnificent accomplishment in so many ways, similar to Kubrick's 2001. But, who knows, maybe Winter's Bone or 127 Hours will pull an Arcade Fire and shock the bulk of the clueless country? Prediction: Either Social or Speech. It all probably comes down to who is winning awards all through the night. If pressed, we'd probably go with Speech, a movie we think lacks the Right Now quality of The Social Network. Complaint: I'd very much prefer to see Another Year, Shutter Island and especially Blue Valentine in there over Toy Story 3, Kids and 127 Hours, none of which feel anything like Best Picture movies to me. Hell, we'd take the hilarious and beautifully made Greenberg over any of those three!
Also: Toy Story 3 will easily win the Best Animated Feature statue while, we think, Biufitul will win the Best Foreign Language award, mostly because it's the one that features two past Oscar heavy hitters in lead actor Javier Bardem and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inattiru (Babel, 21 Grams, Amorres Peros), who just flat out doesn't make bad movies. We think Alexandre Desplat's The King's Speech score will maybe win; if not, it'll be Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' music for The Social Network, no mayor how good Hans Zimmer's Inception score was. Original song? Probably Randy Newman's latest Toy Story track; Best Visual Effects? Either Inception or Alice In Wonderland. As far as all of the technical awards go, we'll be pretty shocked if Inception doesn't take home the bulk of them.
Written by G. William Locke
