Who cares a lot?

By Jonathan Fisher, March 3rd, 2010

It's Oscar season again, and despite the usual cries of "the Academy is irrelevant!" and "the best movies never win!", critics around the world have begun filing their predictions, like clockwork. Like the cinematic sheep I am, it's time for me to follow suit. There have been a few changes this year to the Academy, the biggest one being the expansion of the Best Picture category from five to ten nominees, a knee-jerk reaction to the battering they received for snubbing The Dark Knight and Wall*E last year. I'm still rather sceptical about this move. Not that I think there can only be five "best" pictures in any given year, but more because the Academy will no doubt use this as an opportunity to give another few pity nominations. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, here are my Oscar predictions for this year's ceremony:


Best Picture:
Nominees:
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air  

It's a tight field this year, with Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, The Hurt Locker and A Serious Man all worthy of being tagged 'year's best'. My pick for the win is Kathryn Bigelow's astounding The Hurt Locker. It's gained a lot of traction over the last few months, and momentum and campaigning are key in any Oscars race. Avatar could well pip The Hurt Locker purely because of the scale of its success, but I think Oscar did his bit merely by nominating James Cameron's swashbuckling sci-fi adventure. I'd love it if my expectations were upturned and Inglourious Basterds won it, but I think the fact that we haven't seen Quentin Tarantino on all that many red carpets recently is telling.

Best Actor in a Leading Role:
Nominees:
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
George Clooney (Up in the Air)
Colin Firth (A Single Man) 
Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

I think it's a toss-up between Jeff Bridges for his fantasticly nuanced performance in Crazy Heart and Jeremy Renner's turn in The Hurt Locker. I'm going to go with Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart in this category. As much as Renner probably deserves to win, there's a lot of buzz about Bridges in this category -- and for good reason, too.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
Nominees:
Matt Damon (Invictus)
Woody Harrelsen (The Messenger)
Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

Christoph Waltz won this award the moment he appeared on screen in Inglourious Basterds. No other performance this year was as menacing, as funny, as nuanced, or as fun as his turn as Hans Lauder in Tarantino's masterpiece.

Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Nominees:
Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Helen Mirren (The Last Station)
Carey Mulligan (An Education)
Gabourey Sidibe (Precious: Based on the novel "Push" By Sapphire)
Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)

This is a very tough category this year. I'm not sure the Academy is prepared to give Sandra Bullock an Oscar since she's spent most of the last fifteen years in vapid, cookie-cutter rom-coms, and the fact that Mirren won so recently, and that her movie The Last Station has gone almost unnoticed counts her out. Streep is pretty much given a free ride into the pool of nominees by virtue of the fact that she's awesome, but I can't see Julie and Julia taking home an Academy Award. After some careful deliberation, I'd say Gabourey Sidibe will win this year.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Nominees:
Penelope Cruz (Nine)
Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)
Mo'Nique (Precious: Based on the novel "Push" By Sapphire)

I'm irritated at Oscar for nominating Cruz for Nine. Not because she was particularly bad, but because that movie should be forgotten and disregarded in the careers of all involved. As for the other nominees, this is a very tight one. I thought both Farmiga and Kendrick were exceptional in Up in the Air, Mo'Nique showed depth and range that I wasn't expecting and that I've never seen before from her, and Maggie Gyllenhaal broke my heart in Crazy Heart. I'm going to go with Vera Farmiga for Up in the Air, if only because my heart says she should win.

Best Animated Film:
Nominees:
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up

I think the Academy has given away the winner of this category already by nominating Up for Best Picture. It would make no sense, and would make the Academy look foolish, if Up didn't win the Best Animated Feature category. Thus, Up has this one sown up.

Best Director:
James Cameron, Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels, Precious: Based on the novel "Push" By Sapphire
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

I don't think Avatar will win any of the major awards, but it could win this one, by virtue of the massive scale of its achievements at the box office and among the public conscience. But, Kathryn Bigelow won the Director's Guild Award, that that is usually a good litmus test for this award. As such, my tip is Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker.

Best Feature Documentary:
Nominees:
Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home

I admit to not having seen any of these (none of them have been released in Australia yet except The Cove, during which time I was out of the country), but The Cove generated a lot of acclaim and pleased a lot of crowds during its run, so I think on name recognisability, it will win.


Best Foreign Language Film:
Ajami (Israel)
The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustuda) (Peru)
A Prophet (Un Prophete) (France)
The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) (Argentina)
The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) (Germany) 

I've seen just two of these this year, and loved them both. A Prophet is a richly intimate, detailed epic that, at three hours long, you can absorb and lose yourself in. The White Ribbon, directed by the master Michael Haneke, is a riveting, haunting film that I was so obsessed with, I viewed twice in two days. It's also the Palme D'Or winner for this year, so my tip for this one is Haneke's The White Ribbon.

Best Original Screenplay:
Nominees:
Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, The Messenger
Joel and Ethan Cohen, A Serious Man
Peter Docter, Bob Peterson and Tom McCarthy, Up

I think this award belongs to Quentin Tarantino for his outrageous re-imagining of World War II, Inglourious Basterds.

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, District 9
Nick Hornby, An Education
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci, Tony Roche, In the Loop
Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious
Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air

Given the controversy surrounding the screenplay for Up in the Air (Sheldon Turner wrote the screenplay many years ago, only to have it bought by Ivan Reitman, whose son Jason tinkered with it and claimed it as his own), I'd love to see the awkwardness of Reitman and Turner accepting the award together. I think they will too. My pick is Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air.

**

Time will tell if my predictions ring true. I'm notoriously bad at this. The last few years have seen my percentages vary significantly, from 51% in 2007, to 65% in 2008 and 67% in 2009. So I'm gradually getting better. This year is so unpredictable, though, that I could conceivably get all the above categories right, or none of them. Time will tell, and in the meantime we have an excessively indulgent, over-long ceremony to watch. I've always thought that I could record the telecast ahead of time, and whittle down my viewing to around an hour, of just the awards. But Hollywood wouldn't be Hollywood without a little egotism and grandiosity. Let the back-patting begin!

Note: This year my picks have been entered into a movie critic Oscar prediction competition, sponsored by http://www.VoucherCodes.co.uk

20 Great Award Moments (forgive the inclusion of "Grey's Anatomy"...):