Slant Magazine's Predictions

[Sabin]

OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - SUPPORTING ACTRESS
By: Eric Henderson On: 02/11/2009 13:48:09 In: Oscars Comments: 0

Amy Adams, Doubt - 15%
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona - 30%
Viola Davis, Doubt - 25%
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 10%
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler - 20%

Taking Kate Winslet out of the equation seemed to turn this category into any Academy Award fan's dream scenario: an Oscar ripe for the taking in a veritable five-way contest. While it's true that this is the only one of this year's four acting categories where you can conjure up a pretty realistic scenario for any of the nominees being declared the winner, and we were all deprived a truly representational trial heat for this category, it's myopic to act like there weren't a couple clear favorites before Winslet's departure that are now, consequently, favorites once again. Back in late December, Penelope Cruz was making a pretty unbroken sprint through the most important critics' prizes, winning citations from the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Granted, and as Sally Hawkins could tell you, this isn't one of those years wherein critical attention seems to be any sort of dealmaker. But in a tight race, critics' endorsements could be enough to buttress the role's Oscar-friendly cultural minstrelsy and erection-friendly lesbianics to an easy win. If any of the other four nominees can surmount Cruz's early lead, it will be Viola Davis, if for no other reason than the desire to throw an award to one of Doubt's four Oscar-nominated performances. Some carp that the role is too brief to win here, especially given Amy Adams, in a much more durationally substantial role, is competition. But if there's a category where it's totally okay to show up for a single scene and knock it out of the park (Beatrice Straight, Judi Dench), this is it. Adams could conceivably win on the "Ooh, she's a hottie" ticket if Cruz and Marisa Tomei's veteran stripper are too exotic for the Academy's demonstrable white-bread crotches. But Adams's character spends the entire movie attempting to defuse situations and explain away the entire plot's inciting incident. Oscar prefers dur-ah-ma, and next to Davis's epic, tearful stare-down against La Streep, Adams's "can't we all just get along" blubbering comes off as an irritating, protracted whine. Hell, for that matter, Cruz's fiery stereotype refused to cry unless she could do it in Spanish. And so we see the Academy, forced to reboot in Winslet's absence, reverting to the early favorite here.

Will Win: Penelope Cruz for Vicki Cristina Barcelona

Should Win: Viola Davis, Doubt

[Sabin]

OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
By: Ed Gonzalez On: 02/10/2009 13:31:23 In: Oscars Comments: 0

Frozen River - 10%
Happy-Go-Lucky - 5%
In Bruges - 20%
Milk - 35%
WALL*E - 30%

For writing that hinges on indulgent exposition, leaden metaphor, painful grade-school symbolism, and clich characterization, Courtney Hunt is now an Oscar nominee thanks to the same AMPAS voters who don't recoil into the fetal position at the sound of actors reading aloud from a Paul Haggis screenplay. That's a pretty significant bloc of the academy, but we're guessing there's a considerable overlap of fans between Frozen River and the smarmy In Bruges, which was quickly forgotten after opening in early February but has built a sizeable cult following since then and is now riding high off Golden Globe and BAFTA fumes. Of course, it's rare for a screenplay to win here without also being nominated for Best Picture, so don't bet on In Bruges taking this one unless you also think six-time Oscar nominee Mike Leigh will be given a chance to wax cynicallyand justifiably soabout his improvisational style of writing and Happy-Go-Lucky's egregious snub in the Best Actress category. Dustin Lance Black, the openly gay ex-Mormon who writes for HBO's Big Love, should have had this one in the bag, especially after his Writers Guild of America victory, but Black didn't have to contend with WALL-E for that award. Critically and financially, WALL-E benefits from being the most successful film in this category, but we're of the opinion that the same blue-haired types who confuse Most Editing for Best Editing will feel somewhat uneasyand mistakenly soabout voting for a film that's written in chirps and beeps for a significant portion of its running time, even if they do prefer WALL-E to Milk at the end of the day.

Will Win: Milk

Should Win: Happy-Go-Lucky

[Sabin]

This is one of Eric's best write-ups. A strong case to be made for a Hare upset. I think Slumdog's screenplay has it in the bag though.

OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
By: Eric Henderson On: 02/09/2009 14:49:49 In: Oscars Comments: 0

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 15%
Doubt - 10%
Frost/Nixon - 10%
The Reader - 30%
Slumdog Millionaire - 35%

Are screenplays of acclaimed stage plays adapted by the authors of the original works cursed when it comes to Oscars? Ernest "The Loons" Thompson can poop on that theory, but Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, and Harold Pinter can all say, "Yes, unquestionably." So will Peter Morgan and John Patrick Shanley soon enough, so let's move on to the three-way battle of the flashbacks. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button uses the flashback structure in ways both elegant (gently suggesting Benjamin's chronological affliction) and stilted (the late-inning revelation of Julia Ormand's character's true identity, long-since presaged by most viewers), but the most damning flashback in terms of Oscar viability is the nagging dj vu that we've seen an extraordinary American life detailed like this somewhere before, and from the pen of Eric Roth at that. The literacy I referenced in the nominations prediction blog indeed helped secure The Reader a nomination in this category, but its surprise nominations in a number of other categories suggest it wasn't much of an uphill battle for David Hare. And even we have to admit that his ability to weave back and forth between multiple time periods demonstrates something resembling narrative momentum (as opposed to the maladroit gynecological synchronicity he and Daldry attempted with The Hours), but it also hinges on a mid-film revelation that, if you don't accept it, turns the entire movie into an endless, pompous slog toward bitter denouement. Of course, the movie's Best Picture nomination means just as many bought it as a tragic romance, which also means Slumdog Millionaire isn't quite the invincible (sorry, "underdog") favorite here as it is in a bunch of other categories despite its recent WGA win. That said, Simon Beaufoy's screenplay is playful with its flashbacks, and cannily allows the movie to climax in the here and now. It seems like a close one, but as Slumdog's final title card says: "It is written."

Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire

Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire

[Sabin]

OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS DOCUMENTARY
By: Ed Gonzalez On: 02/08/2009 14:06:36 In: Oscars Comments: 0

Betrayal - 10%
Encounters at the Edge of the World - 20%
Man on Wire - 40%
Trouble the Water - 20%

In case you weren't paying attention, given Sally Hawkins's egregious snub and all, Werner Herzog is now an Oscar nominee—and not a moment too soon. Now it remains to be seen if an adventurous cameramen will pick out the maverick director out of the Oscar crowd and lock on to the man's eternally and blissfully blazed face—assuming, that is, Herzog even shows up. We can't imagine Herzog expects to win this one, even if he probably has the vote of every academy member who counts Aguirre: Wrath of God as one of their favorite movies. On paper, the excellent Katrina doc Trouble the Water screams a winner, but this enraged examination of social injustice is possibly headier than even Encounters at the End of the World. Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath's acclaimed The Betrayal and Scott Hamilton Kennedy's The Garden bring to mind past winners in this category, but this one seems like a knockout punch for Man on Wire, especially with Standard Operating Procedure out of the running. As big a crowd-pleaser as Slumdog Millionaire, Man on Wire has won almost as many awards since the start of the Oscar season, connecting with people first as a thrilling exaltation of high-wire artiste Philippe Petit's chutzpah, then as a memorial to the similarly superhuman daring responsible for building the stage the man walked across on the morning of August 7th, 1974.

Will Win: Man on Wire

Should Win: Encounters at the End of the World

[Sabin]

OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - VISUAL EFFECTS
By: Eric Henderson On: 02/06/2009 14:35:53 In: Oscars Comments: 0

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 40%
The Dark Knight - 35%
Iron Man - 25%


No fuzzy, talking animals can possibly and unexpectedly tip this year's Visual Effects contest like they recently did for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe and The Golden Compass, but at least we do have a grizzly in the form of Brad Pitt's computer-enhanced young codger. There are, of course, a lot more qualities stacked in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button team's favor: It's actually a fully-stocked buffet of CGI, process shots, trick photography, and computerized Botox. (Pitt wasn't the only one who spent large chunks of screen time looking like his younger self, and we already know just how much the Academy loves their Cate Blanchett.) If nothing else, think of all the voters who chuckled every goddamned time that drooling raisin flashed back to one of the seven times he'd been hit by lightning. The breadth of VFX content in the film (even if some effects soar while otherslike Pitt circa 1991just creep us out) should easily trump its competition, unless voters choose to fixate on a single, spectacularly-executed effect, in which case Harvey Dent's ruined face may give The Dark Knight a leg up on Pitt's slowly fixed one.

Will Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Should Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

[Sabin]

OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - ACTRESS
By: Eric Henderson On: 02/07/2009 15:39:55 In: Oscars Comments: 1

Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married - 20%
Angelina Jolie, Changeling - 5%
Melissa Leo, Frozen River - 5%
Meryl Streep, Doubt - 25%
Kate Winslet, The Reader - 45%

To quote Homer Simpson, it seems everything is all wrapped up in a neat little package. By ignoring Weinstein's attempt to gerrymander Kate Winslet into two categories, Oscar's unexpectedly independent-minded decision to place her in the lead category for The Reader has cleared up any and all loose ends in this particular storyline. The academy gets to award the long overdue actress for her role in a movie that's clearly more to their liking than Revolutionary Road, especially given the nominated role allows her to execute (no pun intended) a number of the tricks Oscar loves to see from actresses (old-age makeup, funny accent, Holocaust drama, pert young breasts). Bonus: they can avoid having to deal with category fraud, which slotting Winslet's Reader performance as supporting clearly would've been. I suppose it would've been a better story to give Winslet the award for a role in which she was directed by her husband Sam Mendes instead of the one whose most endearing production backstory is how Stephen Daldry and his crew were strongarmed into wrapping the damned thing up specifically for the purpose of qualifying it for Oscars. But that's collateral damage. Ditto the fact that her win here has the unfortunate effect of allowing the Academy to walk right into Ricky Gervais and Winslet's satirical trap on Extras. Winslet might be portraying a nun in that fictional Oscar bid on Gervais's series, and La Streep is undoubtedly her closest competition, but her "interesting" decision to portray Doubt's Sister Beaver for comedy will probably blow out a few too many voters' lights. Winslet's not old enough yet to lose many votes to Anne Hathaway from the Academy demographic that routinely votes for female actors they'd like to sit on their laps. Finally, there are no cripple roles in this spread. Like Winslet said, besides the Holocaust, "you are guaranteed an Oscar if you play a mental." With no bona fide mentals in the running here (Hathaway's self-destruction also extends to destroying others, so no sympathy points there), that pretty well clears the path for Winslet to break her losing streak for what's pretty obviously her worst nominated performance. Still, cue up the cult of Winslet's chorus of Flanders-like screams.

Will Win: Kate Winslet for The Reader

Should Win: Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married

[Sabin]

I'm of the belief that Waltz with Bashir won't win either. We don't really know anything about Departures but here is the imdb summary:

"Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living."

...now the best way to describe this kind of movie in my mind is Best Foreign-Language Oscar Winner.


OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - FOREIGN LANGUAGE
By: Ed Gonzalez On: 02/05/2009 14:41:02 In: Oscars Comments: 0

The Baader Meinhof Complex - 10%
The Class - 35%
Departures - 20%
Revanche - 5%
Waltz with Bashir - 30%

After years of controversy, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally elects an executive committee to give a second chance to three foreign-language films snubbed during this category's first round of voting. By most accounts, this decision to police the regular nominating committee, Academy Members for the Perpetual Reward of Holocaust Pictures, has yielded an unusually strong batch of contenders, which include two Cannes prizewinners and the latest from the director of The Last Exit to Brooklyn. Now the question remains if the Academy will enact similar quality-control measures in other categoriesso, you know, a travesty like the one that befell Sally Hawkins this year will never happen again. But I digress. This year my blindspots are Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex and Yojiro Takita's Departures. The former, about the roots of the Red Army Faction terrorist group, sounds like a more youthful and explosive relation of Germany's last winner in this category, The Lives of Others, but Departures may have a leg up on it if Variety, that bastion of film-biz-y shorthand criticism, is to be believed: "Fascinating glimpses into a unique profession trump the pic's emotional manipulation and substantial length, suggesting that its top prize in Montreal could lead to fest action and, following judicious postmortem editing, selected arthouse engagements." Revanche, Janus's first theatrical release of a new film in decades, will be released on video by the Criterion Collection and may be the strongest contender here. The story of lives intersecting in a rural Austrian town after an unfortunate accident, this ninth feature from Austrian director Gtz Spielmann threatens to go down the low-road of a guttersnipping Ulrich Seidl production until it evolves into a morally disquieting and visually prismatic and resplendent look at grief, boasting the most chilling sound design you'll hear outside a torture porn. But the last thing academy members probably want to think about is getting sliced to bits by a woodcutter, so the race is probably between The Class and Waltz with Bashir. The latter won the Golden Globe and obviously has its fans, but naysayers have also called out its redundancy and borderline incomprehensibility, though it may ultimately lose because voters might feel it should have been nominated in either the animated or documentary feature categories. Laurent Cantet's The Class, also being released by Sony Pictures Classics, has received a less thoughtful theatrical run, which is surprising given the film's buzz following its victory at Cannes, but the temperament of the film, which documents in reality-TV fashion the struggles of a teacher to tame his immigrant-city students, seems very much in sync with that of the academy's. In short: If Armond White thinks it's racist, it must be a winner.

Will Win: The Class

Should Win: Revanche

[Franz Ferdinand]

Oscar Race 2009: Winner Predictions - Animated Feature
By: Eric Henderson On: 02/04/2009 14:12:27 In: Oscars Comments: 0

Bolt - 5%
Kung Fu Panda - 10%
WALL-E - 85%

Annie, are you okay? The Annie Awards, which are handed out by animators to animators, gave what by almost any measure is the most highly-regarded film of the year (animated or otherwise) the cold shoulder, instead showering the cute-but-no-cigar Kung-Fu Panda with a record-setting haul. Sorta makes you wonder whether animators might be a tad tired of hearing the standard mantra people tend to repeat whenever a new Pixar movie is released: "It's more than just a cartoon." That, or they really are just a bunch of furries that have lucked into a harmonious vocation. I've heard a few people explain WALL-E's Annie shutout is testament to animators' affinity for traditional cartoon-character renderings, that it's far more difficult for animators to get excited about what registers as cinematic to your average layman film-fan. Thus, they can naturally be expected to endorse Panda's motley selection from the animal kingdom over WALL-E's movie-movie pleasures (WALL-E dipping his metal claw into a streak of stardust). Never mind. Oscar voters are strictly fans when it comes to this category, and with Waltz with Bashir and its tempting political pull out of the running in favor of the potentially vote-splitting traditional character animation of Bolt, WALL-E won't be going home empty-clawed here.

Will Win: WALL-E

Should Win: WALL-E



Edited By Franz Ferdinand on 1233771914

[Franz Ferdinand]

Good call, Ed. It has become a sort of social experiment to see who people could see possibly upsetting Ledger at this stage. I doubt the Academy voters will fail to play along.

[Sabin]

OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - SUPPORTING ACTOR
By: Ed Gonzalez On: 02/03/2009 14:31:07 In: Oscars Comments: 0

Josh Brolin, Milk - 10%
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder - 5%
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt - 5%
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight - 75%
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road - 5%

Even if people wanted to vote for a critics darling like Josh Brolin (Milk) in this category, to do so might seem akin to failing one of the Joker's social experiments from The Dark Knight. Hell, I'm even afraid of giving my should-win vote to anyone other than Heath Ledger for fear I'll end up with a pencil shoved through my eye.

Will Win: Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight

Should Win: Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight

[Sabin]

Poor phrasing on my part. I meant, if that's not what you mean, then you're wrong. But you did mean that. So you're not.


RE: James Newton Howard vs. Danny Elfman.

Outside of The Village which is a terrible movie with a very good score, I don't like James Newton Howard. But Defiance sounds like a Best Score winner. It's got all the ingredients except for the right movie. Milk has all the nominations, sure, but it's a very, very subtle score. I have a feeling that Danny Elfman is probably going to win before James Newton Howard does but it's not going to be for something like Milk. It's such a subtle score and the Academy usually favors something more anthemic. I would put money on Defiance before Milk winning Best Score.



Edited By Sabin on 1233649861

[The Apostle]

They might mean since the inception of the Animated Feature category but that's blatantly incorrect.

Yes, we meant since the inception of the Animated Feature category; that could have been clearer, but we're still "blatantly incorrect"? The Chubbchubbs!, Harvie Krumpet, Ryan, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, The Danish Poet, and Peter & the Wolf are not Pixar films, or am I mistaken?

[Eric]

Because he's James Newton Howard! His scores are ass! And Elfman is, if nothing else, connected to an 8-time-nominated Best Picture nominee!



Edited By Eric on 1233614155

[Sabin]

They might mean since the inception of the Animated Feature category but that's blatantly incorrect. Likewise, I have no idea how Elfman has a better chance of winning the next award than James Newton Howard for Defiance or an equal chance as Desplat for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.


OSCAR RACE 2009: WINNER PREDICTIONS - SCORE
By: Eric Henderson On: 02/02/2009 14:32:27 In: Oscars Comments: 0

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 20%
Defiance - 10%
Milk - 20%
Slumdog Millionaire - 35%
WALL*E - 25%


The brouhaha over The Dark Knight's eligibility has been settled and found irrelevant. Clearly, the Academy music branch prefers their James Newton Howard scores to sit down, shut up, and give the timpani a rest. Thus, he gets his nomination for his collaboration with director Edward Zwick, resulting in a music score with all the potency and dynamic range that particular combination of cinematic personalities would imply. As far as composers who are starting to rack up stacks of nominations without toppling over into a win, Danny Elfman (Milk) and Thomas Newman (WALL-E) undoubtedly stand better shots than Newton Howard. But neither are solid bets, in part because the ghosts of previous compositions overshadow them. Like the movie that surrounds it, Newman's understated work in the earlier portion of WALL-E eventually slips into a slightly disappointing techno-satire, and even though the "Define Dancing" cue is gorgeous, the movie's most enduring musical legacy is the hat routine WALL-E performs to his VHS copy of Hello, Dolly. And Elfman's score almost deliberately avoids the sort of emotional gut-punch that Mark Isham provided in his muted, icy requiem for The Times of Harvey Milk. Flip that equation and you have Alexandre Desplat's conundrum. His luxuriantly legato cues are like an entire movie's worth (make that movie-and-a-half's worth) of John Williams's elegiac coda from A.I., but no matter how pliantly his orchestra bends their bows to forge an emotional connection, Fincher's film retains its calculated distance from the material. Not that I'm saying every last voter got weepy over AR Rahman's tranced-out interpolation of the theme from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but it may be the one piece of music whose pulse most closely matches that of its respective film.

Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire

Should Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

[MovieWes]

Strange that the only time Pixar won here was the same year it lostand tragically soin the race for Animated Feature. Nine years later, it seems doubtful that Presto, which accompanied WALL-E throughout its theatrical run, will end what's slowly becoming a Susan Lucci-esque losing streak: The story of a bunny who takes vengeance on the magician who denies him a carrot, the short is adorably feisty but forgettable.

Umm... correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Pixar also win for Geri's Game and Tin Toy?