Oscar Predictions 2011

My favorite prediction post of the year! I tend to be much better on this subject than any other. Last year I got 19 out of 24 right, so I’m unlikely to do better this year.

No matter! I intend to rest on my laurels. On to the predictions! I’m planning on keeping the column short this year, unless an explanation is absolutely necessary.

Two answers for each category – the likely winner, and the nominee I’d like to see take it.

Best Picture
Will Win: The King’s Speech
Should Win: The King’s Speech
Explanation: I know, I know, I just picked Inception as my favorite movie of the year. But I really feel like The King’s Speech is the more deserving movie. It’s less daring than Inception, but also has less flaws.

 
Best Actor
Will Win: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
Should Win: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
Explanation: This race was over before it began. I’d be surprised if any of the other nominees wrote speeches.

Best Actress
Will Win: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Should Win: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Explanation: The only reason Portman wouldn’t win is that voters seem inclined to vote for Annette Bening because Portman’s much younger, and Bening “probably doesn’t have many chances left.” I think this is lunacy, but people apparently “vote with their hearts, and a lot of people are just less inclined to vote for the pretty skinny girl.” (I don’t know why that’s in quotes, I just made that up) You’ll hear this same argument come up whenever Julie Zorrilla or Pia Toscano get voted off American Idol get voted off this year.

 
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Should Win: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Explanation: Who is this grinning, fun-loving shaggy figure making jokey acceptance speeches, singing the PowderPuff Girls theme song and talking about how much he loves Beverly Hills Ninja? This is the same guy who went on a rant at some random lighting guy for ruining his ability to over-emote on the Terminator: Salvation set? The same guy who (allegedly) hit his mother? I’m not convinced.

 
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Should Win: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Explanation: Melissa Leo has won every trophy in this category up to this point, but she has two things that’ll trip her up this time:

a.     Steinfeld, who was really a lead actress in her movie, usually wasn’t nominated in this category.
b.     Leo decided to release her own series of “Consider: Melissa Leo” ads that were so self-aggrandizing, it made it much easier to admit that she wasn’t that great in The Fighter. A lot of the acting she did in that movie was just making her hair frizzy.

 
Best Director
Will Win: David Fincher, The Social Network
Should Win: Christopher Nolan. I mean, David Fincher.
Explanation: I know it’s rare that a film wins Best Picture but not Director, but it’s not been quite so rare lately. It’s happened a couple times in the past ten years, including in 2006, when Ang Lee won Director even though Brokeback Mountain lost out to Crash.

 
Best Animated Feature
Will Win: Toy Story 3
Should Win: How To Train Your Dragon
Explanation: Pixar’s nominated every time, and they’ve only lost this thing twice, not to mention they’ve got a Best Picture nomination, so it seems a safe bet to pick them. I liked Dragon better than Toy Story, but I may need to re-watch both before I make a final choice on that front.

 
Best Foreign Film
Will Win: Denmark, In A Better World
Should Win: ???
Explanation: In order to vote on these films, you’re required to see all 5, which very few Academy members do. So even though Biutiful has an Oscar nomination, it's not a lock to win. The word on the street from those who have actually watched these films is that In A Better World is excellent, and Dogtooth is just crazy and strange. Do with that information what you will.

 
Best Documentary
Will Win: Inside Job
Should Win: Exit Through The Gift Shop
Explanation: I have no idea. Usually I pick a war documentary – I was leaning towards Restrepo – but Inside Job is about the financial meltdown, so I assume that the Academy will lean that way. I’d prefer that the choice be Exit Through The Gift Shop, because if Banksy really did get to accept the Oscar while wearing a gorilla mask so we wouldn’t know what he looks like, that would be the best thing that ever happened, ever.

 
Best Original Song
Will Win: “Coming Home,” Country Strong
Should Win: “I See The Light,” Tangled
Explanation: I can’t decide here. I feel that “I See The Light” is the best song – it feels like a classic Disney song in all the right ways. But “Coming Home” is far and away the most radio-ready, and the Academy might want to honor Gwyneth Paltrow for working so hard to become a viable musician. Then again, Randy Newman is nominated, and the man has 20 nominations, one win. Hmmm.

 
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Should Win: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Explanation: You probably already know, I’m a huge Sorkinite (that’s not really a thing, I just wanted a word for it), so this was an easy pick for me. But still: verbose, smart, well-assembled. A slam dunk in this category.

 
Best Original Screenplay
Will Win: David Seidler, The King’s Speech
Should Win: Christopher Nolan, Inception
Explanation: You already know my feelings on the lack of Inception love here, so I’ll just point out that a lot of the run-up to the awards shows have noted that Seidler also overcame a speech impediment. He’ll get the sympathy vote, but on the upside, it probably will make his victory speech exciting. Not because he’ll be stuttering, but because he’ll be talking about how this win means so much to stutterers everywhere, as if they cared that a guy who used to stutter won an award for something. Harsh? Maybe. I have no sympathy for such things when the movie I'm rooting for is getting shut out.

 
Best Art Direction
Will Win: Alice In Wonderland
Should Win: Alice In Wonderland
Explanation: Showy beats subtle. Every time.

 
Best Cinematography
Will Win: Roger Deakins, True Grit
Should Win: Roger Deakins, True Grit
Explanation: Roger Deakins has shot the following films: Revolutionary Road, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, No Country For Old Men, Jarhead, A Beautiful Mind, O Brother, Where Art Thou, The Hurricane, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption, The Hudsucker Proxy, and In The Valley of Elah. He has never won this award. That’s changing.  

 
Best Costumes
Will Win: The King’s Speech
Should Win: The King’s Speech
Explanation: There’s no flashy choice here, so it’s wise to go with the frontrunner. I tried to talk myself into Alice In Wonderland here, and failed.

 
Best Editing
Will Win: The Social Network
Should Win: Inception
Explanation: I will not stop flogging this dead horse. This award should have been Inception’s, and it's not even nominated. If The King’s Speech wins this, I will lose my mind.

 
Best Makeup
Will Win: The Wolfman
Should Win: The Wolfman
Explanation: Always pick the makeup job that seemed hardest to do. Making some guy a wolf seems way harder than making some guy look dirty, or old.

 
Best Score
Will Win: The Social Network
Should Win: Inception
Explanation: BRAAAAAAAAHM! BRAAAAAAAAHM! BRAAAAAAHM

 
Best Sound Editing/Design
Will Win: Inception
Should Win: Inception
Explanation: Hooray, consolation prizes!

 
Best Visual Effects:
Will Win: Inception
Should Win: Inception
Explanation: More consolation prizes!

 
Best Animated Short
Will Win: Day & Night
Should Win:  Day & Night
Explanation: When in doubt, pick the only choice that you personally saw. Loved this thing.

Best Live Action Short
Will Win: “Na Wewe”
Should Win: Who cares?
Explanation: Haven’t watched any of these, and none of them seems to have a subject matter that jumps out – they didn’t get AIDs from Bernie Madoff or anything – so I’ll pick the one that seems to have some sort of buzz to it. It’s set in Africa, which is always a win.

 
Best Documentary Short
Will Win: “Strangers No More”
Should Win: No idea.
Explanation: Underpriviliged kids in Tel Aviv where kids from dozens of different countries come to learn. Their stories are filled with hardship, and uplift. It’s like an Oscar voters’ wet dream. But then, so is “Killing In The Name,” which is about a Jordanian who confronts Muslim extremists after a bomber kills 27 people at his wedding. The voters must be so torn. So many bad things happening to people! How can we show that we care more about it than other people?

It feels like a straightforward year, right? I predict 17 out of 24 correct for me this year. It’s kind of a chalk tournament, I think.



1. Inception

Sunday night, at the Oscars, Inception will be shut out of all the big awards. Oh, it’ll probably land a few condolence prizes: the two sound awards, special effects, maybe even best score, though that seems unlikely.  The winners will get up there and make reference to the great vision cast by Christopher Nolan, and the camera will cut to him smiling graciously, and everyone watching will think what a nice moment it is for a film like Inception to get some notice at the Oscars. And all those people will be missing the point.

Members of the Academy – or columnists talking about members of the Academy – always mention the Academy’s desire to be current. It wants to be in tune with the average moviegoer, they say. It wants to have an awards show that honors movies people actually watched. It doesn’t want to be pretentious.

But it can’t help itself. Inception is going to be snubbed on Oscar night for having the gall to be considered intelligent and brilliant by the average moviegoer, and the Academy knows better. They know what a smart movie actually looks like.

If you didn’t see – or didn’t like – Inception, you might be raising an eyebrow at the previous paragraph. Do you really think that the Academy’s really that condescending? And I don’t, really; not intentionally, at least. Nor do I think that Inception is in any way an inarguably better movie than Social Network or King’s Speech, I just liked it a little better than those two movies.

All I’m saying is that if Inception was truly being considered fairly, the nominations would look a little bit different.

Consider this: Inception failed to garner a nomination for either Best Director or Best Editing. Were there five films this year that were better envisioned and executed? Five that were more skillfully assembled? Were there any? The films nominated in those categories (Black Swan, The Fighter, The King’s Speech, and The Social Network are nominated in both categories, with True Grit getting the other directing spot and 127 Hours the other editing one) are all deserving, but there’s not much of a case you can make that Inception isn’t clearly more deserving.

Let's study the editing nominations, since that's an easier case to make. No offense to The Fighter or The King’s Speech, but those were both relatively simple films to assemble. I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s work, but with all the long takes and back-and-forths of The King’s Speech, I’m pretty sure I could’ve put it together myself in an afternoon.

Compare that with Inception. The film works on dreams within dreams within dreams, with time moving at a different speed in every level the characters move to.  It requires an exceptional piece of editing in order to just make the story make any sense at all – the fact that the film is exciting and energetic while remaining lucid is a testament to the talents of Christopher Nolan and his editor, Lee Smith.

Don't believe me? Dave Edelstein from New York Magazine hated Inception, but declared the editing Oscar "all but sewn up."

Look, I’m a video editor by trade. So believe me that while I couldn’t actually assemble these films as cleanly as the men and women who did so, I understand the amount of effort and skill required to put certain films together, and recognize good editing when I see it. And for a film like Inception to work, it requires a masterful director and incredible dedication by its editor.

And the Academy knows that too. That’s why Inception’s snub is so egregious. To put these other movies in a class above that film is to say that you consider honoring movies you like better a more important responsibility than doing your job correctly. And I can’t get behind that attitude at all.

For shame, Academy.

2. The King's Speech

We are in the middle of awards season, and The King’s Speech is gaining speed as an Oscar contender. A month ago it seemed certain to be runner-up to The Social Network as it continued its ticker-tape parade, but it received 12 Oscar nods to The Social Network’s eight, and suddenly it’s the odds-on favorite.

There is talk – mutterings, really, in dark corners of the internet – that an Best Picture win for The King’s Speech would be a travesty, an ugly distortion of justice. That The King’s Speech is an Oscar bait for an older, staler generation, and The Social Network represents the new school and the cutting edge. It’s become yet another Star Wars-Annie Hall, or Pulp Fiction-Forrest Gump, the battle between a historical Oscar-baiting epic and a film that will define a new generation. Stuff and nonsense.

First, let me dismiss the idea that voting for The Social Network would be some sort of recognition of a new breed of filmmaking. The only thing modern about The Social Network is its subject matter, nothing else about that movie seems particularly daring or fresh. It’s a movie that centers around an intermediary negotiating financial settlements in boardrooms, which is something most teenagers very little time doing (Lindsay Lohan’s now too old for a joke here, right? <checking> Yup. Oh, well).  It’s a well-told, verbose movie, and if it wins Best Picture, I won’t be in the least aggrieved, because it’s deserving of the accolades it’s received. But there’s no reason to celebrate it for being revolutionary filmmaking. That’s not what that movie is about.

The King’s Speech, meanwhile, is not nearly as traditional as you might be led to believe. It’s directed by first-time filmmaker Tom Hooper, best known as the director of HBO’s acclaimed “John Adams” series.  That series, like this one, is marked by an unconventional attitude towards historical stories – no soft close-ups, no sweeping shots of grand vistas, and very little in the way of stirring orchestral music. There are no giant battles as set pieces, no one tries to land a ridiculous accent, and there’s certainly no bodice-ripping. Instead, Hooper tries to introduce you to two characters you have no reason to care about – a very dull king and his slightly bizarre speech therapist – and makes you root for them passionately.

As much as Hooper deserves a great deal of credit for how well the movie works (even during Academy season, I think that directors don't get nearly the credit they deserve), the hero here is Colin Firth. Firth is known as a good actor, but until last year’s A Single Man, he’d never had a vehicle to show just how remarkable a talent he really is. He’s stunning here – he transforms King George VI’s stutter from a tacked-on physical impediment into an internal emotional struggle. You only have to watch Firth’s eyes to see him bursting to get the words out, furious to be held back by his own frailty. The Best Actor trophy has rarely been so little in doubt.

As for Best Picture, in a choice between this and Social Network… I'd say there are no losers in that scenario. Except of course, for...

Is Lorne Michaels Who We Think He Is?

I watched Saturday Night Live’s latest behind-the-scenes special, this one called “Saturday Night Live Backstage.” Ostensibly, it was supposed to be about what it’s like to put together a show like SNL – working in a small space, putting sets together in two minutes, and so on – but instead it ended up just another straightforward SNL history lesson.

It’s disappointing because the actual magic of seeing how the crew puts on a show like that would be a fascinating documentary to watch. I’d like to see the late night writing sessions, watch the pitch meeting, see the host interact with the cast members, follow sketches as they go through re-writes, see the new cast members fight for air time and learn the ropes, watch Lorne Michaels cut things at the last minute, and so on. I’ve certainly seen enough of the standard retrospective talking-heads TV special, but that’s what we got this past week anyway. Worse, this special seemed to be culled almost exclusively from leftover – and sometimes reused – interviews from those specials, including yet another rundown of how Norm MacDonald was fired from "Update" midseason (this one blamed the O.J. Simpson jokes, which is a sort of revisionist history so clearly inaccurate that the viewer should feel insulted).

But amidst the endless back-patting of “Backstage,” there was an extended section where they interviewed cast members who had failed to make a mark during their runs on the show, but had gone on to bigger things elsewhere. They were all gracious about their failures – I suppose becoming fabulously successful and wealthy later will do that to you – but there were so many of them. It made me wonder if maybe it wasn’t just an example of the stars themselves failing.

In a show of SNL’s size, it’s perfectly understandable that a few talents would squeeze through the cracks. But look at the list of cast members who failed at SNL but became much more successful outside the show: Robert Downey, Jr., Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, Joan Cusack, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Sarah Silverman, Damon Wayans, Ben Stiller, Chris Elliot, Janeane Garofalo, David Koechner, Rob Riggle, Paul Shaffer, Anthony Michael Hall. And that’s ignoring the fates of the writers who failed on the show but succeeded elsewhere, like Larry David and Conan O'Brien. You can make a valid excuse for the lack of success any of those, but when you see them all together, it makes you wonder.

In the midst of “Backstage,” frequent host Alec Baldwin referred to Michaels as “Darwinian.” SNL creates a place where “only the strong survive,” he noted.  In many ways, that’s a healthy attitude for a comedy show. Something’s either funny or it’s not, it either makes it on air or it doesn’t, and you have to adjust to that. But look again at that list of cast members. Doesn’t it seem likely that with that group, if they had created an atmosphere where these people could have succeeded, the show would have been much better off during those terrible, unfunny years?

And there have been a great many unfunny years. Of course, our memories betray us. Everyone always complains about how the show is terrible now (whenever now is), and complain about how it was much better when _______ was on the show. But it usually wasn’t.  And there were long stretches where it was truly abysmal.

The show has developed a pattern where it flounders for a couple years, finds its footing for a short time once a cast gels, then begins to splinter as the writers and actors run certain characters into the ground. The cast disintegrates, new cast members come in, the show flounders again, then reasserts itself. But nobody remembers the bad years, other than the famous replacement cast of '80-'81 and '85-'86.

We remember the best of the Will Ferrell sketches (and Ferrell himself was just as good as everyone recalls), but most of the stuff on air during his run was the same sketch trotted out over and over.  The "Cheerleader" sketches, the horny couple that Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri played, Mary Katherine Gallagher… all had grown unbelievably stale by the end.

The mid-90’s were a disaster for SNL. Looking back now, it seems that a crew with Chris Rock/Chris Farley/Adam Sandler/David Spade/etc. must have worked. But it didn’t work – so much so that this article was written – and Sandler and Farley were both fired from the cast without much fanfare.

The 80’s were an unmitigated disaster, save for Eddie Murphy’s performances, until the Dana Carvey/Phil Hartman cast saved the show. And so on.

But we don’t remember any of that. All we remember is what we see on those SNL retrospectives that VH1 loops ad nauseum, until a whole decade of mediocre work is distilled down in our mind to three or four brilliant sketches. And Lorne Michaels knows that.

There’s a mystique to Michaels, the silent, deadpan “comedy genius” who turned a late-night variety show concept into a television institution.  There’s a reason why Matthew Perry’s character on “Studio 60” seemed patterned after Michaels. The respect for him seems to reach the level of idol worship.

Cast members – even the failed ones – are quick to absolve Lorne of all blame, explaining how they just “didn’t get it,” or they weren’t confident enough, or they made mistakes they couldn’t recover from. Lorne “fought for them” as long as he could. There’s a pantheon of reasons given of why their failures are self-inflicted.

But how much of Lorne’s story is talent and genius, and how much of it is luck? If SNL wasn’t as successful as it is, we wouldn’t be telling the same stories we are now. No one is in any hurry to anoint the creators of “Mad TV” or “In Living Color” comedic superheroes. The idea is laughable. But what’s the real difference between them and Michaels? Just a few share points a night.

I don’t mean to discount Michaels, whose legacy I appreciate as much as the next comedy nerd. But at some point, Lorne moved into kid-gloves territory, where every comment about him has to be framed with the understanding that Michaels is untouchable, because of all he’s done for comedy. But before we build that Hall of Fame plaque for him, maybe we should take another good look at the man’s batting average.

Because when the show's bad, we'll find a way to blame everyone else but him. But for the entire 35-year run of the show, they've had a lot of really bad shows - and only one constant presence there for almost all of it.

3. The Social Network

Back in October, I wrote a review of The Social Network, and my feelings on the film are unchanged - and I'm suspecting that others are starting to feel the same. The review is reprinted here.

I've always been a fan of David Fincher and his exacting filmography. And if there's anyone who's completely bought in to Aaron Sorkin's verbose style and intelligent-discourse-is-sexy scripts, it's me. So the idea of the two of them doing a movie together, any movie, is automatically appealing to me. Even the idea of a "Facebook movie."

If you've seen the reviews, you don't need me to tell you that the movie's very, very good, perhaps great. It will garner a Best Picture nomination this spring, Fincher will likely be nominated for Best Director, and Sorkin's an early frontrunner for Best Adapted Screenplay. If you were torn on seeing it, do so. It's worth it.

Interestingly, the things that one would think (or, at least, I would think) should weaken the movie are some of its strongest aspects. The casual viewer might assume that watching someone create a website would be boring, or that the bickering of two college kids creating a web start-up would seem small and petty, but these are some of the strongest parts of the film, simply because the audience inherently knows the stakes of these moments. The small decisions to do something one way and not the other, the slights that slowly fester, the little disputes that that brook separation rather than compromise, all move with the weight of the audience understanding that these seemingly throwaway exchanges changed the course of these character's lives - and, by extension, our lives - in a way they can't remotely comprehend at that moment.

Sorkin noted that he would be just as unhappy as Mark Zuckerberg about the movie (Zuckerberg, Facebook's creator and CEO, has refused involvement in the film and refuted most of its content), since the decisions made at 19 years old would make for an unflattering movie for anyone. I imagine that if someone cobbled together my worst moments from age 19 to 21, you would find a tough character to root for. Especially because these battles are over business decisions made by people who aren't actually in business in any real sense of the word. They're college students. They don't understand how the world works.

I'm now 27, and I now have done enough freelance work to have some understanding of how business is done when the work is hammered out in your living room at 3 in the morning, and all contact is just quick emails and short phone calls. But I made mistakes along the way, and I was mistreated by some of the people who contracted me. These things happen when you're young and unfamiliar with business protocol.

A huge part of the film is based on the lawsuit brought by three students who had hired Zuckerberg to build a social networking website for Harvard students. However, Zuckerberg doesn't build this site, instead he builds Facebook and puts it online himself. The students maintain that he'd stolen their idea, whereas Zuckerberg maintains that his idea was different, and better, which is why his idea worked and their site doesn't exist. Sorkin strives to make sure that both points seem valid: Zuckerberg remembers it one way, the students another, and both are convinced their story is the right one.

And isn't that the way things always are? The Social Network has a clearly deliberate Rashomon quality to it. To Zuckerberg, his idea is different from the one proposed to him, because that proposal made him think "well, then, why not this?" Because his mind works ten steps ahead of most people, he misses the fact that there's a logical progression between the idea proposed to him and the site he created, and that progression means something in the business world. It's the same as a bright high school student who finds himself capable of leaping to the answer in his algebra work without working through the steps given to him in the textbook: since he didn't seem to need the steps, he doesn't realize the steps exist whether or not he's cognizant of using them.

All these mistakes and hurt feelings mean so much more because the end result is a multi-billion dollar business, one that everyone feels they have a stake in. But the weakness of the film is that in some ways, it doesn't recognize that in order to buy the emotional investment of the characters, we need to be convinced that their battles are real. The truth matters.

You would think that it wouldn't, since it's just a movie. Both Fincher and Sorkin have admitted to changing details, imagining conversations, combining multiple encounters into one more dramatic one. Sorkin even pushed to deliberately try to make things more fictional than necessary sometime, with the argument that sometime reality isn't the best choice for a story. There's a scene early in the film where Zuckerberg, the night after a bad breakup, builds a website for comparing Harvard girls against each other. In the scene, and in real life, he drinks several bottles of Beck's, but Sorkin wanted him to make a screwdriver in the film, so that it's clear that he set out to get drunk. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? People understand that this movie version of the story, not the real version.

Except that what keeps this story gripping is its ties to real life. There's only so much an audience can care when a movie character gets cheated out of a billion dollars. But if you can say "this is the story of how Eduardo, a real person and the co-founder of a website you use every day, got cheated out a billion dollars back in 2005," then all of a sudden the financial details, the small decisions carry the weight of us understanding that this guy missed out on not just a lot of money, but on Facebook, the behemoth that controls our online consciousness. That's the only reason we can get involved in this story at all.

I think, in a few years, our appreciation of the movie will fade. We'll remember that it takes place mostly in deposition hearings, we'll recognize the unlikabilty of the Zuckerberg character, and most importantly, we'll forget how important Facebook was in our lives. It'll become MySpace, Friendster, and AIM; Homestar Runner and HotOrNot.com. Something we used to do, someplace we used to spend all our time. The movie will seem dated, and maybe even a little silly. Imagine a website about the founding of any one of those sites. Who would care? Who can even remember?

But as a movie about now, as a movie primed to tap into the zeitgeist, it's damn near perfect. Get out and see it.