Obsessing Over Oscars

It’s that time of year, the time movie fans either love or loathe. Yes, Oscar walks among us again.

Often at this time I indulge in a bit of navel gazing about why I am so interested in the Oscars. The ceremony itself is usually bloated, smug and features a horribly teary acceptance speech by the best actress, and I seldom agree with their choice of best picture. Crash beating Brokeback Mountain still makes me grind my teeth.

To be fair to the Academy, they have been getting more diverse and less mainstream with their choices of films in recent years. This year the nominees are the most multicultural ever.

Fundamentally though, why should movie fans give a damn what Hollywood thinks the best in the last year of cinema was? You already know what you like and what you don’t.

I guess it comes down to the fact that, as a lover of movies, it’s nice to see them celebrated. It’s also a great excuse to go see a lot of good films, and yell at the tv when your favourites miss out.

Below are my pics for the likely Oscar winners, and who I’d pick in the various categories. Bear in mind that as usual I’ve not seen some of the heavyweight contenders, such as ‘Notes from a Scandal’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’.

The nominees are here:

http://www.imdb.com/features/rto/2007/oscars

By all means let us know what were your favourites!

Best Picture

Likely winner: Man, this is really hard to pick this year. All the contenders have won earlier awards, none of them is really dominating things, and they're all excellent. I’ll pick the feel-good factor of Little Miss Sunshine.

Tane’s top five:

Babel
Little Miss Sunshine
Letters From Iwo Jima
United 93
The Departed

Honourable mentions:

The Queen
Out of the Blue
Children of Men
Russian Dolls
Candy
The Squid and the Whale
Superman Returns
Flags of Our Fathers
Happy Feet

Lauren’s top five:

United 93
The Departed
Little Miss Sunshine
Babel
The Prestige

Honourable mentions:

Letters From Iwo Jima
The Queen
Superman Returns
Russian Dolls
Out of the Blue
The Devil Wears Prada
Candy
The Squid and the Whale

Best Director

Likely winner:
Surely, surely, Martin Scorsese will get his long overdue Oscar this year. Even if The Departed doesn’t get Best Picture, the momentum is there for him to get one of those unofficial lifetime achievement awards the sentimental folks in Academy bestow from time to time.

Tane’s best director: Paul Greengrass, United 93. With no major performances to drive it, if any movie’s success can be put down to a director’s skills, it was this one.


Best Actor:

Likely Winner: Forest Whitaker, who played Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, has swept all awards before him.

Tane’s best actors: Whitaker. My nominees would also include Matt Damon from The Departed, Leonardo Di Caprio and Djimon Honsou for Blood Diamond, and Heath Ledger in Candy. Honourable mentions to Sacha Baron Cohen from Borat, Daniel Craig from Casino Royale, Ken Watanabe and Kazunari Ninomiya from Letters From Iwo Jima and Mathew Sunderland from Out of the Blue.


Best Actress

Likely Winner: Helen Mirren, Her Majesty in The Queen, has been as dominant as Whitaker.

Tane’s best actress: Mirren. I’ve not seen any of the other nominees though. Abby Cornish in Candy and Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls were also outstanding, and Sarala from Water delivered perhaps the child actor performance of the year.

Best Supporting Actor

Likely Winner: Eddie Murphy, as troubled soul star Jimmy Early in Dreamgirls.

Tane’s pick: The supporting actor/actress nominations often bug me, as so often someone gets nominated (Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind comes to mind) who is clearly a lead, simply because the studio thinks they’re more likely to win in that category. Djimon Honsou comes into that category this year.
My pick would be Murphy. My other nominees would be Alan Arkin and Steve Carell from Little Miss Sunshine, Michael Caine in Children of Men, and Adam Beach in Flags of Our Fathers.

Best Supporting Actress

Likely Winner: Jennifer Hudson from Dreamgirls, though she’s clearly the film’s lead actress.

Tane’s pick: Rinko Kikuchi from Babel. Other nominees: Adriana Barazza, also from Babel, Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, and Seema Biswas and Kulbhushan Kharbanda from Water.

Best Original Screenplay

Likely Winner: This could be an early indicator of the winning film – I’ll go with Little Miss Sunshine

Tane’s pick: Babel. Nominees: The Queen, Little Miss Sunshine, Russian Dolls and Out of the Blue.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Likely Winner: It’s a bizarre nomination, as it was a largely improvised film, but I think Borat might take this.

Tane’s pick: The Departed. Nominees: The Prestige, Candy, Children of Men, Letters From Iwo Jima.

Best Cinematography

Likely Winner: Children of Men

Tane’s pick: Apocalypto

Best Art Direction

Likely Winner: Dreamgirls

Tane’s pick: Dreamgirls

Editing

Likely Winner: Cripes, editing’s such a fundamental part of a film I always find it hard to judge it. I’ll take a stab and go the Academy liking the interwoven stories of Babel.

Tane’s pick: United 93

Costumes

Likely Winner: Dreamgirls

Tane’s pick: Apocalypto

Score

Likely Winner: ?

Tane’s pick: Apocalypto

Song

Likely Winner: I Love You I Do, from Dreamgirls

Tane’s pick: Patience, from Dreamgirls

Makeup

Likely Winner: Apocalypto

Tane’s pick: Apocalypto

Visual Effects

Likely Winner: Superman Returns

Tane’s pick: Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

Sound

Likely Winner: Flags of Our Fathers

Tane’s pick: Flags of Our Fathers

Animated Film, Documentary, Foreign Film

Off all the films that would fit into these categories, I've have only seen Happy Feet, An Inconvenient Truth and Water, so I can’t really comment. Cars is tipped to win animated, An Inconvenient Truth is sure to get documentary and Pan’s Labyrinth was thought to be close to landing a regular Best Picture nomination, so it’ll win Foreign Film.

Sound Editing

Too technical for me!