My Oscar Predictions and Other Musings

Since the Oscars are Sunday, I figured that I’d give my predictions on the top categories. If I were taking part in an Oscar pool, I probably wouldn’t win, but it’s fun to speculate.

Best Picture: LOTR: Return of The King
Part of me wanted to say Mystic River, but ROTK will probably win. This will be a cumulative honor for all three films, plain and simple.

Best Actor: Bill Murray for Lost in Translation
Johnny Depp won the SAG award and Sean Penn is the favorite, but I’m going to go with the idea that the Academy honors performers who they have overlooked later on, regardless of the performance itself. Denzel Washington was nominated for Best Actor twice for great performances (Malcolm X and The Hurricane) without winning. So, the Academy honors him by having him win for Training Day. When you stop and think about it...did anyone really think that Denzel’s turn as a bad guy would actually be Oscar material and end up making history (along with Halle Berry’s win) when the movie first came out? But back to Bill Murray, he’s a funny guy and a good actor who deserved an Oscar for Rushmore (and I didn’t even like the movie). Bill carries Lost in Translation and puts in a nice performance especially given that he doesn’t have a whole lot of dialogue. However, I wouldn’t be mad if Johnny Depp won the Oscar too. His performance was probably the most unique version of a pirate I have ever seen, and he was damn funny. Talk about a switch...Johnny Depp gets an Oscar nod for a comedic role (which is different from his normal strange dramatic roles) and Bill Murray gets an Oscar nod for what is basically a dramatic role with a small amount of comedy (as opposed to the great comedic roles that he’s known for).

Best Actress: Charlize Theron for Monster
Let’s see here...pretty young woman uglifies herself to play a real-life serial killer with a troubled childhood? She’s destined to win.

Best Supporting Actress: Renee Zellweger for Cold Mountain
I have not seen Cold Mountain, but the Academy likes Renee Zellweger. Even though they could make history by voting for Shoreh Aghdashloo (who would be the first Iranian actress to win an Academy Award), they probably won’t.

Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins for Mystic River
They won’t give Alec Baldwin an Oscar just yet. But if either or them wins, I’ll love to hear their acceptance speech and whether or not the well-known liberals will bash President Bush. Part of me hopes that Djimon Hounsou gets the Oscar though. He’s the only black person nominated this year. It’s always a shame how African-American performances are often overlooked. The Academy seems to like to nominate African-Americans every couple of years, regardless of quality of performances. I think that someone from Antoine Fisher should have been nominated last year, but that didn’t happen. At the same time though, there have to be some notable performances in order for them to nominate anyone in the first place. I honestly can’t think of any other notable performances by African-Americans that the Academy should have really recognized. Even the NAACP Image Awards went beyond African-Americans this year in their movie nominations, nominating films like Bend It Like Beckham and Whale Rider. That signals a great spirit of inclusion by the NAACP, but the dearth of good performances by African-Americans is sad indeed.

Best Director: Peter Jackson for LOTR: Return of The King
Another award for cumulative achievement. I may have said this before, but Peter Jackson is the only person with enough of a balance between genius and insanity to take a 1000+ page three-part novel and not only make three epic profitable films that don’t alienate the fans, but then go back and make three longer director’s cuts of those same films within a year of their release while working on the other films. No other director could do this, and that’s why he will win.

Best Original Screenplay: Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola
Even though I liked the film, I’m not really all that enamored with the screenplay. I know she wrote the film specifically for Bill Murray, but he really held the movie together. The movie’s dialogue is unimportant (hell, we don’t even get to hear what Bill Murray tells Scarlett Johannsen at the end of the movie), there is no plot structure, and even the idea of two people who meet and have a brief relationship in a strange place isn’t new. Having said that, a good unstructured, loosely plotted movie is better than a crappy structured and tightly plotted one. Lost in Translation will win because it won’t win Best Picture or Best Director and the Academy will want to honor Sofia Coppola somehow.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Mystic River by Brian Helgeland
ROTK won’t win because the screenplay won’t be seen as the true strength of the film (that would be the directing). American Splendor won’t win because it’s too unknown (I’ll finally watch my rented copy this weekend, so I’ll have a better perspective on it soon). City of God and The Barbarian Invasions won’t win because they aren’t American or in English (I know Pedro Almodovar won last year, but the Academy likes him). Seabiscuit...well...maybe they’ll give it to this, but I doubt it. There’s a better chance that City of God will win (so they can give this supposedly great Brazilian film something) than Seabiscuit.

Best Animated Feature: Finding Nemo
If this loses, it will be the biggest upset of the night...even bigger than if Keisha Castle-Hughes somehow beats Charlize Theron for Best Actress. Finding Nemo is the highest-grossing animated film in US history, and one of the highest grossing films of 2003. Let’s also not forget that it’s actually a very good movie, and that Pixar has won several Oscars for their short films and that they don’t have a tough Dreamworks competitor (like they did when Monsters, Inc. went up against Shrek). Only sentimental value could make Brother Bear win, since it’s one of the final 2D animated features Disney will release (not counting the cheapquels) and Disney is almost single-handedly responsible for animation coming far enough to finally get its own feature Oscar. When Spirited Away won last year, it gave hope to all those smaller independent and foreign animated films. The Triplets of Belleville has gotten great reviews, and is Finding Nemo’s only true competitor. However, with the Disney/Pixar relationship about to end, the Academy will definitely honor Pixar’s great work.

That’s it for my picks. Honestly, I’m hoping I’m wrong about the winners in some of these categories. But if I’m somehow completely right, I’ll kick myself for not entering Roger Ebert’s Outguess Ebert contest.

Oh, one more thing...I finally watched Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress. It’s a phenomenal movie. Completely interesting to watch, well-animated, and filled with creativity. It’s sad that this movie wasn’t nominated for Best Animated Feature as it really deserved it. The votes for it were probably split between it and Kon’s other film Tokyo Godfathers, which I have yet to see. However, after thoroughly enjoying both Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, I can’t wait to see Tokyo Godfathers.