So i didn't do as well as i'd hoped in my task of watching all the nominated films. Some of them i simply couldn't find. Other times my computer had some trouble with the sites i was using to watch them...trouble like getting viruses demanding my computer hard drive be replaced. There are some categories i've not seen all the nominees for, but in most of those cases, the ones i haven't seen aren't terribly likely to win anyway. Below is my list of who i think should win in the categories, and who i think will win. Here we go.
Best Picture - I think Inglourious Basterds is the best of the bunch - i think it had a really awesome commentary on the relationship between cinema and history (i.e. cinema's power to change and influence history), as well as a great genre juxtaposition by placing western style over a WWII setting. My #2 is maybe Up, but i'd need to see it again to be certain. The Hurt Locker is more likely to win, and i'll be okay with that, it is almost as deserving and does great work to place the audience in the action and the tension with the characters. If Avatar wins, as much as i do enjoy it, well that will be sad because it's simply not the best of the best this year. My hope: The Hurt Locker and Avatar split votes, and Inglourious Basterds gets enough #2's and #3's to come up in the middle and win for the upset.
Best Director - Kathryn Bigelow. She's probably most responsible for creating the tension and atmosphere that makes the film work so well. She deserves it, and will probably win.
Best Actor - i haven't seen Crazy Heart (this is the movie most likely responsible for my virus problems), but from what i hear, Jeff Bridges isn't merely getting a lifetime achievement award, he actually gives the best performance of the group. So there. i also haven't seen Colin Firth in A Single Man, though i suspect if i did, i'd be partial to that performance.
Best Actress - i'm gonna say Sandra Bullock has the edge for the actual win, and it's actually a very good performance, in my opinion. However, despite the relative inexperience, i think the best actress was Gabourey Sibide in Precious. She might never make another movie (let's be honest, she's not the easiest actress to cast...), but this one should be enough.
Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds, all the way.
Best Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique's gonna win, and she deserves it. i wondered for a while how much of it was just play acting, pretending to be mean, and then i remember some of the things she had to do for the role. For example, she had to throw a mentally handicapped little girl on the floor and call her a monster. i don't see how you can do that and not have to be giving a tremendous performance without being a monster yourself. That said, my #2 is definitely Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air.
Best Original Screenplay - Inglouious Basterds deserves it, and i think it will win because people will want to reward it in more than one category. There's competition from The Hurt Locker, though, which in my opinion simply doesn't deserve it for two glaring reasons: it's yet another screenplay with biased, limited, and all around insulting portrayals of officers in the military and that whole Jason Bourne-esqu sequence where the guy goes off base with a pistol to find that kid...it was weird. it worked for the character's emotions...but not as a plot point in the movie. totally distracting, doesn't deserve to win.
Best Adapted Screenplay - Up in the Air. Just the best screenplay here.
now on the to technicals:
Film Editing - The Hurt Locker - again, my point about all the tension building, playing on the audience, a lot of that happened in the editing room. My #2 would be Inglourious Basterds, partly because i want it to win as much as it possible can, and partly because it's a movie that understands how to let shots linger before rushing off to the next one - although that technique did work well for The Hurt Locker because it was used well.
Cinematography - i know i know i know, James Cameron invented a camera to shoot Avatar. But more and more over the past semesters i've been learning to appreciate cinematography as the composition of images and those images' effects on the audience. And i'm sorry, but the majority of the images in Avatar were created in post-production by a visual effects team, probably with the director of photography in the background saying "Oh no, more light there," while pointing at the screen. If there were a category for Best Digital Photography, i'd give Avatar that Oscar, but there isn't yet (i suspect there will have to be eventually). For now, i'm going my preference is Inglourious Basterds, and the likely winner is The Hurt Locker. For me, The Hurt Locker was just a little too shaky, with just a few too many quick zooms to really best the best. It was the best way to do that film, yes, but while it ran as fast as it could, other films ran faster. The White Ribbon was also really awesome camera work...but i think a lot of its effect came from the black and white (it did look an awful lot like a old film, with its framing and all), but that color scheme came in post, not in production...so i'll rule it out on a technicality.
Art Direction - i've heard the The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is possible the deserving winner here, but i've not seen it. i'd give it to Nine (which is a much better movie than critics would have you believe - not a great film, no, but it was good, not terrible like the reviews let on). Again, Avatar has the best chance of winning, but again, i think it's cheating. The designs are tremendous, but they were implement in large part by a visual effects team, and there's a separate category for that.
Costume Design - Again, i liked Nine's stuff best of what i saw, but the Oscar tends to go more period film here, so i think The Young Victoria has the edge over the spoiler Bright Star. The other two aren't likely.
Makeup - anything other than Star Trek is an upset, and pretty much undeserving.
Original Score - Up. gorgeous stuff, and again with Pixar, there are entire sequences that rely on the music alone to accompany the story the images create (the same reason Wall-E deserved to win last year, and was robbed by Slumdog Millionaire's just-like-every-other-Bollywood soundtrack)
Original Song - Crazy Heart - best song here, and sometimes that really is enough to win.
Sound Mixing - The Hurt Locker does some really cool stuff blending together the natural sound and effects to again work towards creating an entire atmosphere for the audience
Sound Editing - Avatar had the most to work with here and put it all together better than the other movies.
Visual Effects - Avatar. obviously.
Animated Feature - Up
Documentary Feature - The Cove
Foreign Language Film - The White Ribbon (though really, it's anyone's game, and Un Prophete could easily upset)
Documentary Short - The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Animated Short - Logorama (or maybe A Matter of Loaf and Death)
Live Action Short - The Door
So there's that. 24 categories, 24 predictions, plus a few places where i just said what i wanted to happen. We'll see how it goes tomorrow night.
