Oscar Time

Its Oscar time folks. When I was at Western Michigan a friend of mine would have Oscar parties with a $20 pool, those were some of the best times I ever had watching the show; how else are you going to have such a rooting interest in Dame Judi Dench? And at what other point in your life do you get to lament "damn, Shakespere in Love really f***ed me over"? Good times. But with no action on the ceremony I don't much care to watch the show ... boy is it ever dull. Even though the Oscars have shut down the most convenient freeway exits to Hollywood, I'm not going to hold a grudge. While I doubt I'll watch them (unless I'm on house arrest with Carrie on Sunday night) I will make some picks.

Now whenever somebody asks me "what movie is going to win the Oscar" and I answer "X movie will" they inevitably retort "what? X movie sucks!" to which I have to reply "yeah moron, but you didn't ask what the best movie was, you asked what was going to win."

So I'm going to answer both questions with my picks, in bold will be the pick that I think is most deserving (if I don't like any of the nominees then I'll add my own nominee at the end). My predicted winner will be in italics Sometimes the pick will be both bold and italicized. Got it? Here we go:

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Bet the house on this one. You guys remember Gangs of New York when DDL acted circles around Leonardo? Leonardo was so out of his league next to this guy I felt that my performance as Juror #6 in Ben Davis High School's production of Seven Angry Men was better than Leo's and I only had one line. Well, DDL is even better in this flick and lucky for us the silent kid from Little Miss Sunshine did a better job co-starring with him than Leo did.

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

Katherine Heigl, Knocked Up-I know I'm in the minority here but I thought Page was trying way too hard with her performance of Juno. Heigl was much more believable as a pregnant woman battling bad timing. Christie won the Globe so I'm predicting her.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

The perfect Coen bros. villain: a cold and vicious sociopath with a hilariously absurd haircut.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Something tells me the Academy is going to pull one of those shockers and give a sentimental award to Dee, but Blachett is so good in this flick you never once question why she is playing the role of Bob Dylan.

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I LOVED Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Schnabel deserves to win for it, but I think the Coens had a much more difficult script to tackle and they really nailed both the narrative and figurative aspects of the story.

BEST PICTURE
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Long, boring, epic, war-time period piece? Check, check, check, and check. The Oscars love to give this award to crap like Atonement. Where's the nomination for Diving Bell? Personally I can't pick between No Country and There Will Be Blood, both are brilliant movies that will be rememberd for a long, long time. Hopefully I'm wrong and the Academy will show some sack by giving the Oscars to one of them.

There you go. For the first time in a long time I really like this list of nominees and think it captures what was actually good this past year quite well. What are your picks?