Alright ladies and gentlemen, check this out. Oscar season is officially upon us, and there is no more boring way to get involved than by placing your bets on who’s gonna win this or that category. Since betting on the winners is an activity that may very well be older than the hills, I’ve come up with another way to involve yourself in Hollywood’s biggest night. Don’t make predictions and then end up just right or wrong, but keep score!
Granted, this requires that you have seen the majority of the nominees in the major categories, although guessing is allowed too. Below you’ll find a list of my Oscar picks in preferential order, #1 being my choice for the winner and #5 being my least favorite of the five.
I hesitate to call these predictions, however, because even after so many years of watching the show every year, I still haven’t figured out how to tell when it’s going to be focused on furthering the cinema as an artistic medium and when it’s just going to be a popularity contest. And given that the wonderful but unspectacular film Benjamin Button has been nominated in a whopping 13 categories this year, the latter is looking likely.
So here’s what I’m doing – the following is my list of choices, and basically I’m keeping score like a grade point average. If my first choice wins the Oscar, I get four points. If my second choice wins the Oscar, three points. If my third choice wins, two points, fourth choice, one point, and if my last choice out of five ends up winning the Oscar, then I get no points for that category.
And by the way, if there are less than five nominees in any category, then there are only four, three, and two points available (The D’s and F’s are eliminated, basically). Oh and if you haven’t seen a single movie in a category, like the documentary short films, which tend to be hard to find, I suggest just sitting them out. No use failing the exam when you didn’t even take the class, right?
Are you with me so far? At the end of the show, total up your points and divide it by the number of categories and you’ll be left with your total score. Makes the betting more interesting, doesn’t it?
You can review your choices and make any changes up until the beginning of the show on Sunday, February, 22nd, but no cheating!!
Here’s my list:
BEST PICTURE
1. Frost/Nixon
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. The Reader
4. Milk
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
BEST DIRECTING
1. Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
2. David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Stephen Daldry, The Reader
4. Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
5. Gus Van Sant, Milk
BEST ACTOR
1. Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
2. Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
3. Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
4. Sean Penn, Milk
5. Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
BEST ACTRESS
1. Angelina Jolie, Changeling
2. Meryl Streep, Doubt
3. Kate Winslet, The Reader
4. Melissa Leo, Frozen River
5. Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
2. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
3. Josh Brolin, Milk
4. Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
5. Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1. Viola Davis, Doubt
2. Amy Adams, Doubt
3. Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
4. Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5. Marissa Tomei, The Wrestler
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
1. Wall-E
2. Kung Fu Panda
3. Bolt
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. Doubt
3. Frost/Nixon
4. The Reader
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
1. In Bruges (*did you see this thing? See it!!*)
2. Milk
3. Happy Go Lucky
4. Wall-E
5. Frozen River
BEST ART DIRECTION
1. Changeling
2. The Dark Knight
3. The Duchess
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5. Revolutionary Road
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
1. Changeling
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. The Dark Knight
5. The Reader
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
1. The Duchess
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Australia
4.
Milk
5. Revolutionary Road
BEST FILM EDITING
1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. The Dark Knight
4. Milk
5. Frost/Nixon
BEST MAKEUP
1. Hellboy 2
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. The Dark Knight
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
1. Defiance
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Milk
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5. Wall-E
BEST ORIGINAL SONG (click on the songs to hear them)
1. “Slumdog Millionaire“: A.R. Rahman, Gulzar(“Jai Ho”)
2. Wall-E: Peter Gabriel, Thomas Newman(”Down to Earth“)
3. “Slumdog Millionaire“: A.R. Rahman, M.I.A(”O Saya“)
BEST SOUND
1. The Dark Knight
2. Wall-E
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5. Wanted
BEST SOUND EDITING
1. Wall-E
2. Iron Man
3. The Dark Knight
4. Slumdog Millionaire
5. Wanted
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
(*Note: Hellboy 2 deserves the Oscar in this category, but since it has been snuffed…)
1. Iron Man
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. The Dark Knight
Note: For a variety of reasons, the only movies I’ve seen in the following categories are two of the animated short films, Oktapodi and Presto, so I’m making a wild guess in the animated short film category but still sitting these ones out…
BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
1. Presto
2. Oktapodi
3. La Maison en Petits Cubes: Kunio Kato
4. Ubornaya istoriya – lyubovnaya istoriya
5. This Way Up
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
1. Auf der Strecke
2. Man on on the Asphalt
3. New Boy
4. The Pig
5. Spielzeugland
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
1. The Betrayal
2. Encounters at the End of the World
3. The Garden
4. Man on Wire
5. Trouble the Water
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
1. The Conscience of Nhem En
2. The Final Inch
3. Smile Pinki
4. The Witness from the Balcony of Room 306
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
1. Baader Meinhoff Complex – Germany
2. The Class – France
3. Departures – Japan
4. Revanche – Austria
5. Waltz With Bashir – Israel
The Bean Meter!
Oh and by the way, you may notice that Bean’s input is conspicuously absent from the nominee selections. I’ve decided not to include his ideas here because I asked him what he thought the Best Picture winner should be and he’s insisting on Hotel For Dogs. I tried to explain the logic behind selecting a movie that was released in 2009 as the Best Picture for 2008 but he won’t hear it. He says that the title Slumdog Millionaire was misleading and even a little offensive, so he couldn’t support it even though it “smelled better” than the other four nominees…
