Can I begin by just communicating how much I love Judi Dench? She makes a fantastic first impression, surprising you by spelling "Judy" with an "I" and somehow turning out to be an elderly British woman and not a 20-year-old puppeteer from Oregon. And then you actually see the woman work and almost within the first momentÉyou're completely on her side.
It doesn't hurt that she instinctively reminds you of your favorite teacher, but the major selling point of a Dame Judi Dench is, naturally, the acting. She seems to be in an elite guard of actors who can completely sell nearly any sort of role in any sort of filmÉand no matter how serious and sober the performance, she communicates that she really, really likes her job.
Getting back to the name, though, the second major selling point of Dame Judi Dench is that she has a name straight out of a P.G. Wodehouse short story.
So: Judi. If you ever find yourself on a Green Line platform here in Boston, I won't resist the impulse to say hi and tell you how much I love ya on TV and in the movies and ask if maybe I could get a picture together for my blog? But an Oscar isn't happening this year. "Mrs. Henderson" was a charming film but it's precisely the sort of movie that's being aimed at a nomination and not a win. In Winter Olympics terms, "Mrs. Henderson" is a world-class biathlete who had the extreme bad luck of not being born in Eastern Europe.
Keira Knightley is also out, on the basis of committing the unforgivable sin of performing in a film based on an Austen novel. I can't think of a single genre that so strongly fits into the stereotype of an Oscar-winning movie -- costumes, Heavy Stuff going down, lots of opportunities for both the men and the women to do some serious Flouncing and pouting -- that so securely guarantees a lack of a win. As for Charlize Theron, it was fairly arrogant of her to deliver such a strong performance in yet another well-regarded small film so soon after her win for "Monster." She's out, too.
Which leaves us with June Carter Cash and the transgendered female. Transgendered male? Dash it. I'm writing this on a brand-new (as in: yet to be released) notebook PC that doesn't like the WiFi rules of this coffeeshop, so I'm barred from Googling for info on transgender. This little PC is confused on the subject as well; every time I type "transgender" Word forcefully changes it to "transgender."
Even if I had WiFi, I'm not sure I've the courage to see what happens when you plug the word "transgender" into a search engine.
And here I think you see a serious impediment to Felicity Huffman's Oscar hopes. Not since Charlie Kaufman shared a Best Screenplay writing credit with his fictional alter-ego has there been such a fundamental problem in discussing a nominee. Is Theron a woman playing a male role? A male role as a female character? Laugh if you will, but it clouds the issue of Huffman's acting. How much of an impact does her performance owe to her skills and her industry as an actor, and how much comes simply from the simple fact that she's hiding her sex behind not one, but two layers of articulation?
√ My Prediction: Reese Witherspoon, "Walk the Line"
This one is a walkover. Witherspoon is in a movie set in the past (one point) that came out during Oscar season (two points), whose DVD was released just as ballots were going out (three points) portraying a real-life character (four points). Figure in question is beloved (five points) and Witherspoon herself is universally regarded as seriously adorable herself (six points).
It sounds fairly obvious, but you can't overlook the simple question "do the voters want this person to win an Oscar?" Well, obviously, or else they wouldn't be voting for the nominee. But it's a subtle truth that while voters are supporting what they feel to be worthy candidates, they're also choosing the person (or the entity) who they'd most like to see give an acceptance speech and hang the suffix "Academy-Award winner" on the first line of their CV for the rest of their lives.
√ If I Were Voting: Reese Witherspoon, "Walk the Line."
When I call this one a walkover, I'm naturally not totally dismissing the possibility of an upset for Huffman, whose performance is probably regarded as more "actorly" than Witherspoon's and who has the added advantage of being on TV every Sunday night, which is a handy ongoing reminder to the voters that she exists. But an upset of this scale is about as straightforward a prediction as The Joker zooming down to the Oscar stage on rocket-skates and snatching the Best Actress award right out of the presenter's hands. And when you come down to "what would you like to see happen?" I'm afraid that Huffman isn't even in the running on this one.
Terrence Howard is an early and easy strike from the list. Performances like this one more or less created the practice of Strategic Nominating. Recent years have demonstrated that the Academy's voters will support a black performer in the Best Actor category, but only in the right role and in the right movie, and "Hustle & Flow" is 0 for 2. Add to this "and only with the right sort of competition" and it's an excuse for Howard not to worry about it too much if he tears the seat of his pants when he sits down in the Kodak Theater. He won't be getting up again on-camera. Which is a damned shame, because if the studio had asked the voters to apply their subconscious "Supporting Actor" rules to Terrence Howard, he'd be in there with a serious chance.
Looking at these other four men, it's amazing how much they support conventional wisdom about The Sorts Of Performances That The Voters Like. Four period movies, and all but one of the nominees was playing a real-life character. Had "Good Night, And Good Luck" been released later in the year or garnered more momentum or had managed to avoid being known as "George Clooney's pet project" (thus making the whole film look more like the achievement of one man than an ensemble), I'd keep Strathairn's thankless, challenging task on the shortlist.
But we've got to make room, because we've got a three-way horserace on our hands.
All righty: let's sort through each guy's strengths. Ledger is in what is perhaps the only film with magnetic Oscar momentum behind it, and will doubtless be getting a lot of votes simply by virtue of being on the (perceived) winning team. But if "Brokeback" established a great deal of velocity early in the race, "Walk The Line" gained it when it counts the most: just as nominations were announced, long before voters had any real chance to get sick of hearing about the film and how they were all expected to up and vote for it. And it's true that Phoenix will benefit from voters' fondness for Johnny Cash.
And then we have Hoffman, who quite simply owned "Capote." Both the man and the film.
I'm going to guess that Ledger is out, on the basis that the buzz for "Brokeback" has been out there long enough for it to curdle slightly into backlash. But this is definitely one of those categories where I'm not so much coming up with reasons why I'm predicting who's going to win as much as I'm rehearsing the excuse I'm going to be making when it turns out that I got it wrong.
√ My Prediction: Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Capote."
Obviously, if you remove Hoffman's performance from the movie, then you have no movie. It helps to have your character's name right there in the title; witness Jon Heder's Best Actor win for "Napoleon Dynamite," after all.
But Hoffman went one logarithmic step further: "Capote" is entirely about Hoffman's performance. He contributes an essential quality to "Capote" that Jamie Foxx didn't really add to "Ray." The movie is 100% about the audience's relationship to the character and not the character's relationship to the other people in the movie. At times, his performance is almost terrifyingly compelling to watch, as you struggle to urge Truman Capote's actions and interactions. It's a performance of tremendous dexterity and commitment and if Hoffman managed to pull that off just once in his career, he could spend the rest of his career starring in straight-to-DVD releases about animals with an unusual dexterity for pro sports, and do so with head held high.
But that's not the case. Hoffman is one of those Ironmen of actors, whom every knowledgeable film buff regards as his or her own special discovery. Voters are going to want him to win.
√ If I Were Voting: Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Capote."
When a random audience member feels a certain urgency about a nomination, you know the actor's done his job exceedingly well. Though dammit, I wish there could be a second awards ceremony in which the Academy votes only for nominees that it feels certain cannot possibly win. David Strathairn certainly had one of the most thankless jobs in acting: playing the part of a very serious man who isn't the least bit emotionally-demonstrative. Edward R. Murrow communicates his feelings mostly through cigarette smoke and as tremendously difficult as that is, it's also tremendously difficult to leave an audience thinking "He acted the holy living crap out of that scene!"
The nominees in this category sort of short-circuit most of my usual tricks, fallbacks, and wimpouts. Traditionally, I cite Mercedes Ruehl and Cuba Gooding, Jr. as the prototypical Best Supporting winners: I like to look for long-established but largely-unrewarded actors, or Fresh Young Unpredictable Faces.
But neither sort of nominee can overcome the handicap of being in a film that was seen by about 1% of a random "Man Gets Hit In Nuts" video on YouTV.com. First cuts are therefore Amy Adams and Frances "Honestly, a well-made 'Fargo' sequel would only create a wonderful new franchise on the order of the 'Thin Man' series or the best 'Columbo' episodes" McDormand. "Capote" belonged to Hoffman, so out goes Keener, as well.
So this one will come down to either Rachel Weisz or Michelle Williams.
√ My Prediction: Michelle Williams, "Brokeback Mountain."
This year it's pretty weak of me to say "But 'Constant Gardner' was released, like, thirteen years ago and nobody saw it" because that phrase (which is usually a nomination-killer) describes nearly every single nominee. But I find it hard to believe that the voters will overlook the one film they've almost certainly heard of and have probably actually seen.
√ If I Were Voting: Frances McDormand, "North Country."
The stated reason for this pick is that I simply liked her performance more than I liked any of the other nominees (though I could have liked Catherine Keener a little more if she'd been given more to do in "Capote"). The real reason is because if she gets another Oscar, maybe it'll give her enough heat with the studios to put "Marge Gunderson: Mom On Patrol" into production.
For these first few categories, I'm transcribing names of nominees from the nearest convenient source: "Entertainment Weekly." They didn't even bother to mention the name of the movie that William Hurt was nominated in. That's bad. I actually had to slip in a placeholder for it, because I couldn't remember it either...even though it turned out that I'd seen the movie. That's really bad. If this were "American Idol" -- which has organized squads of prank voters who try to support the worst singers -- he'd be in with a chance. As-is...not so much.
And poor Paul Giamatti! In 2004 and 2005 he topped the "Why the hell wasn't this person nominated?!?" lists (for "American Splendor" and "Sideways"). Under most circumstances, this would make him a front-runner or possibly even the presumptive man-to-beat.
But he's up against both Matt "I Was In A Very Important And Well-Received Movie That Didn't Get Many Other Nominations" Dillon and George "My Labor-Of-Love Film Will Get Beaten Like A Rented Mule In Every Category But This One" Clooney. All right, Clooney was nominated for "Syriana" and not "Good Night, And Good Luck" but the voters don't care. Either way, it don't look good for Paul Giamatti's Best Consolation Oscar award for "American Sideways."
And while Gyllenhaal is an obvious pick in this category, I'm finding it hard to imagine him out-voting Clooney and Dillon here. Instinct -- yes, the same factor that tells lemmings "look, I'm going to follow the group just as far as the top of that hill but no farther" -- tells me that "Brokeback" has plenty of momentum as a film but little momentum for its actors. So it's a two-horse race.
√ My Prediction: George Clooney, "Good Night, And Syriana"
Because that's what he was nominated for and that's why he'll win. Again, "Who do the voters want to see win an Oscar?" Answer: George "Old-School Movie Star" Clooney.
√ If I Were Voting: Paul Giamatti, "Cinderella Man"
Well, duh. The disappointment of his loss this year would have been worse if he'd been nominated for another movie like "American Splendor" or "Sideways." But it still stings, like the last few seconds you hold the Listerine in your mouth before spitting.
Art Direction and Cinematography are usually a lot of fun to handicap, because the list of nominees is largely buzz- and box-office proof. It's clear that the nomination is the product of what's there on the screen and not how frequently the movie's star managed to get on "Access Hollywood" or whether the flick made so much money that the director's face is now on the new ten-dollar bill.
In Art Direction, the question is "From full sets all the way down to tiny props, how well did the nominee create the physical (or, given modern filmmaking, virtual) world that the story inhabited?" I'm going to knock out "Pride" for the simple reason that I've seen little of that in my life. "Kong" is next, because I think the flick's going to be remembered for the Big Electronic Monkey Suit and the jungle scenes, not the (rather dazzling) recreation of period New York City.
I find myself puzzling over the impact of digital filmmaking on this category. Should I remove "Goblet of Fire" because it's a fantasy film that lacks the epic qualities of past-winner "Lord Of The Rings"? Or should I remove it because most of its key props aren't as tactile as the ones in "Geisha?" Well, I want to move on to the main event, here, so I'll merely note that I should remove Harry from the running; I ask you to trust that the reasons follow impeccable logic that must never be questioned.
I think it'll be either "Good Night" or "Geisha." "Good Night" because it offered one of the most obvious Big Opportunities for an Art Director ("Recreate a bygone era which much of the audience still remembers fondly"); "Geisha" because the whole movie was about a woman learning and mastering a long list of crucial props and objects.
√ My Prediction: "Memoirs of a Geisha."
The flick didn't do so well, but in this category, who cares. I think the pros will appreciate the enormous contributions that John Myhre made to both the performances and the film by getting all of those heavily-scrutinized props and sets Just Right.
√ If I Were Voting: "Memoirs of a Geisha."
Because truth be told, I was rather bored by the story and found myself pulling most of my enjoyment out of scrutinizing the props and sets.
This is possibly the category I enjoy the most, because it forces me to turn off most of my logical and critical subprocessors and simply enjoy a movie as a series of photographic images. Cinematography is all about picture-taking. Which one had the best pictures?
"New World": out. This category may be box-office-proof...but come on.
We're left with four very, very worthy films. "Brokeback," with its "I dare you not to give me a Cinematography Oscar" landscapes; "Batman Begins," pure fantasy in a Gotham City that was built upon captivating angles and things that catch light and cast shadows; "Good Night," in which every shot is in moody black-and-white; and "Geisha," composed and shot like a tapestry.
√ My Prediction: "Brokeback Mountain."
A movie that everybody's talking about is a movie that everybody's seen. And the only way not to be impressed by the way this movie was shot is if you experience it through your iPod in your car stereo during your morning commute. Which you really shouldn't do, because (a) "Brokeback" is a very pretty movie and (b) that **** will get someone killed.
√ If I Were Voting: "Batman Begins."
There was just such a range of shots, here, from ice-barren plains to the rolling hills of a vast estate to Sunny, Cheerful and Misty, and Deadly Gotham Cities. But I don't think that "Batman" can overcome all of the publicity that "Brokeback" has been receiving.
The only way "Memoirs of a Geisha" could have a better shot at this would be if it were more accurately titled "Costumes of a Costume Woman in a Job in which she Has to Wear a Costume and Clean Costumes, and She'll be Judged by her Costumes, And In the End her Costume only serves to Costume her from the True Self that she's been Costuming Away all her Life."
But that wouldn't fit in the trade ads so: "Memoirs of a Geisha" it became.
√ My Prediction and Personal Choice: "Memoirs of a Geisha."
I gotta back "Star Wars," here. Populating scenes with representations of an entire galaxy worth of species trumps a set of meat-face makeups and whatever the hell they had going on there in "Narnia."
√ My Prediction and Personal Choice: "Revenge of the Sith."
So: the movie based on that SNL skit, the one starring Jumping Over Oprah's Couch Guy...or Kong? Kong's story and pacing might have tempted me to unholster my Nokia and check for emails, but its visual spectacle kept me on the straight and narrow aisle of movie-theater etiquette.
√ My Prediction and Personal Choice: "King Kong."
When John Williams is on this list, the first question to ask is "Is there any reason why he wouldn't win?" And "Geisha" is yet another strong, strong effort. For such a perennial nominee, it's amazing that the man has never allowed himself to settle into a rut. He always supports and enhances the film and it's clear that the score for "Geisha" wasn't kicking around in his desk since it got rejected from "Catch Me If You Can," say.
Still, there's that "Brokeback Mountain" problem. It's possible that more people have heard it.
√ My Prediction and Personal Choice: "Memoirs of a Geisha."
A good tool for evaluating nominees in this category is to just dim the screen of the PowerBook, sit back, close my eyes, and think of the music. "Geisha"'s score comes to me immediately. "Brokeback" only offers vague impressions and no emotions. An easy pick.
I'm tempted just to hand it to "Travelin' Thru." It would be completely out of spite and I'd be right to do it and I'll tell you why: at this moment, "In The Deep" and "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp" aren't available through the iTunes Store...yet "Travelin' Thru" is a free download.
A pity that it's such a slight song, though. Now here's your stereotypical "No, I totally wrote this for the movie; pay no attention to the fact that the lyrics are written on the back of a 1989 gas bill" sort of Best Original Song nominee.
√ My Prediction: "In The Deep."
Simply because it's the best song of those nominated, although
√ If I Were Voting: "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp"
...gets my vote because I'd like to hear someone in a $20,000 gown and $800,000 worth of jewelry say those words.
Honest to God, I think the Academy voters use these two "Best Sound" categories as a mechanism for sending coded messages to deep-cover operatives embedded throughout the world. Because for the life of me, I've no Godly idea what they're looking for in these things.
Once again, I'll fall back on my perception that Sound Editing is all about Things That Go Boom (or Grrr! or Crash!), Solely on that basis:
√ My Prediction and Personal Choice: "King Kong."
...And with this one, I'm clinging to the idea that it's all about laying lots of sounds together while nonetheless ensuring that you can still hear dialogue and work out that the sound of footsteps amid all that traffic noise is actually a ladies' heel on concrete, not a work boot on dirt.
√ My Prediction and Personal Choice: "Walk the Line."
I gotta think that the whole point of the sound editing in this film was in preserving performances through music and environment. No small task. "Line" is up against far more ambitiously-noisy movies here, but I can't think of any scenes in them in which you're meant to focus on both dialogue and apocalyptic catastrophe at the same time.
A gold-plated opportunity for "Crash," which has the dual advantages of being the sort of multi-POV interlocking story that could have become an incomprehensible mess with the wrong set of hands behind the Avid console, and also being a Popular Movie That Needs To Win Some Oscars.
√ My Prediction and Personal Choice: "Crash."
How -- I ask you -- how many animators are now kicking themselves that they chose to take a year off before starting or finishing up their lifelong labor-of-love feature? The one that they've been plotting and preparing for all of their lives? The traditionally-animated feature that would state emphatically that feature animation is an art form that can reach far beyond orphaned animals coming of age accompanied by a streetwise sidekick and three hit songs by Elton John, and that traditional, 2-D animation will always be a vibrant part of the world of animation?
I'll cut straight to the end: The feature film that has not a snowball's chance in Satan's left armpit of getting an Oscar nomination, let alone a win, because there will never be a year in which the category isn't dominated by Pixar, Dreamworks, or another maker of heavily-commercial CGI features?
If you animate with puppets or watercolors or ink-and-paint, this was your year. This was your year! Who could have predicted that Pixar wouldn't release anything in 2005? And who would have thought that Dreamworks would get zorched out of a nomination for "Madagascar"?
(Certainly not someone who'd seen the film and admired both the unique style of character design and the confident blending of realistic lighting on fantastical shaped. IE...me.)
Well, too bad for those guys but if you're a fan of animation this is your year to be thrilled beyond the ability to control your bladder. This year, the winner will either be a Nick Park clay-animated film or a darkly comic Tim Burton and Mike Johnson puppet feature.
And if both lose...it goes to Hayao Miyazaki!!! Clearly, it's impossible to be anything less than completely delighted by the outcome.
√ My Prediction: "Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit"
It was a fantastic film and a hugely entertaining film...possibly the single most entertaining film of the year in any category, though I refuse to jeopardize that conclusion by actually running through my list of favorite films and verifying that. And a Best Animated Feature Oscar would be a tremendous first step in rebuilding the studio, after having lost their entire decades-long archive of notes, models, and mementos in a catastrophic fire last year.
√ If I Were Voting: "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride"
I simply loved this movie. The animation was compelling and delightful and the story ticked along with the precision of quartz timekeeping. It had that rare quality of being fun, funny, charming, and poignant...and rarest of all, it had no fears whatsoever of coming across as un-hip. An inevitable classic.
Another interesting category to call because chances are excellent that I won't have seen more than one or two of the nominees. Oh, bigotry, prejudice and snap-judgements...where would I be without you?
"Badgered" is a very, very traditional sort of short, hand-drawn in colored pencils in a style that's effective but which doesn't scream out "I fear that I may very well have left a chunk of my very soul embedded within this, my life's work." Out. "The Moon and the Son" is a long film with (if reviews can be trusted) real relevance and power, focused on the tough real-life relationship between the artist and his father. But it's long. What's that, prejudice? "No way are voters going to stick with such a heavy subject for so long?" Thanks again, Prejudice. Take twenty bucks out of petty cash and have a long lunch on the company's dime.
"Jasper Morello": I've read three different descriptions of this one and I still don't get it. Ego says "Then it's impossible to understand on any level and it won't win." Fab; Ego, maybe you can share a cab with Prejudice.
So it's down between the two films I've actually seen: "9," which might be summarized as "the visually-ambitious and slightly-dark adventure that attracted the immediate attention and feature-film backing of Tim Burton" and "One Man Band," aka "this year's Pixar short."
√ My Prediction and Personal Pick: "9."
Which is probably unfair to Pixar's team. "One Man Band" is clearly more thought-out than "9" and naturally it's better-executed. But I vote for "9" both ways because it's just so different in design and appearance. And while it's clumsy to claim that there's any sort of backlash against Pixar in this category, I think there's a conventional agreement that Pixar's artists get tremendous rewards from the work itself...while an Oscar for "9" will quite simply change Shane Acker's life.
I won't pretend that I've seen "Darwin's Nightmare," so I'm going to heed the text-message I just got from Prejudice and Ego advising me to remove it from consideration and asking if I can put a decent $20 bottle of Port on the company Amex.
"Enron" bored me to tears with its officious "Sit still and shut up: If we can spend three years assembling this information than you can damned-sure spend 90 minutes assimilating it" approach. Out. "Penguins" bored me to tears as well -- it seems like it'd be perfectly entertaining if I were watching in my living room with a web browser at hand -- but (as Roger Ebert has said often) it grossed more money than any of the Best Picture nominees this year. In.
"Street Fight" is about a New Jersey mayoral campaign. Good fodder for a "Frontline," but pretty weak for an Oscar nominee. Out.
It ought to be "Murderball." It really needs to be Murderball. But I am paused by one simple fact: the people who choose the Documentary categories are all either drunk or recently out on bail with a score to settle or else they've suffered one of those industrial accidents in which a steel pipe blasts into the skull and the only thing that doctors can do is saw the ends off and buff the exposed metal down until it blends in with the level of the skin.
You simply can't predict this category. Will "March of the Greenbacks" win because of all that lovely, lovely cash? "Murderball," because it was probably the most-liked? Or will it go to a movie that (according to voters) "had the right sort of message" or "needs a win more than the other, more successful movies do"?
√ My Prediction and Personal Pick: "Murderball."
I think this prediction is a big risk. I close my eyes and I see "March of the Penguins" winning. But Best Documentary rarely goes to a film that made lots and lots of money, and it usually goes to a film that says something about The Human Condition(tm). Can it go to a blockbuster nature documentary? I'm going to hold my nose and go with "Murderball" for both.
Hell if I know; I haven't seen any of these. I shall Google for synopses and move forward from there. "Corwin" is a quick scratch because it's apparently a straightforward bio with no comments on The Human Condition(tm) or particularly uplifting beats.
"Mushroom Club" is about survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The other two nominees touch on the ongoing calamaties in Africa, so it's odd man out, I say.
√ My Prediction: "God Sleeps in Rwanda."
Because "Rwanda" is (by the end) a hopeful and uplifting story about women surviving Rwandan genocide to build a better nation, while "Carter" is a sad tale of suicide. Again I cite my very thoughtful "Hell if I know" comment but ultimately decide to back a tale that ends on a high note.
I've seen a couple of these and in a way, that makes this a bigger challenge than simply making quick snap-judgements. "Our Time Is Up" is a somewhat straightforward comedy and "Cashback" has lots and lots of sex. Both are good things and I wish there was more of this sort of stuff in movies these days. But both things tend to clip a Best Short nominee's wings.
Back to snap-judgements, then. I've read synopses of "The Runaway" -- a "lonely man meets the cute son he never knew he had" tale with a clever twist to save it from becoming treacly -- and slide it into the "Okay...so why wouldn't this one win?" slot. "Six Shooter" sounds like too much of a head trip. "The Last Farm" sounds like it's more respected than liked.
√ My Prediction: "Ausreisser (The Runaway)."
Why not. That sound you just heard was tumbling dice.
Another "I won't pretend that I have a moviegoer's opinion of these flicks" category: I'm 0 for 5 with this list.
√ My Prediction: "Tsotsi."
Solely because that it's based in Africa, it notes that There Are Problems There, and because lots of people seem to think it's going to win.
The screenplay categories are a confusing mess of gears, drives, shafts, and pulleys, and a bucket of wrenches is poised clumsily on a catwalk above.
Because here's where the voters seem to act with their hearts. When a drop of pity is consistently shed from a significant portion of those 6,000 voters, that bucket's gonna fall, and it'll gum up any prediction that you imagined was a dead lock.
Such as: "Brokeback Mountain." Clearly, the presumptive favorite. "Capote" is (once again) the Philip Seymour Hoffman show; "History of Violence" was a fantastic film but nobody apparently paid any attention to it; and despite tremendous anticipation, "Munich" got credit for little more than a Nice Try.
And then there's "The Constant Gardener."
I liked it. But I never imagined that it would have any traction come Oscar time. Yet look at its other nominations, particularly in top-tier categories. Clearly, this flick made a serious impact and struck some sort of chord. Is this the spoiler that everyone with five bucks in the Oscar pool should dread and fear?
√ My Prediction: "Brokeback Mountain."
I can't imagine this one losing, and can't come up with a single compelling reason to think that "Constant Gardener" will beat it. Still...here I am, slipping the name of the movie into this category as many times as possible so that if it actually pulls a rabbit out of the hat, I can say "See? See?!?"
√ If I Were Voting: "A History of Violence."
This was one of the true sleepers of 2005 for me. A very conventional story told in a highly-unconventional way, and a flick that I intend to screen many more times over the next few months. Someone explain to me why Ed Harris didn't get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for this one.
(Oh, right...he doesn't do interviews and doesn't appear to care about being nominated. Got it.)
Man alive...four stories I loved. Only one story that I couldn't motivate myself to formulate any sort of strong opinion of. "The Squid and the Whale"? A better title than a movie, I thought. I see a family-family feature, the startup release produced by a new animation company staffed by disgruntled former Pixar and Dreamworks animators.
(Even so: a hard sell, as I know lots of people at both companies and they all seem to think they've landed their dream jobs.)
"Match Point" is a compelling tale of how one can forcibly render even the most dreadful of acts into a morally-ambiguous one through sheer force of will. "Syriana" bamboozles you into thinking that you're going to see a searing indictment of greed and geopolitics, but it slices the angles so sharply that you find yourself compelled to see Big Oil as a set of desperate and interlocking personal interests.
Both are worthy, both are out of the running, knocked out by the (apparent) goodwill for "Good Night, And Good Luck" and the (obvious) sense that a Consolation Oscar will go to "Crash."
√ My Prediction: "Crash."
It was a powerful film, yes yes duly noted. But can a movie garner this much attention and yet be ignored in a "Best Screenplay" category? Remember, Screenplay isn't merely the Consolation Prize...it's the award for Best Picture If We Actually Voted For The Highbrow Movies That We Claim We Want To See, When We're Being Interviewed. I think not. I want to win that Honey-Baked Ham this year so I'm making the smart, safe play.
√ If I Were Voting: "Syriana."
I admired this screenplay more than any other story this year. Just slightly more than "Crash," though for reasons I can barely articulate, I think that the writing carried more of the load with "Syriana."
I mean, what the hell...there's no money riding on this and I could cite "Big Momma's House 2" if I wanted to. But "Syriana" would indeed get my personal nod.
Ang Lee, Director's Guild award, end of story.
But whom would I pick? Damn. I'm going to be stuck here for a while and so I now push "Pause" on this document window so I can fetch myself a Coke -- one from my dwindling stash of Mexican ones, no less -- and return after a good ponder. Hang on.
Nope, I've still no idea. "Munich" is an early scratch because (unfairly) I've higher standards for a Spielberg film and it seemed to me like the man who directed "Munich" had a headcold. It was still Spielberg, and still a very capable and creative man, but it was a man who'd had the top 2% of his abilities temporarily disabled by a stuffy head and the effects of over-the-counter remedies.
"Brokeback Mountain"...also out. How does a film impress you as an achievement in directing, specifically? It's something that you sense, more than something that you deliberately understand. But I didn't sense it in this flick. I sensed it in "Good Night," but for the wrong reasons. I appreciated how much of a labor of love this flick was and I certainly respected the amount of craft that went into Clooney's direction. And let's also praise the man for having the confidence to not become over-indulgent either visually or emotionally, which seems to be a the most predictable (and desperate) reaction of the actor-turned-director species.
And then there's "Crash."
I've been digging deep into my reactions to this film. Is there really even any need to justify why a certain movie had a particular effect upon you? Must I pick at my thoughts until I've taken a simple and sincere reaction that struck me immediately, and begun to question every facet of it?
Right or wrong, that's what I'm doing...and I'm prone to ascribe this to the fact that a reaction to a film is simply a reaction to the film, and that the truly great films can defend themselves against whatever doubts you throw at it. "Crash" emerges from this abuse a little less steady on its feet. The more I attempt to identify the things that resonated with me, the more I think that what I truly enjoyed were the discussions that the film provoked. Both the ones with friends (hours, weeks, and months later) and the ones I've had with myself, starting with the drive home from the theater.
For that reason, I remove "Crash" from consideration.
√ My Prediction: Ang Lee, "Brokeback Mountain"
√ If I Were Voting: Bennett Miller, "Capote"
I sensed a million separate elements being drawn together into perfect harmony here. Yes, again, this was The Philip Seymour Hoffman Show, but Miller surrounded him with the right sets, and the right cinematographer, and the right supporting cast, and the right mood.
Damn. I'm left with the exact same decision as before, only rotated about 45 degrees out of phase from the "Best Director" nominees.
The correlation between the DGA Award and the Best Director Oscar is so tight that to bet against it is something you can only do after processing about half of the contents of whatever was in the trunk of the car at the start of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Your Best Director choice only urges your choice for Best Picture. The two categories tend to be joined at the hip, but there's ample precedent for upsets.
Let's cut to the chase and say that the only two movies with any chance of an upset are "Crash" and "Capote," with "Capote" as an extreme dark horse candidate.
So it comes down to the question of whether "Crash" can pull off a surprise of this magnitude.
√ My Prediction: "Brokeback Mountain."
I'm convinced that voters will be satisfied with "Crash"'s Best Screenplay win. When you recognize a film's screenplay, you're rewarding the ideas behind the film more than anything else, and as wrangled in the "Best Director" massacree, I wonder if folks really want to honor "Crash" as a total movie experience.
√ If I Were Voting: "Capote"
Really, no question about this one. This was beyond question my favorite movie of the year and the most powerful, true filmgoing experience of 2005. Those two aren't always the same movie.
It's hard not to forge an emotional connection with Philip Seymour Hoffman. As an audience member, you yourself are that critical third eye that Truman Capote seemed to lack in himself. You watch him as he makes his way through his creation of "In Cold Blood": from bored, casual interest in selecting a new project; to the adventure of new things; to the spark of creative engagement; to the realization that he's found the means toward a multitude of personal and professional desires; to depressed slogging through the project; to impatience for it to be over...and then, finally, to the realization that over the course of the book's production, he has committed a multitude of capital sins for which the only possible repentance will require wrenching amounts of commitment, sacrifice, and determination.
And as the movie ends, you know that Truman Capote just doesn't have it in him. Even before the final title card confirms it, you know that "In Cold Blood" will be the end of him.
It's amazing. "Capote" is a movie in which you watch Hoffman pretend to be a guy who was probably never terribly genuine to begin with...and yet, you engage and invest in this character more completely than you will with anyone in any office you ever work in. You leave the theater feeling somewhat like a priest at the end of a particularly difficult confession, one that left you questioning whether all souls can indeed be saved.
"Crash" left me with fodder for discussion. "Capote" gave me a true experience, and it's the best picture of 2005.
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