2009 Oscar Nominations

The Oscar nominees were announced today. Let's begin the speculation. This is tough, because it's basically a head to head between two of my favorite living filmmakers, David Fincher and Danny Boyle. And, in my opinion, it's going to result in a slew of awards for one film, and few for the other. Both films are extremely high quality, but the Oscars aren't run just on merit: money and politics do play a role (sadly). Considering one is a film that was budgeted at 150 million dollars, and the other was budgeted at one TENTH that amount, you can see where the weight might go naturally.

The nominees are here, but a more accessible list is at IMDB. So, let's go through some of these. I'll give the picks that I think would win, and if they're different, the picks that I think should win.I'm starting with my bad categories, the ones where I've seen few of the films or none.

Best Live Action Short Film: No clue. Haven't seen any of these films, and haven't heard much about any of them. So, it's impossible for me to even speculate beyond picking a title at random.

Best Animated Short Film: Presto. It's the only one I've seen, true. But it's still damn entertaining and quite wonderful. This is the Pixar short that was put in front of Wall-E.

Best Short Subject Documentary: No clue. Again, haven't seen any of these nor heard of them. Can't judge them at all, aside from picking one at random.

Best Documentary: Man on a Wire. I haven't heard one bad thing about this film. Every review I've seen of it has been ecstatic about it, and it seems pretty clear it's the winner. The real competition seems to be with Werner Herzog's film Encounters at the End of the World. Herzog is considered one of the best documentary filmmakers living -- and hasn't even been nominated before. But I haven't seen any of these films myself. However, again, the numerous reviews I've read about Man on a Wire are unanimous about it's quality.

Best Foreign Language Film: The Class (Entre les murs). I sadly haven't seen any of the foreign language films either, but I was interested in seeing The Class earlier. It did best picture at Cannes, so don't take it lightly. The other contender seems to be Vals Im Bashir, an animated film from Israel.

Best Animated Picture: Wall-E. Seriously. Is there any question here? Wall-E was fucking amazing, and probably should've been nominated for Best Picture instead. It will easily win, when compared to... Bolt. Yeah. That ones a given.

Now, we get into the categories where more difficulty and wiggling is presented.

Best Achievements in Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yeah, The Dark Knight will get shafted. At least, that's how some will see it. Key distinction here: if it's a practical effect that is done on set and for the shot, it's a special effect. If it's an effect done in post-production, almost entirely done with computers now, it's a visual effect. The Dark Knight is a movie with surprisingly few visual effects, and a lot of special effects. It does have some great instances (Harvey Dent's face, hello...). But compared to the visual effects that suffuse Benjamin Button, it's a bad comparison. Benjamin Button is basically a category shift, and deserves its award for it's flawless effects.

Best Achievement in Sound Editing: Wall-E. This is a tough one for me, since most of these films I've seen only in theatres, and to really appreciate the effects of good sound and sound editing, you have to be able to turn it off. Very difficult to understand just how important sound is to a film without being able to do that. But Ben Burtt is an icon in sound design in Hollywood. You may not know his name, but you've seen the films that gave him 12 nominations (including these) for his sound work, and the two that he won. Just a few titles: Star Wars, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. However, I can still see this award going to either Slumdog Millionaire or The Dark Knight, though I'd favor The Dark Knight in that contest. But, remember, Wall-E had no dialogue for the first 30 minutes or so. All the emotion relied on the images, actions, and sound -- not words.

Best Achievement in Sound: Wall-E. It's basically the same reasoning as above, just with the added complication of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I can easily see a close competition between the four nominees of the category, and slightly favoring Benjamin Button. And seriously, what the fuck is Wanted doing on this list? Wanted is a two time Oscar nominated film? Nuts to that.

Best Original Song: Jai Ho (Slumdog Millionaire). Slumdog Millionaire is a very good film, and one of the best things about it is it's score and use of music. This original song is very entertaining on its own, and the dance ending is strange to most western films, but tame by Bollywood standards (the standard number they have in most films is 6 dance sequences in a film, and not just one at the end credits).



(Original link.)

Best Original Score: Slumdog Millionaire. Again, Slumdog Millionaire does a lot of things right, and the score is definitely one of them. However, there's also Wall-E to remember. I haven't seen Milk, but Danny Elfmann did the score, and that's to be considerd. Benjamin Button is also up, and could potentially sweep this along with other awards. I'd stil bank on Slumdog Millionaire, though.

Best Achievement in Makeup: The Dark Knight. This is kind of the reverse of the visual effect category I think. Benjamin Button has spectacular aging effects, and certainly used makeup very well. But The Dark Knight relied on it more. And, of course, you're dealing with the Joker....

Best Achievement in Costume Design: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It's a time-spanning epic piece, from many different time periods that are re-created to exacting detail. I could see Australia sneaking up and winning, but I doubt it.

Best Achievement in Art Direction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Largely same reasoning as costume design. But I'm less certain on this one.

Best Achievement in Editing: The Dark Knight. I've gone back in forth on editing with the Oscars over the years. At times, I go with films that are deliberate with their editing, slower films that cut at the right moment just as they want to to get the best result. Other times, the academy goes for films that seem to be saying "It's amazing this thing is coherent with all those cuts" (IE: Bourne Ultimatum -- even though it was great). I'm thinking it's another year like that, so I have to go with The Dark Knight. Slumdog Millionaire might also sneak up here for the same reason, since it's a very rapid pace movie.

Best Achievement in Cinematography: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Changeling and The Reader I dont think make the cut. Slumdog Millionaire I just cannot accept getting this, because this was the one complaint I had with the film: at times, the print is so grainy it's just too distracting to enjoy, and dramatically out of step with the rest of the film. I can understand that in those situations most of the time they were limited to what they were filming with, smaller cameras at faster speeds to keep pace with the rapid environment they set up. But still. It didn't look good, and even if it's making do, it could've been better. Benjamin Button is, again, flawless in its cinematography. Runner up is The Dark Knight, which could win due to the technical achievement of working with the IMAX cameras.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The screenplay categories generally get the reserves. By this, I mean, if there's a big title movie that is in chance of sweeping all awards, it's likely that one of the screenplay awards will be the reserve pick for a more "true artistic" feel. The one that sticks closest to this to me is Eternal Sunshine winning in 2005, but even the year before when Lord of the Rings swamped the awards, Lost in Translation won for best original screenplay. Still, I see Button winning here as the big picture, with Slumdog as the runner up.

Best Original Screenplay: Wall-E. Again, the first large section of Wall-E is without dialogue, and the screenplay follows that format just as strictly as the film. It's an impressive feat. Milk or In Bruges could combat and overcome it, but I feel strongly Wall-E will win.

Now, the big five.

Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (Doubt). Doubt is a good film, even if I wasn't exactly blown away by the leads. But Viola Davis as the mother of the boy supposedly abused... stunning. She's only in the film about 10 minutes, but steals it entirely once she appears, and makes you remember her after the film. The runner up here for me is Taraji P. Henson as Queenie in Benjamin Button. She also gave a very strong performance. But Viola Davis was just astonishing.

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight). I needed to see the other nominees before I would say it, but with these contenders, I feel it safe to say that Ledger will get the posthumous Oscar. I hear Josh Brolin is great in Milk, but I haven't heard anything in comparison to Ledger's role in The Dark Knight. Everyone knows he absolutely carried that film, and was the rigging that held it in place. He did it magnificently.

Best Actress: Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married). I always feel bad judging best actress categories, since it always seems I never see enough of the films to seem confident. Here, I've only seen Doubt. I wanted really badly to see Rachel Getting Married, but the timing never worked out. I wasn't too impressed with Meryl Streep in Doubt, beyond her being Meryl Streep. Part of the trouble of being a terrific actress: her expectations are so high, if she meets them it seems ordinary. As for Kate Winslet, I do want her to win, and she could with her Golden Globe wins as a booster -- but I am doubtful about The Reader, personally. Plus, everyone knows it doesn't matter if she gets one now: she got fucking robbed for Eternal Sunshine, and any award now is cheap droppings in comparison to that role.

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler). Yeah, I'll give it to him. Runner up would probably be Frank Langella, since he was damn good as Nixon. Haven't seen Milk, but could see Sean Penn winning, though it's a bit tampered by him already having won an Oscar (but, hey, Tom Hanks won back to back Oscars in two years, so that's hardly an exclusion for Penn). I liked Pitt in Benjamin Button, but I just don't think he'll land an Oscar for the role.

Best Director: David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). I think it's about damn time he wins. It's a toss up between Fincher and Boyle here to me, and as much as I like Boyle's work and Slumdog Millionaire, I do think Benjamin Button was the more successful and impressive work. A final factor in this, is that there has been an intense lobbying effort on behalf of Benjamin Button. You can see that with the amount of nominations, as well as the funding the film had. Fincher has the leg up on that fact I feel, but he already would've won to me without it. But, if neither of these guys win, I'll go fucking ape-shit.

Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. As with director, I think it comes down to Slumdog and Button. One of the two will win. I think Button is the stronger film overall, the more impressive, and has the better behind the scenes pull to win. But the first two qualities are the more important ones.

So, my totals:

The Curious case of Benjamin Button -- 7 Oscars.

Wall-E -- 4 Oscars

The Dark Knight -- 3 Oscars

Slumdog Millionaire -- 2 Oscars

Rest are various one hits. Again, I by and large fell that it's Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire going head to head, and Slumdog is going to lose out in more instances than it will win. But it's not like I'm going to be pissed if Slumdog wins more than Button.