Oscar Predictions

Picture
Will Win: I've already blogged about how Juno is a likely upset; although I agree that my prediction is crazy, I'm sticking with it so I can be the guy who was right on this one.
Should Win: I wouldn't be disappointed with either No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood, or even Michael Clayton when it comes down to it. But There Will Be Blood is currently highest on my top ten list, so that's what should win.
Better Not Win: Joe Wright's great step backward Atonement certainly is pretty, and some scenes are well acted, but Wright couldn't figure out how to use any of it.

Director
Will Win: Joel and Ethan Coen have never won a directing Oscar, not even for critics' darling Fargo. They're due.
Should Win: This is actually a pretty solid group of nominees. I'm going with Paul Thomas Anderson because he makes his film work by sheer force of directorial vision, but I'd be fine with any of these worthies.
Better Not Win: Despite what a lot of people think, Oscar didn't embarrass himself by nominating Jason Reitman—he shows uncanny skill at coaxing great performances out of his cast—and therefore I abstain.

Actress
Will Win: Call me crazy upset guy, but I'm going with Marion Cotillard, who seems to have narrowed the gap between Julie Christie and the rest of the pack. Did she narrow it enough to take the gold? We'll see.
Should Win: Well, Angelina Jolie should win, but they didn't nominate her. So I'm going with Julie Christie.
Better Not Win: Why, exactly, did Cate Blanchett receive a second nomination for failing to develop one whit on her performance from 11 years ago?

Actor
Will Win: I think this is the only category that's utterly and completely locked up, aside from perhaps Original Screenplay. Daniel Day-Lewis will win his second Oscar, and...
Should Win: I can't say I disagree.
Better Not Win: Part of being in a musical is singing. Johnny Depp forgot that part.
Haven't Seen: Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah

Supporting Actress
Will Win: Despite Amy Ryan's winning just about every critics' award, and despite Ruby Dee's status as an un-Oscared elder, Cate Blanchett pulls off the dual feat of playing the opposite sex and doing a bang-up job of it.
Should Win: But where's the love for Tilda Swinton, who's the yin to Clooney's yang, the opposite moral pole of Michael Clayton's universe?
Better Not Win: They nominated the wrong Briony; Saoirse Ronan is a competent child actor, but Romola Garai was nearly great.

Supporting Actor
Will Win: As implacable and unstoppable as his character is Javier Bardem's drive for Oscar; none dare stand in his way.
Should Win: Who am I to argue with the Prince Valiant haircut and the air gun? Javier Bardem.
Better Not Win: In perhaps the biggest instance of category fraud since Pigskin Parade, Casey Affleck, who is the main character of his film, just might win an award he does not deserve. He's good; he's not a supporting actor.

Original Screenplay
Will Win: The biggest lock of the season seems to be Diablo Cody's screenplay for Juno.
Should Win: Beyond all the name-dropping in Juno is a smart, funny, sometimes painful look at a girl floundering between the rules of childhood and the realities of adulthood.
Better Not Win: Abstain. All of the nominees I've seen are worthy.
Haven't Seen: Lars and the Real Girl

Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: There Will Be Blood because this is where Oscar awards the critical darlings? No Country for Old Men because the Best Picture frontrunner almost always wins? I have no clue. Flipping the coin: No Country.
Should Win: I'm going with No Country for Old Men, although I'm not sure how many of the film's narrative and tonal surprises were the Coens' invention.
Better Not Win: The screenplay may have been the least of Atonement's problems, but aside from that first act, it didn't impress.

Animated Feature
Will Win: OK, some things are more locked up than Juno's screenplay award. Ratatouille, of course.
Should Win: I was more impressed with Persepolis; the animation style made up for some narrative weaknesses.
Haven't Seen: Surf's Up

Cinematography
Will Win: Although it doesn't look like there's a front-runner, I could see it going to either No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood. Flipping the coin: No Country
Should Win: I'm going with There Will Be Blood, but I wouldn't be upset if No Country won.
Better Not Win: It's certainly full of pretty pictures, but Atonement can't figure out how to use them. The worst offense is that Dunkirk tracking shot. Why?

Art Direction
Will Win: Ooh, it's a tossup. The only weak nominee here is The Golden Compass, but I'm going to go with There Will Be Blood because a lot of people who know more than I do about art direction have been saying that Jack Fisk needs to finally win.
Should Win: As long as The Golden Compass doesn't win, I am fine with whoever they pick.
Better Not Win: See above.

Costume Design
Will Win: The green dress. I mean Atonement. It has to win something.
Should Win: Dear god I don't know. I'll go with La Vie en Rose.
Better Not Win: We've already seen the costumes for Elizabeth II: Elizabeth Harder, so why bother noticing them again?

Visual Effects
Will Win: Two words: Giant robots. Transformers.
Should Win: But I wanted to see the damn things transform! I abstain.
Better Not Win: Those cartoonish "animals" from The Golden Compass.

Sound Editing
Will Win: Giant. Robots. Remember back in 1999 when The Matrix won the second-most awards, all on the strengths of its special effects? Transformers is going to win the second-most awards on Sunday.
Should Win: The empty whoosh of the air gun, the agonizing hollow clanking of the tentpoles in the HVAC system at the hotel: No Country for Old Men had a wealth of memorable sound effects, which I'm pretty sure this category is supposed to honor.
Better Not Win: I abstain. I could go with any of the nominees.

Sound Mixing
Will Win: Robots. That are giant. Transformers.
Should Win: The entire Bourne series has been unjustly ignored by Oscar, so here's where the sound team behind The Bourne Ultimatum should receive its "series achievement" award.
Better Not Win: I abstain. This is a quality bunch.

Editing
Will Win: Despite the fact that No Country for Old Men will not win Best Picture (see above), this is the kind of award that goes to the Best Picture winner, unless it goes to a whiz-bang action movie. So obviously No Country will win. I think.
Should Win: Let's see some more props for the team behind The Bourne Ultimatum, who have advanced chaotic fight scenes to the point where anything more choppy will induce seasickness.
Better Not Win: I'm not wild about Into the Wild's overreliance on montages.

Makeup
Will Win: There's certainly a lot of makeup in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Should Win: Beautiful Marion Cotillard's transformation into unique-looking Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.
Better Not Win: I will not watch that Norbit film.

Best Documentary Feature
Will Win: I have no clue. Will the mainstream non-Iraq documentary win? I haven't seen enough of the nominees to comment on their quality. I'll go with Sicko because people like a good acceptance speech.
Should Win: Of the two I saw, No End in Sight was clearly superior; in fact, it's one of the ten best films of 2007.
Better Not Win: I haven't seen any of the other nominees.

Original Score
Will Win: Can anything beat the typewriter-clacking in Dario Marianelli's Atonement score?
Should Win: I can't say I'd disagree with that choice.
Better Not Win: I shouldn't let my dislike for The Kite Runner influence my opinion of its score, but all I remember about it is vaguely "ethnic" wails.

Original Song
Will Win: "Falling Slowly" from Once just has to be their pick; they insulted it in every other category it deserved.
Should Win: See above.
Better Not Win: The songs in Enchanted fell into three categories: outright parody ("Happy Working Song"), is-it-parody? ("That's How You Know"), and cheeseball slacking by Menken and Schwartz ("So Close").

As for the rest, I haven't seen any nominees, so I'll dispense with the chatter. Here are my completely uninformed predictions.

Foreign Language Film: Katyn
Documentary Short: Salim Baba
Animated Short: Madame Tutli-Putli
Live-Action Short: Tanghi Argentini

So the awards count at the end of the night for fictional films of feature length will be thus:

No Country for Old Men: 5
Transformers: 3
There Will Be Blood: 2
Atonement: 2
Juno: 2
La Vie en Rose: 1
I'm Not There: 1
Ratatouille: 1
Pirates of the Caribbean: 1
Once: 1

It's probably not too late to place your bets in Vegas; tell them goatdog sent you.

Why Juno Will Win Best Picture

1. It's the biggest moneymaker of all the Best Picture nominees, at $119 million and counting. It's brought in twice as much as its nearest rival, No Country for Old Men.

2. A lot of people really love this movie. Cal of Ultimate Addict pointed out that in addition to Ebert, it has Oprah. Oprah.

3. The love people experience for it is largely emotional (with many intellectual, well-thought-out exceptions).

3a. Viewers respect and admire There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men, but they want to take Juno home with them. Plus,

3b. There Will Be Blood is just too weird and eccentric for Oscar, and

3c. No Country for Old Men is too dark and too, um, what should I call it? Nontraditional in its story structure and almost unfinished when it ends. This makes voters say "wow, that was really avant-garde," but it won't make them vote for it.

3d. Of the other options, Michael Clayton feels like prestige filler, and

3e. Atonement is the kind of serious literary adaptation that would have won in 1985, had Mr. McEwan written his novel back then.

4. Last year, a high-style crime thriller, The Departed, won. It was an anomaly then; would Oscar really do it twice in a row?

5. Oprah.

6. It was the year of "should I keep/have a baby?"—4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days; Knocked Up; Starting Out in the Evening; Waitress; Bella; Lake of Fire—and Juno is that trend's cutest little poster child.

As you can see from these succinct points, no other film could possibly win Best Picture except for Juno, the 96-minute comedy about teen pregnancy. Did I just type that?

The No Norbit Book

My Oscar obsession takes me many places. One place it will not take me is to the fatsuit extravaganza Norbit. I've composed a children's book (of a sort) as a valentine to the one feature-length Oscar nominee from 2007 that I will never delete from my obsessive spreadsheets.

3rd Annual Goatdog's Movies Oscar Contest

Yes, it's time for the third annual Goatdog's Movies Oscar Contest. Click on the image for the ballot. The prize, as always, is either a DVD of the Best Picture winner or a DVD of equivalent price. Entries are due by 5:00 CST on Friday, February 22, and I'll announce the winner on Monday, February 25.

The 72-Nomination Long Weekend

Since I have little to do but nap and complain and watch movies, I've decided to take a figurative bulldozer to the Oscars. The 10 films I've watched since Friday represent 72 nominations in various categories, leading me to develop the important new measure, Minutes Per Nomination (MPN), which leads to more efficient Oscar viewing. I chose MPN instead of NPM (nominations per minute) because I don't like decimal points, although some worked their way in anyway. I chose mostly the long, nomination-bogarting epics of the 1950s and 1960s, with stops along the way for remarkably good films like They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and Hud. In descending order of MPN, here they are.

State Fair (1933): 96 minutes / 2 nominations = 48 MPN
Picture, Writing–Adaptation

Proof that they'd nominate just about anything for Best Picture back in the early days of Oscar, this anonymously agreeable countrified hoo-haw is about a rural family at the state fair. Yep, that's about it. Will Rogers frets about his moody pig, Louise Dresser frets about her pickles, and the kids, Janet Gaynor and Norman Foster, find big-city love with Lew Ayres and Sally Eilers. Even the pig gets in on the action. 2 goats

A Free Soul (1931): 91 minutes / 3 nominations = 30 MPN
Actor, Actress, Director

Norma Shearer looked dazzling in a series of gowns and snazzy little flapper outfits by Adrian (it's a crime that there wasn't a costume design category yet), but aside from a first, lighthearted scene, my god did she stink when she talked. She pains me, because I like her so much in some parts, but so little in others. Also-nominated director Clarence Brown let her indulge all of her worst tics: she squints like she's staring into the sun and packs in all the, er, vogueing she can (strike a grimace!), and many of her line readings were howlingly funny. Lionel Barrymore, who actually won Best Actor, is little better; his bag of tricks included just one, "drunk," which he used whether his character was drunk or not. Clark Gable was good, though, and he and Norma certainly made a fine-looking pair. 2 goats

Cleopatra (1963): 243 minutes / 9 nominations = 27 MPN
Picture, Actor, Cinematography, Editing, Original Score, Art Direction/Set Decoration, Costume Design, Sound, Visual Effects

The loudest thing about this epic was the mighty slap in the face that Oscar delivered; despite nine nominations including the big one, notably missing were its million dollar star Elizabeth Taylor, her high-profile lover Richard Burton, and Joseph Mankiewicz as either a writer or a director. It's the film without stars that was neither written nor directed! It's also a colossal bore, too long by half. Rex Harrison (who was nominated) was very good and Burton was pretty good, but Taylor's more petulant than queenly. At least some of the spectacle was suitably spectacular, especially Cleopatra's entrance into Rome. 2 goats

The High and the Mighty (1954): 147 minutes / 6 nominations = 24.5 MPN
Director, Supporting Actress X 2, Editing, Original Score, Original Song

Recent archaeological studies have pushed the origins of the modern big-budget disaster flick back as far as 1954, when John Wayne saved a planeload of passengers and their personal problems from fiery or watery death. All the elements were already set in stone: the pilot with a hidden yellow streak, the washed-up copilot with a troubled past, the cute kid, the boozy floozies, the tormented businessmen, even the token minorities. And, of course, the screaming and crying and Best Editing nomination. Dmitri Tiomkin's score won, but the oddball is an Original Song nomination for a song whose lyrics we never hear, not even during the closing credits. 2.5 goats

Seabiscuit (2003): 141 minutes / 7 nominations = 20 MPN
Picture, Cinematography, Editing, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction/Set Decoration, Sound Mixing, Costume Design

By the time I'd recovered from being yanked around by the bridle by unnominated director Gary Ross's hopscotch history lesson-cum-character development, I was thoroughly annoyed by the cutesy cutaways and near-jump cuts the editing favors, the gauzy sun-dappled cinematography (according to this film and Cinderella Man, the Depression sure looked great!), and the tendency of the screenplay to have a character tell us, at the very end of a scene, what we should already have gathered. At least the races were shot well, except for the closeups, which looked like Tobey Maguire on an animatronic hobby horse. 2.5 goats

Doctor Zhivago (1965): 197 minutes / 10 nominations = 19.7 MPN
Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction/Set Decoration, Costume Design, Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Sound

This wasn't as bad as I'd expected it to be. It certainly spent a lot of its time (and money) flailing for epic status, but it was quite good in smaller moments—most of them including Rod Steiger, who deserved the Oscar nomination that Tom Courtenay received mistakenly. The biggest blight was Omar Sharif, the appeal of whom I just don't understand, having seen him in this film and Funny Girl recently. He doesn't seem to want to be good, or even noticed. 3 goats

Hud (1963): 112 minutes / 7 nominations = 16 MPN
Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Art Direction/Set Decoration, Adapted Screenplay

The best film of 1963 wasn't nominated for the top honor; it settled for a slew of other nominations, among them Paul Newman's poisonous title turn as a sexy, jarringly amoral layabout. Patricia Neal's flinty, flirty pseudo-lead won a deserved Oscar and is probably among my top 10 winners. James Wong Howe's stunning, dusty photography won, but Tom Jones (!!!) stole most of the other awards that Hud deserved. One of the most glaring omissions was Elmer Bernstein's haunting, lonely score, which wasn't even nominated. 5 goats

Sons and Lovers (1960): 103 minutes / 7 nominations = 14.7 MPN
Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction/Set Decoration

This somewhat gelded adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's scandalous first novel is still pretty good, if only because the screenwriters were able to transfer some of the novel's pages and pages of self-examination into the mouths of the characters. Especially effective was the expansion of the father character (Trevor Howard, who plays what's clearly a supporting part but was up for lead anyway) and Dean Stockwell's relationship with the nominated Mary Ure, but the all-important mother obsession takes a backseat, as does Paul's oddly spiritual relationship with Miriam. 3.5 goats

My Fair Lady (1964): 171 minutes / 12 nominations = 14.2 MPN

Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Art Direction/Set Decoration, Costume Design, Adapted Score, Sound

This wasn't nearly as painful as I'd been led to believe. I can't quite believe that Rex Harrison won Best Actor for his one-note growl, and there were several superior films they could have lavished a bunch of Oscars on, but this was moderately enjoyable. I loved the unnominated Audrey Hepburn until her big makeover, and Stanley Holloway was a lot of fun around the edges. The songs are great, even if their staging was often unimaginative (except the one at the horse track, which was brilliant). Still, one thing the film really screwed up was the ending: they've spent 170 minutes convincing us that nobody could like Henry Higgins, so why should we believe it when Eliza Doolittle decides to stick around? 3 goats

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969): 120 minutes / 9 nominations = 13.3 MPN
Director, Actress, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Editing, Costume Design, Art Direction/Set Decoration, Score of a Musical Picture, Adapted Screenplay

One of the bleakest films ever made, it's as if they rolled up all the desperation of the Great Depression, unleashed it in one big dance marathon, and then forgot to nominate one of the best films of the year for the big award. Jane Fonda's tough, desperate performance is probably one of the best of the 1960s, but she didn't win, nor did Susannah York. The only win was Gig Young's brave take on the heartless bastard of a host. The biggest question is for director Sydney Pollack: what the hell happened? You were really great once upon a time. Yowza. 4.5 goats

Now Is the Time for All Good People to Hobble to the Aid of Their Party

For my first foray outside since I got back from the hospital, I hobbled, ducklike, down the street to the Mormon church to vote—not for a new Mormon leader; they have a system for that. No, it was Democratic primaries that had me braving the cold and snow and puddles I can't jump over at the moment. As my favorite art historian remarked, they let us have our cake and eat it too: I could vote for Kucinich in the primary, but all the available delegates were for either Obama or Clinton.

Six Things That Hurt the Most Right Now

1. Sneezing.
2. Coughing.
3. Getting out of bed.
4. Getting back into bed.
5. The thought of how bad I must smell after not showering since Tuesday. (Finally climbed that mountain.)
6. They forgot to nominate Angelina Jolie for Best Actress for her excellent work in A Mighty Heart, which I liked on first viewing, and which vaulted into my top ten list on second viewing. Will she win my Goatie for Best Actress? I'll get back to you on that.

(With apologies to par3182.)