Oscar Picks 2016

It's Oscar weekend, my favorite holiday of the year! And for once, my favorite movie of the year (Mad Max: Fury Road) is nominated in a bunch of categories, including Best Picture. Mad Max may, in fact, be my favorite movie of the past five years or so. Perhaps the past decade. It is amazing on all levels and if I had my way, it would win all the Oscars including Best Picture and a write-in Best Actress for Charlize Theron.

But there's a big gap between what I want to win and what I think will win. Here are my best guesses as to how the hardware will be distributed:

Best Picture: The Revenant
Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio
Best Actress: Brie Larson
Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone
Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander
Best Original Screenplay: Spotlight
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short
Best Film Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Cinematography: The Revenant
Best Score: The Hateful Eight
Best Song: "Til It Happens to You" from The Hunting Ground
Best Art Direction: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Costumes: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Makeup: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Best Sound: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Sound Effects Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Animated Feature: Inside Out
Best Documentary Feature: Amy

You'll notice that while I'm picking The Revenant for Best Picture, I'm picking Mad Max to take home the most Oscars. Mad Max was, objectively, the best looking, best sounding movie of the year. I'll be thrilled if it wins more, but I predict it will take at least six Oscars.

There was a lot of buzz for Spotlight and The Big Short in the Best Picture race, but I think The Revenant will take it in the end and the others will take the screenplay awards. Also, it looks like Inarritu is poised to become the third person in Oscar history to win back to back directing Oscars. The lead acting categories are locks and Vikander is a strong favorite for Supporting Actress, but Stallone is in a tough race. His win (for a role he's played in seven movies) could be seen as a defacto lifetime achievement award, but many may feel that that's a lifetime of bad action movies and cast their votes elsewhere.

The category I'm most anticipating is Best Score, where the legendary Ennio Morricone is poised to win his first competitive Oscar in a lifetime of creating memorable music. This will be the best-deserved Oscar of the night and I'll be very bitter if he doesn't receive a standing ovation. In other music news, I predict that Lady Gaga will be halfway to an EGOT by the end of the ceremony.

As usual, I don't pick the short films and this year I'm not comfortable taking a guess in the Foreign Language category. I will take a shot at Animated Feature (Pixar is usually a safe bet) and Documentary Feature.

The Oscars are on Sunday night on ABC with Chris Rock hosting - it should be a good time. I'll post the winners and my correct picks.

 

Oscar Predictions 2014

It's Oscar season again and it's time to make my picks. There are some really close races this year and a few others that are shoo-ins. Some leaders have emerged and other big races are still up in the air. It should be interesting. Here are my predictions:

Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave
Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Best Lead Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club
Best Lead Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer's Club
Best Supporting Actress: Lupita N'yongo, 12 Years a Slave
Best Original Screenplay: Her
Best Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave
Best Cinematography: Gravity
Best Film Editing: Gravity
Best Sound Mixing: Gravity
Best Sound Effects Editing: Gravity
Best Score: Gravity
Best Song: "Let it Go," Frozen
Best Art Direction: The Great Gatsby
Best Makeup: Dallas Buyer's Club
Best Costumes: American Hustle
Best Animated Feature: Frozen
Best Foreign Language Film: The Great Beauty, Italy
Best Documentary Feature: The Act of Killing

As usual, I don't get to see the Short Film nominees, so I don't pick those.

The top three contenders this year are 12 Years a Slave, Gravity and American Hustle and, as you can see, I've picked Gravity to take 6 categories, but not Best Picture. It will likely sweep the technical categories and be recognized for its direction, but I suspect that 12 Years a Slave will edge it out for Best Picture. It's unusual for the Best Picture not to get the highest number of Oscars, Best Director, or the Film Editing Oscar, but that's how I see it going this year.

The big story is the emergence of Dallas Buyer's Club in the acting races. McConaughey and Leto have been picking up prizes all award season and are expected to finish big, overshadowing higher-profile performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Bradley Cooper.

I'll be watching on Sunday, March 2nd and hope you will too. The official pre-show begins at 7pm EST on CBS but E! will be broadcasting arrivals all day long. It should be an exciting show and I hope to match or beat last year's 76% success rate.  Enjoy the show!

 

Best Picture

I rather like the ten-nominee system of the past few years.  It's allowed some interesting films to get recognition when they normally wouldn't.  So here are the ten Best Picture nominees and my assessment of their Best Picture changes:

1. Toy Story 3: A solid film, but animation is still struggling to gain equal acceptance with live-action films.  Its a shoo-in for Best Animated Feature, which will be the extent of its wins.

2. Winter's Bone: One of my favorites of the year.  Fantastic acting, a real, gritty sense of danger, and an excellent surprise.  It doesn't stand a chance.

3. 127 Hours: In short, it's too gruesome to win Best Picture.

4. Inception: Popular, yes, but it's dense as granite and it's sci-fi, which traditionally cleans up in the technical categories and gets overshadowed in the Best Picture race.

5. Black Swan: Too crazy to win.

6. The Kids Are All Right: It's a talky, character-driven family drama with a bitter touch of comedy.  All bode well, but it's missing the epic quality of some of its contenders. Just like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, it's more attractive as a Screenplay winner than as a Best Picture.

7. The Fighter: This one is really an acting showcase. Melissa Leo has a strong shot at Supporting Actress and there's no way Christian Bale can lose Best Supporting Actor, but the movie as a whole is all over the place.

8. True Grit: A real contender.  As I wrote in an earlier post, it's the least-awful Coen Brothers movie.  It's a big story in a big setting with big characters, but perhaps the actors are getting more attention than the film itself.

9.  The Social Network: It has up-to-the-minute relevance and tells a compelling story, but I feel that its screenplay is the real star, rather than the actors or directing.  Also, from a visual standpoint, it's not much to look at.

10. The King's Speech: It's a period historical drama tempered with appropriate levity, it deals with epic events on an intimate scale, and it's filled with notable performances. And the costumes and sets are top-notch.  The King's Speech fulfills every criteria for a Best Picture and, unless voters decide to get all modern and edgy this year, I think it will win Best Picture.

The Fighter & The Social Network

In The Fighter, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is an aspiring boxer with a close-knit family - his mother (nominee Melissa Leo) is a pushy, posessive manager and his half-brother Dicky (nominee Christian Bale) is his trainer.  Dicky's crack addiction is an open secret and its effects ripple out to create trouble for Micky's family and career.  All the negative influences in his life hold Micky back from his true potential, but when he cuts them loose and starts winning, his victories are hollow and, until a balance is found, he is kept from being a true champion.

In The Social Network, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (nominee Jesse Eisenberg) invents Facebook and brings his friends on board for the ride.  As the project grows and expands, reaching the boundaries of his grasp, he befriends Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), a controversial figure in internet history for his own groundbreaking invention, Napster. Sean takes Mark under his wing, instilling his cutthroat instincts and paranoia in the young programmer. Sean introduces Mark to a life of excess while insinuating himself into the company and insulating Mark from the friends who first helped him succeed.  As Facebook grows stronger, the friendships fall apart, making all the victories hollow.  What was intended as a way for people to be more connected on a personal level eventually became a wedge between friends and partners.

Best Director

This year's Best Director nominees are Darren Arnofsky (Black Swan), David O. Russell (The Fighter), Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), David Fincher (The Social Network), and the Coen Brothers (True Grit).

The King's Speech might be the front runner for Best Picture, but its director is the youngest and most inexperienced of the five nominees. Though he did some interesting things with lenses, the other four nominees are better-known for their unique artistic visions and visual styles. I think that Russell, the Coens, and especially Arnofsky are considered oddball outsiders who make weird, outside-the-margins movies. Fincher, on the other hand, makes tasteful commercial hits, has never won before, has one previous nomination, has earned Hollywood credibility with films that are considered "modern classics," and his movie has a notable lack of psychotic ballerinas who grow feathers onstage.

True Grit and Winter's Bone

You may recall that I swore off Coen Brothers movies last year but, unfortunately, True Grit is a juggernaut at this year's Oscars, so I felt compelled to see it.  But I still refused pay for it myself.  That said, I found it to be the least-annoying movie they've ever made.  Probably because their over-written, cloyingly stylized dialogue doesn't sound nearly as grating coming from 19th-Century frontierspeople.  There are Coen-esque annoyances throughout, though.  Mainly the courtroom scene and the dentist. 

End of disclaimer. moving on:

True Grit follows 13-year-old Mattie Ross (nominee Hailee Steinfeld) as she seeks revenge for her father's murder. Mattie hires gruff U.S. Marshall "Rooster" Cogburn (nominee Jeff Bridges) to track and kill Tom Cheney (Josh Brolin).  Constantly underestimated and condescended, Mattie pushes hard to get what she wants, negotiating and bargaining her way through the towns and wilderness with a focused ferocity.  As a child and a female in the Old West, she gets no respect but, in her father's absence, Mattie is now the man of her household and she takes charge of what needs to be done.

In Winter's Bone, Ree (nominee Jennifer Lawrence) is a modern teen in rural Arkansas. Her criminal father has left her to care for an invalid mother and two much younger siblings and, it turns out, jumped bail. Unless Ree can find him and turn him in, she and her family will loose their home.  So Ree searches and asks around, encountering a series of dangerous people who don't want her father found.  But Ree doesn't care if he's alive or dead, what he did, or who is responsible for his disappearance.  She may be looked down on for being a child and a girl, but her stoic, single-minded focus keeps her going until she finds the truth and can save her home. She is the man of the house and, despite warnings and beatings, puts herself in harm's way to provide for her family.

127 Hours and The King's Speech

In 127 Hours, Aaron Ralston (James Franco) is the cocksure mountain climber who gets pinned in a narrow Utah canyon and famously ends up cutting off his own arm to free himself.  Though he realizes soon after the accident that he'll probably lose the arm, Aaron takes five agonizing days to actually take the initiative and do what has to be done.  In that time, he ponders his life and the mistakes that led him to that point. He meditates, in his dehydrated state, on his attitudes, his relationships, and his life. The movie makes it clear that without having the time to reflect in the face of death, he would never had achieved the epiphany of self-awareness that led him to free himself.  "That rock was waiting for me my whole life," he says, "The minute I was born, every breath that I've taken, every action has been leading me to this crack on the outer surface."

In the King's Speech, the future King George VI (Colin Firth) fights a debilitating stutter and seeks help from Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist with unusual methods.  While Lionel can help "Bertie" with a few tricks and exercises, it's not until the future king opens up about his anxieties and troubled past that lasting progress can begin. After Bertie reluctantly takes on the role of king - a responsibility he never thought he'd have and one that he has dreaded his whole life - England is thrust into a war with Germany and the country finds itself in need of a leader with a strong voice.  Though it is by no means easy, it is clear that he never would have been able to do it at all without help from Lionel and the self awareness that came from his epiphany.

In each film, our main character must face the past that led him to a defining moment. Though their stakes and situations are very different, they must both muster their courage to endure the unthinkable.

Inception and Black Swan

In Inception, an elite team of thieves that infiltrate peoples' minds to steal information is gathered for an unusual mission - they are hired not to take information, but to leave an idea behind. To do so, they wire themselves and their mark into a computer that allows them to walk through carefully constructed dreams... and dreams within dreams... and dreams within those dreams.  All this dream-hopping is dangerous for our thieves because it's easy to lose track of what's real and get lost forever.  This hazard is all to real for the team leader, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose wife killed herself, thinking she was in a dream and hoping to wake up.  But was she right?  Lines are blurred and reality is in question throughout, as the story unfolds.  What and who is real?  Who can be trusted?  Where is the way out?

In Black Swan, Nina (Natale Portman) is a young, driven ballet dancer who scores not one, but two roles of a lifetime in a new production of Swan Lake - she will play the sad, graceful White Swan as well as the sinister Black Swan.  She is naturally delicate and embodies the White Swan perfectly, but she is pressured by her castmates, her director, and herself, to find her darker Black Swan side. As she pushes her body and mind to the limit, Nina gets lost in the roles, becoming paranoid and delusional, always questioning the people around her and her own sanity.  Who wants her to fail and why? Who and what is real?  Throughout the film, we see a fragile woman break in two with the darkest of consequences.

Both films take you into the mind of its lead characters and show that reality is only as tangible as our perceptions.

The Kids Are All Right & Toy Story 3

In The Kids Are All Right, a laid-back suburban California household is cast into disarray when the two teenage kids, Joni and Laser, decide to contact their sperm-donor father, Paul (Supporting Actor nominee Mark Ruffalo).  His appearance throws everyone's relationship into sharp relief, bringing up difficult issues in everyone's life and redefining their expectations of each other.  After the unexpected phone call, Paul wrestles with his feelings about family and commitment. After meeting Paul, Joni and Laser have to come to terms with how to define their relationships – and how far they want him in their lives. Once they find out what their kids have done the parents, Nic and Jules (Nominee Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) question their parenting and their marriage while trying to define a place for newcomer Paul and establish boundaries within their family.

Oh, didn't I mention that the parents are both women?  No?  Probably because the movie doesn't make a big deal about it either.

Those boundaries are pushed and frictions arise as Paul becomes more and more involved in the kids' lives, infiltrating the family, much to the dismay of the protective Nic.

In Toy Story 3, the familiar residents of Andy's toy chest find their lives in disarray when they're donated to a local daycare center. Things seem great at first, but the situation soon turns sinister when they uncover the machinations of the center's leader, Lotso. The move to this new environment forces the toys to question their roles and their purpose in life. Is their loyalty to Andy or to the dozens of kids at the center who lack the emotional connection that they're used to?  The toys struggle to find a place at the daycare while maintaining the boundaries and roles of their old life.

In their own ways, both films deal with change and how difficult and important it is for people to adjust their perceptions and their relationships. Nic in Kids and Jesse in Toy Story 3 find trouble by remaining rigid, refusing to give up their old status quo. Conversely, the kids in Kids and several of the toys in Toy Story 3 (including Barbie, Rex, and Ham) are more flexible, accepting with the change in their lives, but not without disappointment and heartache.  Each movie shows us that the answer is somewhere in between - it's important to accept change, but not at the expense of your self and your family.

Best Picture

By now you know that this year, the Academy is trying something new (or rather, something very very old) and named ten Best Picture nominees.  The idea was that by opening up the category, there would be more room for popular movies (rather than the usual serious arty fare) which would lead to more general interest, which would lead to higher ratings for the Oscar broadcast.

Well, we got ten nominees and at least the first part worked.  Popular movies were, in fact nominated alongside the serious critics' favorites.  Has that led to heightened interest in this year's awards? Not that I can see.  Will it lead to higher ratings? Maybe. Probably not.

Anyway, the nominees are Avatar, The Hurt Locker, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, and Up In the Air.

If there were only the usual five nominees this year, I really don't think that The Blind Side, District 9, Up,  Inglourious Basterds, or A Serious Man would have made the cut.  The rest are just the kind of thing the Academy likes - one populist pick, a dark horse, a quiet foreign production, and a couple of strong, serious contenders.  Normally, there's no room for feel-good fluff, allegoric sci-fi, cartoons, or talky, hard-to-categorize ensemble action spy films.  Of course, with this year's weird new voting rules, it really could go to anyone.

Realistically, though, there are two serious contenders: Avatar and The Hurt Locker.  Both are big action movies with puzzling titles, but I think voters will gravitate toward The Hurt Locker because it has more genuine soul and pathos.  Avatar's electronic blue monkey-cat puppets might be visually dazzling, but no motion-capture performance can ever compare to real-life acting in actual locations.  Many hearts will be broken, but I think The Hurt Locker will take the top prize.

In case you're curious: If it were entirely up to me, the Best Picture nominees would be The Hurt Locker, Up, Star Trek, District 9, and Inglourious Basterds.  I also found Paranormal Activity extremely effective.  And I'd give Inglourious Basterds the trophy.

A Serious Man

The film A Serious Man is about a man who is serious.  Very serious.  Oh, so serious all the time.  And he wears glasses.  And stands on a roof.


Okay, I didn't see A Serious Man, but I have an excellent excuse: I hate the Coen Brothers' movies.


What?  You can't hate the Coen brothers!

Oh, but I do.  And it's not like I haven't tried really hard to like them.  I've seen 10 of their 13 movies and have disliked every single one of them.  I kept going in thinking "maybe this is the one I'll like" and I kept coming out disappointed.  I don't find their comedies funny and  I don't find their dramas compelling  Their characters are always greedy, idiot losers or cloyingly naive half-wits whom I wouldn't want to spend time with in real life and certainly don't want to root for in a movie. 

But you HAVE to like the Coen brothers!

I don't HAVE to do anything.  Just because their movies are considered "classics" and critics fall all over themselves to praise everything they do doesn't mean I'm obligated to like them.  I know it's blasphemous to say that I dislike everything they've ever done, because movie-lovers everywhere are SUPPOSED to love these movies without question, but I'm tired of being told what I'm SUPPOSED to like.  Enough, I say.  I'm done with the Coen brothers - they've failed me for the last time.  And this is a big deal, because I've seen every Best Picture nominee of the past 15 years.

But this one is different!

That's what they said about No Country For Old Men, Fargo, The Lady Killers... no, it's just going to be pathetic, greedy loser characters who do contrived, idiotic things in a "quirky" way and spout overwrought colloquial dialogue while being filmed at odd angles.  Done.

They won Best Director and Picture for No Country.  Doesn't that mean that they're good?

It means that people have convinced themselves that the Emperors are wearing clothes.  David Lynch has never won Best Director or Best Picture and his are some of the most fascinating, personal, and compelling films ever.  Seeing them makes me want to see whatever he does next.  Alfred Hitchcock is considered one of the greatest directors ever and he never won.  Same goes for Stanley Kubrick.  Martin Scorsese waited his whole life to win Best Director and finally won for re-making a Hong Kong action flick.  So no, a Best Director trophy doesn't mean that they're geniuses.


The Coen brothers make really smart movies.  Maybe you're just  not on their level.

EXCUSE me?  Them's fight'n words.  And I'll argue that point to the ground.  I don't consider The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona particularly "cerebral" and I found O Brother, Where Art Thou to be a dull and uninformed adaptation of The Odyssey.  No, I don't find any of their movies "smart" except in the sense that all their characters are so stupid as to make many viewers seem like MENSA candidates by comparison. A lot of this has to do with the "look" of their films, filled with weird camera moves and unusual compositions that make their stupid stories seem "artsy."  That's the work of their Director of Photography, Roger Deakins.  I have no beef with Deakins, other than the fact that he enables the brothers and covers for their insipid scripts.

So there it is.  I refuse to waste any more time and money on Coen brothers movies.   With only two nominations this year, A Serious Man is the least likely of the Best Picture nominees to win and I feel extremely confident that I'm not missing anything.

District 9 & Avatar

The best science fiction turns a funhouse mirror back on the viewer, distorting and augmenting reality and revealing truths.  Aliens, robots, and outer-space settings become metaphors for our life, society, and humanity and, by showing us what we're not, show us who we are.

The metaphors are all too bitter in District 9, when an alien spacecraft docks over Johannesburg, South Africa.  The lobster-like refugees are taken in, but little effort is made to understand their language, culture, and needs.  Instead, the government is more concerned with appropriating alien weapon technology.  Corralled into a filthy ghetto in squalid conditions, these aliens lash out with violence and the humans wonder why.  Enter Wikus Van Der Merwe, a government bureaucrat tasked with evicting the "prawns" to a new and even worse slum.  During the search of a tenement shack, he encounters an alien substance that starts to transform him into one of the creatures that he so despises and, forming an uneasy partnership with one of the aliens, he works to return back to normal.  As Wikus's transformation and his time with the aliens progresses, he gains an understanding and empathy for their plight.

Anyone who knows anything about South Africa knows what this film is really about. 

Avatar has pretty much the same plot.  On the distant planet of Pandora, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully finds new life when, through the miracle of technology, he is able to "become" the member of a local alien race known as the Na'Vi.  While Jake makes contact with the natives and learns their ways, his corporate and military bosses are more concerned with mining opportunities under the Na'Vi settlement.  Unlike Wikus, Jake prefers his lithe alien body and, after gaining a mystical understanding of the Na'Vi ways (and a romantic understanding of his tutor) he finds himself in a war against the humans.

So in Avatar, the U.S. Military brings an unprovoked attack on a nation (of aliens) in order to gain lucrative drilling rights.  Hmmm... what could they be saying here?  Conversely, roles are turned on their heads when the destruction of a large tower-like structure serves as a call-to-arms for the Na'Vi. On top of that, we discover (with Jake) that all life on Pandora is literally connected in a web of consciousness and that destroying any part of the planet is bad for all living things.  Director James Cameron has never been big on subtlety.  The screenplay may be as artful as a cudgel to the head, but at least Cameron recognizes that science fiction can provide an entertaining platform for his allegorical ideas.

An Education, Precious, & The Blind Side

Which is more important - a formal education or life experience?  Which shapes us more and has longer-lasting effects?

Jenny, our protagonist in An Education, is working hard to get into Oxford and sees it as a dead end into a life of boring conformity.  Growing up outside London in the early 1960's, she stands on the outskirts of a cultural explosion, shielded by her old fashioned, single-minded parents.  That is, until she meets a charming, charismatic, rich older man who whisks her into a world she's only dreamed of.  Soon, Jenny decides to ditch her plans for higher education and run away to a life of music, freedom, ideas, and excitement - but is everything as it appears to be?  Is the "school of life" an adequate substitute for a formal education?  Is she making the right choice?

The title character in Precious has a different take on things.  Life experience is all she has, and it's left her with nothing.  Precious is a 16-year-old morbidly obese, illiterate, mother of a child with Downs Syndrome and is once again pregnant with her father's baby.  She lives with her resentful, abusive mother in a Harlem tenement in 1987 and is only kept around for the welfare check.  If you think that's a depressing set-up, don't worry: things only get worse for her.  The public school system has failed Precious and she finds herself at an alternative school in a class led by Ms. Rain, the first person who refuses to give up on her.  Ms. Rain sees value in Precious and works hard to show her that she has worth and for the first time, Precious realizes that there is another way, that a formal education is the path away from the abusive experience of her childhood.  She may never achieve her fantasies of fame and glamor and will likely die young, but an education is a start for Precious and any step up from where she started is welcome.

Somewhere in between Jenny and Precious on this scale is Michael Oher (or at least the Michael Oher depicted in The Blind Side).   Like Precious, Michael finds a nurturing, understanding supporter after a life of people giving up on him.  Michael has problems with written tests, trusting others, and applying complex concepts.  Hiding a decent mind behind a dull facade, he slowly starts to gain confidence from teachers and his adoptive parents, who must learn to reach him on his own level.  Jenny and Precious gradually change their world view, but it's the people around Michael who change most of all in The Blind Side.  Instead of Michael changing his view of the world, the world changes how it sees him.  He's been fine all along.

As an aside, I'd like to share a little anecdote:


Woman In The Movie: [to Sandra Bullock] You've really changed that boy's life.
Woman Sitting Next To Me: He's changed mine.
Sandra Bullock: No... He's changed mine.
Me: [to Woman Sitting Next To Me] This movie writes itself, doesn't it?

Inglourious Basterds & The Hurt locker

Movies have shown us many different facets of war over the years: war as heroic act, war as gruesome ordeal, war as political maneuver.  Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (sic) shows us something quite different - war as a game.  Eschewing gritty realism for his trademark verbal flourishes, Tarantino's characters criss-cross Nazi-occupied France in what feels like an epic game of cops and robbers.  Good guys and bad guys alike swagger with a bravado and purpose, giving each other nicknames, infiltrating enemy lines, eluding escape, and plotting heists.  The battlefield becomes a gigantic backyard in Tarantino's world, and, just like in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, it's a world where everyone is living out the movies that depict their lives; fantasy rolls back into reality.  In fact, Inglourious Basterds is really more about movies than it is about war.  It may not be realistic, but it sure is a lot of fun, and fun is something that has been missing from war movies ever since The Great Escape.

In The Hurt Locker, we see a different kind of game play out.  In Iraq in 2004, SFC William James (Jeremy Renner) is the head of a bomb squad and uses each call as a game of Russian roulette.  Playing fast and loose with safety procedures and protocol, James puts himself and his team at risk on a regular basis.  In a world where everyone is a potential threat and every pile of rubble could be hiding a tripwire, Sgt. James not only gambles with his life, but has become an addict.  It's not that he has nothing to live for - quite the contrary - but that he doesn't feel alive without the adrenaline rush that his job provides.  James is indifferent to the stress he causes his by-the-books team, but he sees the world differently: defusing bombs is his stress release.  Everything else makes him anxious.

Up & Up In The Air

In Pixar's Up, Carl, a quiet, old square, inters himself indoors, transforming his cottage home into a shrine for his beloved and departed wife.  Shunning human contact, Carl instead lives in the dust of his past and the regrets of unrealized ambition.  When he is finally forced out of his home, he chooses a unique solution - Carl attaches thousands of balloons to his chimney and floats the whole building to Peru.  His plan is to simply set the house down next to a waterfall and live quietly, but along the way, he gets saddled with an overeager Adventure Scout, a troublesome bird, a talking dog, and an adventure he never asked for.

Carl comes to realize that the things - the house, the objects - that he has accumulated don't make up his life.  He learns that his house (wherever it's located) is not his home and that while he yearned all his life for an adventure, his life was an adventure in itself.

We find Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney in Up In the Air) in a similar airborne epiphany.  A professional traveler, Ryan's philosophy is to that the more baggage one has (physically and emotionally), the more weighed-down one's life becomes.  He lives only in the present, never letting the dust settle, never wanting more than what he needs. Unlike Carl, who is only comfortable at home, Ryan is comfortable anywhere else. He leaves everything and everyone behind and insulates himself through detachment.  As a corporate downsizer, his job is to deliver hard news and then disappear from peoples' lives, but when he undertakes one last trip, this time saddled with an overeager post-grad, he begins to question his philosophy. A trip to visit a family that barely knows him really drives things home.

Like Carl, Ryan comes to realize that a life well-lived is the real adventure and that there is real value in relationships, family, and people.  They just had to uproot everything to get there.

Best Picture

Warning: spoilers ahead.

I believe that the nominated movies' themes will be the key to this year's Best Picture race. First is The Reader, about the dark secrets and lies uncovered during the trial of a concentration camp worker. Next is Frost/Nixon, about the final disgrace of an already-maligned political leader. Then we have Milk, a film about the brief success and tragic end of a martyred political activist. Benjamin Button traces the life of a man who ages in reverse - it's an epic and tragic love story, but it's essentially a movie about death.

Finally, there's Slumdog Millionaire - the triumphant movie where the young protagonist rises from the filth and brutality of India's slums to win the girl of his dreams and millions of Rupees, while inspiring the downtrodden of his city.

It's a new world out there, people. We're in the Obama age and people are ready to embrace change and optimism and put the darkness of the past decade behind them. After years of brutal movies about moral ambiguity, war, and corruption winning Best Picture, I believe that the world needs a movie with a low body count where the guy gets the girl and lives happily ever after. We saw it happen back in 1998 when the relatively lighthearted Shakespeare In Love blindsided dour favorite Saving Private Ryan. Slumdog Millionaire has no nominations for acting and two of its ten for Best Song. With the most nominations of the year, Benjamin Button is a strong contender, but the world needs Slumdog Millionaire to win Best Picture. Let's all root for the underdog.

Frost/Nixon

The interviews depicted in Frost/Nixon are famous for finally answering questions and addressing issues that weighed on the minds of Americans since Watergate. What the movie focuses on, though, is the behind-the-scenes preparations that brought two men together in a mental chess game. No, not a chess game - more like a boxing match. In fact, the whole film seems to parallel one of the most famous sports films of all time, Rocky. Actually, it's more like Rocky III. In one corner, we have the underdog: flashy British celebrity chat-show host David Frost (Michael Sheen), high on success and easy celebrity but looking to shed his lightweight reputation. In the other corner is the heavyweight champ: calculating and evasive former President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), eager to establish a legacy focused on his successes rather than the scandal that brought him down. The two circle each other for quite a while, prepping for the interviews. Our underdog goes through challenges finding backing for the project and is under constant pressure to research every aspect of his subject's life - the journalistic equivalent of training in the snow and hauling timber. Meanwhile, Nixon has his own aids who expect softballs but prepare for the worst - A political version of Ivan Drago's high-tech training lab. When the two finally meet, the heavyweight just toys with his challenger, running down the clock. Can the challenger muster his courage and his last ounce of strength to defeat the champ?

The real theme of the film, aside from the political implications, is the power of media. Nixon's strength is his nimble mind and analytical nature, but ever since his debates with John F. Kennedy, he is fully aware of his complete lack of on-screen charisma. Frost may be a lightweight, but he understands the power of television, fully aware of how to work the medium to his advantage. He is comfortable and confident on screen and Nixon underestimates him because of this. I think that what the film is saying is that good public image is as important to a politician's success as positive actions. Nixon had neither and his downfall was inevitable.

Frost/Nixon is up for five Academy Awards: Best Actor (Langella), Editing, Adapted Screenplay, Directing, and Best Picture. Mickey Rourke's win seems like a sure thing this year, so Langella is out of luck. The editing is nothing too flashy and long-time readers know how I feel about Opie's directing, so I can't in good conscience pick them to win. Frost/Nixon was based on a play and transcends its origins into something naturally cinematic, so it might have a chance for Adapted Screenplay, but up against three better-received Best Picture contenders those chances are slim. Like Milk, Frost/Nixon uses historical events to make a statement about modern issues, but I think voters will want to go with something less cynical and more uplifting than a film about holding a scandal-plagued former President accountable for his wrongdoings.

Milk

Milk is not as much the story of Harvey Milk as it is the story of a revolution with one charismatic personality at its center. Starting as a humble but civic-minded businessman in San Fransisco's Castro district in the mid-1970's, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) was drawn into the world of politics through his involvement in the growing gay community in his neighborhood. Spurned into action, Harvey goes through three unsuccessful campaigns for public office, gaining allies and support as well as enemies with each attempt. When he finally becomes America's first gay publicly-elected official, he finds that things don't get easier. An expert at the theater of politics, Harvey used the media and grass-roots movements to affect change. He started speeches by saying "I'm Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you," demonstrating his belief that there is power in numbers and that when united behind a cause, minorities can make up a majority. As he gains support and influence, Harvey also gains powerful enemies who turn out to be his undoing, but the revolution he led grew and lives on, becoming more powerful than the actions of one man.

Milk is up for eight Academy Awards: Best Actor (Penn), Best Supporting Actor (Josh Brolin), Costumes, Editing, Score, Screenplay, Directing, and Best Picture. Brolin and Penn each have big competition and aren't likely choices. I'd love to see Danny Elfman's score awarded, but pop songs were used as much as original music, so a film with more sustained use of score is more likely to win. The costumes were period, but it was a recent period and will be considered to have a lower degree of difficulty than some other films. Milk will probably not win its Editing or Directing nominations. As for Best Picture, it's impossible not to draw parallels between Harvey's struggle against Issue 6 in the movie to the recent outrage over California's Proposition 8 - a ballot measure opposed by many current Academy voters. It's a very timely movie that brings up current events and strong emotions, but it will lose ground against flashier fare and epics. Its best shot is for Best Original screenplay. The story of Harvey Milk has been kicked around Hollywood for years and it was only recently that someone had the novel idea to focus on the political movement rather than the politician. Besides, it's the only Best Picture nominee in the Original Screenplay category.

The Reader

Several years after his affair with an older woman, German law student Michael (David Kross, later Ralph Finnes) discovers that his former love, Hannah (Kate Winslet), is on trial for war crimes in The Reader. When the horrors of her past are revealed in court, Michael must balance the abstract terms of the law with his personal relationship, sorting out his feelings and how they have changed in this new light. Can he show her sympathy? Should he show her sympathy? Postwar Germany was a tumultuous time when the youth of the nation had to come to terms with the actions of the older generation and this film brings that struggle to a human level. In the end, it is not about forgiveness, but about simple understanding.

I did not care for The Reader. It started great, even though the love scenes are rushed and the symbolism is heavy-handed (water = "washing away the past." Okay. We get it. Enough with the water.). Then in the middle of the trial there's a plot twist that I will call "The Twist That Ruined The Movie." Hannah refuses to reveal a personal secret that could help her case and she goes to prison for life. I won't reveal the twist, in case you want to see the movie, but I'll make a parallel. Let's say she's allergic to peanuts. Ask yourself: if you were on trial and could either reveal that you're allergic to peanuts or be sentenced to life in prison with the stigma of murdering the weak and infirm, wouldn't you tell everyone you know not to give you peanuts? Personally, I'd make that choice faster than you can say "anaphylactic shock." Hannah chooses not to, shattering the movie's credibility beyond suspension of disbelief. On top of that, Michael knows her secret and refuses to tell anyone or even address it with her. The story could have taken any number of more interesting, more realistic directions, but instead, it takes a glorious swan dive into the ground.

The Reader is up for five Academy Awards: Best Lead Actress (Winslet), Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director(Stephen Daldry), and Best Picture. Beset by strong competition in all its categories, I believe that The Reader is the weakest of the five Best Picture nominees. Its only outside chance is for Winslet, who is very popular among voters and may get a boost from her acclaimed and un-nominated performance in Revolutionary Road. Even still, I won't be picking The Reader to win any of its categories.

Best Picture

And now, the big one.

Personally, I'd love for Juno to win. It has so much going for it: charming characters, zippy dialogue, and a good time at the movies. Unfortunately, it's the fluffiest, least "substantial" of the five nominees. Michael Clayton, on the other hand, is anything but fluffy. Its conscience-conflicted characters rub against each other like sandpaper and create real dramatic heat in the process. Still, its complex plot and character-centric focus might turn voters off. Aside from Juno, Atonement is the only movie of the five with a love story, and it's the sweeping, historical, epic, British sort of love story that Oscar loves to reward. I wouldn't be unhappy if Atonement won, but its lack of a Best Director nod and the fact that most of its other nominations are clustered in the artistic categories doesn't bode well. No Country For Old Men got my pick for Best Director(s), but I suspect that it might be too violent for the older Oscar voters. Actually, they don't mind violence, but it's senseless, glamorized, and consequence-free violence in films like No Country and Pulp Fiction that tends to turn them off. There Will Be Blood is plenty violent, but the body count is much lower and it has the historical and epic qualities that voters are often attracted to. Its themes are clearly presented and it has artistic merit and great performances throughout. No Country and Atonement might surprise with an upset, but my pick for Best Picture of 2007 goes to There Will Be Blood.