Nominations

It has begun! Another Oscar season has kicked off and it looks like there will be a good mix of runaway favorites and neck-and-neck races.

Benjamin Button got the most nominations (13) with Slumdog Millionaire close behind with 10 (two of which are for Best Song). The big shocker was that Revolutionary Road, which was expected to make a big showing, ended up under-represented with only three nominations - none of them for lead acting, directing, writing, or picture. Instead, surprisingly, The Reader made a surprise showing, not only for Kate Winslet (up for Lead Actress, tdespite her campaigning in the Supporting category) but for Picture and Director, among others. Lots of people were rooting for The Dark Knight, which collected an impressive eight nominations, mostly in artistic and technical categories.

Two little independent films snuck in the door: the immigration drama Frozen River (up for two including Best Actress for Melissa Leo) and the excellent film The Visitor, which earned Richard Jenkins a nod for Best Actor.

As for the breakaways, Best Actor looks like Mickey Rourke's game to loose and Heath Ledger is poised to earn the second-ever posthumous acting Oscar. WALL-E is a shoo-in for Animated Feature, and Israel's Waltz With Bashir is poised to walk away with Foreign Language Film.

No Country For Old Men

I have a confession that will likely shock many: I can't stand the Cohen Brothers' movies. I know, they're supposed to be a do-no-wrong cinematic double threat and all right-thinking cineasts are expected to bow down to their genius, but I really don't enjoy their work. Any of it. I find their comedies, like Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski unfunny and I find their "artsy" dramas, like Fargo and Blood Simple tedius and unappealing. Their latest, No Country For Old Men is no different and I really can't understand how it got nominated for so many Oscars. The plot follows a man who stumbles across the grisly scene of a drug deal gone bad, steals the money, and goes on the run from a psychopathic mob hitman. It's a slow-paced quiet movie that somehow also manages to be graphically violent - countless people (and two dogs) are either shot or are killed by a cattle-slaughtering device. In an attempt at justifying this mess, the whole sprawling ordeal is punctuated with old men ruminating on their mortality and rambling on about the old days, weather things are worse now, and how the old-timers would have faced modern crimes. Then the movie ends. Nothing is solved, there's no closure of any kind, the movie just sort of decides to stop. If the movie is an exploration of mortality, it never develops the ideas enough to make an impact. If it's just supposed to be just a grisly crime story, it gets muddled in its slow pace and attempts at a "message."

There are two things I can credit the Cohen brothers for, though. First, they're great at casting - especially the small roles like the gas station attendant and the hotel clerk. These are real-live folksy folks and I don't know where the brothers find them. Also, Javier Bardem was an unusual, but ultimately interesting choice for Anton Chigur, the dead-eyed assassin. Second, they write great dialogue. They have an especially good ear for colloquial dialects. If they could cast and write dialogue for other peoples' movies and avoid making any more of their own, it would be an ideal situation.

No Country For Old Men is up for eight Academy Awards. It looks outmatched for Adapted Screenplay, Sound, Sound mixing, Editing, and Cinematography. The brothers, Joel and Ethan, share a nomination for Best Director, but barring an upset, they probably won't win. The film's best bet is its Best Supporting Actor bid for Javier Bardem, who steals the movie with an admittedly chilling performance. As for Best Picture, No Country doesn't get my pick, but strong Academy support could, unfortunately, prove me wrong.

Artistic Awards

The nominees for Best Cinematography are The Assassination of Jesse James, Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, No Country, and There Will Be Blood. Roger Deakins has been denied an Oscar despite over a dozen nominations and this year he has two shots - for Jesse James and No Country. Still, I think he will get beat again, this time by Atonement, a movie that manages to make a bombed-out beach look as gorgeous as an English manor. Plus, there was that virtuosic 5-minute tracking shot that involved a cast of thousands.

Best Art directions pits the fantastical and dark (Sweeny Todd and The Golden Compass) against modern (American Gangster) and historical styles (Atonement and There Will Be Blood). I think Atonement will take this one for showing a wide variety of set designs - from a stately country estate to the grungy ruins and triage hospital of WWII France.

In the Best Costumes category, the more ffantastical and outrageous costumes always trump subtlety. Atonement, Across The Universe, and La Vie En Rose each had a great variety of costumes, but they pale in comparison to the Victorian goth look of Sweeny Todd and the outrageous Elizabethan garb in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I predict that the team from Elizabeth will take the prize.

The three nominees for Makeup are La Vie En Rose, perennial nominee Rick Baker for Norbit, and Pirates 3. Norbit's achievement really is its makeup and Pirates 3 is impressive, but the makeup team from La Vie En Rose transformed Marion Cotillard into Edith Piaf in every stage of her life, from her 20's through her 60's. It was just as important to creating the character as Cotillard's fine acting and I think it will get recognized.

Technical Awards

My big prediction for this year's Oscars is that the awards will be distributed categorically - that all the artistic awards will go in one direction and all the technical awards will go in another.

Let's start with Best Editing. Surprisingly, this year's nominees focus mostly on storytelling rather than flash. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Into The Wild, There Will Be Blood, and No Country For Old Men are all pretty standard when it comes to editing. I think it would be interesting for No Country's Roderick Jaynes to win here because he doesn't really exist - he is the pseudonym for directors Joel and Ethan Cohen, who edit their own films. The real standout, though, is The Bourne Ultimatum, a film whose elaborate and jittery editing really contributes to the style, intensity, and suspense of the movie while complimenting the performances, cinematography, and script.

Sound Editing and Sound Mixing are very different things, but often go hand in hand. This year, the nominees are almost identical in both categories. Traditionally, musicals and animated films are praised for their sound. No musicals are nominated this year, but Ratatouille could be a contender. Movies like No Country, There Will Be Blood, and 3:10 To Yuma are nominated for their effective on-location sound rather than their custom sound effects. More likely to win are the big noisy blockbusters like Transformers, however I think the winner in both categories will once again be The Bourne Ultimatum. It really offers the best of both worlds. It's a successful action movie, it was critically praised, and is also a prestige picture - a thinking man's action flick, much like The Matrix, which swept the technical awards back in '99. Count on two more for Bourne.

Three movies are nominated for Visual Effects, which I find very upsetting. I'm only a little surprised that 300 didn't get nominated for costumes and cinematography, but if ever there was a category for a 90% CGI comic-book-based Bronze-Age war movie, it would be Visual Effects. The films the voters did choose are The Golden Compass, Pirates 3, and Transformers. I think The Golden Compass might still be too controversial to win so I'm counting it out. The CGI robots of Transformers would have been a lot more impressive if the cinematography weren't so veritee. I had a hard time focusing on them with all that camera-shaking. Pirates 3 was impressive, but I think voters may have Pirate fatigue - a "been there, done that" attitude about the whole film. Even still, the maelstrom scene was groundbreaking and required new technology to be invented and the seamless blending of makeup and effects is noteworthy. I'll give my pick to Pirates by a small margin.

Best Supporting Actress

The race for Best Supporting Actress features a wide variety of performances this year. Young Saoirse Ronan got her nomination for a brief but intense performance in Atonement and Amy Ryan put forth an equally intense performance as a grieving mother in Gone Baby Gone. In both cases, I think age will work against them, especially considering the veterans who fill out the category. Cate Blanchett (the only previous winner in this group) plays electric-era Bob Dylan in I'm Not There - a role she shares with several other actors and a clever bit of casting that yielded a bravura performance. If she wins, she will be the second person to win an Oscar for playing a character of the opposite gender (Linda Hunt was the first). This could also be her second win for playing a prominent 20th-Century performer. We shouldn't count out nominee #4, Ruby Dee. Age and experience are always a factor in an Oscar race and sometimes voters will choose the veteran receiving her first nomination over the more challenging performance. I call this the "She was due" argument. Also known as the "Don Ameche Effect." Filling out the category is Tilda Swinton, who plays a reluctantly amoral corporate spokeswoman in Michael Clayton . There are a few reasons why I think she will win. First, the British actress pulls off an excellent American accent. Second, she is the most fully-formed, human character in the bunch. Swinton reveals her character's tough, polished exterior and, in private moments, her regret, fear, and insecurity. Finally, even though she has supporting screen time, she actually has the leading female role in the Michael Clayton cast. Amy Ryan may also claim that distinction, but I think Swinton's performance will get recognized. The vast majority of the voting body is actors and Michael Clayton is clearly an acting showcase above all else. My pick goes to Tilda Swinton.