Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Oscar Picks!

Actually, I care about the Academy Awards about as much as I care about the Olympics. Even during the best years, the Oscars are an exercise in recognizing unremarkable blandness -- try and name the Oscar winners from, say, ten years go -- and 2008 was such a dribbly year for flicks, the task is even easier.

Or is it? Does a weak year make it easier to predict the winners? Let's give it a try:

LEAD ACTOR - Mickey Rourke, hands down. Everybody loves a comeback, especially now that the economy is tanking. Just like the economy, Rourke and his character endured years of bad behaviour. If Mickey Rourke can come back, surely so can Merrill Lynch. Of course, it's implied that Rourke's character dies at the end ... just forget about that part.

Wow, this is easy.

SUPPORTING ACTOR - Heath Ledger. I don't even know if I'm going to bother finishing this post, it writes itself.

LEAD ACTRESS - Winslet has it going on this year, so she'll win it. The only thing that could stop her is if enough people were annoyed by her overdone 'I can't believe it' speeches at the Golden Globes. Don't make us hate you, because we will at the drop of a hat.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS - It was weird when such a weak actress won an Oscar the first time, so she'll win because her winning again would be hi-freaking-larious! Sometimes the universe just loves to rub your face in it. And then do it again.

ANIMATED FEATURE - Rise & Fall of the Nazi Dinosaurs will win in an unexpected upset. Or Wall-E. Whichever one had the bigger budget.

ART DIRECTION - movies always look great so everybody nominated and everyone working in this area on every film should win. If only the writing of mainstream flicks matched the art direction.

DOC - Man on Wire. I guess. Rarely do the best docs of the year show up as Oscar nominees and this year is no exception. There were some really great docs last year ... The Betrayal, for example, was neat because it was shot over decades ... but it wasn't 'great' the way a bunch of other, unrecognized films were.

FOREIGN - I like the vampire flick, Let the Right One In ... but it wasn't nominated. I reckon Waltz With Bashir will win.

BEST PICTURE - Probably the Brad Pitt move. I can't see the enthusiasm for Slumdog Millionaire resonating the same way in the US as it has elsewhere. Besides, it's a really good movie ... but it's not a great movie. The year's other slum movie, City of Men, is better. I'll bet that if you watch City of Men and then watch Slumdog Millionaire right after, it won't seem as special.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY - Frost/Nixon. It'll win as a sort of snub of the former Bush administration. That's funny because it probably wouldn't win if more Americans knew who David Frost is and that he works for Al Jazeera English.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY - MILK.

I'll check back in on this post and tally the results after the show.

If you go and look at some lists of this year's movies, the mainstream movies were all just really tired and sad. Nothing great and nothing really bad, just lots of movies that make you shrug and think, 'so what?' But what do you expect from a time when the teen pop senations proclaim their virginity with 'purity rings'. At age 20. The 1950s just called, they want their stupidity back.

Cult and genre flicks had a much better year; there was some fun to be had from those selections. Maybe the Obama election, the financial crisis and the changing of the decade will energize non-mainstream entertainment again. The horror cycle will probably wane and sci-fi should rebound as we move from and even-numbered decade to an odd-numbered decade, so that holds promise. The more alternatives there are to dull 'award winners', the happier I'll be ...

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