Oscar picks

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010, 7:05 pm

Because you care, here are my picks for the Oscars, not who I think will win, but who I want to win. I'm going to go ahead and pick every award even when I don't know a damn thing about it. What's a blog for?

Picture: District 9 is still the number one movie in my top ten, so I see no reason why I wouldn't root for it here. As a solid section option, I will root for "not Avatar". I don't think The Blind Side was the best movie of the year by any stretch, but I'd much (much much) rather see it win than Avatar.

Director: I'd love for Kathryn Bigelow to take this one just to strike a blow for equality, but I can't actually root for the movie because I haven't seen it. (It's still on Long Wait here from Netflix. If it stays that way all the way up to the Oscars, I'll just have to Redbox it.) I don't really want to see him make a speech, but the sheer visual balls of Inglourious Basterds means that I'd applaud Quentin Tarantino if he took this one home.

Actor: This is a rough category for me because I've actually only seen one of the movies. From the perspective of "always the bridesmaid" + "should give a good speech", then, I'm rooting for Jeff Bridges.

Actress: Having not seen Precious, I'm rooting for Carey Mulligan at the moment. Meryl Streep is always great, but she doesn't need another award to tell us that. Share the wealth, Meryl.

Supporting Actor: Stanley Tucci was the best part of The Lovely Bones. Everyone loved Christoph Waltz in Basterds, of course, and I enjoyed his performance as well, but I can't shake the feeling that the character was more juicy than the performance. Tucci was the epitome of the creepy child molester without being a stereotype. It's a difficult line to walk.

Supporting Actress: Vera Farmiga is smokin'.

Animated Feature: Up by the barest of noses over Mr. Fox. This is really difficult. Both movies were beautiful and wonderfully voiced. I'm taking Up on the strength of just being a bit tighter, story-wise. I'd be ok with a tie, though.

Original Screenplay: To call Tarantino's script a script is to demean the efforts of screenwriters who write actual movies. It was revenge porn: a bunch of arousing scenes thrown together with little in the way of glue to keep them together. Because I put Up ahead of Mr. Fox on the strength of its screenplay, then, I'll root for it here.

Adapted Screenplay: I think I have to go with District 9 here, if only so people can complain all over again (completely wrongly) that it turned from an interesting character movie into Transformers: South Africa.

Documentary Feature: I haven't seen any of these yet, sadly, so I'll root for The Cove on the strength of social message and real-world effect combined with the sheer balls it took to get the footage they got.

Original Score: I can't really say I remember any of these. Mr. Fox's score was done by Alexandre Desplat, though, and I like French people, so I'll root for that.

Original Song: I didn't like "Down in New Orleans" and I don't remember which song "Almost There" was from The Princess and the Frog, so: go go T Bone Burnett!

Film Editing: I'll go Basterds here even though the shots that have stayed with me are one-takes. I certainly can't explain why, but I'll go with the theory that it's not just framing and lighting that give a film such a strong visual mood, so I bet Basterds probably had great editing as well. How's that?

Cinematography: Basterds again.

Visual Effects: Avatar, I guess. I think James Cameron's visual imagination was sort of stunted -- he didn't manage to invent anything on Pandora that felt entirely new. Everything had an Earth analogue. But the world was visually impressive nonethelesss, as much as I prefer the gritty realism of District 9's effects, I suppose we should acknowledge the advances Avatar brought about.

Sound Editing: Um? Up! Just 'cause.

Sound Mixing: Star Trek. Same reason.

Live Action Short: I don't care as long as English is not the first language of whoever goes up to accept the award.

Animated Short: Same, with preference for Fabrice O. Jourbert. For reasons mentioned above.

Foreign Film: France!

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