82nd Annual Academy Award Nominees: My Predictions

Blame The Dark Knight for ruining the Oscars. Last year, people were so upset their precious Batman movie wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, the Academy responded with a most illogical decision: Expand the Best Picture race to 10 nominees instead of 5, in an attempt to boost the telecast’s ratings with bigger box office hits among nominees. In short, they decided to dumb it down.

This is incredibly short-sighted and unimaginative; do they really think more people would have tuned in for an unceremonious Best Picture nod for The Dark Knight, one it was sure to lose? To merely hear the title mentioned before the drum-roll of the final envelope? No, DK fans tuned in for the far more compelling reason of seeing whether Heath Ledger would win, who would accept the award, and for their hearts to break one more time over his passing.

If the Academy truly wants to bring in a wider audience, they should improve the entertainment value of their telecast, not devalue the nominees. Add star power to the presenters, limit musical numbers to the Best Song nominees (and keep those moving briskly at that), and trade dull montages of movies we’ve presumably seen for new content. (Personally, I’ve always wanted to see more acting at the Oscars. How about live skits where actors re-enact scenes from the nominated films, to hilarious effect?)

The Oscars will never be the Superbowl. They are not the People’s Choice Awards. (Or the Kids’ Choice Awards. Or the MTV Movie Awards, etc.) The award for the movies making the most money is…the money. However often we may disagree with the Academy’s choices (choices I am never shy to criticize), there is at least the intention of honoring quality work that will stand the test of time, rather than soak up box office dollars and then immediately evaporate from our consciousness. (Yes, it was an outrage that Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash, but at least it didn’t lose to Wedding Crashers.)

The Academy has chosen to reach beyond its modest ratings and greedily court a demographic that isn’t going to watch their show anyway. And they will alienate their true fans in the process.

Alright, that’s my rant. Down to business.



(Note on abbreviations: NYFC, LAFC, NSFC, NBR, and CC are the major film critics' awards. GG is the Golden Globes. SAG, WGA, DGA, and PGA are the guild awards for actors, writers, directors, and producers. All actors, writers, and directors have their Oscar record to date expressed as their number of nominations, comma, number of wins.)

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges	Crazy Heart	*LAFC, *CC, *GG, *SAG	4,0
George Clooney	Up in the Air	*NYFC, *NBR, CC, GG, SAG	2,1
Matt Damon	The Informant!	GG	1,0 [acting only]
Daniel Day-Lewis	Nine	GG	4,2
Robert Downey Jr.	Sherlock Holmes	*GG	2,0
Colin Firth	A Single Man	CC, GG, SAG	0,0
Morgan Freeman	Invictus	*NBR, CC, GG, SAG	4,1
Joseph Gordon-Levitt	500 Days of Summer	GG	0,0
Tobey Maguire	Brothers	GG	0,0
Viggo Mortensen	The Road	CC	1,0
Jeremy Renner	The Hurt Locker	*NSFC, CC, SAG	0,0
Michael Stuhlbarg	A Serious Man	GG	0,0

Tender Mercies, the 1983 film about an alcoholic country singer trying to put his life back together, finally won beloved character actor Robert Duvall the Oscar on his fourth attempt. Now re-write that sentence with Crazy Heart, 2009, Jeff Bridges, and “fifth” (Duvall just happens to have a small role in Crazy Heart, too.) Bridges has scored with his peers (the SAG), the critics, and whoever those Golden Globe people are, so I think the race is already over. His closest competitor is George Clooney, as a different kind of addict (a serial traveler) in need of redemption. An Oscar campaign doesn’t come more pedigreed than Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela directed by Clint Eastwood; that nomination is a done deal too. Colin Firth, as a professor in mourning, has picked up nods from all the major award circles, so voters will happily send their favorite Mr. Darcy (of both Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’s Diary) to his first nomination.

Only the fifth spot is the least bit vulnerable, though almost every other award group has chosen Jeremy Renner, the bomb detonator of The Hurt Locker. If the Academy wants to shake things up, they could reach out to comeback king Robert Downey Jr. (bringing his debonair comedy to Sherlock Holmes), a shape-shifting Matt Damon (gaining weight DeNiro-style to play a schlubby whistle-blower), Oscar virgin Tobey Maguire (with career-best notices), or the Serious (and quietly unraveling) Michael Stuhlbarg.

Best Actress

Emily Blunt	The Young Victoria	CC, GG	0,0
Sandra Bullock	The Blind Side	*CC, *GG, *SAG	0,0
Sandra Bullock	The Proposal	GG	0,0
Marion Cotillard	Nine	CC [supporting], GG	1,1
Helen Mirren	The Last Station	GG, SAG	3,1
Yolande Moreau	Seraphine	*LAFC, *NSFC	0,0
Carey Mulligan	An Education	*NBR, CC, GG, SAG	0,0
Julia Roberts	Duplicity	GG	3,1
Saoirse Ronan	The Lovely Bones	CC	1,0
Gabourey Sidibe	Precious	CC, GG, SAG	0,0
Meryl Streep	It’s Complicated	GG	15,2
Meryl Streep	Julie and Julia	*NYFC, *CC, *GG, SAG	15,2

The most unlikely rivals are competing for the title of all-out Queen of 2009 – one of our greatest actresses and one of our dullest – Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock. In a time when studios are still leery of financing films starring women, these actresses had two box office hits apiece last year. They each picked up a Golden Globe nomination for one of them, each WON a Golden Globe for the other, and they even tied with each other at the Critics’ Choice Awards. Even though both their Oscar bid films got mediocre reviews, these two women own this category on the strength of the year they had, and everyone else is just along for the ride.

Two new-comers will make the top five: 24-year-old Carey Mulligan got sterling notices as a young woman navigating her future, and 26-year-old Gabourey Sidibe astonished as a young woman with seemingly no future. Finally, 2006 winner Helen Mirren returns in a lusty, tragicomic role as Leo Tolstoy’s wife, so that pretty much ends the race.

If anyone surprises, I bet it will be Emily Blunt as The Young Victoria, because Oscar is quite the sucker for British queens (Judi Dench was nominated for this same role in Mrs. Brown.) Disappointment for The Lovely Bones and Nine has sidelined Saoirse Ronan and Marion Cotillard (the latter teetering between the lead and supporting categories), and no one has even heard of surprise critics’ winner Yolande Moreau.

Best Supporting Actor

Matt Damon	Invictus	CC, GG, SAG	1,0 [acting only]
Woody Harrelson	The Messenger	*NBR, CC, GG, SAG	1,0
Christian McKay	Me and Orson Welles	CC	0,0
Alfred Molina	An Education	CC	0,0
Christopher Plummer	The Last Station	GG, SAG	0,0
Paul Schneider	Bright Star	*NSFC	0,0
Stanley Tucci	The Lovely Bones	CC, GG, SAG	0,0
Christoph Waltz	Inglourious Basterds	*NYFC, *LAFC, *NBR, *CC, *GG, *SAG	0,0

It’s tough for an unknown performer to lead an Oscar race, but fans, critics, and insiders are so enthusiastic about Austrian Christoph Waltz’s wicked Nazi turn in Inglorious Basterds that he has pretty much already won the award before the nominations have even been announced.

Those who will be honored just to be nominated include Woody Harrelson, who delivers news of soldiers’ deaths to the next of kin in The Messenger, and Christopher Plummer’s embodiment of Leo Tolstoy’s final years, which will earn the 80-year-old his first Oscar nod. Stanley Tucci captured hearts with his quiet turn as Julia Child’s husband Paul, but his polar-opposite performance, as the sinister neighbor in The Lovely Bones, is the square focus of his awards push; though Bones was poorly received overall, support for his performance is still afloat. Matt Damon hasn’t been nominated since he picked up Best Screenplay for Good Will Hunting, but he’ll return to the race not for his starring role in Soderbergh’s The Informant!, but for his smaller role as a South African soccer player.

Like the Best Actress race, all five nominees in this category at the SAG awards were also chosen by the Golden Globes, so it seems these five actors are untouchable. Hoping for upset are the men from An Education, blowhard father Alfred Molina and charming boyfriend Peter Sarsgaard, steely soldier Anthony Mackie of The Hurt Locker, boy-toy (or, more accurately, middle-aged-man-toy) Alec Baldwin of It’s Complicated, and Christian McKay as the title character in Me and Orson Welles.

Best Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz	Nine	GG, SAG	2,1
Vera Farmiga	Up in the Air	CC, GG, SAG	0,0
Anna Kedrick	Up in the Air	*NBR, CC, GG, SAG	0,0
Diane Kruger	Inglourious Basterds	SAG	0,0
Mo’Nique	Precious	*NYFC, *LAFC, *NSFC, *CC, *GG, *SAG	0,0
Julianne Moore	A Single Man	CC, GG	4,0
Samantha Morton	The Messenger	CC	2,0

Not to be outdone by Christoph Waltz, Mo’Nique is also winning every award in the business as another horrifying character, the abusive mother of Precious. She gave an amazingly clear-eyed performance and deserves the recognition, but my inner English schoolteacher is very cranky about having an Academy Award nominee with such a typographically ridiculous name. The ladies from Up in the Air are next in line, both Anna Kendrick as the chipper corporate-climber and Vera Farmiga as a seductive frequent flyer.

Then the possibilities are more liquid. There’s reigning winner Penelope Cruz, vamping up the sex appeal in Nine. If Nine gets any nods in the top categories at all it will be for her, though the musical could fizzle out altogether. There’s Julianne Moore, who still hasn’t won the big prize, but her one-scene performance didn’t pick up a SAG nomination, making an Oscar win impossible, and will voters really want to send her to bat a fifth time just so she can lose again? There’s Diane Kruger, as a German actress spying for the allies, who picked up a surprise SAG nod, but I think if Inglourious Basterds cracks this category, it will be with the devastating turn by Melanie Laurant, the heart and soul of the film’s [fictional] revenge upon the Nazis. Finally there’s Samantha Morton, the war widow of The Messenger.

It’s a crap-shoot; I’ll say Penelope Cruz and Julianne Moore, and hope for a Melanie Laurant upset.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Crazy Heart	Scott Cooper	WGA	0,0
District 9	Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell	CC, GG	both 0,0
An Education	Nick Hornby	CC	0,0
Fantastic Mr. Fox	Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach	CC	both 1,0
Julie and Julia	Nora Ephron	WGA	3,0
Precious	Geoffrey Fletcher	CC, WGA	0,0
A Single Man	Tom Ford, David Scearce	CC	both 0,0
Star Trek	Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman	WGA	both 0,0
Up in the Air	Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner	*LAFC, *NBR, *CC, *GG, WGA	both 0,0 [writing only]

Leading the pack are Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for taking the interior monologue of the Walter Kirn novel Up in the Air and bringing it to an external, visual medium. Similarly, Geoffrey Fletcher will score for reworking the first-person narrative of Precious (which is, as its awkward subtitle declares, Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire.) An Education missed out on a WGA nod on an eligibility technicality, but Nick Hornby’s tender adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoir will easily land in the Academy’s top five.

Surely that film’s exclusion is the only explanation for the WGA’s inclusion of Julie and Julia; Nora Ephron’s grafting of the memoirs by Ms. Powell and Ms. Child was universally panned for its dreadful Julie half (and merely adequate Julia half.) So I’ll give one wild card slot to the low-key Crazy Heart, which avoided every cliché it approached, and the other to sleeper hit District 9, the apartheid allegory (based on a short film) that’s already on its way to cult classic status.

The remaining candidates are A Single Man, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, Anthony Peckham’s Invictus, and Star Trek.

Best Original Screenplay

Avatar	James Cameron	WGA	0,0 [writing only]
500 Days of Summer	Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber	CC, WGA	both 0,0
The Hangover	Jon Lucas, Scott Moore	WGA	both 0,0
The Hurt Locker	Mark Boal	CC, GG, WGA	0,0
In the Loop	Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Ian Martin, Tony Roche	*NYFC	all 0,0
Inglourious Basterds	Quentin Tarantino	*CC, GG	1,1
It’s Complicated	Nancy Meyers	GG	1,0
A Serious Man	Joel and Ethan Coen	*NSFC, *NBR, CC, WGA	both 3,2
Up	Pete Docter, Bob Peterson	CC	Docter 2,0; Peterson 1,0

Here is a race that’s truly up for grabs. The Hurt Locker is maybe the front-runner, followed by A Serious Man, my favorite Coen brothers film of the decade. Tarantino’s audacious rewrite of world history Inglourious Basterds was also ineligible for a WGA nod on a technicality, but it too is a certainty for the Academy’s shortlist.

Since the inception of the Best Animated Feature category, it has been almost a law of Oscar gravity that the favorite animated film of the year (Wall-E, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Shrek) is passed up by the WGA but nominated by the Academy’s Writers’ Branch on its way to the inevitable Animated Feature win. Therefore, Up is in.

It’s not hard to reason that Inglourious and Up’s omissions are the reason the Guild included Avatar and The Hangover. Cameron’s overripe dialogue for Titanic was rightfully denied a writing nomination, so I don’t think he’ll charm the Writers’ branch this time around either. And only in this lower-the-bar year could a hunk of garbage like The Hangover be a contender for anything, let alone its lazy script. (Besides, it should be in the adapted category for ripping off almost everything in the Flanders-goes-to-Vegas episode of The Simpsons, with deeply diminished returns.) I’m also crossing off Nancy Meyers, who is cut from the same cloth as Nora Ephron, and In the Loop, a little-seen political satire from across the pond. There are long-shots in The Messenger and The Young Victoria (by Gosford Park winner Julian Fellowes.) So I’m giving the last slot to 500 Days of Summer, the most acclaimed romantic comedy of the year, for its clever deconstruction of a failed relationship.