BEST PICTURE:
In order of likelihood:
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Milk
The Dark Knight
Wall-E
I think Slumdog and Button are locks – they both have a shitload of critical acclaim, a lot of awards and award nominations, and most importantly they’re getting award nominations at the right time (the Golden Globe and Screen Actors’ Guild award noms were very favorable for both films). Milk isn’t quite as strong because it got mostly shut out at the Golden Globes, but it’s critically as popular as Slumdog or Button is and Sean Penn carries a lot of Academy weight. The Dark Knight is The Dark Knight, but it’s not as strong a contender as the first three films, mostly because at this point it’s only getting nominated for Heath Ledger’s performance and Christopher Nolan’s direction (which isn’t entirely fair to the film, but whatever). My fifth pick is Wall-E, mostly because I like to pick one longshot every year and this year Wall-E is a longshot despite being an astounding popular critical and popular favorite, mostly because, hey, cartoon. Sure, it’ll win Best Animated Picture in a heartbeat, but winning the ghetto category isn’t hard, you know?
If there’s any deviation from my picks, it’ll probably be either Wall-E or Dark Knight getting replaced with either Frost/Nixon (which really isn’t strong enough to merit a win in most categories and hasn’t done well in critical awards or major award nominations, but it’s a Ron Howard movie and I think Ron Howard could film his cock for ninety minutes and then Ron Howard’s Dick On Film would get a Best Picture nomination with a little luck) or The Wrestler (which is getting a serious push late in the game as it capitalizes on surprise crowd heat, to put it in wrestling parlance).
BEST DIRECTOR:
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Gus Van Sant, Milk
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight
Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler
Best Director picks usually mirror Best Picture picks with one exception so everybody can talk about how “X can be Best Picture but its director isn’t Best Director, what’s up with that?” Boyle and Fincher are locks just as their respective movies are, I think, and I think Christopher Nolan gets a nomination for Best Director even if Dark Knight doesn’t get a Best Picture nod because most of the acclaim for that film that wasn’t given to Heath Ledger was given to him (and rightfully so). Van Sant is a pure if-his-movie-gets-a-BP-nod pick; if Milk gets knocked out, I think he does as well. Aronofsky gets my longshot pick in this category for The Wrestler on the “everybody likes his work and thinks he’s due for an Academy nod of some kind” tip.
Other potential nominees are Ron “my milkshake brings the Academy voters to the yard” Howard for Frost/Nixon or Sam “suburbia sucks, guys, did I mention that” Mendes for Revolutionary Road. Bear in mind that the DGA announces their award nominees on the 9th and that has the potential to introduce an underdog in the mix (maybe Andrew Stanton for Wall-E, say, or Jonathan Demme for Rachel Getting Married), but my list is probably pretty close to what Oscar ends up recognizing.
BEST ACTOR:
Sean Penn, Milk
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Penn, Rourke, and Langella all have a 99 percent chance of getting nominated; all three performances are brilliant, Langella’s never won an Academy Award despite being an acting force practically his entire life, Rourke has the magical comeback story and Penn is the recipient of “hey, this guy is the best actor of our lifetimes, maybe we should give him more awards” buzz (and rightly so). Jenkins’ work in The Visitor is a career best from a veteran character actor; I was worried it would get overlooked but then he got a SAG nod, and SAG nods tend to translate to Oscar noms. The final slot probably boils down to either Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio for Revolutionary Road – both are popular actors, both are relatively underrecognized by the Academy despite strong bodies of work, and both would look really good accepting an Oscar. I’m going with Pitt, who had a better year than DiCaprio thanks to a critically popular role in Burn After Reading in addition to Button, and who got the SAG nod.
(Yes, I am aware that my list is a straight copy of the SAG best actor nomination list. Fuck off.)
Other than DiCaprio maybe swapping in for Pitt or Jenkins, I don’t see this list differing too much. Maybe, if Dustin Hoffman (Last Chance Harvey) or Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges), both nominated for a Golden Globe, get lucky… but it would take an awful lot of luck.
BEST ACTRESS:
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Hathaway, at this point, is a lock not only to get nominated but also probably has very good odds to win the award: she’s a critically acclaimed young ingenue, and Oscar loves critically acclaimed young ingenues. This would bother me more if Hathaway weren’t so inherently fantastic. Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep and she will get a nomination because she is Meryl Streep and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Jolie has the critical heft behind her, but here’s the thing: the Academy actually doesn’t like her that much, mostly because – and this is stupid – she’s “tabloidy” in that she acts out and cusses and and has a vial of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood somewhere and she does action movies and she steals Brad Pitt from people. I think she’ll get the nom anyway, though.
Kate Winslet isn’t going to win this year, not in Best Actress, and I’ll be the first to say that the fact that Kate Winslet does not have seventy billion Academy Awards right now is a bigger crime against humanity than Darfur. Well, no, not really, but it’s pretty bad. But she has a good chance at getting nominated. Hawkins didn’t get a SAG nomination, but her performance has gotten a lot of critical attention, and it’s a really cheerful movie that people like watching, and that helps a lot.
If there’s any differing from my list, it’ll be a swapout of Winslet or Hawkins for Melissa Leo in Frozen River (because she got a SAG nomination, despite nobody actually seeing her movie) or Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy (which is actually probably the best female performance of the year overall, but it was released really late and thus missed the opportunity to build up steam). Note that Williams also gets a little “grieving widow” cred (morbid as it might be to say that, but the Academy does pay attention to that sort of shit).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Josh Brolin, Milk
Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire
Ledger is a lock and 99 percent sure to win it as well, and something like that means the rest of the nominations get taken more on a “performances we want to honor with a nomination” basis. Doubt is an “actor’s movie” and Hoffman has the Golden Globe and SAG nods already, so he’s in. Downey Jr., like Hoffman, has the double-double of SAG and Golden Globe nods, and plus it is a performance where they can put up a clip of him on the broadcast in his blackface and everybody will laugh, and the Academy loves that shit, so he’s probably in. (He gets a lot of help from the “Ledger is winning this” factor, given that his performance was the sort that, in another year with no Ledger, might not have gotten nominated because people wouldn’t actually want it to win.) Milk had three separate performances the Academy might choose to honor (Brolin, James Franco and Emile Hirsch) and Brolin has both the most cred and the most acclaim. Dev Patel is the only serious chance that Slumdog has for an acting nomination, and it’s really, really popular with the awards crowd, and he got a SAG nomination too. So he’s probably in.
Patel and Brolin are the likeliest candidates for not getting the nomination, and if they don’t it’ll probably be one of Franco (for Milk or possibly even Pineapple Express), or juuuust maybe Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder because he was very funny and got a Golden Globe nomination for it.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Amy Adams, Doubt
Viola Davis, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader
Rosemarie Dewitt, Rachel Getting Married
Pretty straightforward. Cruz has won, like, everything for her role in Vicky Cristina (as much as I disliked that movie). Adams and Davis are both actors in the “actor’s movie” this year and both were excellent and critically hurrahed. Kate Winslet is Kate Winslet, except this time she has a Golden Globe and SAG nod. (She won’t win, because she is Kate Winslet, AKA “the Susan Lucci of the Academy Awards.”) Dewitt is the second fiddle to Anne Hathaway, which is a good place to be.
Marisa Tomei might sneak in there for The Wrestler, but other than that, it’s pretty straightforward, I think.
EDIT TO ADD:
By multiple request:
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire (from Q and A by Vikas Swarup)
Eric Roth for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story)
Peter Morgan for Frost/Nixon (from his stage play)
Justin Haythe for Revolutionary Road (from the novel by Richard Yates)
David Hare for The Reader (from the novel by Bernard Schlink)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Jenny Lumet for Rachel Getting Married
Charlie Kaufman for Synecdoche, N.Y.
Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon for Wall-E
Robert D. Siegel for The Wrestler
Thomas McCarthy for The Visitor
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I didn’t like Vicky Cristina Barcelona either, but Penelope Cruz’ role on it was the best thing about it.
I’m hoping that Tom Cruse doesn’t get nominated. But I say this largely because I could not actually sit all the way through Tropic Thunder. Movie was baaaaaad.
God, I hope you are wrong about Kate finally winning.
We must bring an end to this injustice!
It’s the category he got nominated for in the SAGs, I know, but Patel as supporting actor? He’s the star, period.
I hadn’t even released that Winslet has never won. That’s extraordinary. I really hope that doesn’t go on to become one of those enduring Oscar oversights.
I’m with NB on Tom Cruise, but I liked Tropic Thunder well enough. Downey Jr was better in Iron Man, though, and I thought Cruise’s performance was horrific.
Wall-E won’t get nommed for Best Picture; as you note, that’s why they have a separate category for cartoons now. It’s not really a ghetto any more than Best Foreign Language picture or Best Documentary or Best Short are.
I fear you’re right about the accolades to expect toward The Dark Knight, and especially toward Ledger. It’s a bit of a shame Ledger is getting such acclaim for that role while no one is mentioning Ironman at all. Downey gave one of his strongest performances, and the character actually changed, which is quite a lot more than I can say about a lot of the other fare out there.
On the other hand, I turned Tropic Thunder off. Just not entertained.
I think you’re most accurate about Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, although I also have to note that this weekend adds some buzz concerning Marley and Me, which is the sort of flick the academy lurves: its IMDb plot synopsis is “A family learns important life lessons from their adorable, but naughty and neurotic dog,” which seems tailor-made for the Oscars. “Important life lessons”? From a canine?
I think Aniston might get some attention for the same reasons you note Jolie probably won’t win. After all, Aniston’s the one Jolie “stole” Pitt from.
I think a little recognition for Cruise would be good, and I won’t discount Valkyrie; a long and troubled production history and a somewhat controversial release for a movie about Nazis trying to kill Hitler (!) that people of Berlin are loving, by most accounts, and that’s swayed some critics to say some really positive things about it. Plus, the Academy is already familiar with both Singer and McQuarrie, and flipped for the last movie the two did together (The Usual Suspects).
Any picks for the screenplay categories (original and adapted)?
Will, there is precisely zero buzz for Marley and Me. It is a shitty family film with no critical acclaim of any sort being released at the end of the year. So it made a lot of money in its opening weekend; big deal. The Academy Awards are, by nature, a fairly conservative organization, and the Academy still remembers how stupid it looked when it gave nominations to Ghost in 1990. Without some sort of critical support or awards-based momentum, a movie is hardpressed to get even a single nomination outside of the technical categories.
He gets less screen time than any of the other “supporting actors” in the category. Such is the danger of appearing in an ensemble film in a primary role.
Not that it matters, because he isn’t going to win no matter what category they push him for; if he gets a nomination that’s his “win.”
I sincerely hope Wall-E gets a best picture nom (and a win would be fantastic) and Kate finally gets to take home a little golden man.
@MGK: Marley has a fairly solid pedigree (its writer, Don Frank, already has an Oscar for Out of Sight), a fairly strong cast (including Alan Arkin, also an Oscar winner). It’s based on a best-selling memoir (Oscar likes literature connections), which makes it a true story (Oscar also likes), and includes the old Characters Learning Life Lessons (Oscar also likes lessons) From a Dog(!).
Mind you, I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard good things about it.
Concerning your addendum: Doubt will knock one of your adapted picks off, and I’d guess it’ll be The Reader. I’d also put The Dark Knight on it, though seeing your picks, I can’t figure out where, exactly.
If TDK gets an adapted screenplay nom, what exactly would the presenter say…
The Dark Knight adapted from Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Denny O’Neil, etc. work on Batman comics.
That precisely is why TDK won’t get an adapted nom. And perhaps this is me being overly cyncial about the academy, but if TDK gets any noms besides Ledger and maybe score, I’ll consider it a huge win. It’s a movie about super-heroes and since the academy is filled with a bunch of old fogies who consider comics ‘kids’ stuff’ I have to imagine that approving a Best Picture nom for The Dark Knight will cause them to prematurely roll around in their graves.
Fuck the Oscars. What are your picks for this year’s Razzies?
Lister, the Spirit’s going to flat-out run away and hide with the Razzies. It is to Will Eisner as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie is to Alan Moore.
Speaking of comic movies, I thought Hellboy 2 was fantastic and I hope it gets nominated for something.
Oh and Max Payne will dominate the Razzies this year. Hands down
I’m seeing an awful lot of reviews for Benjamin Button that can best be described as “lukewarm.” Not really getting the impression that it’s as universally critically acclaimed as you’re saying.
I haven’t seen most of the movies you’ve been discussing, nor the ones I’m about to mention, and I haven’t been keeping up with the ‘buzz’, but…
I’d have thought that Clint Eastwood would get a nomination for Director for Changeling or Gran Turismo, or maybe an Actor nod for the latter. This is based on nothing other than Eastwood being fairly awesome in a way that the Academy usually likes to honor.
I think you’re right on Brolin — he had two great turns this year, and deserves the nom for W. However, Hollywood is not going to want to nominate someone playing Bush right as he’s leaving office, so the Milk nom is a safer bet.
Slumdog will probably win best picture. It’s a great movie, but I have a quibble or two with some choices near the end that I think make it rank behind Wall-E and Dark Knight. There’s a chance that The Wrestler sneaks in and takes the prize. Button is a good movie, but it is a tier below the others. I haven’t seen Milk.
I think Nolan should win Director not just for making arguably the best movie, but for also actually advancing the craft of film making with his use of IMAX and practical effects. Dark Knight had shots that you could not have created without Nolan’s innovative thinking.
Rourke, Hathaway, Ledger, Cruz will take the acting awards.
I was going to ask you why no Ledger for Best Actor, forgot he was only supporting in TDK.