Brad Pitt vs King Kong

OK, you have seen the list of nominees. Despite leading with 13 nominations, Benjamin Button is quite likely going to win only a couple maybe only 1. B.B. would be the front runner in the visual effects category. I’ve heard it described as groundbreaking. It is not, but it should and will win.

Putting a computerized aged Brad Pitt head on a midget doesn’t compare with the movies that have won for visual effects over the years. The Wizard of Oz lost in 1939 (In the height of The Great Depression, I remind you). In 1956, the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments was memorable. 1968, 2001 A Space Odyssey took us to outer space before Neil Armstrong got to the moon. 1977, Star Wars. 1980 – 1984 was swept by anything Spielberg or Lucas (2 Star Wars movies, 2 Indiana Jones movies and E.T.). Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Titanic, Gladiator, and all three Lord of the Rings movies have won in the recent past. I would not consider Buttons to be groundbreaking visual effects, the T-Rex from Jurassic Park would kick his butt, so would King Kong.

Slumdog Millionaire, the rags to riches tale, has 10 nominations and may win somewhere in the range of 5-8 of them. Which ones? Probably Best Picture, maybe director…my complete list of picks will be posted prior to the Oscar telecast.

Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor are Winslet and Ledger, you can take that to the bank. Maybe you better put in under the mattress, given the state of our banks, in this economy.

Supporting Actress is always a wildcard. Remember when Marissa Tomei won for My Cousin Vinny in 1992. I picked that one and won the contest in my local paper that year. The winner is usually surprising, but not if you know what to look for in a nominee. Are they new? Are they young? Are they hot? Examples please…

In 1992, Tomei was new young and hot. 1993, Anna Paquin – young (age 11). 1995,1997,1999, 2001 -Mira Sorvino, Kim Basinger, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Connelly –hot, hot, hot, hot. 2006, Jennifer Hudson – new. 1990 Whoopi Goldberg – ha I tricked you, the new, young and/or hot clearly does not always work.

Marissa Tomei is back this year in The Wrestler, and she is not new anymore. She is not technically classified as young at age 44. This is sad news to me, since I will be celebrating my 45th birthday tomorrow. She is still hot as the “stripper with the heart of gold” character that we have seen before. She probably won’t win, she already has an Oscar and that counts against you in the voting, more on that later.

This comes down to a Penalope Cruz battle vs. a 10 minute scene for Viola Davis in Doubt.

The last of the “major” categories that I have not mentioned is Best Actor. Here we go, I will try to explain this as delicately as possible. Front runners are Senn Penn for Milk and Mickey Rourke for the Wrestler. Longshot is Frank Langella as Nixon in Frost/Nixon.

Langella and Penn play real people and that gets you votes. Penn’s character is a gay rights activist in California, nominated in a year of some political turmoil over gay rights in California. That gets you more votes. If you look at the academies history of presenting an Oscar to a gay character, and I am thinking specifically of Russell Crowe’s, Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator, you would think that Penn would have a guaranteed win.

But in this corner, weighing 250 pounds and apparently using the same steroid dealer as A-Rod, is Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler.

Hollywood loves a riches to rags to riches story, because so many of the voters have been there and done that. Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Hard to say if Rourke can overcome the political message vote for the much loved Penn (I loved him as Spicoli, in Fast Times and Ridgemont High.). One thing in Rourke’s favor is that Penn has won before in this category, 2003 Mystic River. (He beat Bill Murray and Johnny Depp.)

Screenplays come in two types adapted and original. Original is like Wall-E, not based on any classic novel or Milk, a story written directly for the screen in the hopes of winning Oscars from political Hollywood types.
Adapted is like Benjamin Button, from a classic short story from F. Scott Fitzgerald, that Hollywood folk have been drooling over for many years and could finally make now that technology has allowed us to age in reverse. Adapted screenplays are also like Slumdog Millionaire, from the autobiography of Regis Philbin, adapted into something completely different.

There is a large group of small categories that will make or break your Oscar pool. Involving editing, sound, makeup, animation, both short and feature length, documentaries, short and feature length, cinematography, costume, and foreign language.

I will try to explain the technical process of making educated guesses for these minor categories in my next post, but here is a quick tip. Does the subject matter even remotely involve the Holocaust. Pick it.