Simon's Oscar Preview: Writing & Directing

This week's schedule:
Monday - Art & Design, Music
Tuesday - Technical Achievements
Wednesday - Short Films, Special Feature Films
Thursday - Writing & Directing, Acting
Friday - Best Picture

Films I haven't seen are marked accordingly.

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
Nominees: Another Year, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech

Who Will Win: Inception
Who Should Win: The King's Speech

This one's a bit hard to predict. The Writers' Guild chose Christopher Nolan's insanely ambitious Inception script over others, yet The King's Speech is certainly the more recognized movie among the Oscar nominees. On top of that, you've got the fact that Inception is full of poorly fleshed-out characters and occasional chunks of clunky dialogue, while The King's Speech is one of most wonderfully language-based films I've seen in recent memory. Ultimately, I think voters are gonna throw Nolan a bone here, especially considering the popularity Inception received from actual movie-goers. The Academy has a history of using the writing awards to placate films that won't win the bigger awards. Whether that fact favors Inception or The King's Speech is yet to be seen.

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
Nominees: 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter's Bone

Who Will Win: The Social Network
Who Should Win: True Grit

There is virtually no way Aaron Sorkin can lose here. His pithy, blisteringly witty script for The Social Network has been receiving accolades all year long and the Oscars will be no exception. Now, personally, I find Sorkin' script incredibly obnoxious. The infamous Sorkin-style dialogue transformers real people into hyper-verbose caricatures, all while carrying out a truly terrifying piece of character assassination against Mark Zuckerberg. If we interpret the field's title in the most literal sense, I feel True Grit is the best adaptation of the year. The Coen brothers' version of Charles Portis' novel is far more true to the source material that the old John Wayne version, dragging the subject matter into the dark and brooding end of the pool. Winter's Bone is another intriguing candidate. Either way, even though I'm betting on The Social Network, the less Sorkin in my life, the better.

DIRECTING
Nominees: Darren Aronofsky - Black Swan, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen - True Grit, David Fincher - The Social Network, Tom Hooper - The King's Speech, David O. Russell - The Fighter

Who Will Win: David Fincher
Who Should Win: Darren Aronofsky

Ok, who should really win this award is poor, ignored Christopher Nolan, whose visionary work on Inception shows the true power a director can exert over a film. Even with its many flaws, Inception's directing is beyond compare. So, of course, Nolan wasn't even nominated. Fincher has the inside track here, although, if the voters end up getting behind The King's Speech instead of The Social Network, Tom Hooper could swoop in. Of the candidates who are actually nominated, my vote goes to Aronofsky. Black Swan is another flawed movie that is catapulted into another level by intelligent, edgy camera work and a limitless sense of visual style. Aronofsky will probably always be too out-there and experimental to truly win over Academy voters, but we can dream.