This week's schedule:
Monday -
Art & Design,
Music
Tuesday -
Technical Achievements
Wednesday -
Short Films,
Special Feature Films
Thursday -
Writing & Directing,
Acting
Friday -
Best Picture
...and we've reached the end of our 2012 Oscar Commentary. Thanks for stopping by, folks, see you next year--wait, what? Oh you want me to actually talk about the Best Picture nominees? Psh, fine. Here you go.
THE ARTIST
Why It Might Win: Let's see how gently I can put this.
The Artist, is, ahem,
strongly favored to win Best Picture on Sunday night. It won at the Golden Globes. It won at the Producers' Guild. It won at the Directors' Guild.
It didn't win at the Screenwriters' Guild, but that's because it was foreign and ineligible. It won at the BAFTAs. In fact, the only conspicuous feather missing from its cap of awards was from the SAG Awards. Let's face it, what do actors know about anything, right? So, yeah,
The Artist has some sizable momentum behind it. It's also an excellent movie, which fluffs up the myth of Hollywood and has an adorable dog. The Academy shouldn't be able to put up much of a fight.
THE DESCENDANTS
Why It Might Win: Speaking of award shows, here we have the other movie that won at the Globes and the Screenwriters' Guild. It does have a bit of Hollywood pedigree behind, featuring a Certified Movie Star (Clooney) and helmed by Alexander Payne, who people in Hollywood keeping treating like some kind of unrecognized genius. It's big, it's sappy, it's got kids, plus some death on the side. It certainly feels like a classic Best Picture nominee. Thankfully, we've seen the Academy get smarter over the past decade and movies like
The Descendants seem to be falling out of favor. It will take a lot of voters clinging to the past to lift this movie over
The Artist.
EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE
Why It Might Win: Well, the voters had one collective aneurism when they voted this into the category, so it's conceivable that it could happen again and they all blindly give it Hollywood's top honor. It should be pointed out, though, that
Loud has exactly two nominations: this one and Best Supporting Actor for Max von Sydow. It has been eons since a Best Picture winner wasn't up for Director, Actor/Actress or Screenplay. The trends (and basic, common sense) do not bode well for this grating tale of national tragedy and autism.
THE HELP
Why It Might Win: The SAG Awards breathed a sparkle of life into
The Help when they handed it their highest award, for Best Acting Ensemble. For a brief moment, it looked as if
The Artist might have a shadow of a challenger. However, when you stop and think about it, that SAG win makes sense.
The Help does have excellent acting. What it doesn't have is strong directing or writing, which the Academy evidently noted when they chose not to nominate it for those categories. Perhaps the sheer strength of the performances will generate enough good will to elevate it to the top of the heap. It seems unlike, but it's not entirely out of the question.
HUGO
Why It Might Win:
Hugo is proof that not all Academy Award nominations are equal. It leads the whole pack this year with eleven nominations. Yet, too many of those are found in the technical and art awards, which traditionally have little bearing over Best Picture decisions.
Martin Scorsese is up for Director and it nabbed an unfortunate Adapted Screenplay award, but no acting nominations to speak of is never a good sign. Of course, the movie looks beautiful and it really does deserve those Pretty Things Are Pretty Awards that air in the first hour of the show. Best Picture, though? Not so much. Unless the film history angle wins over a whole bunch of very stupid voters,
Hugo will have to cry into its Art Direction award.
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
Why It Might Win: Woody Allen! He's a guy who makes movies! Been making them for some time, in fact! Some of them were even considered good! Hollywood loves old guys who make some good movies! This is the logic necessary to convince yourself that
Midnight in Paris has a chance. It may have been Allen's best movie is years... but that's really not the compliment it could be. This is no
Annie Hall. This is a light-hearted piece of fluff that will probably walk away with a Screenplay award and nothing else. As with so many other films in this category, a lack of acting nominations really speaks volumes about what's going on. Allen's Hollywood insider status can only get him so far. It won't get him to Best Picture this year.
MONEYBALL
Why It Might Win:
Moneyball feels like a poor man's
The Social Network to me. Both are tales about intellectual pioneers and iconoclasts who effect massive change in their respective worlds.
Both are written by Aaron Sorkin, who is firmly in love-him-or-hate-him territory. Both will never win Best Picture. I mean, being someone who obsess over sabermetrics every April through October, I'd love to see a movie about on-base-percentage, WAR, VORP, BABIP and so on succeed.
Moneyball is not that movie, unfortunately. It's a plucky underdog sports movie, not that far removed from those plucky underdog sports movies you liked all those years ago. Plucky underdog sports movies don't have a great track record at the Oscars.
Moneyball will do nothing to change that.
THE TREE OF LIFE
Why It Might Win: Well, if movie critics voted on these awards, this would be a near slam-dunk win. Terrence Malik's epic about life itself has certainly raked in some high praise from the artsy end of movie viewers. There's a chance that the Academy could finally get on that train and go all-in on this massive, dense, inscrutable film. But, the viewership of the award ceremony would crumble and die. People would be sitting on their couches, bitching about how those ivory tower intellectuals said that terrible movie with dinosaurs was better than that uplifting story about the Civil Rights movement (note:
The Help is NOT about the Civil Rights movement).
The Academy could give
The Tree of Life the Best Picture award. They would just be running the risk of never giving out a Best Picture award ever again.
WAR HORSE
Why It Might Win: Spielberg! He's a guy a guy who makes movies! See where I'm going here? So many of the Best Picture nominees this year feel so obligatory,
making it hard to keep the cynicism at bay. In all fairness,
War Horse is much better than it could have been. It's big and epic and full of explosions, grime and haunted looks on the faces of innocent young men. Sure, fine, that's great. There's just nothing special enough about it. I feel like a broken record, but observe: no director nomination. No acting nominations. No writing nomination.
War Horse is hanging out with
Hugo in the ignored-awards ghetto. This is the movie that will wrestle Best Picture away from the other eight nominees? I don't think so.
So, there are all nine. Are we done yet? No, you want me to predict winners too? If you insist...
Who Will Win:
The Artist
Who Should Win:
The Artist
As you must have noticed above, the "Why It Might Win" sections should have been renamed "Why It Might Beat
The Artist." There's just no getting around the fact that the awards this year might as well not even be aired. Best Picture was locked up months ago, as were most of the other categories. There is a chance for upsets in Screenwriting, Lead Actress and Documentary, but everything else seems set in stone. The Academy Award nominations this year were far too safe and did little to recognize even remotely challenging films. We're only two years removed from
The Hurt Locker taking down the most profitable film of all time. There is hope to be had. Unfortunately, the Oscars turned back into the Oscars this year, forcing us to watch them try to justify
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close being considered a finalist for Best Movie of 2011. Thankfully,
The Artist is a fairly great movie and I'll be happy enough to see it win. There are just so many other great films from this past year that should have been discussed. The Academy let us all down this year. It's only fitting that a silent movie will win everything.
