2005 Oscar Predictions
March 4, 2006
There will be few surprises at the Oscars tomorrow night, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be watched, if anything, we need the Oscar celebration more this year to get over that long and boring stretch run of the Winter Olympics. TV spectacles only come around once every few months, so savor the Oscars when they show, because there is nary an awards telecast (The Grammy’s? The Emmys? The People’s Choice Awards? Think again) that is as glamorous, as well respected, and as entertaining (when cut to a slim three hours) as the Academy Awards, even if guessing the winners this year is like shooting fish in a bathtub. Some things to look forward to, besides the awards, will be host John Stewart’s monologue, which, despite the obvious, tired “Brokeback Mountain” gay cowboy jokes, should be peppered with the kind of satirical political humor that makes his Comedy Central show such a hit, and with the current state of partisan politics (don’t let anyone tell you these people aren’t itching to appease the left) potential winners like George Clooney could provide a veritable bounty of topical sound bites. As for the rest of the show, I’m looking forward to seeing 81-year-old Robert Altman, the man who literally changed to face of genre filmmaking in the 70’s with such revisionist masterpieces as “MASH”, “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”, and “Nashville”, receive a lifetime achievement Oscar, an award that has eluded him his entire career. It’s long overdue, and the montage of clips preceding Altman’s acceptance, and the inevitable three-minute standing ovation, should be filled with prime examples of why he’s considered one of the ten greatest American directors of all time.
I’ll get to the Big Six awards in a minute, but there are a few smaller races that should be interesting. The toughest to choose is the Best Animated Feature category, where highly respected Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki’s traditionally animated “Howl’s Moving Castle” goes up against box-office stop-motion champs “Corpse Bride” and ‘Wallace and Gromit’, all of which were light years ahead of the expensive American CGI films of the year. Frankly, I don’t care who wins, but since Miyazaki and the guys from Aardman studios already have Oscars, I’d go with Tim Burton’s creepy and inventive “Corpse Bride”, the most original movie he’s produced in years. Next year, with “Ice Age 2” and Pixar’s “Cars” ready to restore CGI to its former glory, this year of traditional animation and stop motion at the Oscars may be a one-time thing. Elsewhere, in the technical categories, Clooney’s beautiful black and white “Good Night and Good Luck” will triumph in cinematography and Art Direction, “King Kong” should take most of the computer effects categories, the Kimono’s of “Memories of a Geisha” should secure a Costuming award, and Gustavo Santaolalla’s aching strumming guitar score for “Brokeback Mountain” should best two nominations for the oft-nominated John Williams. Those cuddly, heartbreaking penguins of “March of the Penguins” have stiff competition in the Best Documentary category with “Murderball” and the corporate expose “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”, while the topical Palestinian film “Paradise Now”, the only nominee in the category to play locally, should be a lock for Best Foreign Language Film. Finally, if “Hustle & Flow’s” “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” doesn’t take home Best Original Song, than at least star Terrence Howard’s performance of the catchy number should be one of the highlights of the telecast. I look forward to them all, but without further ado, here are my picks for the top six categories on this year’s program.
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Best Supporting Actress: This may be the toughest category of the night, with three first time nominees (Amy Adams, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams), a previous nominee (Catherine Keener), and one previous Best Actress winner (Frances McDormand). Weisz has picked up a few critics awards for her role as a dead activist in “The Constant Gardner”, and Williams steals every scene she is in in ‘Brokeback’ as the wife of Heath Ledger’s distant cowboy, but I think that, given her various acclaimed performances in 2005, from “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, to holding her own against a towering Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote”, the highly respected, and talented Keener will win the award she lost for “Being John Malkovich” six years ago. Personally, if I had a pick, I’d go for Amy Adams, whose performance in the criminally under seen “Junebug”, as a naïve pregnant southerner in awe of her eastern sister-in-law, is the heart of funny, poignant, and very realistic family portrait.
Should Win: Amy Adams, Junebug
Will Win: Catherine Keener, Capote
Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney is up for three Oscars this year, and his best shot at actually winning one is in this category, where he plays an American agent who gets involved with international conspiracies, and winds up in a torture chair, in “Syriana”. A sympathetic Academy trying to make amends for his “Sideways” snub last year might go for Paul Giamatti as a boxing coach in “Cinderella Man”, but the movie is virtually non-existent in any other categories, and might be forgotten by now. If there is an upset, it’ll be Matt Dillon for his sympathetic racist cop in “Crash” (the Academy might want to give the film something besides Best Original Screenplay), but in a night celebrating “Brokeback Mountain”, I see Jake Gyllenhaal, easily Heath Ledger’s equal in the meaty love epic, taking the prize. He’s come a long way from “Bubble Boy”, that’s for sure.
Should and Will Win: Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
Best Actress: Not really a difficult category, though it would have been had my pick for the year’s best female performance, Joan Allen in “The Upside of Anger” been nominated, but as it is, Reese Witherspoon in “Walk the Line” is a virtual runaway. She’s popular, she’ll look adorable on stage with the award, and her June Carter is the soul of a film primarily about the burnout of a great singer, and his redemption through a loving woman. Emmy winner Felicity Huffman is a dark horse for her complex performance in “Transamerica”, but nobody has seen that film, where “Walk the Line” was a big hit, so barring a last minute surge by Keira Knightly (not likely) or Dame Judi Dench (double not likely), this baby is all Reese’s.
Should Win: Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Will Win: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Best Actor: This is the strongest lineup of the night, and in a weaker year, Terrence Howard, the star of my favorite film of 2005, “Hustle & Flow”, would be a clear favorite for his performance as a dispirited pimp who turns his life around with an underground rap tape, but in this cutthroat category, he was lucky just to be nominated. Joaquin Phoenix goes the Jamie Foxx route with his all-singing, all-boozing take on Johnny Cash, but his isn’t even the best impersonation in the group, he’s third behind Hoffman’s brilliant Truman Capote, and David Strathairn’s amazing Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night and Good Luck”. The wildcard is Heath Ledger, giving the performance of a lifetime in a one of a kind film as the torn, secluded, and scared lover of Jake Gyllenhaal in “Brokeback Mountain”, but Hoffman, who has been so good in so many little seen films, has finally broke through into rarified air, and his Truman Capote is a marvel to behold. Five fine performances, but Hoffman is clearly the winner here.
Should and Will Win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Best Director: It’s nice to see two first time directors (Paul Haggis for “Crash”, and Bennett Miller for “Capote”), and one second time director (George Clooney for “Good Night and Good Luck”) included in this category along with veterans Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee, but they have virtually no chance of winning, so the nomination is recognition enough. The Academy loves Spielberg, and he’s won this award in the past when his film didn’t (“Saving Private Ryan” lost to “Shakespeare in Love” in ’98, but should have won), but “Munich” is hardly his best work, and a win here would be overkill, despite his stature as Hollywood’s most accomplished director. That leaves Taiwanese director Ang Lee, who, in a career of films with vastly different subject matter, from the American suburban wasteland of “The Ice Storm”, to the luscious romantic misunderstandings of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility”, has only been nominated one other time, for the robust, gravity defying martial arts epic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. His meticulous mise-en-scene for “Brokeback Mountain” is a thing of beauty, visually contrasting the freedom of a summer courtship on an open mountain range, with the oppressive secrecy and fear of violence of a repressed western state of mind. “Brokeback Mountain” was already a good story, but Lee turned it into a masterpiece, and he’ll re richly rewarded, even more than he already has, with Best Director.
Should and Will Win: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Best Picture: You can copy and paste everything I just said in the last category and apply it here; there will be no surprises, the most talked about, and most acclaimed film of the year, “Brokeback Mountain” will win Best Picture. If it doesn’t, and “Crash” somehow sneaks in, for one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history, you can attribute it to ‘Brokeback’ backlash, but there’s a better chance of me striking it rich in Vegas, sitting next to Phil Ivey and Phil Hellmuth at a World Poker Tour final table, than there is of that happening, so don’t count on it. As Ennis Del Mar opens his symbolic closet, and the door swings open on his and Jack’s bloody shirts, together, like they couldn’t, at the end of the film, “Brokeback Mountain” becomes something of a profound elegy on the inescapable power of a forbidden love, and the ridiculousness of human bigotry and hatred, and if there is a more prescient, and heartfelt, closing scene in this year’s bunch of nominees, than I couldn’t find one. The entire picture works, but that final scene is a wrecking ball of longing, remembrance, and hurt, and will rightfully propel Lee’s glorious western to the top.
Should and Will Win: Brokeback Mountain
by Adam Suraf