Tipping Oscar winners isn’t easy, even for entertainment
insiders. New York Times entertainment editor Gayden Wren has seen
everything, talked to everybody and heard all the buzz, and now
he’s ready to give his predictions for the 2008 Academy
Awards.
This year’s Academy Awards are scheduled to be presented
tomorrow afternoon (Melbourne time), the earliest the ceremony has
ever been held, and until recently the question on everybody’s lips
has been, will there even be a ceremony?
Now that that question has been settled, others come to the
fore. Who’s going to win? What will the host say? Who will touch
the most hearts? And, oh yeah, who’s going to win?
Now, predicting the Oscars is notoriously tricky. But, for
argument’s sake, here are a few tips to consider in preparing your
office sweep.
MOST LIKELY TO TOUCH YOUR HEART
That’s usually an easy call: typically, it’s the winner of the
Honorary Oscar, who can win without anybody else losing. When
Robert Altman received the award in 2006 there was hardly a dry eye
in the house.
For the past couple of years it’s been trickier, because the
honorary winners haven’t been household names. Composer Ennio
Morricone, last year’s recipient, is widely admired, but no Robert
Altman. Last year’s sentimental favourite was long-overlooked
director Martin Scorsese, whose win was the most widely popular in
years.
This year’s honoree, production designer Robert Boyle, has
worked on some of America’s favourite films - think North by
Northwest (1959), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and
Private Benjamin (1980) - but the 98-year-old Boyle
himself is little known outside the industry.
Furthermore, this year’s competitive nominees include two
beloved old-timers who, improbably, are enjoying their first-ever
nominations, and one veteran who was out of the business for
decades and whose nomination represents the kind of comeback that
Hollywood loves.
If 83-year-old Ruby Dee wins, count on a loving tribute to her
widely revered, never-nominated husband, the late Ossie Davis, to
bring down the house. If she doesn’t, a win by Hal Holbrook or by
Julie Christie will do nearly as well. If none of the three wins,
well, there’s still Boyle, a four-time nominee with no wins. His
movies are great and, hey, he’s 98. Hard to argue with that.
THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED
Best picture: The academy created the best animated feature
category as a ghetto into which it could exile films that don’t
employ conventional actors, actresses and directors, pretty much
ensuring that Beauty and the Beast (1991) will remain the
only animated film ever nominated for best picture. But was there,
among last year’s slew of movies, a film that brought more pure
pleasure to more people than the witty, winning
Ratatouille?
Best director: Mira Nair’s The Namesake took a
problematic, decades- and continents-spanning novel and made it
into a movie that was clear, culturally illuminating and profoundly
moving.
Best actor: Christian Bale’s performance as an imprisoned US
pilot in Rescue Dawn delicately balances dogged
determination and borderline insanity to brilliant effect.
Best actress: It’s a pity that movie goers’ weariness with “Iraq
movies” led so many people to miss Angelina Jolie’s impassioned
performance as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart.
Best supporting actor: Alan Rickman’s hilarious turn as the
leering, deranged Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd: The Demon
Barber of Fleet Street.
Best supporting actress: Juno offered two excellent,
award-worthy turns: one from Jennifer Garner, as a woman who starts
out as a neurotic, straitlaced superwoman and ends up as much more,
and Olivia Thirlby as the heroine’s cynical, sarcastic but loyal
best friend.
OSCARS THAT WON’T BE PRESENTED
Worst performance by a current Oscar nominee: Javier Bardem in
Love in the Time of Cholera.
Worst performance by a reigning Oscar winner: Helen Mirren in
National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
AND FINALLY, WHO WILL WIN
The most important thing to remember: It’s not “how”, as in “how
good the performance was”, but “who”, as in “who should win an
Oscar”.
And it’s not who you think should win, because academy voters
aren’t like you or most of your friends. They see more movies, and
they see them as insiders, meaning that they’re more conscious of
the mechanism behind the magic but, conversely, more impressed when
the magic overcomes the mechanism.
Putting yourselves into the minds of the academy voters gets you
only so far, though, and every prediction is really little more
than a guess. But so what? Here are our guesses.
Best picture: This should boil down to a battle between No
Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. The
charming, uproariously funny Juno is too small-scale for this
category, and its teen-pregnancy storyline will put off voters.
Besides, the academy has a long-standing prejudice against comedy.
Atonement has the period-costume-drama look that the academy loves,
but its confusing plot left many viewers scratching their heads.
Michael Clayton is a crowd-pleaser, but newcomer Tony
Gilroy lets the film get away from him occasionally. Of the
remaining two, There Will Be Blood has period appeal and a
towering performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, but the latter may work
against it - is it a great movie or merely a great performance? In
any event, the film lacks the offbeat humour that sparks the
similarly gripping No Country for Old Men. The Coen
brothers are long-time favourites of the Hollywood community, and
this time I believe they’ll bring home the gold.
Best director: Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old
Men, with the only real competition coming from There Will
Be Blood’s Paul Thomas Anderson. Jason Reitman of
Juno and Tony Gilroy of Michael Clayton are
youngsters whose best work is ahead of them, while The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly’s Julian Schnabel - a painter dabbling
in filmmaking - is too much a Hollywood outsider.
Best actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, in the slam dunk of the night. Not
only is it the year’s most riveting performance, but this is a rare
year in which the men’s slate isn’t that impressive. Johnny Depp
brought sinister charm and a surprisingly good singing voice to
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but
revenge, murder and cannibalism aren’t the academy’s cup of tea.
Depp will get an Oscar, but not this year. Tommy Lee Jones’
impressive work in In the Valley of Elah doesn’t matter,
since few in the academy bothered to see this year’s “Iraq films”,
and Hollywood favourite George Clooney - who would otherwise be a
strong candidate - was a winner only two years ago. Day-Lewis’ only
real competition comes from Viggo Mortensen’s compelling work as a
Russian mobster in Eastern Promises, but few saw that
either.
Best actress: The year’s most competitive race pits
always-a-bridesmaid Laura Linney against comeback queen Julie
Christie and brilliant youngster Ellen Page. Cate Blanchett won’t
overcome the general consensus that Elizabeth: The Golden
Age is a less impressive work than Elizabeth (1998),
and she didn’t win for that. French actress Marion Cotillard is
brilliant in La Vie en Rose, but her upset nomination will
have to do, given that virtually no one in Hollywood has seen the
film. Juno’s Page won’t win, but she’ll store up brownie
points for the future. Christie’s moving performance in Away
from Her deserves an Oscar, and Hollywood loves a comeback -
but too few people have seen the film. In a battle of Alzheimer’s
movies, The Savages will win and Linney, who has deserved
an Oscar for years now, will redeem those brownie points for a gold
man.
Best supporting actor: Javier Bardem for No Country for Old
Men. Hollywood loves a good villain - hey, Hannibal Lecter won
Anthony Hopkins an Oscar - and Bardem’s Anton Chigurh is a beaut.
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s daffy CIA agent in Charlie Wilson’s
War would be a contender if he hadn’t recently won for best
actor, and Casey Affleck is young enough to get other chances.
Everyone would like to see sentimental favourite Hal Holbrook win,
but too few people saw his movie, Into the Wild. Tom Wilkinson is a
respected actor and he delivers a meaty performance in Michael
Clayton, but this isn’t his year.
Best supporting actress: Ruby Dee, as a tribute not only to her
lifetime of fine acting, but to that of late husband Ossie Davis.
When he died in 2005, Hollywood was stunned to realise that neither
he nor she had ever been nominated for an Oscar.
Her chief competition comes from Amy Ryan’s mother-on-the-brink
in Gone, Baby, Gone. Tilda Swinton’s Michael
Clayton turn would be a strong contender in another year, Cate
Blanchett’s faux Bob Dylan in I’m Not There is too weird
for the academy, while 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan is honoured enough
with a nomination.
OSCAR BY NUMBERS
Oldest 2007 nominee Ruby Dee and Hal Holbrook are both 83. She
wins, because she’s 113 days older. Neither is the oldest nominee
ever: that would be Gloria Stuart of Titanic (1997), who
was 87.
Youngest 2007 nominee Saoirse Ronan, 13, has it handily over
20-year-old Ellen Page. No threat there to Tatum O’Neal, who at 10
won an Oscar for best supporting actress for Paper Moon
(1973).
Tallest 2007 nominee In a year of unusually short nominees,
Daniel Day-Lewis leads at 187cm, a pinch taller than Hal Holbrook
and Tom Wilkinson. Tilda Swinton is the tallest woman at 178cm.
Shortest 2007 nominee Saoirse Ronan was the shortest when the
nominations were announced, but at 13 she’s growing fast and may
pass the 155cm-tall Ellen Page by Oscar night. Casey Affleck and
Johnny Depp are the shortest men at 175cm.
Gayden Wren is the entertainment editor for The New York
Times Syndicate.
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