Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Oscar Predictions For Shut-Ins

By Bob Wire, 3-05-10

	"Do you think James Cameron has enough money yet?" "Hush up, blue Angelina Jolie! We need to start looking on other planets!"

Greeting, movie fans! Welcome to a fresh perspective, an alternative look at this year’s Oscar contenders. It’s fresh because I’m making it up as I go, giving opinion more weight than fact. It’s alternative on account of I haven’t seen most of the movies.

It’s like this: I’ve got two middle-school-aged kids, an overworked wife, and a schedule crammed with doctor/dentist/orthodontist appointments, work meetings, impulse sleepovers, school concerts, recitals, sports practices, and the occasional hangover. Throw in a limited amount of disposable income, and you can see why I can’t go see a movie every damn weekend. I probably get to a movie theatre once, maybe twice in a year. If a movie doesn’t have a trailer playing on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel, I’m probably not going to see it until it’s out on DVD. Even then, I’ll usually have to watch it some afternoon while I’m folding clothes.

While this scenario might not make me the optimum Oscar picker, I do have my opinions. And this here bully pulpit. So enough pussy-footin’! Let’s get to it!

Despite my limited screen opportunities, I’m a huge movie buff, and somewhat easily impressed. So I’ll start with Best Cinematography. As a fairly capable amateur photographer and graphic designer, I like to think I’ve got an eye for composition. My favorite cinematographer is the late, great László Kovács, whose work in such films as Easy Rider and The Last Waltz set the bar pretty high for other lensmen in the movie biz. Obviously, splendid cinematography is going to be difficult to achieve in a small-set film like 12 Angry Men, say, or The Big Kahuna, which both take place mostly in a single room. So the more sprawling the movie, the bigger the canvas.

This year the top two contenders sprawl like crazy: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Inglourious Basterds. Only two contenders, mostly because I haven’t seen the other movies. And a cinematography award for Avatar? No way. I haven’t seen it, I’m sorry to say, but that would be like giving a cinematography award to a video game. Harry Potter is a technical marvel, of course, with digitally enhanced sets and eye-popping wizardry blended seamlessly into practical effects, but it’s also got great, evocative scenery. First-rate, to be sure, but they’re basically polishing a well-worn stone at this point. Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s finest movie since Pulp Fiction, is my pick for this award. The shots are framed masterfully, and Tarantino gets the most out of the anamorphic format. Basterds has the best use of cinematography to help set the mood and tell the story.

Long as we’ve opened the can of Avatar worms, let’s move on to Visual Effects. Like I said, I’m not that hard to fool, so modern CGI effects usually blow me away. Didn’t see Star Trek, although I heard it’s great. But I did see District 9, and it is easily the most believable depiction of earthbound aliens I’ve ever seen on film. I couldn’t eat shrimp for weeks after seeing it, that’s how real those crazy-ass prawn-faced things looked. Aliens are notoriously difficult to present, maybe because there’s no real model to compare them to. That very issue gives filmmakers unlimited license, though, and these critters were the best things since a giant bug inhabited the skin of Vincent D’Onofrio’s ornery farmer in Men In Black. Oscar goes to this South African shrimp cocktail.

Best Animated Feature? Up. No question. It’s a strong field this year, including the old-skool charm of The Princess and the Frog. Didn’t see it. Didn’t see any of the nominees except Up, and a few minutes of Coraline (while delivering popcorn to a living room full of giggly, pre-pubescent girls during a sleepover Speaker had at our house). But I think Up is Pixar’s masterpiece, and the first ten minute section could have been nominated for Best Picture. If this movie didn’t move you, put your helmet on, Darth, and get your ass back to the Death Star.

Best Animated Short Film: I don’t live in San Francisco, L.A., or New York so I didn’t see any of them. Your pick. Going by title, I’m choosing A Matter Of Loaf And Death, or anything voiced by Dennis Hopper.

Best Supporting Actress: I didn’t see any of the movies featuring the nominees, but I’m going with Penélope Cruz for Nine, because I love her lead guitar work with Aerosmith.

Best Supporting Actor: There may be three people in America who don’t think this will go to Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, but they haven’t been found yet. Supporting Actor? The guy should be nominated for Grand Theft Movie because he stole the friggin’ film. He is the most interesting, charismatic killer since Samuel L. Jackson’s Bible-quoting hit man in Pulp Fiction. Hell, he even eats a damn pastry with more acting skill than anyone. He made me crave strudel like an alcoholic craves a short-dog. He should win two Oscars.

Best Actor: Again, I didn’t see any of the movies nominated, but I think Jeff Bridges, the odds-on favorite, should win. But not for Crazy Heart. He should win the Lifetime Achievement Award for his iconic role as the Dude in The Big Lebowski. Make that the Lebowski Achievers Award. It’s easily his best-known, most-loved performance, and Lebowski needs to be honored with more than its heavyweight cult status. If he doesn’t win, I will cut off my Chonson.

Best Actress: Okay, I saw Julie and Julia and like it a lot. I like Meryl Streep and all, but “acting” is not the same as “hamming it up like the main course at Easter dinner.” If Julia Child had been mentally challenged or a paraplegic, Streep could have added another layer to her depiction that would have made her a shoo-in. And Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side? Come on! She wasn’t even blind! Oscar goes to Streep, only because Jane Lynch was her sister.

Best Director: Quentin Tarantino needs to win this. I didn’t see any of the other nominees’ movies, so Tarantino’s is easily my favorite. I’m part of the cranky backlash against Avatar: if it’s that popular, it can’t be that great. I know people who hated Inglourous Basterds, the way some people hate Bob Dylan or Neil Young. Something this singular in style, this potent, can’t be take-it-or-leave-it. It’s a brilliant, powerful movie that takes a lot of risks. Hell, the very story, a fictional account of the assassination of Adolph Hitler, takes brass balls to bring to the screen at all. It had to be done by an audacious auteur such as Tarantino, though, to retain its potency and punch. It’s smart, hugely entertaining, shocking, and as with most Tarantino pictures, gleefully over-the-top in its depiction of violence. Waltz, as I mention, is a revelation, and I’ve never seen Brad Pitt doing better work. Hell, the entire ensemble cast works together to create a beautiful, thrilling, moving, funny, savage machine that should mow down everything in its path.

Like Avatar, Inglourious Basterds deals with the issue of racial genocide, but I don’t think two movies could be more different. Avatar is a geek cartoon, and Inglourious Basterds is a history lesson as taught by Sam Peckinpah and Hunter S. Thompson. I’m hoping to catch Avatar on the big screen, but I’m sure Inglourious Basterds will become a part of my DVD collection.

As for the Academy Awards telecast, I’m looking forward to watching Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin mix it up as co-hosts. I hope you enjoy it too, movie fans. Kick back with a chilled martini, maybe enjoy a few bites of Danish (but wait for the cream). This year’s stellar list of Oscar nominees tells me one thing: I have GOT to get out more often.

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By Bob Wire, 3-05-10 | comments (10) | email story | print story