Oscars

NOMINEES

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Eric Roth

Doubt – John Patrick Shanley

Frost/Nixon – Peter Morgan

The Reader – David Hare

Slumdog Millionaire – Simon Beaufoy

WILL WIN

In all honesty, this category should be a lot harder to predict than it actually is. Four of the five nominated films are also up for Best Picture, so that tack gets us nowhere. Looking at the writers themselves, two have Oscar pedigrees (Roth already has a statuette for Forrest Gump, while Hare received a nomination for The Hours), and two others (Morgan and Shanley) have adapted their own critically lauded plays for the screen. And none of these candidates has a chance in Hell of winning an Oscar this year. Read More

NOMINEES

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Alexandre Desplat

Defiance – James Newton Howard

Milk – Danny Elfman

Slumdog Millionaire – A.R. Rahman

Wall-E – Thomas Newman

WILL WIN

I’m discounting Defiance immediately, which is a shame because it means poor James Newton Howard will fall to zero-for-eight in his Oscar chances. The veteran is one of the most reliable and prolific film composers around – in the last two years alone he’s scored 10 feature films, most notably the stunningly beautiful cues for I Am Legend – but Defiance just doesn’t have any traction (Howard’s nod constitutes the movie’s lone nomination). He’ll get his due someday, although likely not for his work on Confessions of a Shopaholic. Read More

NOMINEES

Josh Brolin – Milk

Robert Downey Jr. – Tropic Thunder

Philip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt

Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight

Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road

WILL WIN

It’s perhaps the most relevant question of the 2008 Oscars: Does anyone have a chance to beat Heath Ledger?

There are a few potential answers to this question. The most direct – also the most accurate and the most important – can be condensed to one word: no. The more pompous answer goes something along the lines of, “The only person who can beat Heath Ledger is Heath Ledger,” a line of reasoning that vaguely and counterintuitively refers to the inescapable fact that Heath Ledger is dead. This is, of course, an unfortunate fact, but also sad is that Ledger’s death has become inextricable from his actual performance. Part of this is the nature of modern American publicity, while part is tied to the unnerving creepiness of the performance itself – his character The Joker is at once a casual dispenser of death and twisted philosopher of it – but no Academy member will look at the role and see only the acting. Their judgment will be affected, to some degree, by the tragic circumstances of Ledger’s demise. Read More

NOMINEES

Changeling – Tom Stern

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Claudio Miranda

The Dark Knight – Wally Pfister

The Reader – Chris Menges, Roger Deakins

Slumdog Millionaire – Anthony Dod Mantle

WILL WIN

Working backwards will only get us so far here, as the lone movie I’m comfortable eliminating right off the bat is The Reader – if it wins this category, Harvey Weinstein truly is Satan. I’m not quite as confident crossing off Changeling, mainly because it’s such an impeccably photographed motion picture, but there’s so little buzz surrounding Eastwood’s movie that I can’t see it pulling an upset. Read More

NOMINEES

Slumdog Millionaire – “Jai Ho” (A.R. Rahman, lyrics by Gulzar)

Slumdog Millionaire – “O … Saya” (A.R. Rahman, featuring M.I.A.)

Wall-E – “Down to Earth” (Peter Gabriel, Thomas Newman)

WILL WIN

It’s quite surprising that only three pieces of music received nominations here, since the Best Original Song category has always supplied the Academy an opportunity to feed its own self-indulgence. Every year people complain – usually with cause – about the bloated length of the Oscar telecast, and one of the more obnoxious segments involves the live performances of each nominated work in the Original Song category. So, unlike the Best Visual Effects category, slicing the number of contending songs from five to three may not have been a bad thing. Sure, there have been some enjoyable moments over the past decade – Robin William’s flamboyant rendition of South Park’s “Blame Canada”, Three 6 Mafia’s unadulterated enthusiasm in performing “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”, Bjork’s unbelievably horrendous swan dress – but for the most part the live performances are a narcoleptic’s paradise. Read More