MovieManifesto

With the Oscar telecast coming up in six days and 12 categories left to go, we’re running a little short on time, so I’m going to have to rip through some of the “minor” categories still remaining. I know my readers are devastated that I won’t be able to devote 2,500 words to Best Costume Design, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices in life for the good of the people. O.K., that kind of sounds like something creepy that Mussolini might have said, but you get the idea.

(If nothing else, this should help everyone fill out your Oscar pools – all three of you who are actually in an Oscar pool.)

BEST ART DIRECTION / SET DECORATION
NOMINEES

Changeling

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

The Duchess

Revolutionary Road Read More

NOMINEES

Frozen River – Courtney Hunt

Happy-Go-Lucky – Mike Leigh

In Bruges – Martin McDonagh

Milk – Dustin Lance Black

Wall-E – Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon

WILL WIN

Ah, now here’s a category. Gene Siskel always used to say that the Best Original Screenplay nominees comprised the second-most important grouping of the Oscars after Best Picture, and while I rarely agreed with anything Siskel said or wrote, he was on the right path. Cinema, despite being a visual medium, is first and foremost about storytelling, and movies that receive their genesis from an original script represent the pinnacle of filmmaking creativity. This is not to say that an original screenplay is a prerequisite for a great movie – on the contrary, most of my favorite films are based on novels – but that the Best Original Screenplay category is important because it honors screenwriters who advance the boundaries of cinema. Ideally, the winner of the category will be entirely new – we’ll never have seen anything like it. (Hopefully that’s the case here, but we’ll get to that.) Read More

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