Although it would appear that many winners of the 2007 Academy Awards are obvious in key categories, Sunday night may provide some surprises,one can only hope. The truth is, a surprise win can be the single most exciting development on the entire show! In the meantime, as we await and watch the show in anticipatory nausea, I think these are the potential winners in each category. Enjoy the show and relish the many
fruitful, subsequent discussions!
Best Picture
No Country for Old Men
Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Actress
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Supporting Actor
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Supporting Actress
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Director
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Foreign Film
The Counterfeiters, Austria
Adapted Screenplay
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody, Juno
Animated Feature Film
Ratatouille
Art Direction
There Will Be Blood
Cinematography
There Will Be Blood
Sound Mixing
Transformers
Sound Editing
Transformers
Original Score
Atonement, Dario Marianelli
Original Song
“Falling Slowly” from Once, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Costume Design
Atonement
Documentary Feature
No End in Sight
Documentary (short subject)
Sari’s Mother
Film Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
Makeup
La Vie en rose
Animated Short Film
Madame Tutli-Putli
Live Action Short Film
Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)
Visual Effects
Transformers
Editor’s Note: Moen is very brave putting up his predictions. It’s something I never do, usually just picking for the Oscar pool an hour or so before the show. How about you? Feel free to post some of your boldest predictions in the comments.
Some brilliant folks over at the National Film Board of Canada have come up with a unique and fun campaign for Oscar-nominated animated short Madame Tutli-Putli. Each visitor to the site can “unlock” a frame of the film each day. If all 23,287 frames are unlocked, then the entire film will be available for streaming on the site.
Not only is this a clever social media outreach, but it provides a way for people outside Canada to actually see the film, alleviating a common problem that many short films face. In my opinion, the film is a lock for the Oscar, and I’d heartily encourage you to participate in this innovative marketing campaign. They’re even giving away 200 copies of the DVD to random frame unlockers.
By the way, this is the NFB’s 70th Oscar nomination (they’ve won 12 times), and the fourth in the past four years.
Well-done, NFB!
[The Oscars have] got nothing to do with standards of good moviemaking. And I mean nothing, as in what’s left when you take zero from zero, multiply it to infinity and divide it the number of times Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa won for Best Director. (Which was zip, by the way.)
Geoff Pevere is spot-on in his hilarious lambasting of the Oscars. But I’ll still probably watch them.
The nominations were announced for the Oscars yesterday. I’ve been seeing fewer feature films lately, but I do manage to catch more documentaries. Of the five nominees, I’ve only seen two so far, but I plan to try to see all of them if I can before the Academy Awards are handed out on February 25.
The nominees for Best Documentary are:
It’s nice to see that documentary film is serving some of its most important purposes in these films: to bear witness, and to kick us in the conscience. It’s interesting to note that two films deal with Christianity (both deal with forms of toxic Christianity, in my opinion), two deal with the Iraq war, and one with a global crisis. No uplifting films, this year, sadly. Times are tough.
If you’ve seen any of these, what did you think? Who’s your bet to win? My money is on Al Gore’s sobering PowerPoint presentation on climate change. Not the most creatively filmed, but certainly the most urgent, and it managed to present information in an entertaining and mostly guilt-free way that made me want to make some changes to the way I live.
UPDATE: In a bit of cross-blog linkery, I’ve listed the losers in this category for the past few years over at Runner-Up! Check ‘em out!
I have surprisingly little to say about last night’s Oscar ceremony. I was pleased that Chicago didn’t sweep everything. I was pleased that The Pianist got some recognition. I enjoyed Adrien Brody’s speech, especially the snogging he laid on Halle Berry. I was disappointed that three of the year’s best movies were essentially ignored: About Schmidt, Adaptation, and Far From Heaven. I wasn’t surprised that Michael Moore made an ass of himself (but I still like him). And though I don’t like Eminem, I’m glad his song won. I liked Steve Martin’s low-key but sometimes biting humour. And I’m happy that they finished by midnight. That is all.
Some friends told me that the Independent Spirit Awards were much better, and I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to watch them.
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