...The Oscars according to me...

Best Picture:

The Hurt Locker – this movie grew on me a lot after I saw it. There were portions of it I didn’t love – I thought the rough housing scene was too long, albeit important. I think the car bomb defusing scene was in the top 5 scenes I saw this year (I admit, I was probably only about 70% to my movie-watching goal)…

But I am not upset with this movie as Best Picture. There is something to be said for Avatar, but there’s a part of me that thinks Oscar voters like to look to the future a bit, and I’m giving them way too much credit and it doesn’t jibe with past precedents, but I think it may have been a case where in 4 years when 50% of the sci-fi movies look like Avatar, we’ll forget how groundbreaking it was – and I think history will treat the Hurt Locker in a much more favorable light.

The drug of war – something those of us who have never sniffed combat, or even real aggression in our lives could understand – is going to prove to be a winning formula in films, given we are going to have a generation of kids born in the late 80’s who grew up with the gulf war and a then a relatively brief respite between then and the Post 9/11 world, which is all about War.

I can’t wait to see how this movie ages, how it gets treated over time, and where it falls in the History of great, not good, War films.
Very quickly, I’d like to give my guess for what the 5 Best Picture nominees would have been if we were using the 5 nominee system:

Nominees: Avatar ; The Hurt Locker ; Inglorious Basterds; Up in the Air; Up* (I’ll explain later)
May have made the cut: Precious, The Blind Side
Left off: District 9, An Education, A Serious Man

Best Actor:

Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart – I didn’t see it, and that is almost unforgiveable for a person like me. It was an Oscar lock for a long time, I should have seen it. Bridges speech was pretty uninspired, and I am not going to comment on his performance, and I’m glad he has won. But we all know, and this isn’t a joke, that his portrayal of The Dude was, without a doubt, his finest moment as an actor – and I don’t care how good he was in Crazy Heart, that couldn’t be topped.

Best Actress:

Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side – I didn’t see this either (Shame on me), but I have a really hard time with this. Her speech was good, but she alluded to the fact that she wore the voters down. But that sort of implies that she had been in the running and/or sniffed greatness in her previous roles. Yes, she can earn a film some money, and she has talent and is funny, but when has she ever put together a role that was remotely Oscar worthy before? Never.
I really need to see this, because in my mind it is on par with ‘Miracle’ or ‘Cool Runnings’…I don’t see how a Best Actress nomination could come out of this.

Especially in a year when Meryl Streep gave a performance in Julie & Julia that was simply held back by the script – she could have poured so much more into that film, and while Amy Adams was more than serviceable, there is a part of me that feels like a pure 100% Julia Child biopic may have been more appropriate. I guess I’m happy for Sandra, but it’ll take a Eruzione miracle for me think she was better than Streep this year.

Best Supporting Actor:

Christop Waltz in Inglorious Basterds – Was there a better performance all year? I don’t think so. I don’t think you can look me in the eye and say that there was. Completely mind-bendingly terrifying is the only way to describe his character. You are honestly led to believe that Tarantino, at some point in his whacky life, met a Nazi who had the traits of Waltz in this film – how could he have created this Nazi character out of thin air? Quite simply, the awesome, awesome opening scene set the tone for a film in which Waltz dominated the screen, and ultimately dominated the entire film.

Best Supporting Actress:

Mo’Nique in Precious – I don’t think I want to hang out with Mo’Nique. I thought her stand up was funny, then she started taking everything so seriously. This role was clearly serious, but to me, and I could be wrong, roles that are this over the top are easier to do, aren’t they? Take Waltz for example, how easy would it have been to be a raving lunatic foaming at the mouth and shooting everything that moved? Seems easy to me, doesn’t it? Anna Kendrick – now that was a nuanced role.

Reading Push made me feel horrible. I felt great, but I also felt horrible. Seeing the movie did the same thing. It leads me to the question, what did Mo’Nique do or offer to the film that would have been missing if Sheri Shepherd or someone else played the role? I can’t think of anything. Again, Anna Kendrick stood out, she played the role perfectly, and deserved the win. I think.

Best Director:

Kathryn Bigelow in The Hurt Locker – How rad is it that the first woman to win Best Director won it for a movie about War – about a job that a woman likely wouldn’t even be allowed to do? I know she didn’t write it, but she got everything out of those guys…the aforementioned rough housing scene – this is speculation and conjecture, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she got more out of her 3 guys in that scene because they didn’t want to look soft in front of a woman, I feel like there are layers to her dominance over that set that we couldn’t even begin to imagine.

And I mention it again, Avatar broke new ground in a million areas, and Cameron deserves some kind of recognition, but if you want to win Best Director, aren’t you obligated to get great, not good, but great performances out of your actors? Zoe Saldana was the only person who reached at all in that movie – Sigourney Weaver and that tall dork from Dodgeball were sleepwalking – and the hulky Australian and goofy war General were so easily forgettable…

Bigelow put together a visually compelling film with timely subject matter and incredibly deep performances by her actors. Those things line up pretty nicely when vying for Best Director, no?

Best Animated Film:

Up – This category really became one of my favorites this year with the nominees. I am going to pretend The Secret of the Kells wasn’t nominated, b/c that’s just dumb that it was. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs wasn’t a spectacular movie, but it was spectacular, if you know what I mean.
But that really isn’t the highlight of the year, which clearly was Up. It separated itself from the field, and you could make the argument it would have been one of the 5 in the Best Picture nominees, as I stated before. It was a complete film, and Pixar is going to really have a hard time aging when guys like Pete Docter and John Lasseter either quit, or age.

Has a studio ever put together a 15 year run like Pixar has? The original Walt Disney Animated run starting in ’37 with Snow White and ending with Bambi in ’42 was demolished creatively by the War – and it took a long time to recover. The rebirth in 1989 with The Little Mermaid arguably ended less than 10 years later with Tarzan – certainly it didn’t continue with Dinosaur and Fantasia: 2000.

Nothing has come close to what Pixar has been able to do in its run of dominance, and there are no signs of slowing with the upcoming release of Toy Story 3, which will undoubtedly break records and warm hearts from now until forever.

But the category overall was very strong in the 3 films that have gone unmentioned. The Princess & The Frog is a great story, entertaining watch, and a sign of good things to come for Walt Disney Animation.

I didn’t see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I regret. That leaves only Coraline, which has gone unmentioned. This movie was, in short, friggen awesome. The score, the animation, the characters and the relationships were all so compelling. Selick is the grandfather of stop motion, and he deserves an achievement award – given he was probably 8-10 years ahead of his time with Nightmare Before Christmas, in conjunction with Burton. I believe Coraline will only get more popular as time passes. I loved it, I wish it wasn’t in Up’s year.

Lastly, I am all in favor of more categories – the broadcast is long, but I do believe that a lot of the categories in editing, mixing, sound, etc can be dumped into that technical awards show that takes place a few weeks/days prior to the real awards show. I have one specific category nomination, which I think would be fantastic.

Best Sci-Fi/Action Film:

I am not sure how you define it, but I think what happens is some movies, and specifically the ones I list below, are put into the same category as movies like The Last Station, and Hurt Locker. Small release, relatively small budget films up against Blockbuster behemoths – it’s unrealistic and unfair. If Animated films get their due, Sci-Fi/Action films deserve theirs as well. With that, I do think it’s fair to remove Animated Films from the Best Picture category, and Sci-Fi/Action films from that category as well. We all know that most of the Academy didn’t watch District 9 with the same intensity they watched The Blind Side, it’s just a reality.

So, without further delay, here are my nominees for the Best Sci-Fi/Action film of 2009:
Avatar; District 9; Star Trek; Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince; Zombieland

The winner, in my opinion, would be Star Trek. As much as I really enjoyed District 9, and I think it was one of the most fantastic movies of the year, it had its flaws that really are hard to overcome (ie, nobody was likeable *Thanks Keegan for that insight*, and the lead character was a bit over the top, even for an action film. Star Trek, however, was pretty flawless by my estimation. It did an amazing job of paying homage to the Star Trek franchise – incorporated very cool character development with a believable and manageable love story (with Zoe Saldana, again), in a way that movies typically don’t do.

The villain was brilliant, the Time Travel aspect was pretty seamless, and nothing was left unanswered. Believe me, I am not saying this was the best movie of the year, it didn’t have the depth and tension of a movie like Hurt Locker, but that is precisely why it can’t be compared to it – it was going for that. It was a film that attempted to entertain for 2 hours.