Maybe our feeling will change, but right now, we’re not really feeling very excited for the Oscars or the nominations. Dunno, maybe it’s because we feel this year like an abundant amount of deserving films are going to get honored and awarded and it just feels too… locked in and predictable.
At the same time, if we had to lay money down on the technical sub-categories right now, we’d probably lose our shirts. As it stands right now, our hear isn’t in it and we haven’t been paying as close attention as we should. Last year with fantastic films like “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country For Old Men” in the running and something amazing like “The Diving Bell And The Buttefly” earning a PGA nod, a lot of great things seemed possible. It felt exciting Now it all seems… predestined, in an extremely boring manner and we’re having a hard time getting excited over any of it or any of the films (last year ‘Blood’ and ‘Country’ were our #1 and #2 picks for 2008).
You never know, you might see our enthusiasm for awards season grow, but with mediocre and boring films like, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (yeah, you heard us right) looking to dominate the field, we might just check out and look forward to 2009, we’ll see.
Last week the New York Times did their, For Your Consideration, Academy piece, where their critics offered their own nominations for the year’s best, so we’ll do the same. We will note though these are the picks of the ed [ed. me] and others may vary and very-well post their own picks as well. The Times seemed to nominate films regardless if they were foreign or not and without regard to Academy rules, so we’ll try and take that tact as well (within reason).”Reprise” for example is technically so old (it came out internationally in 2006 and 2007) and we should leave it off our list, but we can’t. To be clear: this is not who we think will get nominated at all. This is our, for your consideration to the Academy, offering our own noms. This is also just off the top of our head too, this could change tomorrow, but this is how we feel, this moment.
BEST PICTURE
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“Silent Light”
“Doubt”
“Reprise”
“Che”
BEST ACTOR
Benicio del Toro – “Che”
Sean Penn – “Milk”
Mickey Rourke – “The Wrestler”
Michael J. Smith Sr. – “Ballast”
Habib Boufares “The Secret of the Grain”
BEST DIRECTOR
Steven Soderbergh – “Che”
Fatih Akin – “The Edge of Heaven”
Cristian Mungiu – “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”
Laurent Cantet – “The Class”
Lucrecia Martel – “The Headless Woman”
BEST ACTRESS
Sally Hawkins – “Happy Go Lucky”
Michelle Williams – “Wendy & Lucy”
Kristin Scott Thomas – “I’ve Loved You So Long”
Melissa Leo – “Frozen River”
Anamaria Marinca – “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”
(we once went to bat for Kate Beckinsale in “Nothing But The Truth,” but that was before we saw “Doubt” and Meryl Streep is a shoo-in, so no need to give her more props here, but she was amazing)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Eddie Marsan – “Happy Go Lucky”
Michael Shannon – “Revolutionary Road”
Damian Bechir – “Che”
Melvil Poupaud – “A Christmas Tale”
Heath Ledger – “The Dark Knight”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Vera Farmiga – “Nothing But The Truth”
Penélope Cruz – “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Rosemarie DeWitt – “Rachel Getting Married”
Elsa Zylberstein – “I’ve Loved You So Long”
Chiara Mastroianni – “A Christmas Tale”
We’re running out of gas and ethusiasm here so we’ll leave off writing for now. I’ll have to be something we put some thought into first and we haven’t. For those wondering why our Best Picture pics don’t line up exactly with our Best Picks of 2008, we’ll they’re different and Best lists are always a combination of what you think the Best films of the year are and your Favorite films of the year and there’s a distinction to be made there, but if you have to ask…