New University Oscar Predictions: Best Picture
Ben Ritter | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
‘Babel’ has seven Oscar nominations overall. Only ‘Dreamgirls’ has more (but three of its eight nominations are for Best Original Song, which don’t really count). ‘Babel’ won Best Drama at the Golden Globes, which has historically been a good indicator of Oscar success (of the 20 most recent Oscar winners for Best Picture, 15 also won either best Drama or Best Musical/Comedy at the Golden Globes).
This was a good year for Spanish-speaking directors, and a victory for ‘Babel’ may be seen as a nod to ‘Children of Men,’ ‘Volver’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ as well.
Internet gambling sites, interestingly enough, seem to place ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ as the frontrunner. The Academy is long overdue to recognize a comedy (it’s been eight years since ‘Shakespeare in Love’ won and 17 years since ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ before that), but ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ wasn’t even the best comedy of the year, let alone best overall film. Besides, no comedy in the last 20 years has won Best Picture at the Oscars without also winning Best Musical/Comedy at the Golden Globes.
That ‘The Queen’ was even nominated for Best Picture was something of a surprise. One Internet gambling site gives it 19-to-one odds. Enough said.
‘Letters From Iwo Jima’ won’t win because the Academy doesn’t like war movies (two of the five times that the Academy has split with the Hollywood Foreign Press since 1986 were when ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ won Best Drama at the Golden Globes). The conspicuous lack of acting nominations also doesn’t bode well.
There’s no particular reason for ‘The Departed’ not to win. It was a competent remake of a pretty good Hong Kong film with a cast of stars and an acclaimed director, but nothing about it felt particularly fresh or original. A few years ago, it might have won, but the Academy seems recently to have favored pseudo-independent films from directors less prolific than Martin Scorsese, making ‘Babel’ a much more likely choice.
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Animated Feature
Ginny Wang | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
In a race between dancing penguins and a scary man-eating house, Disney’s ‘Cars’ is leading the competition for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film.
Stressing the idea that there is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ Disney and Pixar did a spectacular job contrasting the differences between living in the fast lane and slowing down to smell the diesel fuel. The animation and graphic design of ‘Cars’ lives up to Pixar’s standards while the story’s message that slow and steady wins the race screams classical Aesop. ‘Cars’ captures the glamour of anthropomorphized inanimate objects for the kids and pulls in adult audiences with nostalgia for make-believe and fantasy. If family fun is the focus of this year’s judging, then ‘Cars’ is ahead of the game with its humor and noble message.
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Original Screenplay
Taylor Hudson | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
The crazy road-trip story of the Little Family That Couldn’t has captivated and warmed the hearts of moviegoers since last summer to the tune of $60 million
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Actor in a Leading Role
Julian Camillieri | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
All of the acting categories are going to be tough this year, but you gamblers out there are probably going to get screwed by Best Actor in particular. Here is what it comes down to.
Veteran thespian Peter O’Toole has never won an Oscar and this is probably his last chance, considering he is in the twilight of his life. His role in ‘Venus’ has been celebrated by critics, but John and Jane Doe have not even heard of the movie, let alone seen it.
Forest Whitaker has been getting a lot of attention and awards for his portrayal as Idi Amin Dada in ‘The Last King of Scotland,’ and deservedly so. Again, not a lot of people have seen ‘The Last King of Scotland,’ which, despite its faults, is a fine film. There is also the issue of the Academy Awards tending to be a mostly white institution that usually awards white people, though there is a refreshing number of people of color nominated this year.
In the end I have to go with O’Toole. The Academy won’t pass up an opportunity to give this man an award before he dies.
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Julian Camillieri | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
Again, like all of these acting roles, this is another toss up. Alan Arkin didn’t do much in ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’ but what he did, he did well. Eddie Murphy has garnered some critical acclaim for ‘Dreamgirls’ and a Golden Globe as well. Mark Wahlberg (‘Invincible’), like Arkin, was great as one of the most rooted-for antiheroes in recent film history, but he had much more screen time.
I would like to pick Jackie Earle Haley in ‘Little Children,’ a short but wonderful film about deviance in suburban America. A little clich
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Julian Camillieri | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
For Best Supporting Actress, both Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi have been nominated for their work in ‘Babel.’ Usually, two nominations from the same movie cancel each other out and this may be the case here.
Then there is Abigail Breslin, a talented young actress, but it is debatable whether her performance was challenging enough to win an Oscar.
Finally, there is Jennifer Hudson, who won the Golden Globe for ‘Dreamgirls.’ Despite some critical acclaim I am reluctant to give this one to an ‘American Idol’ finalist.
I am going out on a big limb here and picking Adriana Barraza of ‘Babel.’ ‘Babel’ may have been slow at times, but Barraza was exceptional.
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Cinematography
Mike Olson | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
Competition is fierce among this year’s crop of talented lensmen. Dick Pope (‘The Illusionist’) and Wally Pfister (‘The Prestige’) literally brought magic to the screen, and Guillermo Navarro’s work on ‘El Laberinto del Fauno’ was nothing short of brilliant. Vilmos Zsigmond had an amazing eye for cinematography decades ago with ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (and, of course, 1974′s seminal film ‘The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?’) but his nomination for ‘The Black Dahlia’ is a bit of a puzzler. The Oscar this year, though, has to go to ‘Children of Men’ cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, both for all those jaw-dropping tracking shots and for his delicate mastery of color and tone. The film wouldn’t have been the same without him.
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Adapted Screenplay
Ben Ritter | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
Fourteen of the past 20 Oscar winners for Best Adapted Screenplay won the same award from the Writers Guild. Four of the times when the Academy differed, it was because the Writers Guild awarded comedies (to which the Academy has an obvious aversion).
Only twice in the past 20 years has the Writers Guild awarded a drama with Best Adapted Screenplay and the Academy not gone along (they chose ‘The Pianist’ over ‘The Hours’ in 2002 and ‘Gods and Monsters’ over ‘Out of Sight’ in 1998). There’s no reason for them to buck the trend this year.
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Original Score
Mike Olson | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
In a year without a John Williams or James Horner score in contention, it isn’t so easy to predict which way the Academy will swing. Thomas Newman (‘The Good German’) may be a more familiar name for some, and thus a front-runner, but the two most prolific composers of the five are, a little surprisingly, Alexandre Desplat (‘The Queen’) and Philip Glass (‘Notes on a Scandal’). Last year’s winner, Gustavo Santoalalla (‘Babel’), is a strong contender, but Glass, with two previous nominations to his name, is due for an Oscar. Expect him to thank Ravi Shankar in his acceptance speech.
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Editing
Taylor Hudson | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
In some sense, ‘Children of Men’ is the most unlikely candidate for the Oscar for film editing, as much attention has been drawn to its extremely long, elaborate and deeply immersive handheld camera shots, some of which last up to nine minutes, with all manner of special effects and action choreography throughout. The film probably has the fewest camera cuts of any of the nominees, if not of any film released this year. But that’s what makes the editing itself so impressive: The precisely timed scenes are allowed to play out to their full dramatic effect without the benefit of clever quick-cut film editing on which other special-effects laden films often clumsily rely.
Instead, director Alfonso Cuar
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Director
Bhavik Patel | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese are just a few of the most critically acclaimed directors who have yet to win an Academy Award. This year, Scorsese’s name can be crossed off the list.
After six tries, the Academy will finally grant Scorsese the missing piece of his brilliant directing career
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New University Oscar Predictions: Best Documentary
Monica Sandler | Feb 20, 2007 | Comments 0
It seems that while Al Gore may have lost the presidential election back in 2000, he will be a winner come Oscar night. ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ will walk away with the win for Best Documentary. The film seems to have the support of the liberal Hollywood public.
Its box office success gives the Academy yet another reason to award it. It is common for the documentary with the most domestic success to ultimately be awarded, as seen with last year’s win for ‘March of the Penguins.’
The film does have competition from ‘Deliver Us From Evil,’ the sobering look at a Catholic Priest abuse scandal in California, but the popularity of ‘Truth’ will ultimately give it the edge.
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