The other day, I posted my predictions for the nominees that will end up taking home the trophies at this year's Oscars. Today, I would like to focus on something arguably more interesting: who I think deserves the awards. Before we begin, I must open with a full disclosure: I am obviously not an entire voting body much less the entire Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – that said, I do not have the means to have seen nearly the pool of films that the academy draws from in determining the winners for these awards. Perhaps this will make my personal choices more palatable to a viewing public who is also limited in their abilities to see every film that comes out. Then again, I don't think Avatar deserves any of the major awards, so maybe not. Either way, let me know what you think. Do you agree or disagree? Who would you vote for if you could make up your own Oscars like I just have?
I will break this down into two sections. First, I will have my completely made-up Oscars, where I changed the nominees and choose a winner from my own list of nominees. Then, I will have a separate section where I cast my votes based on the actual Oscar ballot – where I place each category in order from my favorite to least favorite based on the films that I have seen per category:
My 2010 Oscars:
Best Picture:
I did this in the form of a traditional ballot, because I think that it makes things more interesting in a discussion of this nature - the ten-film ballot that the Oscars used this year was just to allow more popular films to make the list - not to actually increase the quality of conversation regarding the films that most deserve to be on the list.
A Serious Man
District 9
Hurt Locker, The
Inglourious Basterds
Up in the Air
Winner: Inglourious Basterds
Runner-Up: Up in the Air
Best picture this year is really tough for me – I found all of these films to be exceptional, and they are all quite different – which makes it difficult to find any common ground to judge them on. You could ask me each week for the rest of the year, and my answer might change every time, but at the moment, my answer is Inglourious Basterds. Basterds is like concentrated Tarantino. Watching this movie is like getting five movies for the price of one. From top to bottom it is a true tour de force. It runs a little long in parts, and it's pretty over-the-top, but it remains absolutely captivating throughout. I'm not sure that it's Tarantino's masterpiece, but at the very least, it is extraordinary.
Best Director:
Wes Anderson - Fantastic Mr. Fox
Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker
Joel & Ethan Coen - A Serious Man
Jason Reitman – Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds
Winner: Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker
Runner-Up: Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds
As with Best Picture, I find this to be another category where it's hard to pick an absolute favorite. Right now, I would say Kathryn Bigelow, but in any given year I think these could all be top picks. I would say Bigelow because – like the Academy, I'd like to share the love – but also because The Hurt Locker was such a tense and focused film. Bigelow's direction is of such a caliber of mastery that – after you have witnessed the first dramatic explosion, every second of the movie is pure tension. That is not an easy feat.
Best Actor
Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
George Clooney - Up in the Air
Sharlto Copley - District 9
Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker
Michael Stuhlbarg - A Serious Man
Winner: Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
Runner-Up: George Clooney - Up in the Air
I would really like to coronate George Clooney with this award, but the fact of the matter is that he might have been too good for his own good. Clooney's performance seems effortless. It doesn't seem like acting. Perhaps that is too his detrement. Jeff Bridges, on the other hand, very clearly resounds with the toil of his performance – and it is a great performance. Vastly overlooked performances from Sharlto Copley and Michael Stuhlbarg round out my short list. Still, the award goes to Bridges, but not without reservations.
Best Actress
Carey Mulligan - An Education
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious
Winner: Gabourey Sidibe - Precious
I am scarcely qualified to comment on this year's Best Actress category – Mulligan and Sidibe were really the only two noteworthy performances in any of the films that I saw. Both were great, but I would personally give the edge to Sidibe. She plays the wounded Clarice “Precious” Jones with astonishing gravity and humanity. This is the kind of role that often falls prey to over-acting (or over-directing, as I feel like much of the film suffered from) – but Sidibe had an admirable restraint to her performance. She is my winner.
Best Supporting Actor
Jackie Earle Haley – Watchmen
Anthony Mackie - The Hurt Locker
Alfred Molina - An Education
Brad Pitt - Inglourious Basterds
Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds
Winner: Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds
Runner-Up: Jackie Earle Haley – Watchmen
I said in my predictions segment that I feel like Waltz's performance could compete in the leading actor category. Alas, if his performance qualifies as a supporting role – he wins it handily. Jackie Earle Haley takes my runner-up spot in a performance that was vastly overlooked. Watchmen itself was a fairly mediocre interpretation of a landmark “graphic novel”, but Haley's performance was a real standout – giving him the edge for my runner-up spot over the other three performances on my short list (all of which were also exceptional, by the way).
Best Supporting Actress
Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal - Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air
Mélanie Laurent - Inglourious Basterds
Mo'Nique – Precious
Winner: Mo'Nique – Precious
Runner-Up: Mélanie Laurent - Inglourious Basterds
Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds alone had enough supporting star power on the female side to almost dominate this category between the two of them. Again, this is a category with a strong field, but Mo'Nique gets my vote for the final scene of Precious alone – I actually thought the performance was a bit uneven (not the fault of her performance, but of what I felt to be fairly heavy-handed directing and screenwriting), but the last scene is a true show-stopper. The single most emotional scene I saw in any movie all year. Mélanie Laurent gets my vote for runner-up. Her performance as Shoshanna in Inglourious Basterds was superb – she was captivating in all of her scenes, and I feel like she represents the biggest snub of the Oscars – she deserved a nomination.
Best Original Screenplay
Disney/Pixar's Up
The Hangover
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Winner: A Serious Man
Runner-Up: Inglourious Basterds
This is another tough call – as this was another great year for original screenplays. 4 of these films earned actual Oscar nominees for best original screenplay. Inglourious Basterds is widely regarded by the critics as the favorite to win the actual Oscar, but my vote goes with the Coen brothers near-perfect script for A Serious man. A Serious Man is a film that actually begins to approach the demands of literature on its audience – it was a film that has kept me thinking about it for weeks after I saw it, and it edges out Basterds as my pick for best original screenplay.
Best Adapted Screenplay
District 9
An Education
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Precious
Up in the Air
Winner: Up in the Air
Runner-Up: Fantastic Mr. Fox
This category is a bit easier for me than best original screenplay. I tend to think that Precious' script was a bit heavy-handed, and thus over-rated. Up In the Air, on the other hand, managed to turn a very delicate matter (job loss, and a character whose job it is to fire others) in a particularly delicate time (the great recession) into a palette for great humanity. It is all done with an astonishingly gentle touch and warmheartedness that makes an exceptional film work (which also benefits from some great performances). Fantastic Mr. Fox gets my second-place trophy (that I just made up) for converting a beloved children's story (beloved by me, anyways), into a serious and contemplative children's film for adults (and children alike).
Best Animated Feature
Coraline
Disney/Pixar's Up
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Winner: Fantastic Mr. Fox
Runner-Up: Disney/Pixar's Up
A large part of why I loved 2009 as a year in films was because it was one of the strongest years for animated films that I can ever remember. All five of the picks on my short list are exquisite – and all have their place as some of the finest animated films that I have ever seen. That said, my pick goes to Fantastic Mr. Fox. Fox had the greatest stop-motion animation that I have ever personally experienced married with a superb script and great direction from Wes Anderson. The whole thing really felt like watching a labor of love – it was both whimsical and emotional all rolled into one, and basically everything that I could personally ever want out of a movie. Up is my pick for runner-up, and was also an extraordinary film, but not quite at the level of Fantastic Mr. Fox – or of Pixar's other best work of the decade – Wall-E and Ratatouille. Up certainly had its moments of greatness – notably the time-elapsed (and heart-wrenching) visual-tale of the love and loss between Carl Fredricksen and his wife – but the film cannot maintain these highs like Fox, and is thus, narrowly edged out for the top spot.
Best Cinematography
Avatar
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Winner: The Hurt Locker
Runner-Up: Avatar
Another category with five great nominees – where all of them occupy a unique space on this list – so much so that this category is almost literally impossible to pick. Avatar was widely regarded as the best looking film of the year, but, as I discussed in my predictions segment, I'm not entirely sure how to judge it from a cinematography standpoint – after all, aren't all those glorious visuals that we are seeing simply special effects not necessarily cinematography? Thus, my pick goes to The Hurt Locker – in particular, all of those eye-popping slow-motion explosions that are captured so beautifully.
My Picks from the actual Ballot:
Best Picture
1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Up in the Air
3. A Serious Man
4. The Hurt Locker
5. District 9
6. Disney/Pixar's Up
7. An Education
8. Avatar[ EXPERT PICK ]
9. Precious
The Blind Side
Best Director
1. Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker[ EXPERT PICK ]
2. Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds
3. Jason Reitman - Up in the Air
4. James Cameron - Avatar
5. Lee Daniels - Precious
Best Actor
1. Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart[ EXPERT PICK ]
2. George Clooney - Up in the Air
3. Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker
Morgan Freeman - Invictus
Colin Firth - A Single Man
Best Actress
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious
Carey Mulligan - An Education
Helen Mirren - The Last Station
Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side[ EXPERT PICK ]
Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia
Best Supporting Actor
Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds[ EXPERT PICK ]
Woody Harrelson - The Messenger
Christopher Plummer - The Last Station
Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones
Matt Damon - Invictus
Best Supporting Actress
1. Mo'Nique - Precious[ EXPERT PICK ]
2. Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air
3. Anna Kendrick- Up in the Air
4. Maggie Gyllenhaal - Crazy Heart
Penelope Cruz - Nine
Best Original Screenplay
1. Inglourious Basterds[ EXPERT PICK ]
2. A Serious Man
3. The Hurt Locker
4. Disney/Pixar's Up
The Messenger
Best Adapted Screenplay
1. Up in the Air[ EXPERT PICK ]
2. An Education
3. District 9
4. Precious
In the Loop
Best Animated Feature
1. Fantastic Mr. Fox
2. Disney/Pixar's Up[ EXPERT PICK ]
3. Coraline
4. The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
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