When I got out of bed the morning of Tuesday, February 13, I was all aglow. I woke up three hours early that day just to watch the Academy Award nominations be announced.
I went back to bed less than half an hour later rather disappointed. I should have seen it coming but my favorite two movies of the year, Almost Famous and Wonder Boys, both got shut out of the Best Picture category. I tried to go back to sleep, but my incessant grumbling about the nominations being fixed kept me up for quite some time.
And really I wasn’t totally wrong. (Well at least, about Almost Famous. Wonder Boys never really stood a chance since it got such little attention from moviegoers in the first place.) Almost Famous was produced, you see, by Dreamworks, the same company that made Gladiator. Dreamworks sort of put all its eggs in one basket where the nomination process was concerned, pushing Gladiator more than any of their other works that year. It had worked for American Beauty the year before, so why not try it again? Plus, you’ve got Harvey Weinstein’s huge yearly publicity drive, which explains why Chocolat ended up with several nominations as well. These two factors kept Almost Famous, a much better film than either of those just mentioned, out of the running.
But the time for lament has passed, and those injustices have long since given way in my mind for new ones. Now is the time for predictions, as well as all new rumblings about what should win instead. So prepare yourself, gentle reader, for with only a week and a half left until the big night (Sunday, March 25), it’s time for me to reveal who I think the winners will be.
“What are these prediction based upon?” you ask before I have a chance to continue. Well, like good sports forecasters do, I take a look at what has won historically and base some predictions upon that. But history is always fallible, as most sportscasters will tell you. Based on history, I falsely predicted in 1994 that Tom Hanks would not win the Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump, believing that the Academy would not honor the same person two years in a row, since the only other time it had occurred was with Spencer Tracy in the ‘40s. By now you should know that Tom Hanks is apparently considered to be the Spencer Tracy of the present era.
Also it must be taken into account that Academy voters are simply people, and they vote according to their own biases. They praise art as a whole but tend to dislike artsy films in particular. They believe hype and fall for schmaltz. They equate an accent with good acting. They vote along party lines, often choosing one horse and sticking with it to the bitter end. (Think about it: how many people do you know that vote Democratic for governor, and Republican for lieutenant governor?)
And most of all, the Academy loves epic films about a hero who triumphs against all odds, even if it means they have to die in the end.
Therefore, I believe Gladiator will sweep it all, from the littlest categories like Film Editing and Visual Effects all the way up to Best Picture.
“But wait,” you cry out. “Erin Brockovich is a schmaltzy film about a hero who triumphs against all odds.” Yes that’s true. But that film was directed by Steven Soderbergh, which thus ruins its chances at winning Best Picture.
Steven Soderbergh also directed the film Traffic, another nominee for Best Picture, the only one that actually really deserves the award. Traffic is brilliant, innovative, epic. It has a great ensemble cast, who just won a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Award for their work on the film (which means nothing really—last year’s winner was Magnolia, which also ended up winning no Oscars). It has a great script and it delivers a great message.
But Soderbergh has the dubious honor of being the first director to ever be nominated twice in the same year, one for Erin Brockovich and one for Traffic. So some people will vote for Soderbergh doing schmaltz in Brockovich and others will vote for Soderbergh doing art in Traffic. The two films will end up canceling each other out, and both Gladiator and its director, Ridley Scott, will go home with statuettes.
(It’s great that Ang Lee won a Golden Globe and all, but Academy voters go for the American film—even if they tend to prefer the British actors. Crouching Tiger was filmed in China and has a Taiwanese director. It’s subtitled, for God’s sakes; it never stood a chance (and unfortunately it might be considered too commercial to take the foreign film category it is nominated in). Poor Daldry never had a shot either. If your film’s not nominated but you are, you might as well just roll over in bad as I did the morning of the nomination announcements.)
BEST ACTOR
Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls
Russell Crowe, Gladiator
Tom Hanks, Cast Away
Ed Harris, Pollock
Geoffrey Rush, Quills
By the same “party line” logic, Russell Crowe is a shoo-in for the Oscar. He’s a guy who was nominated last year for his performance in The Insider but lost to Spacey’s role in American Beauty, and he’s a Brit (well, Australian, but close enough). Hanks has been honored much too much of late, and the other films in this category are much too eclectic.
The Oscar in this category deserves to go to a non-nominee, Michael Douglas. Either for his role in Traffic or in Wonder Boys, you take your pick.
Julia Roberts’ wins at the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards make her the obvious choice in the Best Actress category. She not only carried the picture, she WAS the movie. Laura Linney was great in her role, which was much more demanding, but You Can Count on Me was a much smaller film with a much more limited run and much less hype than Erin Brockovich. All of these movies were in fact, again giving more fuel to the fire that is Julia Roberts.
Albert Finney will take the Best Supporting Actor award home, even though del Toro was better in his role in Traffic. Finney has been nominated four times before and never won, and after this weekend, he too has a SAG Award under his belt. He has the leading male role in the film, but he got nominated in the supporting category, something Academy voters always pay attention to. Plus, he’s an older actor, and of late the Academy has been honoring its elder statesmen in this category. (Martin Landau in 1994, James Coburn in 1999, and Michael Caine last year for The Cider House Rules.)
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Best Supporting Actress category is usually led by an ingénue performer, especially one who is a second generation star, like Angelina Jolie last year or Mira Sorvino in 1995. Therefore Kate Hudson has a good shot for the prize, only helping things that she, like Finney, is essentially the female lead of the film. What might hurt her a little is that Frances McDormand is nominated for the same movie, but this should be a minor wrinkle. McDormand won in this category in 1996 for Fargo, and the only other real competition Hudson has, Dame Judi Dench, won only two years ago.
And it also can only help that this performance is actually the best this year in this category.
The screenplay categories are bones thrown to Best Picture nominees that don’t win, so expect Erin Brockovich to win original and Traffic to win adapted (but don’t ask me how a true story is not an adapted screenplay, ‘cause I’m at a loss). Almost Famous and Wonder Boys may deserve it more but that means nothing.
Documentaries are always anyone’s guess, though if it’s a commercial film, you can count it out. I’d go with something about the Holocaust if I knew what any of the nominees were about. Short films are also hard to pick, since I’ve never heard of any of them. But if any of the animated ones were done by computers, it’s a good bet.
When in doubt, go Gladiator for the smaller categories, ‘cause like I said in the beginning, the Academy likes to vote with one thing in mind.
For song, you should almost always go Disney, but this year I’m defying convention. I usually defy convention to vote Randy Newman in this category, figuring he’s lost it so many times he must be due, but I am always wrong. This year Bob Dylan is nominated and picking someone other than him is a sucker’s bet.
Keep in mind that my picks for the big eight categories (Director, Picture, the Screenplays and all the Acting Oscars) were about half right last year (check them out yourself if you don't believe me--click here!), so don’t bet the farm on what I have to say. But should you end up winning because of me, you can drop off my cut at the Arrow.
