Who Will Win Best Picture This Year?

First, I have to say, I love Sasha Stone. I consider her one of the best film critics around, admire the hell out of the amazing website she’s built over at Awards Daily and consider her (generally) one of the best Oscar pundits around.

Sasha’s Essay on BP This Year

That said, I totally disagree with her thesis of this morning that American Hustle is going to win Best Picture this year. Her reasoning has a major flaw: that critics in any way matter to what Oscar voters will choose. (For the record, I agree with her predictions for the 10 best films selected, and have had the very same list up here for awhile now. I am being even bolder. I think the Academy will have only 9 this year, and leave Inside Llewyn Davis off the list.)

Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams in David O. Russell’s “American Hustle.” Courtesy of Sony Pictures.

But back to the critics. Oscar voters don’t give a crap what critics think. They (the Oscar voters) are, after all, the ones who make the craft of film. THEY are the ones who know better what is best, and I think they take that responsibility very seriously indeed. In fact, if they wanted to vote for a piece of mindless fluff (as Ms. Stone asserts), they would’ve picked “Silver Linings Playbook” last year. And they didn’t.

No, I do think they will try to pick what is best, and yes, their Number 1 votes matter most. Right now, we don’t even have any nominations to look at, so it’s almost hubris to pick the winners now. But, following this thread logically, can one really say that everyone is jumping around saying, “American Hustle was just my favorite”? No. You can’t.

Personally, I predict that “American Hustle” will get a boatload of acting noms and production noms, but not win Best Picture. (Jennifer Lawrence also isn’t winning a second Oscar this year. Amy Adams is far more deserving of one this year, for my money.)

If Oscar voters were brave, they would pick “12 Years a Slave,” of course. But many Oscar voters (sadly) won’t even sit through it. I am still hoping (and so far predicting) that they do the right thing and choose Steve McQueen to win the first ever Oscar for direction for an African-American for this film. (Cause that distinction is long overdue.)

I predict several acting noms for this film as well, and fully well believe that its lead actor shall be the one winning Best Actor. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Michael Fassbender winning Best Supporting Actor, though my official prediction is Jared Leto for “Dallas Buyers Club.”

But I digress. (My predictions, so far, are listed elsewhere on this page.)

My feeling is that Oscar voters like to project better versions of themselves onto the year’s winner. In some cases, the sheer artistry of something is what wins (“Avatar”). Sometimes, it’s a feel-good spectacle (“Chicago”). Sometimes, it’s applauding the bravery of the filmmaker having done what they did to get something on film (“Slumdog Millionaire”). Sometimes, it’s a film that captures the ethos of the moment (“Crash”). Sometimes, it’s all of those.

Even last year’s winner (“Argo”) was the ultimate “Aren’t we [filmmakers] great? We saved hostages!” film.

The one that I think will take home the golden statue this year is the one that Ms. Stone posits as her third choice:  “Gravity.”

It has many of the above-mentioned qualities. It’s actually about something, it took us to new worlds, and gave us visuals we hadn’t seen before.

To say nothing of the fact that it’s pretty much Sandra Bullock and space. If every woman who voted for Kathryn Bigelow to win Best Director voted for this film... A woman as the protagonist? Remember how hard it was to get this film made? It kept bouncing around between different actors and directors. Who wants to be encapsulated in a space suit through an entire movie? Thankfully, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney finally took up the mantle, and helped this movie get made. STILL, Sandra being up there all alone is really landmark when you look at Hollywood film (sadly).

Ms. Stone (who’s normally good about calling Hollywood out on its sexism) is right, though, that in the Oscar race, it goes back and forth as new projected “winners” are crowned, and then uncrowned. What does remain constant, though, and good Oscar prognosticators would be advised to keep this in mind, is that the critics awards don’t matter one bit. Nor do the Golden Globes matter one bit (they being a critics group also).

The only thing that one really need look at are the precursors in the guilds, of which we haven’t seen any winners yet.

I would not be surprised at all to see “Gravity” taking a bunch of these awards, including the PGA. Although, of course, “American Hustle” could clean up with the SAG award, for which (obviously) “Gravity” (being pretty much only Sandra Bullock) wasn’t even nominated. But then, so could “12 Years a Slave.” (It’s really only a predictor of Oscars if there are a lot of people in the cast.)

Remember how “Gravity” took our breath away. The Oscar winner is picked because those who vote want to believe that they are all moving film forward. Isn’t this grand? Look at what we did this year. There are many landmark films this year, that make you think of film in a different way (“Her,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Captain Phillips” among them), but it’s “Gravity” that just takes your breath away. I think that’s why it will win.

(No offense, Sasha.)

Sandra Bullock in “Gravity.” Courtesy of Warner Bros.

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Some Oscar Surprises

Oscar morning. Too early, as usual...

The announcement was an interesting mix. I'm proudest that I was one of the few pundits who called that Ben Affleck was not going to be nominated in Best Director, while Michael Haneke was. I also had David O. Russell on the list for a long time, but took him off after the DGA announcement, when so many were saying it was going to be 4/5 at Oscars. (Peer pressure...)

I did not see the omission of Kathryn Bigelow coming, however. Nor did most people.

Nor did I foresee all the love for Beasts of the Southern Wild. My Oscar prediction usually falters on two things: one, movies I did not see, and the inability to get past performances I did not personally like.

Thus, I omitted Denzel Washington in Flight (Best Actor) and Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln (Best Supporting Actor), even though most were slotting them in.

Two that few people were brave enough to put in (though I did see them on many of the "Gee, it would be nice if... " lists) were the nine-year-old girl from Beasts of the Southern Wild and Jackie Weaver from  Silver Linings Playbook.

I also had Robert DeNiro on my prediction list for a long time, then caved to peer pressure (another Oscar prediction failing). Shoulda stuck with my instincts on that.

No surprise: the cinematography noms, the editing noms. Where Mirror, Mirror came from in the Best Costume noms was a bit of a surprise.

I'm also happy that I predicted four out of five documentary feature noms (not on this page, but in prediction contests).

Since I didn't see it, I wasn't sure where to put Django Unchained. Knew for sure that Tarantino wasn't going to be in Best Director. Also knew (and predicted) that Christoph Waltz would be the one that landed in the Best Supporting Actor category.

Most happy for: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Hugh Jackman, receiving their first Oscar nominations.

We have the oldest Oscar nominee (85, will turn 86 the day after the cerermony) in Emanuelle Riva, as well as the youngest (the woman from Beasts of the Southern Wild).

All in all, a good day. Congrats to all the nominees.

A Consideration of the Best Actress Race: Real-Life Impersonations

Let us examine, for a moment, from a deeply detailed acting perspective, who deserves to win the Oscar for Best Actress, and who doesn't, and why.

Two nominees played real-life people that we know and (maybe) love. Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe.

Let's take Beauty first, then Beast.

Back in the acting days of my youth, there were several actresses that I studied thoroughly: Bette Davis, Kathryn Hepburn, Jane Fonda. And Marilyn Monroe. I knew their gait, their phrasing, their breathiness or lack thereof, I knew their histories, as much about them as I possibly could.

So I started out seeing "My Week with Marilyn" with several prejudices: 1. that really NO ONE can do Marilyn and 2. that Michelle Williams can't act.

Sure, I liked her fine in Dawson's Creek, but since then, she has pretty much left me cold. Didn't think she deserved the nominations for Brokeback Mountain or Blue Valentine.

However, I will say, she deserves this one. It's a very tall mountain to climb to recreate Marilyn Monroe. Williams even taught me something about Marilyn that I didn't know: that she was a series of poses, always posing, even in repose. And, in this movie, Williams does some pretty impossible stuff.

She recreates famous dance scenes, and movie moments, so much that you forget that you are watching another actress. That is no small thing. She has her breathiness down, and her movements. Even her insecurities. For all of those things, for which Williams herself says she "worked harder than she ever did in her life," she gets an A+ in my book.

Sadly, here is where she falters. While she was meticulous about recreating the voice, the mannerisms and the steps and phrasing, she missed the heart of it. She missed the things that really made Marilyn tick.

The script, in Williams' defense, only really gives you bits where this Marilyn shines, but in each of them, Williams falls flat.

Here are the key questions one will ask at the end of this movie:
1. What really drove Marilyn to succeed (and to chase men)?
ANSWER: her childhood in orphanages, and feeling like everyone abandoned her

2. What was her connection with Fame? Why didn't she just give it all up and "settle down" with one guy?
ANSWER: She couldn't, cause fame is a drug like any other. She needed that.

Two scenes ask these questions of her, and Williams' performance (to me) fell completely flat in these scenes. So put that Oscar away for this year.

In one, she is looking at the dolls in a dollhouse. There it is, the metaphor is just about hitting you over the head. This was the moment for the actress to break our hearts with her shattered psyche. BAM. Nothing.

In the second, she is lying on the bed, and her lover asks her to just give it all up and settle down with him. This is the moment where the actress needs to give us some insight as to why Marilyn couldn't give up this lifestyle or settle down with this, or any, man. BAM. Nothing.

At the end of that scene, a really poignant scene, the audience should have been sobbing, or at least, thinking, that poor woman. I felt nothing after watching her. She could've been doing her nails. Very unfulfilling.

Meryl Streep suffers from the other problem. She is phenomenal, the script is dreadful and the direction is hokey.

But for me, it was like this. There is an opening scene where you see an old British woman, buying milk. Like her performance in Angels in America, where you see an old Jewish man, and go, HOLY CRAP! That's Meryl Streep... it's the same here. She walks and talks like an elderly British woman. As she talks more, in closeup, in the next scene, you see that it's Margaret Thatcher.

To be fair, her hair and makeup people also deserve an Oscar, cause WOW! This makeup was unbelievable. I've seen nearly all Meryl Streep movies, and I swear, I had a hard time seeing Maryl in there.

She also loses points (like she did last year) when a good chunk of the movie is someone else playing the younger years.

But wow. You wanna see a virtuoso playing that acting instrument, you need go no further than Meryl Streep in "The Iron Lady." I really didn't like the movie at all, but when Streep was in frame, she was riveting. My favorite scenes of hers were the ones with Jim Broadbent. They really could've made better use of Anthony Stewart Head, too.

Streep didn't look like Thatcher as much as Williams looked like Marilyn, but as far as capturing a heart and soul of a person, this Oscar is Streep's, hands down.

I have yet to see the other three performers in this category, but at this moment, I'm calling Streep for the win.

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