MY WORST OSCAR PREDICTIONS YET! It's time for my annual Oscar humiliation! At picking winners I've had good years and bad, but the very compulsion to indulge this juvenile habit, let alone share it with the world, shames me deeply. Well, better this than Middle East policy, I guess.

As usual, I have seen but few of the nominated films, so these predictions are based mostly on ignorance and gut-rumblings. I will also say that I'm very nervous about these picks, as my Jesuitical reasoning has led me unto highly counterintuitive choices. But that's the story of my life. Now let 'er rip:

Best Visual Effects: Inception. Because it's a Best Picture nominee, and because everyone who gushes about it seems to be describing special effects rather than a movie.

Best Sound Editing/Best Sound Mixing: Toy Story for the former, Inception for the latter. There. We've taken care of two Best Picture nominees that won't win anything else.

Best Makeup: The Wolfman. A man turns into a wolfman!

Best Documentary Short. The Warriors of Qiugang. I just saw the trailers and Jesus Christ, all this stuff looks grim. The Chinese pollution and corruption theme in Warriors seems like something Oscar voters would go for.

Best Animated Short: Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage. Like a sap, I'm picking the one I liked.

Best Live Action Short: Na Wewe. A.O. Scott has me convinced.

Best Documentary Feature: Exit Through the Gift Shop. In my big 2009 win, I got burned betting against the front-runner in the category. Never again!

Best Song: If I Rise, from 127 Hours. It sounds like something a Hollywood factotum might play on his car stereo. And it's from a Best Picture nominee that won't win anything else.

Best Foreign-Language Film: Biutiful. Oscar likes Iñàrritu.

Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3. Duh.

Best Art Direction: Alice in Wonderland. Something besides a Best Picture nominee has to win a meaningful award, and awful as this movie is, its look is highly distinctive and clever. Plus Tim Burton films have won this award three times before.

Best Costume Design: The King's Speech. Never bet against period dress in this category. But which period? I'm guessing many voters will boost the Oscar count for their Best Picture choice with this craft award.

Best Original Score: The Social Network. Yes, I agree, Trent Reznor winning an Oscar would be awesome. And I bet a lot of the voters think so too. (I know they're all supposed to be geezers, but surely you remember "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"; maybe they take recommendations in the musical categories from their less-elderly children or mistresses.)

Best Editing: The Fighter. Tough call. It usually goes either to the Best Picture winner by default, or to a perceived flashy-cutting job a la Bullitt. The Fighter has jittery-as-hell sequences which David O. Russell will not win an Oscar for, so it's this or 127 Hours.

Best Cinematography: True Grit. Roger Deakins FTW. It's time.

Best Original Screenplay: The King's Speech. No way around it.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network. Release the Sorkin!

Best Director: Tom Hooper, The King's Speech. I sweated this one, and briefly considered Darren Aronofsky, and even the Coens. Carpetbagger thinks The King's Speech will win Best Picture but picks Fincher for directing because "best director-best picture splits are rare in Oscar history, but when they happen, they usually reward the edgier film’s director." But since 1972, those splits have usually happened because the Best Picture winners in those years (Crash, Chicago, Gladiator, et alia) really, really sucked. (Also, what's "edgy" about The Social Network?) Whatever its drawbacks, The King's Speech is a well-made object.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter. On consideration, I'm halfway convinced by Jay B's reservations about this showy performance. But Bale's in front and there's no one they're drooling to replace him with.

Best Supporting Actress: Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech. Attend my brilliant reasoning! First, the last time a film won both the Best Supporting Actor and Actress Oscars was Hannah and Her Sisters in 1986. And that was by Woody Allen, a jackpot for supporting actors. Bale will win, so favorite Melissa Leo probably won't.

Till this very moment, and my fifth beer, I was going with Hailee Steinfeld. I really think that if the Coens and Jeff Bridges hadn't been so recently honored, and if the film hadn't been a remake, True Grit would win everything this year; it has deep feeling and great craft, and is just the sort of thing the voters would like to reward with a strong showing. And Steinfeld, who's the heart of the film, would be the logical beneficiary of their affection for it. But the energy is flowing toward The King's Speech, and HBC had a great year with this and Alice in Wonderland, of which she was the only really magical aspect. Well, her and the frogs.

Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech. I'm not a total idiot.

Best Actress: Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right. Or am I? But they've been trying to give this chick an Oscar for 20 years. When her co-star Julianne Moore, who was equally wonderful, didn't get a nomination, I sensed something was up. It may have been easy for voters to decide that Natalie Portman will get another chance down the road. And if it wasn't so easy, Warren Beatty may have made some phone calls.

Best Picture: The King's Speech. For all the reasons you've heard elsewhere. It's lush and uplifting and a massive hit.

These prognostications are made for entertainment purposes only. I'm sure not putting money on them. See you on the red carpet!

UPDATE. LE-O-O-O-O-O-O! Clearly this is one of my bad years. Alice in Wonderland takes both Best Costume and Best Art Direction, and The Fighter both Supporting Actor awards. Hmm. Not that you should listen to me at this late date (10:10 pm EST), but it's looking more like The Social Network's year.

UPDATE 2. No it wasn't. Ah crap. 12 for 25 -- great for batting, lousy for Oscar prognostication. Well, back to tedious political subjects.

ROY'S OSCAR PREDIX 2023 (FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY)

 [Oscar announcer voice] Before we get to the Oscar predictions, let us dispense with the last nominee. [/Oav] For my other Best Picture nominee reviews, see the previous post.

Entertainment Weekly did one of those annoying Anonymous Hollywood Insiders Talk Oscar things where the kibitzers are obviously miserable alte kakers who can’t understand why black people are so pushy and the world has passed them by. (The “marketer” who said he liked The Banshees of Inisherin for “the sense of community… Don't we all just want to move there right now?” is my favorite). But one of the oldsters did get me to laugh by calling Top Gun: Maverick a “big beer commercial” and that stayed with me as I was watching it. I kept imagining Spuds McKenzie in Cruise’s role, transmitting not only his aerial combat instructions but also his love talk with Jennifer Connolly via a voiceover by Don LaFontaine. 

And why not? Maverick was made to be taken unseriously. Look, I’m sorry, I recognize it’s a quality product, and I loved the zoom-zoom and pew-pew, and if the fun macho posturing ain’t Only Angels Have Wings, for our low, mean age it will do. But its emotional content, like the relationship between Maverick and Goose’s son, Pinball or Dipshit or whatever it is (oh, OK, Rooster, guess you caught on pretty quick – what a disagreeable old man I have become), is just cheap – though, like the beer this all seems to be a commercial for, effective to its purpose (which is to make you care about what happens to these guys more than you would, say, the puppets on Fireball XL5) if you get down enough of it. I give director Joseph Kosinski much credit for catching me up on the Top Gun backstory without cluttering up the movie. And if I were invested in that backstory, I guess Maverick’s and Jennifer Connolly’s sub-Hallmark dialogue and Maverick’s and Val Kilmer’s cheesy version of Jack Nicholson’s and William Challee’s scene in Five Easy Pieces (it would be parody material if Kilmer weren’t actually sick, dammit) might be moving. For me, they were carefully planted chokepoints to keep Maverick from becoming Starship Troopers without the self-awareness. OTOH the climactic air battle is a honey and the editing is boss, but Hans Zimmer’s score – ominous and ethereal at the same time -- is the secret weapon.

OK, now my predictions:

Best Picture: Everything Everywhere All at Once. Unlike in previous years, I’m not taking any sucker bets in major categories this year – if I’m to be wrong, let me be wrong with the mob! It’s good, it’s funny and weepy, it’s the magic of the movies. If not: Maverick: Top Gun.

Best Actor: Brendan Fraser, The Whale. I’m not gonna pay twenty bucks to see Fraser’s actual performance at current streaming rates (ditto for Nighy, alas) but the odds are too great and the competition, while brilliant, too thin: I loved Aftersun but Paul Mescal’s is surely the most low-key performance ever nominated, and Austin Butler is too young (and, unlike young’uns like Daniel Day-Lewis at the time of My Left Foot, not convincingly showing more than an uncanny ability to impersonate). That leaves Colin Farrell, whose work I fear is too subtle to distract voters from lobbing a love bomb at the maltreated Fraser. If not: Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin. 

Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Like I said, no sucker bets. Blanchett broke down my resistance to her austere craft with Tár the way Meryl Streep did for me with The Post, but the Yeoh love-fest seems unbeatable. If not: Cate Blanchett, Tár.

Best Supporting Actor: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Nope, not fucking with this Tinseltown tidal wave of sentiment for Short Round’s comeback. If not: Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin.

Best Supporting Actress: Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin. Like everyone I love Angela Bassett but Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a funny-book movie and hers is a funny-book performance, full of brio but unidimensional. And as Heath Ledger showed, you can win an Oscar for that if it’s unexpected – not if it’s General Zod. (Also, way too much screen time.) If not: Bassett.

Best Director: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once. If not: Todd Field, Tár.

Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin. It sure sounds like writing (Irishness helps!). Plus it’s got jokes. The Tár script is downright novelistic in its detail and ambiguities, so it could go Field's way, but look, I'm trying to win here! If not: Todd Field.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley, Women Talking. Making it a chamber drama and making it watchable is a helluva thing. If not: All Quiet on the Western Front. 

Best Editing: Eddie Hamilton, Top Gun: Maverick. Not just for the zoom-zoom, pew-pew, either; the high-intensity conversations really pop, too. If not: Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Best Cinematography: James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front.  If not: Florian Hoffmeister, Tár.

Best Score: Justin Hurwitz, Babylon. If not: John Williams, The Fabelmans. 

Best Production Design: All Quiet on the Western Front. If not: Elvis.

Best International Feature Film: All Quiet on the Western Front. If not: EO. 

Best Costume Design: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. If not: Babylon.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Elvis. If not: The Whale.

Best Animated Feature: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. If not: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.

Best Animated Short: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. I actually saw all five of these! And while I loved the wordless, two-color children’s book feel of Ice Merchants and the innovations of My Year of Dicks, I’m afraid the Apple Films Christopher Robin ripoff will get it. If not: My Year of Dicks. 

Best Live-Action Short: The Red Suitcase. If not: An Irish Goodbye. 

Best Documentary Feature: Navalny. If not: Fire of Love.

Best Documentary Short: The Elephant Whisperers. If not: Haulout. 

Best Sound: All Quiet on the Western Front. If not: Top Gun: Maverick.

Best Visual Effects: Avatar: The Way of Water. If not: Top Gun: Maverick.

See ya at the show! (PS I reserve the right to make changes until one hour to air time.)

UPDATE: Oh yeah that thing from RRR will win Best Song! OK, see ya at the show!

FINAL UPDATE: 16 out of 23 -- 70%, a passing score. I'll take it! 

TIME-LAG OSCARS PART SIX. Stewart is funny still, but he has also sort of faded into the background – in other words, he’s an emcee, not a star galvanizing the event. Makes sense in an Oscar year of small Hollywood movies. Montage films, elaborate gags, nice moments in the acceptance speeches, and a brisk clip – why, you’d almost think they planned it this way.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY. I’m losing the pool, but I’m a traditionalist so I like that one movie is sweeping the craft awards.

BEST ACTRESS. First time I saw her was in Freeway. Then I saw Election. Then she made a lot of movies that I had no interest in seeing, though I peeked at them because she was in them. I thought she was wasting her talent, but I’m sure she was just taking such opportunities as arose to build her audience and her power. Her speech looks and sounds like pleasant treacle, but her comments about her family and her emphasis on T-Bone Burnett show some spine, taste, and wisdom. I haven’t seen this one yet, but I will now.

BEST ADAPTED SCRIPT: Larry McMurtry has a good gig. His dual academic/redneck cred makes it possible for him to resist all kinds of pressure in Hollywood. And he uses it well here. "All are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book." Hear, hear, cowboy.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY. Quoting Brecht? ‘Sokay, America went to bed already.

BEST DIRECTOR: I liked Crouching Tiger etc. Lee's tribute to "all the gay men and womens" is very sweet, partly for being rote. Not having seen The Hulk I don’t have a full read on his artistic personality, but I’ll go to the theatre next week and get more information. Hey, Oscar is doing his job!

BEST PICTURE. Whoa. Big coup! Newspapers full of Oscar ink! Was Oscar scared? Who is Paul Haggis? Is this picture The Greatest Show on Earth, Chariots of Fire, Driving Miss Daisy, or An American in Paris, In the Heat of the Night, All the King’s Men -- that is, a cop-out or a split decision? Again, you’d almost think they planned it.

Now time to clean up my own vomit! Thank you, get home safe!

OSCAR PICKS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

I should add a review of The Imitation Game to my other on to Oscar posts, but it's almost magic time, dammit, so, quickly: We have a cryptographer-hero who's so ahead of his time he may as well be bringing penicillin to neanderthals, and who's also a gay martyr forced into chemical castration and suicide, plus he's possibly on the autistic spectrum, plus he sticks up for women's rights (well, one woman's) -- all this, as they say, and World War II! A Beautiful Mind meets Casablanca! It’s such perfect Oscar bait that I had to admire it, despite hearing each gear-tooth in the machine clicking — click, the platonic love of the smartgirl makes him try to be sociable and he’s humorously inept, click, but they’re going for it, and they stand up to The Man, click, etc.  Keira Knightley as always seems like a little girl playing at grown-ups and once again Charles Dance is made to be the Wicked Witch of the West. But Cumberbund or whatever his name is -- I thought he was supposed to be a pretty-boy and a joke, but in this he's not only believable and affecting in his swallowed anguish, he's absolutely magnetic, a real screen-filling star. Maybe the kids know something after all.

OK, on to this annual death march. I've been good and I've been awful, so make sure you can spare the money:

× Best Picture: The Imitation Game. People are talking Boyhood and talking Birdman. But those movies are probably too weird to win -- look at the past winners -- and will I believe knock each other off. As I just said, The Imitation Game is big-time Oscar bait, and has all the right nominations including Actor, Director, Screenplay, even Editing. (I half-expect -- maybe one-quarter-expect -- a late miracle surge for The Grand Budapest Hotel, so remember that if chaos ensues.)

× Best Actor: Michael Keaton, Birdman. I really was thinking Eddie Redmayne, but Glenn Kenny got me thinking about it -- Redmayne's performance has some nice shadings but nothing like the wells of anger and sorrow that, say, Daniel Day-Lewis gave Christy Brown in My Left Foot. And despite the gags about going full retard, disability is good for getting Oscar nominations, but not so much for winning the prize. In Birdman Keaton was acting his ass off, in both the good and bad ways, and the Academy gives points for effort (if you are or ever have been a star).

× Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Wild. I didn't see any of these movies except The Theory of Everything, so here's my half-assed but not necessarily wrong reasoning: The surge of enthusiasm for Julianne Moore in Still Alice reminds me of the alleged sure thing that was Julie Christie in her Alzheimer's drama Away From Her. Also, I hear great things about Witherspoon's performance, and people love her.

✓ Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash. The odds are too steep for anyone else, plus I'm making too many wild picks and must cut my losses somehow.

✓ Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood. Ditto.

× Best Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood. If it's not the picture of the year, it's the stunt of the year (or past 13 years) anyway. This is exactly the kind of thing that wins directors Oscars in year when their films don't win.

× Best Original Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness, The Grand Budapest Hotel. I think the Academy likes Wes Anderson but has been waiting for him to dispel their suspicion that all his movies were written to be performed by children, and that Anderson was having a laugh by using big Hollywood stars instead.

✓ Best Adapted Screenplay: Graham Moore, The Imitation Game. Now, one or two craft awards and we've got a believable Best Picture card.

✓ Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman.

✓ Best Production Design: Adam Stockhausen, Anna Pinnock, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

✓ Best Costume Design: Milena Canonero, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

✓ Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Frances Hannon and Mark Coulie, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I think Birdman's camera trick carries so much of the movie's feeling that the voters will go for it. Also, now that Budapest has caught their attention, they can lavish rewards on his stunning visuals. (I am violating my own rule on costumes this year -- that the earliest period gets the award, particularly if there are ruffs and crinoline -- so Mr. Turner may make a fool of me. But I am prepared.)

✓ Best Film Editing: Tom Cross, Whiplash, because it's got drumming, and I bet there's a lot of rhythmic stuff going on (almost as good as a car chase!).

× Best Score: Alexandre Desplat, The Imitation Game. And there's your Best Picture winner craft award! I still like Jóhann Jóhannsson's The Theory of Everything music very much, but Desplat has been a bridesmaid too often.

✓ Sound Mixing: Whiplash. Drums!
✓ Sound Editing: American Sniper. Guns!

✓ Visual Effects: Interstellar. Ugh, what do I know. Speaking of which, I didn't have time to meditate and my Ouija board is broken,  so I'll refrain from predicting the other awards, though I will say I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't throw one to Glen Campbell just to fuck with us.

UPDATE. I cleaned up on the minor awards and wiped out on the major ones. Until they got to Best Score I was flawless, baby, solid gold, and even there I got the right composer. (Not predicting shorts, docs, and cartoons really helped my percentage, though, I had no idea what the fuck was going on there.)

But Desplat getting it for GBH rather than The Imitation Game was a tipoff that my big bet wouldn't clear. Guess the WWII-winning loner who's also gay, autistic, and bullied was a bit too on the nose; maybe it would have won if they'd just extended their rewrites of history and  given Turing the happy ending he deserved, perhaps ascending into heaven with Christopher like at the end of Gladiator. (And why not? I'm with Graham Moore, fact-checking the water lilies is stupid.)

I have to admit, if you'd tipped me that The Imitation Game wouldn't win and that Keaton wouldn't win, I still would not have guessed Birdman would win. It may be the most avant-garde (in relative terms) winner since All Quiet on the Western Front. Even other arty winners like American Beauty and No Country for Old Men give viewers some old-fashioned hey-that-star-is-a-guy-like-me thrills, or at least entertaining chase scenes, before it all goes existential; Birdman is the kind of headscratcher people used to associate with Europe and make fun of. Well, forty years of future studio execs going to film school have paid off. 

My Birdman review here.

I CAN'T GO ON OSCAR PREDICTING; I'LL GO ON OSCAR PREDICTING.

This is one of those years where I saw practically nothing up for an Academy Award -- which judging from my past performance as a predictor can either be good or bad for my chances. So attend my belly-flop below.

I will add here, as I have been meaning to since I saw it, that Django Unchained is terrific -- by far Tarantino's best movie. (Mild spoilers.) In Inglourious Basterds I detected a great advance in his filmmaking, but also a lot of his usual annoying tics, such as the use of photogenic violence to resolve situations he couldn't think his characters out of. And that was strange, because if anything offers a good foundation for germane but over-the-top violent scenes, it's Nah-zis. But Tarantino doesn't make the same mistake with slavery: the eruptions of bloodshed make perfect sense, as illustrations of either the oppressive situation or of the hero's wrath. And Django Unchained is much more efficient than Tarantino's other scripts -- the hero's goal is always before us, and each ratchet of the building tension keenly felt; the digressions, such as the lovely snowy romp to "I Got a Name," are pleasurable interludes instead of oh-God-what-now-do-I-have-to-listen-to-David-Carradine. It's a cartoon, sure, but sometimes cartoons are pretty great; when the horrible Stephen bawls over his horrible, fallen master it's lurid, pathetic, and amazing. The only Tarantino thing still around to bug me is characters allowed to live for no discernible reason except to keep the movie going. But who knows; maybe he'll get to that next.

Okay, let's wrap this turkey before I puke:

BEST PICTURE: Lincoln. Nate Silver's method says Argo, but that method (largely based on other awards' histories) doesn't take Academy history sufficiently into account. What other movies have won Best Picture without a Best Director nomination? Driving Miss Daisy, Grand Hotel, and Wings. Even Michael Anderson was nominated for Around the World in 80 Days. The best chance for Argo is suggested by the weak field in which Daisy won; the enlarged Best Picture field would amplify the effect of a lack of consensus. But there's a big, popular, about-our-beloved-President movie in the running that voters can feel good about electing.

BEST DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln. Him again? Well, the voters seem to let him have it when he does something big and noble and (unlike Munich) uncomplicated.

BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln. Is there anyone in there they love as much as him? Denzel Washington by all accounts tore it up in Flight; his is the best outside chance.

BEST ACTRESS: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook. If the movie is popular enough, this goes to the new girl everyone loves. Plus, bonus, mental illness! And Away from Her taught me that old people in dire straits just make everyone sad.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR. Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook. Here's my sucker bet! (Carpetbagger's too.) They're all previous winners, so the give-him-one-already impulse is moot. Doing this by ESP, I surmise that there is a deep enough well of affection for the movie that voters would like to honor it beyond the Best Actress category. And I am told that in this one, De Niro finally figured out how to do comedy.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables. I'm not a total idiot.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Zero Dark Thirty. Shrouded in controversy, is it? Tough titty. This is the movies and movies are magic.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Argo. There was something they loved about it and it apparently wasn't the acting or directing.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi. I went down swinging with Roger Deakins and True Grit a few years back. No more! (Also, look at the Bond films' record at the Oscars.)  Life of Pi got a lot of nominations; there must be something they liked about it, and my uneducated guess is they liked the way it looks...

BEST SCORE: Mychael Danna, Life of Pi. ...and the way it sounds. I was going to pick Thomas Newman for Skyfall, on account of his long unrewarded nomination streak, but as the cinematography category shows, outside the top categories these people aren't sentimental.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Lincoln. As Bluto told Flounder, I've given this a lot of thought, and I just don't think the members will vote for Life of Pi three times.  

BEST SONG: "Skyfall," Skyfall.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Anna Karenina. Brutally Honest Oscar Voter is right: They love them puffy dresses.

BEST FILM EDITING. Zero Dark Thirty. It's got action, it's got suspense, Argo already got an award.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Brave. A lot of these voters have little girls. Also, daughters. (Steve Martin did this joke better.)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Searching for Sugar Man.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Mondays at Racine.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Paperman.
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Curfew.
BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM: Amour.
BEST MAKEUP: Les Miserables.
BEST SOUND MIXING: Les Miserables.
BEST SOUND EDITING: Zero Dark Thirty.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Prometheus.

Good luck to us all.

UPDATE. The links are a bit wonky, but here's a fun Oscar quiz.

OSCAR PREDIX! GUESS ALONG WITH ROY.

Longtime readers know what pleasure I get from this annual Oscar thing, notwithstanding my poor track record. (Mind, I was one of the few who called Green Book in 2019.) So indulge me, please. I reviewed seven of the eight Best Picture nominees at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down; the seventh and the links to the previous six are here, and if you can't access them it's because you haven't subscribed so now's a good time to fix that.  

I just saw my last Best Picture nominee, Minari, and I will say that it's beautiful, warm, and everything people who love it say about it. It's also not my sort of thing. I recall sitting through Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs at its premiere New York engagement at Cinema Studio 1 in 1979 -- by myself, because none of my friends would go -- and thinking: okay, no more three-and-a-half-hour movies about shoemakers for me. To be fair, I was very young and itchy then, and in the decades since have learned more patience with slow movies about families scratching out a living. And though not as long or deliberate as the Olmi (comparatively it zips along), Minari is great at getting the viewer to fall into the rhythms of farm life -- not the "ring the dinner bell, Betty Lou" farm life of old Hollywood, but the mobile-home-on-a-cheap-plot farm life that's Korean emigrant Jacob Yi's gamble for a better future for his family. Material success and failure reveal themselves slowly, seasonally; meanwhile Jacob must succeed not only as an "eldest son" striver but also as a family man, keeping everyone happy and whole -- and it's even less clear that he'll succeed at that. The burden of Jacob's dream wears on his wife Monica, and by bringing over her mother to make her feel more at home and watch the kids, Jacob doesn't solve it -- in fact the mother's presence, for all its charm (she's a fun blend of TV addict and back-country philosopher), actually exacerbates the problem, and finally tests Jacob's ability to succeed not only as a farmer but also as paterfamilias. My synopsis makes it sound like a sitcom, but if it were it would be one directed by Terrence Malick. Thanks in part to stunning photography and music by Lachlan Milneou and Emile Mosseri, you can feel time and nature having their effect. Steven Yeun is leading-man great, and Yuh-Jung Youn as the grandmother brings both humor and something like mystery into the story. I think the fact that people aren't equally celebrating Yeri Han's performance as Monica -- with all its shadings of disgust at this "hillbilly" life, love for her family, perseverence and duty and, finally, finding the end of them -- suggests what's maybe out of balance in the movie, and something besides its genre that bugged me. 

Okay, predictions! Here I stand: 

Best Picture: Nomadland. My folly and glory in the past has been not to follow conventional wisdom. (Last year, I bucked the critics who thought 1917 had it in the bag, but also assumed the Academy would never dare laurel Parasite.)  Well, my feet are flat and I'm tired of running.  Everyone says Nomadland and so say I. Part of me thinks that, as with Roma in 2019, it's a little too much like museum-grade performance art to truly enchant the Academy, but maybe the pandemic year makes this spooky neo-Beckettian slice of life in the bluffs and Badlands the picture of the year.  [My choice: The Father.]

Best Director: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland. I mean they pushed her hard enough, with a zillion publicity photos of her and America's Sweetheart Frances McDormand, and Nomadland is not a "written" movie so much as a directed one. She really painted this canvas, and made the silence sing, give her that. Also, aren't the "nomads" a bit like the "witnesses" in Warren Beatty's Reds? That won him an Oscar too. [My choice: Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round.]

Best Actor: Anthony Hopkins, The Father. Everyone says Chadwick Boseman, and man was he good -- every bit as young, dumb, and full of cum as he had to be to make that tragedy work. Also, he's dead! But Hopkins reminds me of something Thom Jones said about what one's writing needs to be if it is to succeed: "so good they can't reject it." No one who knows the first thing about acting can deny what Hopkins accomplishes here -- totally in the moment, undeniably believable, but also crafted to the sharpest detail. You can't say no to it. And maybe nearly-dead is good enough. [My choice: Hopkins.]

Best Actress: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holliday. Speaking of so good they can't reject it. I like Diana Ross in Lady Sings The Blues okay, but Day not only has Ross' star power, she's also a completely  believable Billie Holliday -- diva, junkie, street rat -- from jump. (When she asks Jenkins in jail, "what's your game, man," I thought: No one with a star on her dressing room door could possibly look or sound so real saying that. But she does.) Even better, the more you learn about Holliday (admittedly the movie makes it hard to keep track), the more sense her characterization makes. [My choice: Day.]

Best Supporting Actor: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah. Looking back at what I recall and wrote about this performance, I notice the contradictions: a committed radical with an awkward teenage gait, a great public speaker who's shy with the ladies, a Man of the People who's really of the people. That's a 3-D performance, and the character's end makes it especially poignant. [My choice: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal.]

Best Supporting Actress: Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari. She's super cute, for one thing, but also when she talks semi-mystical shit like why minari is a good thing to plant and she and her grandson make up a song about it, I buy it, and there's no reason on earth why I should except world-class acting.  [My choice: Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.]

Best Original Screenplay:  Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman. [My choice: Fennell.]

Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, The Father. [My choice: Hampton and Zeller.]

Best Cinematography: Joshua James Richards, Nomadland. [My choice: Sean Bobbitt, Judas and the Black Messiah.]

Best Original Score: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste, Soul.  [My choice: Emile Mosseri, Minari.]

Best Film Editing: Mikkel Nielsen, Sound of Metal. [My choice: Yorgos Lamprinos, The Father.]

Best Costume Design: Alexandra Byrne, Emma. [My choice: Byrne.]

Best Production Design: Donald Graham Burt and Jan Pascale, Mank. [My choice: Peter Francis and Cathy Featherstone, The Father.]

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Eryn Krueger Mekash, Matthew Mungle and Patricia Dehaney, Hillbilly Elegy. [My choice: Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.]

Best Song: "Husavik," Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. [My choice: "Husavik."]

Best Sound: Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michellee Couttolenc, Carlos Cortés and Phillip Bladh, Sound of Metal. [My choice: Sound of Metal.]

The rest, ha ha fuck, I'm just guessing:

Best International Film: Another Round.

Best Visual Effects: Tenet.

Best Animated Feature: Soul.

Best Documentary Feature: Collective.

Best Documentary Short: Hunger Ward.

Best Animated Short: If Anything Happens I Love You.

Best Live Action Short: The Letter Room.

Whew! Wanna put money on it? Kidding, I don't have any money. Watch this space and my Twitter Sunday night for my Oscar show regrets! 

ON TO OSCAR, 5.

(See previous reviews of American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.)

The Theory of Everything. As I've said before, the biopic is a minor form that usually tells us why some famous person was famous and doesn't spare much time for the demands of art. The Theory of Everything stretches the formula a little -- it's not just about Stephen Hawking, it's about him and his wife Jane -- but it's still an inspirational famous-person story, with both Hawking and his doting wife rising through suffering to redemption. In some ways it's just the sort of gush you'd expect: for example, Jane doesn't seem to think about cheating on her increasingly enfeebled husband (with her saintly choir director, no less) until well past the halfway point -- and at that moment, hundreds of miles away, Hawking starts spitting up blood. And every so often someone gets the opportunity to tell the world what a genius Stephen is (most melodramatically, a big-time Russian scientist who carries the crowd with him at a crucial turn). The inspira-biopic formula is faithfully followed.

And yet... the Hawkings' relationship is genuinely interesting. Their meet-cute is pro-forma -- he's gawky but obviously impassioned and fun, she's sincere and sweet and too real for those other boys, and their life at Cambridge is sunny and full of promise. But when Hawking begins to have medical problems, their relationship is stepped up -- though Stephen wants to give her an out, Jane insists she's in for the long haul and that she has the steel for it.

The haul is indeed long, far longer than the two years Stephen is originally given to live, and both parties work hard at sustaining it, and at Stephen's career. Jane's other interests are subordinated, and over time it wears on her, as Felicity Jones, who plays Jane, brilliantly shows: She doesn't become shrewish or embittered -- it turns out she does indeed have the steel -- but she does stiffen; she sees that she may break, and begins to look for ways to sustain herself.

Stephen meanwhile is both increasingly driven and dependent, and like Jane is smart enough to find out how to keep from collapsing. His academic success everyone knows about, but his way of dealing with his physical dilemma is more interesting. Eddie Redmayne is great at conveying the effects of Hawking's ALS, and at showing how Hawking uses his wit and charm, even when deprived of most conventional means of expressing them, to avoid despair in both his own life and his marriage. Still, eventually he, too, has to look outside the relationship to sustain himself. (Though putting across delicate and painful emotions while physically challenged is an Oscar-season punchline, I can tell you that in Redmayne's case, when Stephen has to have the marriage-ending discussion with Jane, it absolutely works.)

So this inspirational story is about what from some perspective might be called a failed marriage. The most obvious argument for its success is Hawking's glorious career. As for Jane's success, that's a little trickier; the film suggests that when Hawking finally acknowledges the possibility of God, which for Jane has always been a certainty, it's because she has made God real to him by her devotion. It seems a small enough victory, though you could say that any good relationship between educated people is to some extent an extended conversation, and that Hawking's admission is not so much about Jane winning a point as it is a sign that they have all along been talking the same language.

All the craft elements are very fine, but I especially liked the lushly romantic score by Jóhann Jóhannsson, which in the grand Hollywood tradition not only underlines but exalts the characters' feelings; it's up for an Oscar and I wouldn't be shocked if it won.

UPDATE. Here's an interesting Music Times column handicapping the Best Score race; it's always nice to hear from someone who knows what he or she is talking about, though the author's view that Alexandre Desplat's double nomination won't work against him is contradicted by history.

BUT IN THE END, THEY'RE ALL LOSERS.

The Oscar nominations are out, and if I get some time I hope to watch more of the nominated films and luxuriate in stupid prognostication like I used to do back when I was single and had nothing to do but attend the ci-ne-ma. Speaking of nerds, I see the wingnuts are having their usual allergic reactions. Kyle Smith, who went from pretending to be a film critic at the New York Post (and sometimes a theatre critic -- see his review of Will Ferrell's one-man George W. Bush show, "Is it too much to ask for Hollywood's leading comic actor not to use the deaths of our troops in combat for a giggle?" Never forget!) to full-blown kulturkampfer at National Review, tells his readers what they want to hear, i.e. that the nominations prove "#OscarsSoWoke" and are all about appeasing the dark gods of liberalism: in this "highly politicized year... Academy voters are going to be very eager to send a duly left-wing cultural message" and so, Smith predicts, moviecommies will vote for The Shape of Water which he says is leftwing -- because of the human/nonhuman miscegnation, I guess. Then he says,

As for Get Out, I think this is a very fine movie that is being hugely overrated because it’s about racism and I can’t imagine Oscar voters, who are mostly senior citizens, will be as impressed with it as critics have been.

So Academy voters are too "senior citizen" to vote for Get Out, but "woke" enough to vote for some other woke movie? Maybe there's something in there about Hollywood liberals being The Real Racists™ -- I'm stunned Smith didn't tease that out!

In another post called "The Anti-Trump Oscars" (these guys are nothing if not subtle) Smith explains why The Post can't win even though, if we follow his Zhdanovite logic, its journalistic-heroes-beat-Nixon story would seem to be the obvious choice: "Perhaps the Academy found the film just a bit too by-the-numbers... or voters thought the film was a bit too blatantly intended to capitalize on the anti-Trump mood. The Oscars are a fan dance..." It's all so complicated! Or maybe it's actually simple: the whole idea of everything that happens in movieland being a proxy battle between Republicans and Democrats is a bunch of bullshit. C'mon, Agent Smith, think outside the box!

Also, while I think people who mope about "snubs" because their personal love-objects didn't get Academy recognition are silly, at least they're just harmlessly indulging fan-crushes; Zachary Leeman's "Conservative Movies Snubbed by the Academy" at LifeZette, on the other hand, is like a cross between 1984 and Tiger Beat. For example, Leeman tells us Wind River is conservative because it's "about the mental and physical stability and fortitude still needed to survive in some parts of the country." You know, like Cimarron or Walkabout! Thus it "deserved recognition for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay," and because it didn't get it Leeman has thrown himself on his bed sobbing and kicked off all the frilly pillows. (The other snubbed movies were ignored, Leeman says, because they have uniformed personnel in them, and Oscar never honors servicemembers except for The Hurt Locker and Platoon and Saving Private Ryan and Platoon and Patton etc. etc. [voice trails off])

Speaking of snubs, if you thought Wonder Woman didn't get any nominations because, news flash, not every big-budget comic-book movie gets the prestige awards that lonely dorks holed up with their "light saber" and a box of Kleenex believe it should, Brandon Morse of RedState is here to tell you it's really because "Hollywood, being the left wing haven that it is, couldn’t stomach a few of Wonder Woman’s glaring politically incorrect flaws." That seems weird, as I remember when the movie came out conservatives were mainly tumescent with rage at all-female showings of the film. But no, Morse tells us,

For one, feminists didn’t seem to think Wonder Woman was suitable as a rep for their narrative. She was too sexy and too beautiful.

And when he unsheathed his light-saber, an usher threw him out of the theater.

Others among the brethren run their own little fantasy factories -- like Victory Girls' Kendall Sanchez saying Get Out is about "how progressives attempt to understand the cultural experience of African Americans." I know, that's what we all took away from it. Also, while Kyle Smith thinks Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is "about a vengeful feminist looking for answers after her daughter’s murder and also has a racist character" and therefore is "just as woke as The Shape of Water" -- a damning assessment, indeed! -- Kendall thinks "it’s a great movie about a desperate mother urging police to find her daughter’s murderer. I went into the movie thinking it would be a giant slam against police" -- and therefore bad! -- "but it turned out to be a humble and empathetic story that emphasized all humans are 1) intention-driven and 2) both good and bad." Ebbing, Missouri is a land of contrasts!

Maybe Smith and Kendall can do a podcast where they argue over whether a movie is conservative-therefore-good or liberal-therefore-bad. That'll really show the libs and send the walls of Hollyweird tumbling down, and our children's children's children will have nothing to watch on the telescreen but Veggie Tales, God's Not Dead 1-3,927, and the Two Minutes Hate, as God intended.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: For conservatives, culture war is not a war for culture but a war on culture.

WINGNUTS OCCUPY THE OSCARS! (PART I) The Oscar nominations are out, and so are the rightwing Zhdanovites. Roger L. Simon:

“The King’s Speech” – a conservative movie – leads Oscar nominations

“The King’s Speech” – an unabashedly pro-royalty, anti-fascist film – has received the most Oscar nominations (12) for this year’s Academy Awards. Does this mean that the normally liberal Academy has had a political conversation to the Dark Side? No. It shows that good filmmaking can sometimes trump ideology.

I guess he thinks a liberal film, conversely, would be anti-royalty and pro-fascist. (Like what? The Patriot?) Here's the saddest bit:

But it may reveal more than that. Movie business liberalism is only skin deep. It is all very much a show for self-aggrandizement. Deep down, they respond like the rest of us. They just won’t admit it. Unless the movie’s as good as “The King’s Speech.”

So Hollyweird liberals aren't even really liberal -- they're just pretending to be, out of pridefulness; but their sham is exposed by the magic of the movies, as seen through the kaleidoscopic chemical cascades in the brain of Roger L. Simon. Hollywood ending!

I'm surprised to see that other conservatives have also rushed to claim The King's Speech. (Conservative Lesbian, for example, headlines her review "Traditional Values Take Center Stage." She should share her idea of traditional values with the House GOP leadership.)

I saw and reviewed The King's Speech, which I enjoyed despite some risible bits. And I must say, if you wanted to stick politics onto it, you could just as easily take this one the other way.

To begin with, isn't the whole preoccupation with a speech impediment anti-conservative? It's the sort of therapeutic subject liberals allegedly love -- an affliction other people neither share nor understand, leaving the sufferer isolated and moody until he is "healed" and brought into the sunshine of a supportive community. If that doesn't sound like a pitch for one of Michelle Obama's fascist fat camps, I don't know what does.

In the course of the movie we are sensitized to (or, to use the nomenclature, blessed with "awareness" of) the problem. Thus we learn to care about yet another type of victim, just as we learned from other movies and TV shows to care about victims of autism, Tourette's, brain damage, depression, etc. Isn't looking at people as victims what liberalism is supposed to be all about?

Even worse, the film has excited yet another special interest constituency -- stammerers have glommed onto the movie as a fund- and awareness-raising tool. Why, next there'll be a fucking ribbon for it. Then it'll be classified a disability, and the speech-impeded will get their own set-aside information and customer service desks where they can stutter and stammer to their hearts' content without people yelling for them to get on with it.

Admittedly the King overcomes his problem eventually, but look how he does it! He actually goes slinking off for help for his problem! Fancy a Live Free or Die Tea Partier going off to a therapist -- with taxpayer money, yet! Why, a real rough, tough conservative King would just beat up any subjects who dared be unimpressed with him. (Maybe that'd be the Schwarzenegger version: "S-s-s-s-metimes ze v-v-v-v-v-vords f-f-ail-me [Head butt].") His tutor turns out to be an actor -- you know what they are -- who refuses to call him Your Highness and talks to him about his feelings and his childhood. The therapist even encourages him to yell and swear as if he were in a Primal Box. By God, it's a wonder the King didn't wind up gay and soaking in hot tubs at Esalen. They call this conservative? It's just Rain Man with royals.

Plus their beloved Winston Churchill is presented as yet another Timothy Spall grotesque.

Okay, now I'm warmed up for the conservatives who say The Social Network is about the magic of entrepreneurism.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT. Luke Thompson was hoping I'd do something on rightbloggers slagging the Oscars. Sadly I'm too busy to pick corn out of that particular shit, but this bit from one of the crazy fucks at HillBuzz ought to be enough for anyone:

Last night I recorded the broadcast, and later I watched small snips of it, fast-forwarding through 95% of it and just stopping at a few of the winning announcements:
Actress: The winner: Meryl Streep for a role that made Margaret Thatcher look like a senile old woman rather than the magnificent world leader she was and is
Foreign Film: nominees from Israel, Belgium, Canada, Iran, and Poland. The winner: IRAN
Supporting Actress: nominees were 4 white women and 1 black woman. The winner: the black woman
Supporting Actor: The winner: Christopher Plummer for playing an older man who comes out as gay later in life.

Inevitably:

I reiterate that I have not seen most of these films.

The whole thing's a treasure, especially when she does the "You Hollyweird lieberals are so 'courageous,' here's what would be really courageous" schtick -- in my humble opinion, as well as it's ever been done:

Here’s what I believe would have been courageous: And entire Oscar broadcast without one snarky remark about Republicans, conservatives, family values, Christians or Jews. Beginning the show with the Pledge of Allegiance. Or an invocation. Having a singer sing the National Anthem. Giving free front row seats to members of the United States Military, veterans, wounded warriors, family of troops currently serving in harm’s way. Creating an “American Patriot” award, analogous to the Lifetime Achievement awards they present to someone who has had a long, illustrious career in Hollywood. [I would nominate Gary Sinise for this]...

Don't dream it, honey, be it. I believe Rick Santorum's got an old barn in Bucks County. Let's put on a show!

UPDATE. Right up there with this cowgirl are some crazy fucks from Iran, in their celebration of the A Separation win for Best Foreign Film. Talk about sore winners:

Iran hailed the country's first Oscar-winning film as a triumph over arch-foe Israel on Monday... 

A state TV broadcast said the award succeeded in "leaving behind" a film from Israel. Javad Shamaghdari, head of the state Cinematic Agency, portrayed the Oscar win as the "beginning of the collapse" of Israeli influence that "beats the drum of war" in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Wow -- movies really are magic!

OSCAR I. As of 10 pm, this is fun. Crystal loosened up quick. The Oscar Best Picture song schtick was at least as well-written as its previous editions. The Supporting winners are fine actors and acquitted themselves well. Every time they cut to Ken Watanabe, who has a natural "I kill you now" look, I break up. And they're right this minute giving an award to the sublime Blake Edwards, who is hamming beautifully.

I do peek in at The Kroener sometimes and think, how sad it must be to be a right-wing bloviator on Oscar night -- applauding a joke at Michael Moore's expense with no apparent awareness of the fact that Moore participated in the gag, which makes him rather a good sport (it's like hating on Bob Hope, honored here, and taking his self-deprecating humor as a point for Your Side). And freaking out that Messiah Mel is not present. Imagine politics being everything in your life! One almost feels sorry for them. Almost, but not quite.

MY OSCAR PREDICTIONS -- FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY!

Feel the excitement -- Oscar night! As you may know, I'm in the habit of seeing as many Best Picture contenders each year as I can. Yesterday I finished the cycle with Ford v Ferrari. And what a dumb pleasure it was! Two racing pros, the plain-spoken and practical Texan Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and the explosive, eccentric visionary Brit Ken Miles (Christian Bale), are at loose ends in 1963 when fate hands them a dream project: Make Ford Motor Company a world-class winning race car. Part of the drama is our boys versus the "suits" at FoMoCo who insist on gumming up their bold work with corporate bullshit. This to some extent also pits our boys against one another, as Shelby is more inclined to work with the suits and Miles to blow them off. Ironically, I felt the heavy hand of Movieland suits on Ford v Ferrari itself --  you can almost call out points where someone must have said, for example, "test scores say we really need Shelby to get hot with the Ford asshole around 1:35." But I gotta admit that, aside for a sniffly coda underlining the heroes' man-love, as Hollywood product goes the thing's very well built. I worried how things will go, felt good when they went well, and the racing stuff made a car-crazy little kid out of me and I don't even drive. I could have stood Shelby and Miles to be more, like, characters, but given the context I'm content with Damon and Bale coasting on their considerable base skills and charisma. If you want real acting there's plenty in the supporting cast, including Tracy Letts as pig-eyed honcho Henry Ford II (a world away from his Lady Bird and Little Women characters; his reactions to a report of Enzo Ferrari's insults is a little master class) and Ray McKinnon as a great car engineer who seems to know a little something about how people work, too. (Yeah, that's a cliche, but with a movie like this cliches aren't so bad.)

OK, you've seen my other reviews (links here). Now to my famous predictions! I'm seldom more that 65% right and often do much worse, but I did call Green Book last year.

× Best Picture: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

My big sucker bet right up top! Here's my reasoning: Everyone's saying 1917. It's so well-done, they say, a tour de force, it's a lock. But no one loves 1917. Once its brutal effect passes, it mainly remains in the mind as a series of unpleasant set pieces. You'll notice no major critics' awards named it Best Picture.

Parasite leads the critics' awards, and oddsmakers put it as #2 to 1917. But would Hollywood go so far as to give its crown jewel to a Korean movie so obviously about class warfare -- and with such a downbeat ending? No, they're more likely to pick a movie that flatters themselves -- indeed, flatters a Hollywood era in which many of them came up. And it's fun!

× Best Director: Sam Mendes, 1917

✓ Best Original Screenplay: Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won, Parasite

And that's where they'll split the difference.

✓ Best Adapted Screenplay: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit 

Had Waititi been nominated for Best Director, too, I'd be liking this movie for Best Picture. I found it not only involving but inspiring -- just the sort of thing Oscar goes for. It's a sign of our times that a movie about the fall of the Third Reich is the sunniest film of the bunch.

✓ Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
✓ Best Actress: Renée Zellweger, Judy
✓ Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
✓ Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

I'm not a total idiot.

✓ Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, 1917
× Best Production Design: Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales, 1917
✓ Best Sound Mixing: Mark Taylor and Stuart Wilson, 1917
× Best Sound Editing: Oliver Tarney and Rachael Tate, 1917

Tough categories, but 1917 really is too good to refuse in the technical areas.

× Best Score: Alexandre Desplat, Little Women

There's a lot of hype for Hildur Guðnadóttir, understandably. Her Joker score is very good at ratcheting the tension of a film that requires constantly ratcheted tension. (Thomas Newman's 1917 score is similarly effective, but with more musical flourishes.) Randy Newman's Marriage Story score is pretty lush, but at odds with the mumblecore look of the film. Desplat's score is as always very musical and I can even remember snatches of tune from it, plus it brings back pleasurable memories of a film that some people think the Academy undervalued.

✓ Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Little Women

'Cuz it's a costume drama, duh. (If they're ambitious maybe they'll recognize the clever, cartoonish exaggerations of the Nazi uniforms in Jojo Rabbit, not to mention Scarlett Johansson's hat.)

✓ Best Film Editing: Michael McCusker and Andrew Buckland, Ford v Ferrari

I have understood since Bullitt that they like to give this award to movies with cars going fast.

✓ Best Song: “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again," Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Rocketman
✓ Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker, Bombshell
✓ Best International Feature Film: Parasite
× Best Animated Feature: Klaus
× Best Short Film (Animated): Kitbull
✓ Best Short Film (Live): The Neighbors' Window
✓ Best Short Film (Documentary): Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You're a Girl)
× Best Documentary Feature: Honeyland
× Best Visual Effects: Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones and Elliot Newman, The Lion King

I don't know. What do I know? Kitbull gave me sniffles. Isn't The Lion King one long special effect?

And there we have it!

UPDATE. I'm a winner!
UPDATE 2: I'm a loser!
UPDATE 3: I can't be sore about Parasite -- it's brilliant. Props to the Academy for having the guts.

OSCAR PREDIX FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

Okay, it's minutes away -- too late to affect the betting line, but just in time to embarrass me! You've seen my Best Picture nominee reviews. And now the proto-envelopes, please:

Best Picture: Green Book. My big sucker bet! I know everyone says Roma, and I loved it, but like I said, it looks and moves too much like a museum installation -- Green Book is old Hollywood stuff and pEoPlE LiKeD iT. (Also: Driving Miss Daisy didn't get a Best Director nomination that year, either.)

Best Actor: Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Actress: Glenn Close, The Wife
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

I'm sticking with conventional wisdom all the way, except for Weisz, whom I think will lap the field out of sheer magnificence.

Best Director: Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman
Best Original Screenplay: Green Book
Best Adapted Screenplay: A Star is Born

My other sucker bet! I think a split ticket on Best Picture and Screenplay is the sort of comity gesture Academy members might like.

Best Original Score: Terence Blanchard, BlacKkKlansman
Best Cinematography: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Best Production Design: Black Panther
Best Costume Design: The Favorite
Best Film Editing: Vice
Best Song: "Shallow," A Star Is Born
Best Make-Up and Hairstyling: Vice
Best Sound Mixing: Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Sound Editing: A Quiet Place
Best Foreign Language Film: Roma

Blanchard is always great and his style and Lee's dovetailed so well here it's giving me a serious hunch. Roma was too good for Cuarón not to win a craft award. The other craft award predix are based on previously observed Oscar wealth-sharing.

Best Animated Feature: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Documentary Feature: Hale County This Morning, This Evening 
Best Special Effects: First Man
Best Animated Short: Bar
Best Life Action Short: Skin
Best Documentary Short: A Night at the Garden

I am totally guessing. I'm guessing on all of these, really -- who knows the heart of the Academy voter anymore? But this is part of the fun for me, and maybe you. Now, on to the Pantages!

(Oh, I'll try to be responsive in comments should you be so inclined.)

UPDATE. Well, I'm losing already.

UPDATE 2. Okay, got the make-up thing, I'm a star, yay.

UPDATE 3.  Why did I bother.

UPDATE 4. I won at something! I feel good now!

UPDATE 5. FIRST MAN FOR VISUAL EFFECTS I'M A  G E N I U S

UPDATE 6. LOL all the woke people are mad about Green Book. Guys, this is Hollywood. What did you expect? It’s like being pissed they didn’t nominate The Love Witch. Anyway, I shoulda put money on it!

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

I see a lot of people complaining in near-apocalyptic terms this morning that their Oscar faves didn't get nominated -- or, in the ridiculous popular term (considering this is a ballot result), were "snubbed" -- and maybe I'm insensitive but really: this is a silly social event where movie people give each other prizes, why you stressin'? The New York Film Critics Circle Award is much more meaningful honor, and Lupita Nyong'o won that; and she shares the distinction of winning a NYFCCA acting award without a concomitant Oscar nomination with Steve Martin, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, and a lot of other geniuses.

If there's anyone who should feel cheated it's Kevin Garnett.

I've just started my way through the big award-season movies, and have written at length about Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, Marriage Story, and The Irishman. I'll get to the rest in time. Right now I'll just say I'm surprised that Taika Waititi wasn't nominated for best director, because I thought and still kind of think JoJo Rabbit would be a good Best Picture choice -- weird enough to hit the artiste-voters where they live, and also extremely well-done and even inspirational. It could still win but it'll be more of a stretch.

As it stands, I will say yay Parasite.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I made a mistake when  I looked over my shoulder/ Cromwell was right behind me, in the driving rain...
•  Well, I’m going for the Oscar gusto again this year. I've already discussed The Post, and will now treat Dunkirk, which I just saw. I said back in 2009, when Christopher Nolan made The Dark Knight, that unlike many other A-list Hollywood moviemakers Nolan could at least shoot an action sequence so I could tell what the hell was going on. He's gotten even better since then, and Dunkirk is a great opportunity for him to show off. From the Brueghelian bombardment of big ships crowded with drowning, burning, and leaping soldiers, to the strafing of a small boat full of shushed, terrified child-soldiers, to balletic dogfights, Nolan can orchestrate mass movement and violence like nobody’s business. And he is beautifully abetted in all the craft details, especially Hoyte van Hoytema’s photography, which combines high contrast with judicious color saturation to give things a edge alternately dreamlike and nightmarish, and Hans Zimmer’s score, which underpins good old-fashioned orchestral pumping with machine sounds and postmodern shrieks to juice the tension. Though the technique is modern and even modernist, the intent is antique-heroic — most clearly seen in the rah-rah over the Little England flotilla and the stiff-upper-lipped British officer class, each beautifully represented, no coincidence, by British national treasures Mark Rylance and Kenneth Branagh. That’s well-earned in both history and the movie, but as an American I found it odd that there was absolutely no humor — even Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve had jokes. Still, if the unrelenting seriousness makes it hard to take Dunkirk to heart, it does increase the effect of the ending, in which filthy, bedraggled survivors awaken on the train home to windows suddenly filled with hay-brightened English sunlight. And though I do look forward to Gary Oldham’s Churchill, I can’t imagine I will be as moved by his rendition of the “Never Surrender” speech as I was by Fionn Whitehead reading it haltingly out of a newspaper on his way back home from hell.

•   On the Oscar theme, I should also mention Get Out: You've probably either seen it or heard enough about how great it is, so I don't have to go into how much I loved it. But I will say that one of the things I love about it is, though it's clearly about race, the central conceit is so powerful and expansive that, were it possible to show the film to people who had no experience or understanding of racism, they would still understand the terror, because it represents a fundamental anxiety: that of anyone entering a world that for whatever reason -- money, background, culture --  is so different from their own that they suspect and are quietly terrified by the prospect of psychic kidnapping and enslavement. Of course, even the slightest awareness of racism and its role in our national history inflames that anxiety considerably -- because it actually happened. This is not, as some morons have suggested, a politically evanescent phenomenon, but a real work of art based on the insanity of American life. 

•   OMG, here's another alleged "reader email" that God-botherer Rod Dreher is just passing along:

I’m a longtime (and recently wavering) atheist, but I have had a very devout evangelical friend of many decades. 

Suuuure you are/have.

He lives in Oregon. He couldn’t afford to send his daughter out of state for college. But he wanted her to go to college and experience the income and class benefits that had eluded him (as a GED holder) throughout his life. 

All this devout evangelical wanted was for his daughter to have the advantages he never had! But alas, to do so he had to send her to godless College, and though it was "the most milquetoast of the bunch from the political activism perspective," she had within a few months been brainwashed by Lesbo Hippies to "disavow her female gender." Perplexed pop's friend reports:

The pressure, he said, was too much, and from all angles—peers, instructors, campus organizations and media, etc. “Non-binary” was a taken-for-granted ontological reality, and to question it was bigotry. To fail to realize your own “non-binary-ness” was self-hatred rooted in bigotry.

Sure enough, by her junior year, she was a “non-identifying queer,” neither male nor female, and an activist. Their relationship is now essentially nonexistent, as she sees him to be a “Nazi"...

It's such a sad tale that I half expected it to end, "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle. She died gender-fluid."

THE SPECIAL-NEEDS CHILDREN OF ZHDANOV.

Try and imagine being Jonah Goldberg:

As for the liberal bias thing. I absolutely agree there’s an enormous amount of leftwing bias in Hollywood, including often at the Oscars. But it’s hardly the case that pro-war or pro-American movies never get nominated. Last year, recall, Argo won best picture (to the dismay of some on the left). It beat out Zero Dark Thirty​, which was even more hated by the left but nonetheless received four nominations. The “Hurt Locker,” a more ambivalent war movie but hardly anti-American, won three years before that (it also won best director, a huge snub to her ex-husband, James Cameron, who directed Avatar). ​ ”Saving Private Ryan” was nominated for 11 Oscars and won five including Best Director — not exactly an anti-military or anti-American movie. 

There are certainly movies that benefited from being on the left. “Crash” didn’t deserve Best Picture. “American Beauty” is wildly overrated. But if the academy was really so leftwing in its tastes, it’s hard to see “Braveheart,” “Forrest Gump,” or even “Gladiator” beating out their competition.Warren Beatty certainly didn’t deserve an Oscar for “Reds,” a piece of soporific agitprop about American Communist John Reed. I think you can make a case for Oliver Stone getting the Oscar for “Platoon” without the benefit of politics, but not for “Born on the Fourth of July"...

That is to say, imagine that you are obsessed with politics but too stupid to say anything interesting about it, and so associate your crackpot ideas with things you do understand, barely, though they have nothing to do with politics -- such as one's choice of football teams, music videos, TV shows, and female body type -- and say things like "great novels are, by nature, conservative" with a straight face.

This is really why we have a "culture war." It's not a categorical imperative; it's a make-work program for unskilled wingnut dilettantes.

UPDATE. Goldberg's previous low-water mark as a kulturkampfer.

UPDATE 2. Commenter Ellis Weiner focuses on Goldberg's murky adverbial phrase "to the dismay of some on the left," which he finds

about as full of meaning and import as a teenager's "like." You can use it anywhere and not be entirely wrong. "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should--to the dismay of some on the left." "I AM your father, Luke--to the dismay of some on the left." "A specter is haunting Europe--to the," etc.

Other commenters come up with their own versions ("Baby, everything is all right, uptight, [and] clean out of sight (to the dismay of some on the left)"). And whetstone reminds us of John Rogers'/Kung Fu Monkey's definitive rebuke to anyone who seeks to anthropomorphize Hollywood as anything but an anteater that eats money instead of ants.

EVERYONE'S A WINNER! I am usually very bad at picking Oscar winners, and though I've seem more entrants this year than usual, I expect to fare as poorly as ever. But talking big on subjects I don't understand is my stock in trade. So I invite you to lift your self-esteem by comparing your picks to mine.

Best Picture: No Country for Old Men. Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis. Best Actress: Ellen Page. Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem. Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton. Best Director: The Coens. Best Original Screenplay: Juno. Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country for Old Men.

(I'm all about Julie Christie, but every Oscar show needs a shocker, Juno is well-liked, and youth must be served. I still can't figure out whether Swinton was good or awful, but she sure was acting. Diablo Cody is the new Callie Khouri.)

Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille. Best Art Direction: Sweeney Todd. Best Cinematography: Atonement. Best Costume Design: Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Best Film Editing: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters. Best Music (Score): Ratatouille. Best Music (Song): "Raise It Up." Best Makeup: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Best Sound Mixing: The Bourne Ultimatum. Best Sound Editing: Transformers. Best Visual Effects: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Best Documentary Feature: Taxi to the Dark Side. Best Documentary Short: Freeheld. Best Animated Short: Madame Tutli-Putli. Best Live-Action Short: Tanghi Argentini.

(I'm totally groping here. I figure the big lush romance and the big summer movies require craft awards, Elizabethan clothes are wicked cool, and Michael Moore is fat. The shorts I judged, as I expect most voters do, by their synopses. Everything else is juju.)

PARAGRAPH OF THE WEEK.

It's from National Review's David French, NR's house testosterone junkie whose prose always purples up when he's talkin' man-talk. The title of his latest emission is pretty good -- "Understanding the Inescapable Reality of Masculinity" -- though the story is the same as usual: A man, Oscar Stewart, did something mainly (chased the latest synagogue shooter! Didn't catch him, but M for Maneffort!), which is offered as evidence that boys are "more aggressive than girls, and more violent than girls, and they take greater risks than girls," and that's good because we need boys to do that because girls, well you know, sugar and spice.

(French actually mentions that at the synagogue "a courageous woman named Lori Kaye lost her life shielding the rabbi from the incoming bullets" and never for a second acknowledges that this fact blows his whole stupid thesis.)

But the nut graf, and it is nuts, is thing of beauty. It comes after French is forced to admit that most men aren't cowpunchers and roadhouse bouncers and opportunities to butch up don't come easy in today's modern, sissy world. Attend:

But what used to happen more naturally must now happen more intentionally. Men need to cultivate physical strength even if physical strength isn’t necessary to their daily lives. They should identify as protectors even when immediate threats aren’t evident. Did Oscar Stewart believe he was in immediate danger when he went to his synagogue last Friday? And our culture and our people need to stop mocking and belittling men when they pursue stereotypically “manly” hobbies and activities. Male friendships are vital, and male friendships flow organically from male pursuits.

"Cultivate physical strength" -- you mean like Jack LaLanne? I hate to tell French but there's this thing called health clubs and it's sweeping the country. Maybe he thinks men should do less cardio and more weight training? [Checks cover of magazine -- this is supposed to be about conservatism, right?]

"Stop mocking and belittling men when they pursue stereotypically 'manly' hobbies and activities" is good too, though I wonder what activities he's talking about -- drum circles? Model airplane building? Jack-off clubs? Well, that would explain "flow organically from male pursuits."

UPDATE. Commenter Andrew Johnston makes a great point: "If all of this is 'natural' to men, then why do you need to teach it?" Maybe someday we'll get a David French book explaining how liberals made all the boys girly and conservatives are trying to bring 'em back to butchitude with crossfit, cigars, and Fetal Pain bills.