This wraps up my Oscar predictions for 2008. Please check out Jennifer’s predicts in the blog post below.
Best Actress
Leave it to Jennifer to mention wigs in her blog post below, since she seems to have more experience with them than Cate Blanchett (or Beyonce and Elton John, for that matter). Many prognosticators have said that this is a two person race between Julie Christie, so fascinatingly subtle as a woman fading away from Alzheimers in Away from Her, and Marion Cotillard, jaw-droppingly bombastic as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. Between the two of them, they’ve cleaned up the critics and precursor awards (BAFTA, SAG) like an Electrolux vacuum in a Luna carpet showroom. I really admired Julie Christie’s performance, which was so full of small, truthful gestures and facial expressions, but I was stopped dead in my tracks by Marion Cotillard’s acting storm, packed with dramatic weight and bluster, but also heartbreakingly human touches. Unfortunately, I don’t think these two ladies can muster enough strength to buck Oscar traditions. Except for Helen Mirren’s win, the Oscar Best Actress award very rarely goes to an actress above 35, so that’s a strike against the 66 year old Christie (who already has an Oscar, and really dressed her age in that shockingly staid, ahhh, pantsuit, at the SAG Awards. I thought she was at a Board meeting, not at a glamorous awards show). And there hasn’t been a Best Actress winner in a foreign language role since Sophia Loren won for Two Women in 1961, so that’s a strike against Cotillard. My “no guts no glory” prediction is a major upset in this category: Ellen Page, quite the ingénue at 21 and speaking English, might just be the Oscars’ Eli Manning, grabbing the statuette underneath the two frontrunners, for her nuanced, very warm and real performance as the pregnant Juno (one point for Ellen is that Juno is the only Best Picture nominee that has broken the $100 million dollar mark- the Academy has to reward it somewhere).
My personal favorite: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
My prediction: Ellen Page, Juno
Best Actor
Daniel Day Lewis’s steamroller of a performance was riveting and highly memorable. However, his performance, I think, suffered from the same inconsistency as the rest of There Will Be Blood- at times his Daniel Plainview was brilliant and magnificent (such as the baptism scene), and at others, it came off as one large piece of ham (such as the bowling alley finale), you’d think if you boiled it with collard greens, it could feed the entire state of Louisiana!!! I was so exhausted seeing him chew up the scenery of Marfa, Texas, and all assortments of trains and cattle, I was craving an aromatherapy massage in the middle of the movie! I actually preferred two other nominated performances- I thought Viggo Mortensen’s complex, minimalist gangster in Eastern Promises was a milestone performance (and because of that, uhmmm, balls-out, I mean ballsy steambath scene, it probably got the majority of the votes from the costume designers and make-up artists in the Academy) and I was really bowled over by Johnny Depp’s Sweeney Todd, which stayed away from Grand Guignol cartoon tendencies- insanely malevolent, touchingly believable, and impressively sung. These two boys though will be sitting it out this Sunday as DDL collects his second Oscar.
My personal favorite: Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
My prediction: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Picture
Jennifer says in her blog post that she hasn’t met anyone who actually liked There Will Be Blood. Where has she been hanging out - at an auto repair shop? I personally think that There Will Be Blood, although massively imperfect, is thrillingly ambitious and magnificently epic. It’s an important film that film classes will be debating and dissecting in years to come. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the discipline and the focus of No Country for Old Men, a very good film, with excellent performances, but with elegant, but sparse writing which I found distant and uninvolving. I didn’t really connect with the movie but admired the mature craftsmanship of the Coen brothers. I think the Best Picture race is between these two since Atonement, although enjoyable, didn’t get a nomination for it’s director or for any of it’s lead actors; Juno felt really slight and ultimately tiring in its self-assured hipness, and Michael Clayton played like a run of the mill made for TV movie (and not a made for network TV movie, mind you, but a made for cable access TV movie). There Will Be Blood is the sexy (and I really believe deserving) pick; No Country for Old Men is the safe choice. Guess which one the Academy (whose average member is only slightly younger than Mickey Rooney) will honor?
My personal favorite: There Will Be Blood
My prediction: No Country for Old Men
Check out our Oscar recap on Monday!
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
The 21st century technology Oscar review! Love it, as always. Great stuff from both of you and I hope you have a blast watching this weekend!
Doug
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
What an astute choice of words, calling TWBB the “sexy choice”. Because that’s exactly what it is…a cinephile’s wet dream. I love love love PT Anderson! Even when his scenes are a train wreck and veer dangerously towards absurdity, I can’t, dare not, look away!
I must disagree, however, with your choice for Ellen Page. Way off base, Francis! If I were a member of the Academy, I would not vote for a snarky pregnant teen over an Alzheimer’s patient or Edith Piaf! Giving a supporting actress Oscar to Anna Paquin is one thing, but declaring someone barely out of college age a bonafide actress…well!
And while I might take umbrage over the fine points of your critique of DDL’s performance…that’s one man I would gladly devour with collard greens!
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Doug and Andrew, on behalf of Jennifer who is busy running with the paparazzi pack in LA to get a shot of Colin Farrell, thank you very very much for your comments!
Andrew, I would be very, very thrilled if Marion Cotillard got the Oscar for Best Actress, but that’s going to be a huge validation from the Academy that I’m not really sure they’re willing to give (look at all the nominated actresses in foreign language roles since Sophia Loren’s win that they have passed over, many of them legendary: Anouk Aimee, Ida Kaminska, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Bergman, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani, Marie-Christine Barrault, Fernanda Montenegro, Penelope Cruz). I think it’s going to be a heck of a lot easier for a young, greenhorn, “of the moment” actress to win an Oscar than someone who is in a role that’s not speaking in English. By the way, Marlee Matlin was also 21 when she won for “Children of a Lesser God”, and look at where she is now…oh, at “The L Word” and the new season of “Dancing with the Stars”…forget about her then!
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm
OK you two: It’s Chrissy Campbell here from a balmy Miami Beach - has the weather made me delerious or is it really that you guys have lost the edge? Ellen Page Best Actress? Dissing Tilda Swinton? Viggo, balls and all, as a “contenda”? I would have walked out of “Eastern Promises” had I not been on a date and, even then, it would have been the highlight of my evening. But I guess that’s a personal issue. :) s.l.a.p. Anyway, in my very humble, never-replied-to-a-blog-before kind of way, “Atonement” was the best movie of the year if not for it’s masterful portrayal of love gone astray - green dress and all (and, man, was that an amazing sex scene sans-skin in the library), but for how beautifully executed and true to the book it turned out. Best screen play? Should be.
Totally agreed on “Michael Clayton” as a cable vehicle. Jeez - it was a walking advertisement for Mercedes Benz, et al. The only movie more egrigious in its subliminal advertising was my personal vote for worst move ever made - “Cloverfield”.
Can you guys tell that I’ve had one too many glasses of Savignon Blanc while I’m house swaping/babysitting with my best couple friends while they’re on Lincon Road at the South Beach Food and Wine Festival and I”m in Coconut Grove listening to crickets and deciding between going to bed and “Deal or No Deal” re-runs? How about that for a run on sentence? Love you both and puh-leese, keep the dream alive.
Chrissy Campbell
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:22 am
Francis and Jen,
What would Oscar night be without you? I must commend you on your website which works far better than many corporate sites I use. Francis, you truly must be gainfully employed by IBM or someone else who uses computers.
Now that we are Californians and read the LA Times everyday, which covers movies the way the Chicago Tribune covers political scandals, we can understand how Californians can pick Oscar winners without seeing movies. But how can two Chicagoans? It’s not like there’s anything to do after October 30 and the weather turns–or is that August 1? At any rate, your commentary far exceeds your viewing habits and we thank you for that. In some future year, we want to know why Jen never made the trip as an impressionable, though fabulous, young girl to Hollywood and tried her luck on the casting couch. The excitement of Lincolnshire surely could have been no match for the glamour of Hollywood. (Francis, we know why you didn’t attempt it since you probably only would have made it to the Valley anyway.) We salute both of you and your love for the movies (never cinema) and thank you for your contribution to the arts through the blogosphere.
February 23rd, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Hi Chrissy C- good to hear from you! And maybe more than the balmy Miami weather making you delirious and hazy about film appreciation, it may be the sauvignon blanc? Did it come in a box??? :) Just for the record, I enjoyed “Atonement”, and Jennifer didn’t. I found the movie quite lush and engaging, but old-fashioned…in between holding my breath to see when someone would finally stick an IV drip into Keira Knightley’ bony, starved arm, I was half-expecting a young, much-better-fed-than-Keira Joan Fontaine or Deborah Kerr to appear on the staircase wearing an identical green dress. Unfortunately, in a year when cinephile dreams-come-true “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” are in contention, I don’t think “Atonement” has a chance.
Hi Ed! It’s a thrill to hear from you always. Thanks for the comment on the overall impact of the blog- I owe it all to my dear friend Tom, master of all things web-related and blogging mentor. And thanks for your generous words about our Oscar note- I will leave stories about casting couches to Jennifer (and those stories may be more about fainting couches, since she has that Jane Austen/Judi Dench aura to her), which may need to be accompanied by some of Chrissy Campbell’s sauvignon blanc! Thanks for reading!
February 24th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Wow Francis — Finally showing up on your blog, I am so impressed with the Oscar prognosis of ‘08 making it to this fresh new media channel. Kudos to you and Jen for transferring the annual ritual that your legions excitedly await with absolutely no hiccups! NOW THAT’s Change Management :-) Congrats and have fun watching. I can’t wait till the day after note….
March 4th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
This is old news by now (I’m back after 2+ weeks of vacation without web access) but who could miss Francis’ Ellen Page = Eli Manning football reference? A sports analogy!??! Francis, Francis, Francis… (picture me sadly shaking my head)…I don’t know what to say.