I’m taking a break from my theater coverage to share my predictions for my other consuming passion – the Academy Awards! I’m quite dismayed by the lovefest that is greeting The King’s Speech, especially in a year that produced The Social Network, a masterpiece for the ages. But enough of the pontificating, here are my predicted winners for all categories at this Sunday’s Oscars.
So everyone who has been reading From the Ledge for the past couple of years know that my usual blogging diet of theater, opera, art, world cinema and other more erudite artistic pursuits is supplanted by Oscar frenzy come February and March of the year. Albee and O’Neill and Puccini and Wong Kar-wai are put out to temporary pasture while I obsess about…uhmmm, Sandra Bullock and Anne Hathaway, and everyone in between. Speaking of Anne Hathaway, she will be bright up and early in Los Angeles tomorrow morning, February 2nd, to announce the nominations for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards (together with Academy President Tom Sherak) at 5:35 am Pacific time, so I think it’s apropros to unveil in today’s post my third annual fearless Oscar nominations predictions. Although there are some pretty sure things (Mo’Nique should have started looking at couture swatches weeks ago), I think there’ll be some surprises, and hopefully some genuine jawdroppers, in tomorrow’s nominations announcement.
So having spent most of last week in Sonoma for a vacation that quickly turned from a real one to a “partial” one (after I was asked to go on eastern time zone conference calls, which made for very long days and called for lots more beverage imbibing later on in the day), I’m still catching up on my arts and culture news from last week. Of course the big news in the American film world is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ announcement that next year’s Oscars will have ten (yes, as in diez, dix, dieci, zehn) Best Picture nominees instead of five. OK, so there is precedent for this, the Oscars were nominating ten films for Best Picture from roughly around it’s inception to 1943 (when Casablanca won over The Ox-Bow Incident, Song of Bernadette, Watch on the Rhine, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, among others). But that was the golden age of Hollywood film-making. Seriously, would the Academy have been able to get 10 films nominated for Best Picture during the past several years? There is serious barrel-bottom-scraping that comes to mind with the nominees in this decade for example (Chocolat in 2000? Seabiscuit in 2003? Michael Clayton in 2007? Frost/Nixon this year?) How are they going to fill up those ten slots, when historically they have been unable to pick five really good pictures to nominate? So will The Hangover and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen get a pretty good shot at a Best Picture nomination? The snub for The Dark Knight aside, it almost seems like box-office success is a better predictor of an Oscar Best Picture nomination than artistic criteria. Boy, this disappointing, perplexing news is enough to make this avid Oscar-watcher hang up his binoculars.
As some of my blog readers know, this is a huge weekend for me. My Superbowl, the Oscars, is going to be on Sunday, so I’ve been delirious with anticipation this whole week for one of the most competitive Academy Awards in years. Before I enter my hermetically-sealed viewing room, not to re-emerge until early Monday morning, I’d like to share with you my predictions for this year’s Oscar categories, and yes, for the first time in my prognosticating years, for all 24 of them. As a caveat, although I have seen 98% of the nominated films, I’ve seen only a couple of the foreign language films nominated (The Class and Revanche), and none of the documentary, animated, and short film nominees, so I’ll be going with what my tea leaves tell me (actually I’m basing them on predictions of various Oscar bloggers, pundits, and avid watchers). Also, just note that my predictions may not necessarily tally with my own personal preferences. Anyone who’s been obsessed with all things Oscar knows that merit is probably one of the least important factors when Academy voters pick their winners. Imagine that ha?
After years of Oscar-watching, soothsaying, trend-spotting, kvetching, and celebrating, I FINALLY know someone who is up for an Academy Award. And in a major acting category at that. Here’s a heartfelt, awe-inspired congratulations to Michael Shannon, A Red Orchid Theater founder/ensemble member, for his nomination in this year’s Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role category, for his terrific, film-stopping performance as Kathy Bates’ mentally unstable son in Revolutionary Road. I’ve been volunteering with A Red Orchid Theater over the years through the Arts and Business Council of Chicago and it’s a Chicago theater company that is very close to my heart. With Mike’s nomination and soon-to-be widespread name recognition, I am equally thrilled for Red Orchid since it was on their stage that Mike brought a lot of indelible performances to life such as the lead role in the original production of Tracy Letts’ Bug, as well as his first directorial effort, Ionesco’s Hunger and Thirst. Although Mike is now an Academy Award-nominated movie star, I still think of him as a Chicago theater actor through and through, so his Oscar nomination is also fantastic for the city’s theatrical community. Very, very cool!
I’m giddier than Jeremy Piven on a fishing expedition or David Duchovny in the middle of a nudist resort since it’s the day before the 2009 Oscar nominations are announced! I’ve been Oscar prognosticating with my buddy the divine Ms. Jennifer M for close to ten years now, yet, I’m still as breathless, as hotflashy, as woozy with anticipation as an Arizona Cardinals fan will be at the Super Bowl, to find out who gets nominated, who doesn’t, and what kind of jaw-dropping, coffee-spilling, croissant-spitting surprises the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can come up with tomorrow. Mark my ominous words though: Brangelina, despite nominations from most of the precursor awards for their turns in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Changeling, respectively, will be snubbed! The Academy, as they have demonstrated in the past, is an extremely political, backstabbing, envy-filled, grudge-carrying group (oh, just like a lot of the co-workers we know and love!), and I think the two most beautiful people in the world have bullseye targets painted on their backs (or at least on their headshots in aging, decrepit, desperately-looking-for-work Academy members’ home-based shrines to revenge and the eradication of beauty in the world!). I have mixed feelings about this since I think it’s going to be a shame if Pitt doesn’t get nominated for his solid, luminous Ben Button. But I really don’t need to see HER and HER SMIRK, floating around the Kodak Theater like a Fijian Goddess, as if she is above us ordinary mortals! (well, she kinda is, with her money, her causes, her perfect man, and her multi-cultural children!) Here then are my predictions for Oscar nomination morning. I have seen most of the films that are being buzzed about this year, but my predictions do not match up completely with my own personal preferences. I take pride in my Oscarwatching skills, so these nominations are the one that I think the Academy will make, given its history, its tendencies and leanings, its preferences over the years. I have also indicated my “No Guts, No Glory” pick for each of the categories (in some categories, it’s more than one), since I have a strong sense that there’ll be a lot of surprises coming!
Recently Attended Events
- 2/02/2012: Disgraced (American Theater Company)
- 1/29/2012: Time Stands Still (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 1/28/2012: Ameriville (Victory Gardens Theater)
- 1/22/2012: Enron (Timeline Theatre Company)
- 12/21/2011: Penelope (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 12/17/2011: Spring Awakening (Griffin Theatre Company)
- 11/12/2011: Red Light Winter (Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.)
- 10/16/2011: The Ugly One (Sideshow Theatre Company)
- 10/15/2011: Overweight, Unimportant: Misshape - A European Supper (Trap Door Theatre)
- 10/08/2011: Follies (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre)
- 10/02/2011: Elling (Redtwist Theatre)
- 10/01/2011: Becky Shaw (A Red Orchid Theatre)
- 9/25/2011: Violet (Bailiwick Chicago)
- 9/18/2011: Clybourne Park (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 9/16/2011: The Kid Thing (About Face Theater and Chicago Dramatists)
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