Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

State of the Oscar Run (updated 3/8/10): Saw all but 2 films. Which Way Home eluded me completely. Ajami I couldn’t find with English subtitles, and I don’t speak Hebrew. Squeezed in Un Prophete and El Secreto de Sus Ojos before the Oscars. All told, I saw 32 full-length films and 10 short films in 34 days.

We’re nearly there, folks. The 2009 Academy Awards will be given out tonight starting at 5:00 PM Pacific time. The world holds its breath: Will Peggy see the last two movies on her Oscar Run list?

Okay, no one cares about that. They really just want to know, after seeing all these movies, who I’d predict to win and who really deserves it. That’s why I watch all these movies, really – so you won’t have to. You’re welcome.

NOTE: This list is now updated with actual winners starred (*). I made 17 predictions, got 12 right, and 4 wrong. (I gave myself a half point each for Documentary and Costume Design as for each I was split between two films.)

Best Picture

My pick: Avatar
My prediction: Avatar

Check my reasoning here. Up in the Air was a close second. (Winner: The Hurt Locker*)

Best Director

My pick: James Cameron, Avatar
My prediction: James Cameron, Avatar

Check my reasoning here. Kathryn Bigelow* (The Hurt Locker) might be an upset win, in more ways than one – she’s Cameron’s ex-wife.

Best Actress

My pick: Helen Mirren, The Last Station
My prediction: Sandra Bullock*, The Blind Side

…which would be ironic, given All About Steve.

Best Supporting Actress

My pick: Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
My prediction: Mo’Nique*, Precious

Very tempted to pick Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart, but I think Anna squeaked past. And no, that pick was not Twilight-influenced.

Best Actor

My pick: Colin Firth, A Single Man
My prediction: Jeff Bridges*, Crazy Heart

Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) might pull off an upset win.

Best Supporting Actor

My pick: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
My prediction: Christoph Waltz*, Inglourious Basterds

I so wanted this to be Stanley Tucci, but no one wins with a movie like The Lovely Bones - including the audience.

Best Original Screenplay

My pick: The Hurt Locker
My prediction: The Hurt Locker*

I actually liked The Messenger better, but I think that was because of the performances, not the screenplay.

Best Adapted Screenplay

My pick: Up in the Air
My prediction: Up in the Air

(Winner: Precious*)

Best Foreign Language Film

My pick: El Secreto de Sus Ojos*
My prediction: Un Prophete

Ojos had the most incredible single-take tracking shot I’ve seen all year, and the best story. Prophete, however, had the distribution. Who knows? Last year, that didn’t matter to Oscar.

Best Art Direction

My pick: Avatar
My prediction: Avatar*

However, I really liked The Young Victoria for this, and thought Bright Star should also have been nominated in this category.

Best Costume Design

My pick: Bright Star
My prediction: Either Coco Before Chanel or The Young Victoria*

Clothes were more of a character in itself in Bright Star, even more so than in Coco Before Chanel, oddly enough.

Best Makeup

My pick: Star Trek
My prediction: Star Trek*

Three words: Zachary Quinto’s eyebrows. But bravo to Il Divo for the nomination.

Best Animated Feature

My pick: Up
My prediction: Up*

But damn, if The Princess and the Frog wasn’t a great return to classic animation for Disney!

Best Documentary Feature

My pick: The Cove*
My prediction: Food, Inc.

Actually, they tied for both pick and prediction in my mind.

Best Cinematography

My pick: Avatar
My prediction: Avatar*

The White Ribbon was deservedly nominated here, and was also the most painful movie to watch – that counts.

Best Original Song

My pick: “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart
My prediction: “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart*

But Marion Cotillard singing “Take It All” was the best part of the otherwise-awful Nine.

Best Visual Effects

My pick: Avatar
My prediction: Avatar*

Check my reasoning here.

Note that I am leaving off categories where I have no opinion: Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing. I’m also skipping Best Original Score because that would take more independent listening than I have time for.

What are your picks and predictions?

Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish pine for each other in Bright Star

I’ve noticed I’m writing fewer reviews of individual movies this year, and by fewer, I mean “not a single one yet.” Sorry, movie fans. Here’s some (I hope) useful info that I can jot down quickly.

We’ve seen 26 of the 34 Oscar movies we intended to, so I can now recommend which you should see and which you should shun.

DON’T MISS:
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Up in the Air
Avatar
The Messenger
In the Loop
Bright Star
Star Trek
Crazy Heart
A Single Man
The Last Station
Up
Invictus
The Princess and the Frog
Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince
Food Inc.
The Cove
Burma VJ

DON’T BOTHER:
The Lovely Bones
Nine
The White Ribbon
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

GOOD, BUT FOR NICHE FANS ONLY:
Precious
Coco Before Chanel
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Blind Side
The Young Victoria
Julie & Julia
The Secret of Kells
Coraline

I STILL CAN’T DECIDE:
A Serious Man

State of the Oscar Run: 21 more movies to see in 14 days.

Podcast alert: If you prefer your movie talk in a visual format, go check out my husband Ken’s new video podcast That Movie Was…, where he and his friend James give their opinions on current movies.

Ken and I have reached a point in our Oscar Run where we’ve knocked out all movies in a few categories, so I can make some picks with confidence. These are not predictions, just who or what would get the Oscar if I were giving them out.

Forgive me if I skip Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing. I don’t even know the difference between those last two categories, so clearly I’m no judge there. I’ll also skip Best Original Score, as I’d have to go back and hear them back-to-back to decide (no time, I have 21 movies to watch!). However, I will tackle Best Visual Effects, Best Director, and Best Picture.

Best Visual Effects

• Nominees: Avatar, District 9, Star Trek
• My pick: Avatar

It isn’t just because James Cameron has spent so many years on this film (his last film was in 1997) and claims to have actually invented the means for new digital effects along the way. And it isn’t just because the list of people credited for special and visual effects for Avatar is so long (1232, versus District 9′s 291 and Star Trek’s 481). It’s my pick because the result was so jaw-dropping, so seamless and stunning, so outright beautiful and so completely involving that I forgot I was even looking at something digitally produced. As good as the effects in the other films were, my brain would still click to the inner comment, “Whoa, that was an incredible special effect” when an alien would blow up or the Enterprise would go through a black hole. With Avatar, the effects were so good that I forgot they were effects. It was like I had ingested them in my Diet Coke, rather than watching them on the screen. They were miles better than the laughable aliens in The Abyss. Good job, Jim. And kudos for dedicating the film to the late, great Stan Winston, whose company worked on it.

By the way, WETA is the new ILM.

Best Director

• Nominees: James Cameron (Avatar), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Lee Daniels (Precious), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)
• My pick: James Cameron (Avatar)

Even though I’m happy to see a woman get nominated for making a war movie, and even though I’m happy to see Jason Reitman focus his considerable talents on recession angst, and even though I love seeing Quentin Tarantino do anything at all, the winner in my mind is still James Cameron. Yeah, he’s the King of the World, and yeah, this movie breaks no ground in terms of storyline (spoiler alert: the good guys win) – it doesn’t matter. Avatar was what the prize is actually named: an achievement in directing.

If I had my druthers, I’d have nominated Lone Scherfig for An Education, but still given it to Cameron. Not that I’m trying to expand any categories, because that would be just stupid. Speaking of which…

Best Picture

• Nominees: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air
• My pick: Avatar

Oh crap, look what I just did there. It’s an all-Avatar lovefest. Not what I intended. So let’s talk about this “10 Best Picture nominees” thing for a minute.

I mean, what? Ten nominees? What for? Because The Dark Knight was unfairly left out last year? Okay, more nominees might prevent future gaffes like that, but it also makes the nominated movies seem less special. Ten Best Picture nominees a year, and in ten years, there will be 100 Best Picture nominees (but probably not 100 really good movies). It will become a sad trivia question: “What were all the Best Picture nominees in the 2010s? Betcha can’t name ‘em all!”

But let’s get back to Avatar. In a sense, it won by default. The other pictures just didn’t reach the same level. Precious went where other movies won’t go, but even though the heroine was smiling in the last frame, she’s still completely fucked, so I’m not sure what we were supposed to learn. A Serious Man dumps you off at the metaphorical bus stop with both cancer and a frickin’ tornado inexplicably coming at you, so I can’t reward that. The Hurt Locker gives you a fresh perspective on work stress – are you standing in the middle of a flower-like arrangement of 7 live bombs? No? Then STFU – but not alot more.

The only serious contenders for my affections besides Avatar were District 9 (a classic and very good sci fi film), An Education (an English coming-of-age film that ought to do wonders for Carey Mulligan), and Up in the Air. Considering Avatar’s somewhat hackneyed storyline – note to Sigourney Weaver: YOU CANNOT TRUST CORPORATIONS IN SPACE! – this means that 2009 was actually not a great year for movies.

Do you know where I could see these movies? They are Oscar-nominated, but eluding me. Help a movie-lover out!

• Ajami (from Israel)
• Burma VJ
• El Secreto De Sus Ojos (from Argentina)
• The Messenger
• The Milk of Sorrow (from Peru)
• The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
• The Secret of Kells
• Un Prophete (from France)
• Which Way Home

Current state of the Oscar Run: 28 more movies to see in 25 days.

As Ken and I have discovered over many years of trying to see Oscar-nominated movies, a nomination doesn’t guarantee that a movie will stay in theaters long enough for you to see it. It helps that there are more movies on DVD and available via cable On Demand services every year, but there are always those that fall in the cracks.

Here are the movies that we advise you see ASAP, as they may be nearing the end of their theater run, and they don’t have a DVD release date yet.

Fantastic Mr. Fox – Most theaters that are still showing this are doing so at “kid times” – just a few showings early in the day. That’s a sign that theater managers think it’s got a limited audience, which means it’s doomed. We’re going to try to see it today. Never miss a Wes Anderson flick!

Invictus - Though this came out only in December and has many big names, it’s being overwhelmed by other, bigger releases, and got few nominations. See it to decide if Morgan Freeman should get Best Actor or Matt Damon should get Best Supporting Actor.

Nine – I suspect this one is going fast because it stank up the joint. Seeing it will be one of the things I do for the love of movies. If you’re not a completist like me, maybe don’t bother. If you do see it, check the art direction, costume design, and possible Best Supporting Actress performance by Penelope Cruz.

The Lovely Bones – This is still playing in a bunch of places, but even with Peter Jackson attached to it, it’s been giving off eau de fail. See it for Stanley Tucci’s performance, nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

The Princess and the Frog – Playing in many theaters, but like Fantastic Mr. Fox, it’s playing at “kid times” – the kiss of death.

Any nominated documentary or foreign film – These are notoriously hard to find. Last year’s winner for Best Foreign Film, Departures, we couldn’t find anywhere – and we were REALLY trying.

Happy film hunting!

As I first explained a year ago, my husband and I try to see every film with an Oscar nomination or a nominee in it before the prizes are awarded. We call this the Oscar Run.

Today we got our marching orders – the 2009 Oscar nominees were announced. Go here for a complete list.

Here are all the movies with a nomination or nominee (excluding shorts and the more obscure technical nominees):

Nine

Up in the Air

Crazy Heart

Precious

Invictus

The Messenger

The Last Station

The Lovely Bones

Inglourious Basterds

The Blind Side

An Education

Julie & Julia

A Single Man

The Hurt Locker

Avatar

A Serious Man

Up

District 9

In the Loop

Ajami (from Israel)

El Secreto de Sus Ojos (from Argentina)

The Milk of Sorrow (from Peru)

Un Prophete (from France)

The White Ribbon (from Germany)

Coraline

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

The Princess & the Frog

The Secret of Kells

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Sherlock Holmes

The Young Victoria

Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince

Bright Star

Coco Before Chanel

Burma VJ

The Cove

Food Inc.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

Which Way Home

Il Divo

Star Trek

Paris 36

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

That’s 44 movies, of which I’ve seen 8. Bottom line: I’ve got to watch 36 movies in 33 days. Gulp!

Anybody want to go see a movie?

Starting tomorrow, everybody!

http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/

See it in IMAX.