Forecasting the Oscars ® since 2003

"It's not about who we want to win,

It's about who will"

WHO WILL WIN / WHO SHOULD WIN? (THE SERIES)

The Oscar® Igloo team analyzes this year's top Oscar® races...

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By Johnny Alba

Like we always say: the Oscars are not about who we want to win; they are about who will win (or at least, who we think will). Still, it is incredibly amusing for us [the writing team] to step out of our routine at least once every year and openly discuss the films we like, the contenders we support and basically; the people we want to be called to the stage on February 24.

Who do you want to win? Are you an independent thinker? Let your voice be heard here and make sure to read each of our writers' thoughtful analyses (just don't make a blood bath out of them during the next few days. Let's get the discussion started...

For Houseman; Ang Lee's Lust, Caution was a deserving Best Picture contender. Do you agree?

1. TOM HOUSEMAN

Best Picture

Will Win: Is there any movie that can beat No Country for Old Men? It’s highly doubtful. No movie has gotten such broad support since Chicago in 2002. Everyone is going nuts over the Coens' latest effort, and it seems inevitable that it will take home the gold. Want to hear about why it won’t win? Read my next article. I will use every ounce of brain power I have to come up with a reason why it won’t. Why am I so adamant? See below.

Should Win: I didn’t like No Country. Not one bit. I feel like it pretty much failed at everything it was trying to do (please don’t kill me). Of course, it wasn’t much worse than Atonement or Michael Clayton, and Juno, while a cute, enjoyable film, just isn’t Best Picture material. The only Best Picture nominee that came close to being great—and it was damn close—was There Will Be Blood. It was a fascinating and deep film that, had it been carved down a bit, would have been one of the best films of the year.

Should Be Nominated: But that doesn’t mean that I can’t find fifteen 2007 films that were better than any of the Best Picture nominees. As a time saver, I’ll only give you the top five, the Best Picture lineup in a dream world. Danny Boyle’s Sunshine was one of the best sci-fi/action films ever made, heart pounding and deeply moving. Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is a superb period drama, beautifully crafted and emotionally resonant (everything Atonement wasn’t). This is England is a stark, disturbing, brutal film, but at the same time it is poignant and affecting. A Mighty Heart features fascinating camera work and editing, great performances, and an incredible true story told perfectly. And if you thought that Juno was the best witty comedy about a quirky teenager, then you need to see Rocket Science. It is the funniest film of the year, and also one of the most moving.

Best Director

Will Win: The Coen Brothers have been on the margins of the Academy’s vision for the last decade, their films scoring a nomination here or there but never matching the success of Fargo. But now the brothers have been thrust into the spotlight, and are ready to collect their Oscar. Nothing is going to stop them.

Should Win: Two of the five directors nominated made incredibly strong choices with their films, and executed them very well, if not perfectly. Paul Thomas Anderson did the best job of crafting his film, There Will Be Blood, but Julian Schnabel made a very interesting and different movie with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Both deserve credit for their work and I wouldn’t be averse to either getting the Oscar, but Anderson deserves more credit because his film was stronger overall.

Should Be Nominated: Two directors not nominated for Best Director made incredibly strong, fascinating, and unique choices with their films, and did execute them perfectly. Christian Mungio’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is shot so simply, and very little happens during his film, but he is able to manipulate the atmosphere so well that he made one of the most emotionally demanding and grueling movies I have ever seen. You might think that Julie Taymor threw everything at the wall to see what stick with Across the Universe, but her film is actually so well crafted and so fascinating. These two films could not be more different, but their directors both did incredible jobs with them, and deserve credit for their work.

Best Actor

Will Win: In 2002, Daniel Day-Lewis played the morally ambiguous, fascinatingly disturbing Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. He was nominated for the Oscar, but lost to Adrien Brody. This year, he played a similar but far better developed character, in There Will Be Blood. There is no Adrien Brody to stop him this time. No other candidate has the support that Day-Lewis has, and only Johnny Depp can match him in popularity. But Sweeney Todd was clearly not a favorite of the Academy’s, while There Will Be Blood was. This award is Day-Lewis’.

Should Win: And why shouldn’t it be? Day-Lewis positively commanded the screen in There Will Be Blood. With his best part since My Left Foot Day-Lewis filled a villainous character with so much depth and humanity. Easily one of the best performances of the year.

Should be Nominated: Instead of George Clooney playing himself or Viggo Mortensen and his funny accent, why not nominate an actor who challenged himself in an incredibly difficult role. Philip Seymour Hoffman gave three excellent performances in three very different movies, but he has never been better than he was in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and he deserved recognition.

Best Actress

Will Win: This one is a toughy. Julie Christie is an extremely respected actress who came out of retirement to play a woman with a mental disability. Classic Oscar fodder. Marion Cotillard is a foreign breakthrough star who played a real person dealing with alcoholism. Which performance will the Academy embrace? After a whole lot of pondering, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the SAG award is too much to overlook, and the Oscar will be Christie’s.

Should Win: But not that it should be. Christie was very good, but Cotillard was flat-out brilliant. Her portrayal of Edith Piaf is the most fascinatingly complex film performances I’ve seen since Billy Crudup in Stage Beauty. She deserves the Oscar, hands down.

Should Be Nominated: One of the most overlooked movies of the year was Lust, Caution, and it was Wei Tang’s lead performance that made the film so great. The emotional arc that her character goes through is fascinating, and Tang never overplays the contrasting desires or inner struggle.

Best Supporting Actor

Will Win: The love for No Country will continue here. Javier Bardem is a highly respected actor who was previously nominated for Before Night Falls and just missed a nomination for The Sea Inside. His part in No Country is completely different from anything he has done before, and he turned a lot of heads for his portrayal of a psychopathic bounty hunter. No other contender has the support capable of stealing this award from him. This award is in Bardem’s pocket.

Should Win: Of the performances nominated in this category, two stand out. Philip Seymour Hoffman took a wonderfully jaded and sarcastic character in Charlie Wilson’s War and positively nailed it. He went toe to toe with Tom Hanks and the two dominated their film. Tom Wilkinson took a mediocre part that could have been boring and clichéd—like everything else in Michael Clayton—and gave a superb performance, standing out as the only true positive of his movie. Wilkinson did more than Hoffman with far less, and for that he deserves this Oscar.

Should be Nominated: I feel like I’m having déjà vu. A year ago I wrote about the best performance in the best of the Best Picture nominees, and that the actor desperately deserved a Best Supporting Actor nomination. This year, I’m championing the same actor in the same position. As outstanding as Daniel Day-Lewis was in There Will Be Blood, Paul Dano battled him for every scene, and was truly spectacular. Once again, it is embarrassing that he was overlooked for a nomination.

Best Supporting Actress

Will Win: When the Globe winner and the SAG winner don’t match up, predicting the Oscar gets complicated. The Oscars are less likely to award older actresses than the Actor’s Guild, and I don’t think Ruby Dee’s performance in American Gangster will be embraced by all the branches. However, Cate Blanchett does not have the universal support she was expected to have, which could leave room for Amy Ryan to sneak in and steal the Oscar. Had Ryan won the SAG, I think she would have been able to overtake Blanchett, but as it is, I think that Blanchett is winning the award.

Should Win: Although my bias might be swaying me here. I barely noticed Ruby Dee in American Gangster, and Ryan was fine in Gone Baby Gone, but Blanchett’s portrayal of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There was so different from anything else this year, that she desperately deserves this Oscar.

Should be Nominated: It seems that whenever the Academy can nominate Meryl Streep, they do, but this year she was overlooked. Although Rendition was average at best, Streep gave a scene stealing performance that was simultaneously subtle and overwhelming. This was her best performance since The Hours, and she should have been nominated for it.

Best Original Screenplay

Will Win: The Academy loves their quirky comedies, and this year all of the attention has been on Juno. Diablo Cody’s debut screenplay has gotten critical raves, been a smash at the box office, and scored very well at the Academy. There is so much support for this film that it seems almost impossible for it not to win.

Should Win: But if the Academy wanted to award the best quirky comedy that was nominated, they would give the Oscar to Lars and the Real Girl. One of the most lovely and charming movies of the year, taking a unique story and executing it perfectly. Juno was an enjoyable movie, but it didn’t have the emotional resonance of Lars.

Should Be Nominated: Of course, if the Academy wanted to nominate the best quirky comedy of the year, then they would start by dumping Lars, Juno, and The Savages, and replace them with Rocket Science, Dedication, and Margot at the Wedding. I cannot sing Rocket Science’s praises enough (seriously, see this movie), but it is one of the best exploration’s of high school life I have ever seen. Dedication is flatout hilarious, with sharp dialogue and fascinating relationships developed as the film progresses. Margot is the opposite of those in that the characters are not sweet, endearing, or remotely likable. But the complexity of every interaction makes it one of the most interesting screenplays of the year.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will Win: If there is a category that No Country has locked up, it is Adapted Screenplay. The Coens are best known for their screenwriting, and their only Oscar was for their script for Fargo, the only other of their films embraced by the Academy. No Country has won every major precursor, and it seems highly unlikely that the only other legitimate contender, There Will Be Blood, could steal the Oscar from the Coens.

Should Win: Not that it wouldn’t deserve to if it did. The weakest aspect of No Country is the incredibly dull and unoriginal screenplay, which meanders along and utterly fails to develop any tension. The screenplay for There Will Be Blood was certainly not perfect, but the characters created in it are fascinating and some of the scenes (most notably the ending) are simply brilliant.

Should be Nominated: But only one adapted screenplay this year truly stood out in its character development and narrative arc, and that is A Mighty Heart. A perfectly executed screenplay of an incredibly difficult story to tell, this movie completely did justice to Marianne Pearl and the emotional trauma she handled during the events that are shown. A Mighty Heart is one of many excellent films overlooked at this year’s Oscars, and its screenplay certainly merited a nomination, and it deserved to win the award.

It seems that every year, at least one category stands out as being truly embarrassing not just in the films it chose to embrace, but in the films it overlooked. I haven’t seen any of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, so it is quite possible that it is a superb category that could not be improved upon.

However, the fact that when the final ballots were cast, there were six excellent foreign films that were not an option is deplorable. Lust, Caution was ineligible due to country placement confusion, Day Watch and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly were not submitted by their countries, and The Orphanage, Persepolis, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days were not included on the short list of possible nominees. That none of these films—some of the best films of the year in any language—were up for this award shows that there is something incredibly wrong with the convoluted system of nominating foreign films. Something has to be done about this category or more and more outstanding films will be left on the wayside.

Who do You think should win?

Next pages:

2. JOEY MAGIDSON

3. CLAYTON DAVIS

4. CHRISTOPHER SHAPPLEY

5. KELLY DOUCETTE

6. MYLES HUGHES

7. JOSH KIRSCHENBAUM

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