The Oscars: What Will and Should Win

It all boils down to the final moment in the awards ceremony, the day we have all been waiting for – the 77th Annual Academy Awards are this Sunday, March 7.

With ten nominations in the major Best Picture category, the selection process by which a film can win is different. Here’s how: instead of voters choosing one movie to be best picture, they rank them numerically and submit their ballot. This could bring drastic changes to the way things used to be, but only time will tell.

If you’ve been following the awards season then it’s probably no surprise that the real race for Best Picture is between Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and James Cameron’s Avatar. It is my belief that Avatar will win Best Picture.

Yes, Avatar was an immersive experience with an incredibly diverse biology, ground-breaking technology and special effects. However, it does not deserve to take home the grand prize.

The Hurt Locker is clearly the better film of the two here; it is a darker, less popular film, but it has the hearts of the critics, and, at this point, it has gained significant awards momentum since its major snub at the Golden Globes. Just this past week, it swept the British Academy Awards, which tends to be a major indicator for the Oscars.

However, money plays a huge role in the awards ceremonies. Half the battle is based on campaigns and endorsements when it comes to gaining Oscar nominations and wins.

Because Avatar grossed $2.5 billion while The Hurt Locker grossed a meager $20 million domestically (though it flies high on DVDs); 20th Century Fox has a lot more power over little company Summit Entertainment, and, based on this information, I believe Avatar will win.

Is it justified? Absolutely not. But sometimes, that’s just the way things work.

Kathryn Bigelow, on the contrary, will make history this coming weekend. After being the first woman to win the Director’s Guild Award for Best Director and the British Academy Award as well (despite her inexplicably ridiculous snub at the worthless ceremony that is called the Golden Globes) I’m confident she will take home the prize as Best Director for The Hurt Locker, since she more than deserves it.

The other awards are pretty straightforward. Jeff Bridges will be the Best Actor for Crazy Heart – he’s simply overdue on his Oscar and the movie, like Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, was made almost as a vehicle for him. You won’t hear any interjections from me about the Dude getting his prize.

While I’m convinced that Sandra Bullock will be considered Best Actress for The Blind Side, I don’t agree, because I feel that the movie was nothing more than a contrived sports drama. Bullock did fine for what she was given, but she does not deserve an Academy Award. Then again, in this year’s category – who does?

Mo’Nique will win Best Supporting Actress for her role in Precious. She deserves it. The film itself is a bit messy/chaotic/overdone, but she brings forth one of the best performances given in years. She plays the abuser of all abusers, and then makes you sympathize with her in the end: an incredible feat.

Christoph Waltz will take home the award for Best Supporting Actor. His portrayal of “The Jew Hunter” Hans Landa in Tarantino’s off-beat re-imagining of World War II history Inglourious Basterds was on par with Javier Bardem’s performance in No Country For Old Men.

Quentin Tarantino has a good shot at getting Best Original Screenplay for Inglourious Basterds. His originality, ability to blend different genres and international cultures, and craft an incredible story has gained him this right. Though he polarizes audiences, critics, scholars and what have you, none can deny that he is a brilliant thinker, the kind that Hollywood loves and craves, which is why he’ll probably beat out the others in his category.

Chances are Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner will take home the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for their sublime mood piece Up in the Air, which at the beginning of the awards season was king of the jungle, but has steadily deteriorated as time has past.

Best Foreign Film will, and should, go to Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, which should have also received a Best Picture nomination.

Best Animated Film will definitely be taken in by Up, as Pixar has quite a record at the Academy. Okay, fair enough.

Best Cinematography will go to Mario Auire’s work on Avatar. With the FUSION camera system that he and director James Cameron created, this achievement is quite impressive, but The Hurt Locker’s use of hand-held photography is still to me far more innovative in the filmic sense.

Avatar will likely take Art Direction, Visual Effects, Sound Design and Sound Editing – and those four awards are about ALL that the film actually deserves.

I think The Hurt Locker will take home Film Editing – all in all, it should be a successful night for both films, and an interesting race to watch.

Many other great films were released this year that might be snubbed or unrecognized in victories by the Academy such as A Serious Man, District 9, The Messenger, An Education and A Single Man.

The Academy Awards has no say in what makes a great movie. For all those who read this and watch the Oscars, do not use the Academy as the yard-stick for what constitutes a great film. Whether a film wins, or is nominated, or is not recognized at all means very little in the long run.

But that also doesn’t mean that the Oscars aren’t fun to watch…