Regardless of what you think of the Academy, the Oscars and some of the ridiculous decisions that have been made over the years, the fact that this is the biggest awards ceremony in the world means that you can’t just ignore it. This year is no different to any other – when the nominations were announced there were shocks, snubs and cynicism in reaction from the press in equal measure, but the result is that we have one of the most interesting awards in recent years. The Oscars roll in at the end of the month and, having now watched ALL films nominated for the big six awards (I refuse to put myself through Mirror Mirror, I don’t care if it’s been nominated for Best Costume Design), which are Best Supporting Actress and Actor, Best Actress and Actor, Best Director and Best Picture, this is how the night will probably pan out, as opposed to how I think it should pan out.
BUT just a quick gripe
about people and films that definitely should have been nominated. While it’s
all very nice to see some well-deserved nominations for Michael Haneke and his
film Amour as well as recognition for
indie film Beasts of the Southern Wild,
The Sessions was a film brought up to
a high level not by the acting of Helen Hunt, who’s garnered a Best Supporting
Actress nomination seemingly purely on the strength of going full-frontally
nude for her role as a sex surrogate, but by John Hawkes, whose dedication to properly
portraying polio sufferer Mark O’Brien was at such a high level that the
measures he took to mirror the curvature of O’Brien’s twisted spine came at a
cost to his own health, and for this and his unique portrayal of Catholic guilt
mixed in with a knowledge that time is running short and a strong desire to get
his rocks off for the first time at the age of 38, he should have been
nominated for Best Actor, as should Jean-Louis Tritignant for Amour. Meanwhile previous winner Marion
Cotillard should have merited a Best Actress nomination for her role as
Stephanie, a killer whale trainer who rebuilds her life after suffering a
terrible accident, in the uncompromising Rust And Bone which, by the by, should have
been in the mix for Best Picture – the two could have easily replaced surprise
nominee Naomi Watts and the vastly overrated Zero Dark Thirty respectively. The Best Director category is also
somewhat contentious, with Les Miserables’s
Tom Hooper, Argo’s Ben Affleck, Django Unchained’s Quentin Tarantino and
The Master’s Paul Thomas Anderson
denied nominations by Michael Haneke (Amour),
Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
and David O. Russell (Silver Linings
Playbook) respectively
Best
Supporting Actress: Amy Adams (The Master), Sally Field (Lincoln),
Anne Hathaway (Les MIserables), Helen
Hunt (The Sessions), Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook)
The only dead cert
award of the night. Anne Hathaway’s been gathering up the awards (Golden Globe
and Screen Actors Guild along with various regional critics’ gongs) like they’re
white plastic balls and she’s a Hungry Hungry Hippo with a pixie haircut for
her fifteen-minute role as tragic prostitute Fantine in Les Miserables. While she piles on the emotion, which the Academy
loves, Sally Field was more understated but no less affecting as the fragile, complex
and unstable Mary Todd Lincoln, the perfect foil to Daniel Day Lewis’s Honest
Abe.
Should
win:
Sally Field
Will
win:
Anne Hathaway
Best
Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin (Argo), Robert De Niro (Silver
Linings Playbook), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master), Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln),
Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
Conversely, this is the
only award where anything could happen, much as I’d love De Niro to win another
Oscar after his recent decade of dross. All nominees are previous Oscar winners
but no-one’s taken the bull by the horns in terms of the awards already
presented – De Niro and Hoffman have won awards but Jones has the Screen Actors
Guild gong and Waltz won the Golden Globe, so it would appear to be between the
two of them. Based purely on the fact that Waltz won the Best Supporting Actor
Oscar in 2010 for his role in Tarantino’s Inglourious
Basterds, I think the Academy will plump for Jones’s performance as
abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, though Hoffman’s performance as cult leader Lancaster
Dodd in The Master is more intricate,
subtle and memorable.
Should
win:
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Will
win:
Tommy Lee Jones
Best
Actress: Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour), Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts
of the Southern Wild), Naomi Watts (The
Impossible)
Probably the most
interesting major category this year thanks to its oldest and youngest ever
nominees, Emmanuelle Riva (85) and Quvenzhane Wallis (9). Neither of them will
win (although Riva’s quiet, dignified performance as the ailing Anne in Amour is heartbreaking to watch) and
neither will Naomi Watts – the race is between Jessica Chastain and Jennifer
Lawrence, two actresses who have only burst into the mainstream in the last
couple of years. Both won Golden Globes (Chastain in the Drama category,
Lawrence in Musical or Comedy) but Lawrence took home the SGA and, based on the
fact that Zero Dark Thirty is more
about the film and the hunt for Bin Laden than Chastain’s character and the
Academy by all accounts loved Silver
Linings Playbook, Lawrence looks set to win on the night.
Should
win:
Emmanuelle Riva
Will
win:
Jennifer Lawrence
Best
Actor: Bradley Cooper (Silver
Linings Playbook), Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln),
Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables),
Joaquin Phoenix (The Master), Denzel
Washington (Flight)
There’s really only one
name that anyone’s talking about in this category, and that’s Daniel Day-Lewis.
As Abraham Lincoln, he displays all of the characteristics that made the man
one of the United States’s greatest presidents, embodying him in the way he’s
come to embody every one of the people he’s played throughout his distinguished
career. It’s unfortunate for Jackman and Phoenix – in another year, they could
have been taking home the Oscar and, though Phoenix actually does run him quite
close purely in terms of performance, his unfortunate slagging-off of the
Oscars and Day-Lewis’s unstoppable awards run so far mean that the engraver
might as well start etching his name onto the statue now.
Should
win:
Daniel Day-Lewis
Will
win:
Daniel Day-Lewis
Best
Director: Michael Haneke (Amour),
Ang Lee (Life of Pi), David O.
Russell (Silver Linings Playbook),
Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), Benh
Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
The potential shock
category. No-one quite knows how comeback king Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated for
his stellar work on Argo, making what
was actually a fairly routine film unbearably tense, but he wasn’t (despite
picking up the Golden Globe and the Directors’ Guild award), so that’s that. You’d
probably bet on Spielberg or Lee winning on the night, but no-one’s made a
significant charge for glory, so it’s really impossible to tell. Given the
choice, it’d be nice to see the Academy shake things up and give Haneke some
mainstream recognition (though he’d probably say that he doesn’t need or want
it) for Amour, which was probably the
best film of the year. You get the feeling that deep-rooted patriotism will get
the better of Academy members and subsequently Lincoln will start to clean up in the big categories, though, and that
makes Spielberg likely to win his third Academy Award.
Should
win:
Michael Haneke
Will
win:
Steven Spielberg
Best
Picture: Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django
Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings
Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty
The trick with trying
to predict a Best Picture winner, especially with nine nominees, is to rule out
the ones that definitely won’t win and narrow the field. Let’s begin. Amour won’t win – the Academy only
included it to show that it’s down with what’s happening in European cinema,
and the fact that Amour is also up
for Best Foreign Language Film, which it’ll definitely win, sounds the death
knell for its Best Picture chances. Beasts
of the Southern Wild was nominated for much the same reason – an indie hit
by first-time feature-makers, it’ll prove to be a bit too left-field for many
voters. Zero Dark Thirty has garnered
a bit too much controversy over its depiction of torture, and the directorial
and screenwriting team of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal were only recently
honoured for The Hurt Locker. Three
out, six still in the mix. Life of Pi
could be seen as a bit too spiritual and wishy-washy for current tastes and
relies largely on CGI, which it’ll probably clean up on in minor categories. Django Unchained, despite being the most
purely entertaining film all year, is far too controversial in terms of how it
portrays slavery, and the Academy has always had a bit of an uneasy
relationship with Tarantino. Four still in. Les
Miserables went down a storm in the US and, though Tom Hooper wasn’t
nominated as Best Director, it should feel it has a decent chance on the night.
Likewise, as previously mentioned, the Academy really took a shine to Silver Linings Playbook. However, the
fight’s probably between Argo and Lincoln. The former sees Hollywood (the
Academy’s favourite films are always about itself) assisting in the rescue of
Americans trapped in a country populated by armed, rebellious brown people
(Iran), while the latter is directed by one of cinema’s greatest directors and
is about possibly the greatest political Amendment being pushed through by the
country’s greatest president. It’ll be a tough choice but you’ve got to think
that Lincoln’s greater amount of
nominations overall says something about the preferences of the people who’ll
be voting on the night.
Should
win:
Django Unchained
Will
win:
Lincoln
