My Oscar Picks!
The Oscars are coming! With that, here are my personal picks for this year.
- Best picture-Slumdog Millionaire. Personally, I felt that slumdog wouldn’t be an Oscar contender…but after seeing the momentum behind it, I gotta get on the bandwagon. I’ll admit it was my favorite movie this season, I just didn’t think it would be considered.
- Best Actor – Mickey Rourke. His stunning take on professional wrestling was not only gripping…it was an intimate look at the comeback kid. But I wouldn’t rule out Sean Penn, who was once again…stunning.
- Best Actress- Kate Winslet. Though I love Streep in her usual dragon lady role…it’s a big been there done that kind of feel. Kate Winslet showed a side of herself in the Reader that I’ve never seen before.
- Best Supporting Actor- Heath Ledger. Once again, I believed someone else SHOULD have won (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) but the Joker just has too much momentum behind him.
- Best Supporting Actress-Taraji Henson. This was my most difficult pick, because of the other ladies nominated. I really felt that she delivered her lines with such verisimilitude that I couldn’t help but feel a motherly connection with the woman.
- Best Animated Film- Wall-E. No Contest here.
- Best Costume- Revolutionary Road. Never has so little said so much.
- Best Editing- Slumdog Millionaire. The cuts that reveal passage of time are simply amazing.
- Best Foreign Film- The Class. I’ll admit I only saw this movie and Waltz with Bashir…but the film left such an impression on me that I feel it should win the Oscar. It did sweep Cannes.
- Best Cinematography- Roger Deakins. Revolutionary Road should have been the movie he was nominated for, in my opinion, but his work is once again invisible yet unforgettable.
- Best Art Direction- Revolutionary Road. The theme, I’ve read, was to keep it simple/believable…to not scream the 50’s, but to set a framework for the movie. I believe it was a success.
- Best Director-Danny Boyle. I want to root so hard for Gus Van Sant because of his brilliant job on Milk, but Slumdog was just too touching to go unnoticed.
- Best Screenplay (Original)-Milk. Dustin Lance Black turns the life of an individual into an understandable and believable narrative.
- Best Screenplay (Adapted)- Slumdog Millionaire. Just the temporal presentation of the story wins this in my book.
- Best Documentary- Man on Wire. Simple proof that non-fiction can be even more gripping that fictional events at times.
- Best Makeup- Hellboy 2. Though the Joker’s makeup was undoubtedly a big part of Ledger’s performance…Perlman’s change is still top notch.
- Best Music- Slumdog Millionaire. Though most of the music was collected from a library, it still fit the movie sublimely.
- Best Sound Editing-The Dark Knight. The sound of the batpod is what sold me on this one. I’ll admit some of the sound effects were a bit corny…but not a deal breaker in my book.
- Best Sound Mixing- Slumdog Millionaire. In my opinion, the sound quality was perfect in this movie. The streets of Mumbai never sounded so crisp and believable.
- Best Visual Effects- Benjamin Button. Never has a movie been so dependent on visual effects since Forrest Gump.
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