Do or Do Not.

(Please pretend like I’m not lame and you’re reading this sometime Monday instead of sometime Wednesday or whenever you’re actually reading it.  I meant to write it Monday, I swear.  But Guitar Hero demanded more of my attention that I had anticipated.)

This year, there was no doubt:  I’m a genius, me.  Last year, I went 6-for-9, but felt particularly idiotic for missing Best Picture; this year, of the nine categories for which I provided predictions, I nailed seven of them, including the “stunning upset” in the Best Actress race.  It should’ve been eight-of-nine, but I talked myself out of what would have been a right call.  The details:

Best Picture:  What I said: No Country for Old Men.  What won: No Country.  Once the Coen Brothers picked up their Best Adapted Screenplay award, it became pretty clear it was going to be a big night for them.  Now the Academy can safely ignore them again until 2020.  Genius.

Best Actor:  What I said:  Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood.  Who won:  Lewis.  As I noted with Helen Mirren’s win last year, it’s not particularly genius of me to go with the mortal lock.  However, it’s also certainly not idiotic of me, so genius it is.

Best Actress:  What I said:  Marion Cotillard, La vie en rose.  Who won:  Cotillard.  Here’s where my astounding genius truly shone most brightly.  No other actress had as much near-universal praise for their performance this year as did Cotillard, so I was having trouble understanding why no one thought she would win.  It’s rare, yes, but not unprecedented, to bestow one of the acting awards on a foreign-language performance, and I figured that if the Academy had done it before they’d do it again for a performance that acclaimed.  And they did.  Genius.

Best Supporting Actor:  What I said:  Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men.  Who won:  Bardem.  Yay me, going with the prohibitive favorite.  Genius.

Best Supporting Actress:  What I said:  Ruby Dee, American Gangster.  Who won:  Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton.  Yup, I blew this one, though I’m glad to have been wrong — Swinton’s a deserving winner both for what was supposed to be a fantastic performance in Clayton and for years’ worth of quality work.  Plus, she seems to be my kind of weird, and anyone who mentions nipple-suited Batman in their acceptance speech gets a big thumbs up from me.  I like her now even more than I did before she won.  Idiot, but happily so.

Best Director:  What I said:  Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men.  Who won:  The Coens.  It was fun watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s head almost explode as the Coens took all these prizes, wasn’t it?  Genius.

Best Original Screenplay:  What I said:  Diablo Cody, Juno.  Who won:  Cody.  This one was, to me, almost a lock since I knew Juno wasn’t going to get any of the other major awards.  (Don’t worry, those of you who feel Ellen Page got shafted — she didn’t; winning lead acting awards for comedies might be even more rare than winning them for foreign-language films.  And Page will have, I feel quite sure, many, many more opportunities to win one of these in the years to come.)  Anyway:  Genius.

Best Adapted Screenplay:  What I said:  Sarah Polley, Away From Her.  Who won:  Ethan and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men.  Here’s where my astounding genius was most obscured by the clouds of my idiocy.  This one was the one I talked myself out of and shouldn’t have:  the Academy’s fondness for gifting Oscars to actors who branch out into other areas was trumped this year by their fondness for gifting Oscars to the Coen Brothers, and really I can’t much blame them for that.  Idiot.

Best Animated Feature:  What I said:  Ratatouille.  What won:  Ratatouille.  Yay me for predicting that one of the best-reviewed movies of the year — animated or not — would win the Best Animated flick.  Genius.

So there you have it… 7-2.  Pretty damn genius of me, overall.  Please tune in next year when I follow up this year’s genius outing by idiotically missing three of the four acting awards and Best Picture!

When I wrote up my predictions for the Oscars last year, I noted that I’d seen very, very few of the films nominated for any of the major awards. This year has proven to be even lamer for me, movie-wise: I’ve seen none of the movies nominated for any of the major prizes. That’s right… none. The only nominated movies I’ve seen even for the mid-level awards are Ratatouille and Enchanted. (Hmm, I’m noticing a little bit of a commonality there.)

What’s worse, this year I really, really want to see four out of the five movies nominated for Best Picture. I want to watch Juno for the tremendous cast and screenplay — any comedy that well respected by Oscar should be just fantastic; No Country for Old Men is by the Coen Brothers, which is all the recommendation I need, even without all of the critical buzz; There Will Be Blood was written and directed by one of my favorite directors, Paul Thomas Anderson (the brains behind Magnolia, one of my top ten flicks); and Michael Clayton was named after one of the wide receivers on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, so that’s a must-see for me, too. Only Atonement leaves me cold at the thought of watching it.

My regular Oscar-predicting disclaimer applies: what follows are not the movies or performances I think should win, but rather those I think will win. Given the fact that I ain’t seen nuthin’ this year, I clearly have no basis to say what I think should win. Away we go…

Best Picture: No Country for Old Men. It’s been more than a decade since the Coen Brothers have gotten major Oscar love and Sunday night will be the night for righting that wrong, culminating in No Country’s Best Picture win. Though I’ll admit that I won’t be totally shocked if There Will Be Blood takes it — I’ve heard much more talk about Blood being a “modern masterpiece” than No Country.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood. This one’s the no-chance-for-an-upset category this year. I hope Day-Lewis has been rehearsing his acceptance speech.

Best Actress: Marion Cotillard, La vie en rose. The presumptive favorite for this award is Julie Christie, but I haven’t heard as much praise for Christie’s performance as I have for Cotillard’s, whose only knock against her seems to be that the movie is from France. But Roberto Begnini won the Best Actor award in 1999 for the Italian Life Is Beautiful, so I don’t think that’s as big a stumbling block as many may think — if her performance truly is the best, she should win regardless of where the movie comes from. I’m going with the upset here.

Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. See the notes for Daniel Day-Lewis above; Bardem’s only slightly less of a lock for this prize. I’m sure there will be some sentimental vote for 82-year-old first-time nominee Hal Holbrook, but Ruby Dee will be taking home the Geezer Memorial Award this year (see next category).

Best Supporting Actress: Ruby Dee, American Gangster. This category seems to be the most wide-open. I’m not sure there even is a favorite here. But I’m going with Dee because she’s really, really old and this might be the last time Academy voters can honor her.

Best Director: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men. I’m glad that the Director’s Guild amended their “movies can only have one director” rule so that the Coens could give up the credit trick of pretending that one of them (Joel) directs their films and the other (Ethan) produces them when it’s long been known that they split both duties (as well as the screenwriting). How awkward would it have been for Joel to win the Best Director Oscar for Fargo when they both acted as director? Anyway, that’s no longer an issue and the two of them will be able to share this award just like they did the Best Original Screenplay award for Fargo in 1996.

Best Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, Juno. Last year, I said the following about Little Miss Sunshine: “I believe this will be the only major award Sunshine gets; it seems like when the Academy falls in love with a little indie of this sort and lavishes it with bunches of nominations, they usually wind up giving it one award as a pat on the head, and frequently that award is for its screenplay. (Lost In Translation, anyone?)” So this award will just have to do.” Substitute “Juno” for “Little Miss Sunshine” and it still applies. (Not to imply that Cody’s screenplay wouldn’t be deserving; it is, from just about everything I’ve heard, an absolutely fantastic piece of writing.)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley, Away From Her. Since I’m predicting Julie Christie doesn’t win Best Actress for this movie, I’m giving the Adapted Screenplay award to Polley to make up for it. The Academy loves to bestow honors on actors who branch out into other fields and do it well — hell, Ben Affleck has an Oscar, remember?

Best Animated Feature: Rataouille. I mean, c’mon.

Coming Monday: The Second Annual Oscar Prediction “Genius or Idiot?” Wrapup!

A few nights ago, we TiVoed Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas for the girls. Not the old Chuck Jones animated version — which is, of course, awesome merely because of the direction of Mr. Jones himself — but the “live action” (and I use the term somewhat loosely) version from 2000 starring Jim Carrey.

And not to sound all Grinchy myself, but… by all that is holy, why did no one tell us how utterly, utterly wretched that movie is?

For someone who fancies himself something of an amateur movie critic, I’m really not all that critical of most movies. If filmmakers accomplish what they’re setting out to do, regardless of whether that’s trying to make “art” or a popcorn-munching blockbuster, I’ll follow along and judge the movie on that basis [1]. Filmmakers don’t have to do all that much to get in my good graces; be reasonably competent and reasonably entertaining or reasonably thought-provoking, and I’ll tend to react somewhat favorably.

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas was neither competent, entertaining, nor thought-provoking, except perhaps for making me think “How the hell do I get the last hour-and-a-half of my life back?”

How could a movie with a budget this ginormous (an estimated $123 million), a big-name lead at the peak of his career and an (eventual) Oscar-winning director turn out so, so badly? Say what you will about Ron Howard, but he’s directed enough movies, including a couple of really good ones, to have a better idea what he’s doing than this movie indicates. And Jim Carrey can be funny, occasionally — this movie, though, features the Carrey that tends to be much more obnoxious and irritating than enjoyable. The Grinch costume — by Rick Baker, no less, one of the best makeup artists Hollywood’s ever known — looks ludicrous (yet, interestingly, won an Oscar. I’m not sure what kind of Christmas snow the Academy voters were snorting that year). The writing was just deplorable. The art direction, which should have been a slam dunk with a movie based on a Dr. Seuss book, looks cheap and, honestly, kind of creepy. The whole thing just looked like a bad TV movie (though I’m sure watching it on TV contributed to that perception).

I actually do have an idea as to just how this travesty came to be: Grinch has the chubby fingerprints of studio interference all over it.

On big-budget studio pictures, of which Grinch is a prime example, the suits tend to give “notes” to the creatives outlining their suggestions for how, in their stuffed-wallet opinion, the movie can be made better. And because those stuffed wallets are the ones paying for the movie, the creatives usually must either A) implement the suggestions or B) quit. (Remember that at Oscar time it’s the producers who actually receive the Best Picture awards; whoever’s got the money gets to make the rules. (That’s three Academy Award references in this article, and that’s three too many in any article about this movie.))

I picture the conversation as follows:

STUDIO SUIT: Y’know, Ron, we like what you’re doing here, but we think the movie’s feeling a little bit too… well, childish. We’ve got to have some stuff in there to keep the adults entertained — they’re the ones spending the money, and we’d like to get that repeat business in there, right?

RON HOWARD: OK, sure… what did you have in mind?

STUDIO SUIT: Well, since you asked… I went to this key party last weekend, right? Everybody seemed to really dig it. I know I sure did — you would not believe how good [BIG-TIME HOLLYWOOD AGENT’S NAME REDACTED]’s wife is with the oral sex. I haven’t been blown like that since that time I tried going surfing during a hurricane. So anyway, I was thinking we could have some of the characters throw a key party, right? The adults in the audience’ll dig it, and it’ll go right over the kids’ heads so we can keep that PG rating. Brilliant, right?

RON HOWARD: Umm…

STUDIO SUIT: And I think you should have the Grinch bury his face in some lady’s tits. That’d be hot, right?

RON HOWARD: [head turns as red as what’s left of his hair]

STUDIO SUIT: I’ll add an extra two million to the budget if you can make that happen for me. We got a deal, Opie?

Oh, and by the way: this wretched, wretched excuse for a movie grossed $260 million in the U.S. alone and was the top-grossing movie of 2000. So just maybe the suits are actually on to something…right?

---

[1] Yes, I know this statement opens a huge can of worms regarding authorial intent, which I believe ultimately to be knowable only by the authors/filmmakers, but I’m speaking in large-scale generalities here: we can safely assume Atonement clearly isn’t going for the same kind of audience, emotion or spectacle as, say, Transformers.

I have decided that in a show of support for the striking members of the Writers Guild of America, I shall not be writing any material either for television productions or motion pictures for the duration of the strike, as much as it pains me not to do so.  But I ain’t no scab.

(Want to know more about what’s going on with the strike and just what the writers are trying to accomplish?  Go read John Rogers and/or Brian K. Vaughan, among many, many others, for the skinny.)

Edward Norton has been cast as Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, the quasi-sequel to 2003’s near-disastrous Hulk. (I say quasi-sequel in that I believe they’ll be skipping over all of the origin hoo-hah and such, acknowledging that we’ve already seen those bits without referencing the first movie at all.) Norton’s actually an excellent choice to play Banner — Banner’s supposed to be a world-class scientific intellect, and Norton, one of my favorite actors, is one of the best of his generation at playing smart. [1] Plus, scared and/or angry and/or conflicted Banner? Norton will be all over that.

The Incredible Hulk will be directed by Louis Leterrier, director of the Transporter movies, so we know we’ll be getting far more of Angry Action Hulk than Angsty Emo Hulk, which suits me just fine. As much as I respect Ang Lee and what he wanted to do with Hulk, it just didn’t work well. Knowing that the next movie will have Edward Norton and much more in the way of “Hulk smash?” Oh yeah, I’m there.

Unfortunately, this new configuration means I’m doubting we’ll get any Jennifer Connelly in the next movie, and that saddens me, but it’s a tradeoff I can live with.

[1] Jessica Alba as a genetic engineer in Fantastic Four? Not so much. Now if they’d cast Leelee Sobieski… her I could’ve bought as a big-brain scientist.

• I’m willing to grant everyone involved with the production of the kinda stinky Ocean’s 12 an Official Do-Over and pretend like Ocean’s 13 is the direct sequel to Ocean’s 11.  The trailer for O13 sure makes it look like it’s going to have all of the same qualities which made the first one so much fun — qualities which Soderbergh, et al. apparently left in their other pants when making O12.  This one’s now gone toward the top of my Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2007.  (Hmm, what’s that smell?  *snf snf*  Oh, yeah, I think that’s the smell of another blog post coming up!)
• Hey, fans of Firefly:  Yahoo! TV has a four-minute video preview of Drive, the new show from Nathan Fillion and Tim Minear.  (The video’s on the right-hand side of the page.)  I was planning on watching this anyway just because of the presence of Fillion and Minear, but after watching the preview I’m actually interested in seeing Drive on its own merits.  OK, yeah, what little bit we saw of the battered wife was pretty cliche, but the scene with Fillion was intriguing.  Time to TiVo up!
• Lee Iacocca has had enough from the current administration.   Yes, legendary industrialist Lee Iacocca expresses his outrage at the Republican White House — kinda says something, doesn’t it?  Iacocca rightly points out that the guys in office right now might be in charge, but they’re not showing a damn bit of leadership.  Big difference there.
• At long, long last, the final issue of The Ultimates 2 has gone to the printer, and Marvel was kind enough to celebrate by offering a preview of Bryan Hitch’s stunning eight-page foldout spread from that issue.  I’m not sure that any comic has ever needed an interior eight-page foldout spread in it before, but I’d imagine this one does, and that Hitch artwork is simply jaw-dropping.  Personally, I’m just glad this comic’s finally coming out since that gets us that much closer to a hardcover collection, which means I can get that to go with my hardcover of the first Ultimates series.
• The Inbox of Nardo Pace, The Empire’s Worst Engineer.

Time now to play a fun little game I call “Going Through My Referrer Logs To See Which Search Engine Phrases Brought Users To My Site In The Last Week.”  Honestly, though?  I think I need to come up with a better name for the game than that.  I like to feel that I’m doing a public service here, providing answers to those questions that Google seems to think I’m uniquely capable of answering.  It’s a responsibility I take very seriously, and I’ll do my best to help soothe the mental anguish and sleepless nights these answerless questions must be causing to the questioners.

opening band for adrenalize tour

This one came to me in several different forms, all from former metalheads like myself desperately yearning to know which band or bands opened up for Def Leppard on their Adrenalize tour in 1992.  Well, Google led you people to the right place.  I’m gonna give you the answer right now.  You ready, my fellow headbangers?  Here goes:

No one.  That’s why you’re having such trouble finding the answer.  Def Leppard didn’t have an opening act that time out…they played a three-plus hour set without any supporting bands on the bill.  You shelled out all of that money hard-earned by busing tables and selling pot for a 100%-all-damn-Lep set, bay-bee.  Did you wanna get rocked, the Lep asked you?  Oh yes, you answered.  You wanted your asses rocked into near cataonia by a three-hour syringe full of pure grade-A Leppard.

(This was the case for the American portions of their tour, anyway; it’s possible the answer’s different in other parts of the world.)

A Love Song for Bobby Long spoiler

You want a spoiler for the mostly-wretched movie A Love Song for Bobby Long?  OK, here goes:  John Travolta sucked mightily in it.  How’s that do you?  OK, fine, here’s a bonus spoiler for you:  yes, it’s true — you do get a nice side-shot of Scarlett Johansson’s boob.

give me a warm enema daddy

Um.  Sorry, can’t help you there.

“inflated boy” superhero

My best guess here is that someone was trying to find out some more information about Chuck “Bouncing Boy” Taine, storied member of the Legion of Super-Heroes (and nowadays featured on the cartoon about said futuristic teens) and role model for fat kids the world over.  Well, unknown person, now that you know his actual name (though I honestly don’t think “Inflated Boy” is any less ridiculous than “Bouncing Boy”), you can read up on his heroic legacy at the Wikipedia.  Always remember:  Chuck might have been the fat kid in the Legion, but he still ended up with a smokin’ hot wife…two of ‘em, technically.

layer cake+what is his name

Another one which came to me in a number of permutations, all of which wanted to know the name of Daniel Craig’s character in the excellent film Layer Cake.  I don’t think this is a spoiler, so I’m going to give you the answer:  we don’t know.  And not only don’t we know, we’re not supposed to know.  The character himself said as much:  “If you knew my name, you’d be as clever as me.”  Whatever the character’s real name was (he’s referred to in the credits only as “XXXX”), it wasn’t revealed within the movie itself or the novel on which the movie was based.  Any site which tries to tell you his name, unless it comes directly from J.J. Connelly, the novel’s author, is lying to you.  This particular bit of information is one you’re going to have to get used to not knowing.

fuzzy storytelling guy

Yup, that’s me!  (Though I hope the “fuzzy” refers more to my propensity for hirsuteness than to my storytelling techniques, else I’ve got a problem.)

actress who did not wear panties to the oscar

Can’t help you there, either, though I must admit I’m more than a little curious to know the answer myself.

im into fuzzy rabbits.  kind of smart i have a big

Ladies and gentlemen, this week’s winner for the Search Keyword Which Causes Me The Most Mental Discomfort Award!

Oscars ’07 are now officially in the books, and during last night’s telecast we saw (to take a cue from Lifetime Achievement winner Ennio Morricone) the Good (awards to deserving veterans like Helen Mirren, Alan Arkin and Forest Whitaker), the Bad (Celine Dion’s overwrought and occasionally off-key histrionics) and the Ugly (a shaven-headed Jack Nicholson).

But now that we know who all got to go home with tiny bald men, I know there’s one key question you still need answered: how did Allen do with his Oscar predictions?

The answer: Overall pretty well, I think, though I certainly don’t like the fact that I blew both Best Picture winners. (Or I guessed them incorrectly, anyway.) Let’s look back at what I said on Friday and play a little game I’m going to call Genius or Idiot.

Best Picture. What I said: Babel. What won: The Departed. I did say that I was hoping Babel wouldn’t win, though I was hoping if it didn’t Little Miss Sunshine would. I also said I couldn’t see The Departed, a really high-end crime thriller, winning this one. Clearly, the ruling on this one is Idiot.

Best Actor: What I said: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland. Who won: Whitaker. Congratulations to me for going with the prohibitive favorite. Genius.

Best Actress: What I said: Helen Mirren, The Queen. Who won: Mirren. Congratulations to me for going with one of the biggest locks in recent Oscar history. Genius.

Best Supporting Actor: What I said: Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children. Who won: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine. Even though I was wrong in my pick, I’m still going to be kind to myself and give myself a Genius award for this one since I had the principle correct. I predicted this category was the one most likely to see an upset (‘cause there’s always one) and thought Haley’s comeback performance would score it for him. However, while Oscar voters did exactly what I predicted, they didn’t do it how I predicted; it would appear that they thought Arkin’s 38-year absence from Oscar ballots trumped Haley’s former-child-star-made-good story.

Best Supporting Actress: What I said: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls. Who won: Hudson. Congratulations to me for going with the prohibitive favorite. Genius.

Best Director: What I said: Martin Scorcese, The Departed. Who won: Scorcese.
Yes, Marty was the favorite here, but he’s been the favorite before and never won, so this one wasn’t quite as much a gimme as one might have assumed. Still: Genius.

Best Original Screenplay: What I said: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine. Who won: Arndt. I was partially right in thinking this would be the big reward for Sunshine since comedies don’t win Best Picture; I underestimated the voters’ love for this movie, what with them giving Arkin his first Oscar, too. Genius.

Best Adapted Screenplay: What I said: William Monahan, The Departed. Who won: Monahan. This award was the source of one of my biggest sources of joy and my biggest predictive embarrassment. The joy: I had no idea that I looked just friggin’ like Monahan (‘cept he’s a little beefier, I think). Seeing him stand on that stage receiving his Oscar made it very, very easy for me to picture myself doing the same thing someday. The embarrassment? I quote myself:

I’ll tell you this right now: while you’re watching the awards telecast, if you see The Departed win this award and Scorcese wins for Best Director and you’ve got money riding on it winning Best Picture — go change your bets fast if you still can. No way does it win all three.

Yeah, well. According to recent Oscar history, that should have been true, though as the ever-astute Tim P. pointed out, that’s not true historically — movies which are deemed good enough to win Best Screenplay and Best Director usually go on to win Best Picture as well. Maybe I should’ve thought about this one more in the larger context, but I didn’t. If I’m going to give myself a Genius for getting one wrong above, I think it’s only fair to give myself an Idiot for this one even though I got it right. (For future reference, any time you ever see me reference betting with regards to a prediction of mine, that’s a good sign you should go the other way with whatever I say.)

Best Animated Feature: What I said: Cars. What won: Happy Feet. I did say I wouldn’t be surprised if Happy Feet won, especially given that it was, y’know, a better movie. Still: Idiot.

So the final tally for this year is 6-3 Genius. I think that’s certainly respectable. Join me again next February as I continue my quest to someday pick every one of the major categories correctly. As long as I stay away from making any comments about wagers, I think it’s possible.

I known I’ve been away for awhile — I’ve been drowning in work and too tired to write when I get home, so the poor site here has been suffering.  And it’s been killing me:  I totally missed writing about the Oscar nominations (I didn’t even know they were happening until after they’d happened, and that never happens), totally missed writing about the Grammys (hooray Dixie Chicks, though psst, Natalie:  a little humility never hurts), totally missed writing about whatever the hell is happening to Britney Spears (is there anyone who cares about this girl enough to help get her shit together?).  But the Oscars are Sunday night, and I couldn’t let them pass without offering My Official Predictions for this year’s awards.

My regular Oscar-predicting disclaimer applies:  what follows are not the movies or performances I think should win, but rather those I think will win.  As with every year since I became a parent, I’ve seen very few of the nominated films.  This year in particular it seems like there’s a lot of smaller independent films nominated for major awards, and those usually prove even harder for me to see.  Maybe I’ll write up my own awards soon based on the, what, 20 movies I saw from 2006, but for now, this is what you get.  (I’ll say this as a preview of my awards:  you’ll see a whole lot of The Prestige in there.)

Away we go:

Best Picture:  Babel.  I don’t want this movie to win it because I’ve heard it’s such a prime example of The Theatre of Look How Much Life Sucks, and I don’t have much desire to see that kind of thing rewarded, well done or not.  None of this year’s nominees scream Best Picture to me, honestly, but I suppose something’s gotta win.  My preference would be Little Miss Sunshine (the anti-Babel — life may suck, but you have to find the joy and beauty in it anyway), if only to see a comedy win Best Picture, which almost never happens; I really enjoyed The Departed, but I have trouble seeing what’s essentially a high-class crime thriller winning the top prize.  Babel’s the kind of Important Film which is constructed to win Oscars (ref. Crash, 2006), so I’d imagine it will, depressing a thought as it may be.

Best Actor:  Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland.  Every year, there’s a shocking upset! in one of the major categories, and this year Best Actor feels like it’s got the best shot at seeing a surprise winner.  For all of the talk about Whitaker’s performance as Idi Amin in Scotland, it seems like the movie itself wasn’t particularly well regarded; while I think he’s still clearly the front-runner, I want to say right here that I won’t be even a tiny bit shocked if Leonardo DiCaprio walks away with it.  While technically the award would be for Blood Diamond, DiCaprio’s work in The Departed was also Oscar-worthy, so I can see Academy voters going the two-for-the-price-of-one route and giving the nod to Leo.

Best Actress:  Helen Mirren, The Queen.  If this award goes to anyone else, it’d go down as one of the greatest upsets in Oscar history.

Best Supporting Actor:  Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children.  This one’s my actual upset pick.  I know Eddie Murphy is considered the favorite here, but Hollywood loves comeback stories even more than it does wait-but-I-didn’t-know-he-could-do-that stories.  Haley’s out-of-nowhere performance was, so I’ve heard, devastating.  Plus, A) I can see voters not wanting to give the same movie both supporting actor awards (see the next paragraph) and B) I can’t help but think all of those ads for Norbit can’t be helping Murphy’s Oscar caché (we’re going to give him an Oscar?  Oh, nuh uh).  Sorry, Eddie; maybe now it’ll be time to learn how to pick your roles better.

Best Supporting Actress:  Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls.  From all I’ve heard, the only crime if Hudson were to win this award would be that she didn’t win Best Actress, instead.  I’m not necessarily big on musicals, but I want to see this movie because of all I’ve heard about Hudson’s (and Murphy’s) performance.  Upset potential exists for Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi — never underestimate the awards-garnering power of portraying the handicapped.

Best Director:  Martin Scorcese, The Departed.  Ironically, Marty will finally win the award for the movie he probably least deserves it for.  That’s not a knock on The Departed, which is a fantastic movie — it’s just not Scorcese’s best directorial job, especially given some of the movies for which he hasn’t won.  This win will classify as much for a lifetime achievement award as a win for this particular movie — the Academy will finally be able to rectify the fact that they’ve given Clint Eastwood two of these and never even given Scorcese one.  (If, for some reason, Eastwood somehow pulls out a win here for Letters From Iwo Jima, I think Marty will be fully justified in jumping Clint on the way to the podium and pulling a Departed of his own on him.)

Best Original Screenplay:  Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine.  I believe this will be the only major award Sunshine gets; it seems like when the Academy falls in love with a little indie of this sort and lavishes it with bunches of nominations, they usually wind up giving it one award as a pat on the head, and frequently that award is for its screenplay.  (Lost In Translation, anyone?)  So this award will just have to do.  (I’d like to say here that I wish the Oscars would follow the pattern of the Screen Actors Guild awards and issue a Best Ensemble Acting award; I think it’s quite likely Little Miss Sunshine, a movie in which there really isn’t a lead actor, would have taken that one.)

Best Adapted Screenplay: William Monahan, The Departed.   Eh, just a gut feeling, really.  None of the nominees jumps out at me as an obvious winner; I’m thinking it comes down to this or Little Children by Todd Field and Tom Perrotta.  I’ll tell you this right now:  while you’re watching the awards telecast, if you see The Departed win this award and Scorcese wins for Best Director and you’ve got money riding on it winning Best Picture — go change your bets fast if you still can.  No way does it win all three.

Best Animated Feature:  Cars.  I’m really torn here.  I thought Happy Feet was a better picture overall than Cars, but I’d imagine Cars is going to win — it’s Pixar, and no Pixar movie released since they began this award has failed to win it. (OK, yes, that’s only two movies, but still).   [EDIT: Nope, I’m wrong here.  As my friend Tim P. pointed out, Monsters Inc. lost to Shrek the first year this award was given out.  Pixar’s not quite as infallible as I thought.  That’ll learn me to rely on my memory instead of doing research.]  Plus, Cars has Paul Newman, so.  Either way, I’m not going to complain — both movies are certainly deserving.

As I had hoped when the Disney-Pixar deal went down, Pixar’s John Lasseter is reintroducing traditional hand-drawn animated features in his new role as Chief Creative Officer at Disney. First up: The Frog Princess, to be directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, the guys who directed The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Treasure Planet (well, two outta three ain’t bad). Alan Menken will be in charge of the music for the movie, which will be a return to the Broadway-esque Disney hits of the early 90’s (think, for example, Beauty and the Beast (which Menken worked on) and The Lion King). This announcement seems to me to be something worth celebrating — the driving talents behind The Little Mermaid making a new cartoon feature with John Lasseter in charge of the whole thing? Oh, yeah, man, good stuff.

But according to the news brief on the IMDb, the Hollywood Reporter doesn’t think Disney’s bringing 2D animation back is such a hot idea: the traditional animation “no longer draws the crowd,” the Reporter says. Um, hello, Hollywood Reporter? Yeah, the thing is that bad hand-drawn animated flicks, movies that seem excessively lame, insult the audience’s intelligence or seem to exist only as launching pads for Happy Meal toys… those are the movies that don’t bring audiences anymore.

Let’s go back to 2002, the year the death knell for cel animation was rung, for just a moment, shall we?

In November of ‘02, Treasure Planet, by most accounts a not-very-good movie, brings in a pitiful $38 million in the United States. Planet’s monumental failure pretty much single-handedly decimates Disney’s cel-drawn animation department, resulting in thousands of layoffs and the shutdown of Disney’s Florida animation facility. It was at this point that the “hand-drawn animation is dead” movement began in earnest.

Yet only five months earlier, Lilo and Stitch, a great movie with plenty of heart designed to appeal to both adults and children, pulled in $145 million domestic, plus launched a spinoff series and several direct-to-DVD sequels. Lilo and Stitch grossed almost as much in its opening weekend ($35 million) as Treasure Planet made during its entire theatrical run. By any metric used, Lilo and Stitch was a solid hit. (For some reason, every article I’ve read of the “no one wants to watch 2D animation” variety ignores this fact — doing so would dispute the foregone conclusion the writers were trying to assert, I suppose.)

Even 2003’s Brother Bear, which was released with relatively little promotion as a result of the huge stinking disaster which was Treasure Planet, managed to earn a healthy $85 million at the box office. (And 2004’s lame Home on the Range, also released with almost no promotion, still managed to out-gross Treasure Planet with a $50 million haul.)

So because of one massive stinkbomb, all of a sudden no one wants to watch hand-drawn animated features anymore?

Audiences do like hand-drawn animation when done well. (Have you noticed the huge surge in popularity of anime over the last decade?) Computer animation isn’t inherently superior, and doesn’t automatically ensure that people will show up. You’ll notice that in the glut of computer-animated movies that have come out over the last few years since 2D animation went into its coma, there have been some pretty big duds in that list, too (The Wild and it’s $36 million take, anyone?). Would The Iron Giant or The Lion King have been better movies if they had been done in 3D rather than 2D? No, I don’t believe it would have. What makes these movies work are the characters, the story, the songs (where applicable), the heart and soul that comes through — not whether the animation is flat or three-dimensional.

If John Lasseter’s going to be overseeing these new features, I have every expectation that the new breed of 2D movies will be more Lilo-like than Planet-esque. Lasseter might be most associated with computer animation, but the man knows storytelling and character and detail, and it’s those qualities which I hope will make these new hand-drawn features every bit as excellent as the Pixar films.