I don't know about you, but I am incredibly psyched for this year's Academy Awards presentation. Really, Crabbie? And why is that? Because this year's Oscars are going to be the best Oscars ever...All right, I got it out of the way, my gushy, mainstream-media-style intro. Now I'm going to tell the truth - I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Oscar presentation like I look forward to my once-every-five-years trip to the dentist (the hot-looking one who absolutely won't succumb to my charms). I mean, the Oscars - could there be anything more tedious? Five hours of lame emceeing, disingenuous acceptance speeches, clips packages of movies no one ever cared to see in the first place - and did I mention the musical numbers? Jesus, what will we get this year? A Cirque du Soieil interpretation of The Last King of Scotland? Yeah, that's what I need - a guy in a codpiece balletically embodying Idi Amin while dangling upside-down from a wire. And, of course, the misery is going to be even worse this year thanks to the hostess - Ellen Degeneres. Jesus, if that woman were any more unfunny she'd be Kathy Griffin.
Okay, so I'm not exactly stoked for the Oscars. But they're still a big deal, so, as a member of the entertainment blogging community, I feel obligated to write about them. Plus it's a boring Saturday with Britney in rehab and no Anna Nicole hearings, so what the hell else am I going to write about?
Crabbie's Picks:
Oscar prognostication is one of the biggest things on the Web these days. Seems every dork with a computer thinks he/she is a brilliant awards handicapper who has discovered the secret formula for sussing out the Academy voters' logic. And Crabbie's no exception. So, here are my predictions:
Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Make-Up and Music:
Whoever the gays dig this year.
Best Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects:
Why do there need to be separate categories for sound editing and sound mixing? Just put them together under "Best Sound." Then instead of two weakly-written intros delivered by uncomfortable-looking B-list actors, we get one. It's called scaling back. And who's going to win? I don't know. Pirates of the Caribbean 2?
Best Animated Short, Live Action Short:
I think Martin Short is very animated. Give that first one to him. As for the second - I don't know. It's all pretentious film-school nonsense anyway. There must be some devastatingly beautiful Norwegian film about a young girl picking a flower and the flower dying and it's all a metaphor for lost innocence. Give it to that. Of course, that movie would be a lot better if Vin Diesel came to rescue the girl from kidnappers and there was a car-chase. Shit, I hope Michael Bay doesn't read this, cause he'll probably try to make that.
Best Original Song:
Three tunes from Dreamgirls, a Randy Newman stinker from Cars and the closing-credit music from An Inconvenient Truth. Newman is the king of crappy Oscar music so he should win this. Actually, I don't care who wins this. I just want to see Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson trying to out-sing each other. Hopefully one or the other of them will permanently damage their vocal cords. Of course, in Beyonce's case, it would be hard to tell - bitch can't sing anyway. And Hudson is liable to injure herself hitting the buffet table before the ceremony and never get to sing. Maybe that new big fat black girl on American Idol can take her place. What's her name? I don't know, but that girl can sing her ass off. I hope she does a movie with Beyonce soon, so Beyonce has someone else to resent.
Best Foreign Language Film:
All right, I've actually seen two of these - Water and Pan's Labyrinth. The first is boring as all get-up, and the second is like something you normally only see after ingesting mushrooms. I don't think either will win. I think The Lives of Others will win, because it's about life behind the Iron Curtain, and movies about life behind the Iron Curtain always win, unless there's also a movie about the Holocaust, in which case that always wins. Movies about how rotten Germany is are like movies about retards - Oscar catnip.
Best Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject:
An Inconvenient Truth will win the first, because this will give Al Gore the opportunity to go up on-stage and deliver a rambling dissertation about the impending end of life as we know it. And you know those phonies won't cue the orchestra to drown him out after 45 seconds either - they'll let that Frankenstein-looking loser go on all night as long as they think he's embarrassing George Bush. The short subject documentary award will go to whatever film does the best job of exposing the horrors of globalism.
Best Cinematography:
All right, finally, a category I'm qualified to talk about because I've actually seen all five movies in it. Well, I'm a sucker for The Prestige - I love the natural lighting and discreet hand-held camerawork (plus Hugh Jackman is hot). The Illusionist is good too with its greenish-gold tonalities and shadow-play. The Black Dahlia has a nice period look to it, and De Palma always conceives some interesting moving shots and focus effects, but it doesn't seem as distinctive as the other work in the category. Pan's Labyrinth is memorable because Del Toro is such a master of imagery, weaving together the real and the fantastic, and creating this kind of dank, subterranean quality that becomes just over-powering. And Children of Men has been compared to Kubrick with its long, intricate shots - but to be honest I thought the film was kind of cold and detached, the camera-movement a little too programmed (I mean, the shots in the car when they're driving through the woods - am I the only one who thought that stuff was too rehearsed-feeling? And some of the stuff where the camera's following Clive Owen - I don't know, it's not spontaneous enough. I mean, okay, so they're not going for a real documentary feel, just something close to that, with a more expansive sense of space. But I don't know - I was just bugged by the sense that it was all about the actors hitting their marks. Not that it isn't really technically accomplished, cause it is. It will probably win just because it's such a prodigious feat. I just never warmed up to the film, and the photography had a lot to do with that).
Best Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay:
The two absolute dumbest Oscar categories. And why are they the dumbest? Because the people who vote don't read the scripts. They're voting on the movies themselves, and sometimes what's in the movies wasn't even in the frigging script. I mean, there have been some dumb winners in this category over the years. Like when M*A*S*H won - most of that movie was improvised, for Christ's sake. And how about when Branagh was nominated for doing a word-for-word adaptation of Hamlet? He didn't change anything! It was the whole play word-for-word! And this year Borat is nominated - Borat? You mean they actually wrote stuff for that movie? I thought they just went around making fun of people and filming it? And it's up for adapted screenplay. Is there a lost Edward Albee play called Borat? Stupid Oscars.
Best Animated Film:
This category would be a lot more interesting if it were Best Dirty Cartoon.
Best Supporting Actress:
I was not that impressed by Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls, I have to tell you. I mean, I thought she was okay, just not crazy-great like people want to make her out to be. As usual, I think it's the backstory that has people caught up - the nobody who rose to fame playing a nobody who rose to fame. So she's going to win just based on her bio - like Hilary Swank (who can't act a lick). If I had a vote it would be for Rinko Kikuchi in Babel. She was amazing. And not just because she was playing a frustrated deaf nympho either - or, actually, yeah, she's amazing because she was playing a frustrated deaf nympho. Not many people get to play that. She was good.
Best Supporting Actor:
Eddie Murphy just ripped off his own SNL James Brown in the hot-tub shtick in Dreamgirls, so I don't even know why he's nominated. Alan Arkin was cute in Little Miss Sunshine, but Crabbie saw a little too much of his own future in that role - an old foul-mouthed heroin-sniffing perv; yup, that's me in a few years. Still, it's probably between either of those two guys - unless the Academy plans on rewarding Djimon Hounsou or Mark Wahlberg for being hot.
Best Director:
That old cokehead Scorsese will win this for sure. All right - Scorsese's not a cokehead anymore. But back in the seventies, man, he was snorting enough snow to blanket the fricking Alps. And Eastwood - dude, back in the '30s, that guy was such a laudanum addict. Used to suck people off in alleyways for money too. Oh, I don't mean Clint Eastwood - I mean Donald Eastwood. Clint Eastwood? Laudanum and sucking people off? No way. That guy's strictly a meth-and-hand-jobs guy.
Best Actress:
Helen Mirren has this sewn up. And she has fabulous tatas...
Or used to have. Bit saggier now I'd guess.Best Actor:
Leo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond - cute; interesting accent; no man-on-man with Hounsou. Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson - cute; strung-out junkie; points taken away for being involved with boring-ass Rachel McAdams. Peter O'Toole in Venus - really old; makes me sick; was a hot homo in Lawrence of Arabia. Will Smith in Pursuit of Happyness - token black-guy nomination; he ain't no Denzel; Men in Black 3 is just around the corner. Forest Whitaker in Last King of Scotland - this is one of those highly-respected powerhouse performances and I'm sure Whitaker is great but something about this guy just makes me nervous I don't know maybe it's his eyes but he always seems like he's on the verge of emotional collapse which is probably why he's a good actor I'd pick DiCaprio based on hotness with Gosling coming in second but Whitaker will surely win and Smith's hair looks dumb in that movie.
Best Picture:
In a stunning upset, the greatest film of all-time, the James Mason/Judy Garland version of A Star is Born comes forward in time and kicks the ass of Babel, The Queen, Letters From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed. The re-animated corpse of Judy Garland takes the stage to accept the award. It's a very moving moment, as her daughter, Liza Minnelli, is in the crowd. But wait, something's wrong. Judy appears to be angry. Yes, she's staring at her daughter Liza, a hellish light shining in her eyes. She points a single papery-skinned finger at Liza and rasps, "I will never forgive you for Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. And marrying David Gest - how could you do a thing like that? He's a god damn freak. I mean, look at him. He makes Karl Lagerfeld look normal for God's sake. Everyone in limbo just laughs their asses off at you. They can't wait for you to die - and it won't be long, dearie - so they can taunt you to your face. You've never done anything but bring disgrace to our family, and considering how I behaved, that's quite an accomplishment. Bwa-ha-ha..." And then she disappears in a poof of smoke.
Special Note: Crabbie will probably be live-blogging the Oscars, and the red-carpet pre-show. Unless I just decide I don't feel like it.
