And the Oscar goes to...

Just a day to go before the most prestigious... rather the most conspicuous movie event of the year, and so it is time to take a look at the present Oscar nominees, and make some "safe" guesswork on who will win the oscars this year. I use the word Safe, because the academy, in the past, has had this inherent quality/inclination to repeatedly make the so called safe choices, these big budget films, that deal with big themes in a big way. And whenever the academy does make (an unexpectedly) good choice in nominating films/actors/directors, it does not however follow through by awarding the most deserved ones. Take for instance, 1995 best picture nominees Il Postino, and Babe, compare this to that years winner Braveheart - one the most overrated movie of our time. In my opinion it (Braveheart) did not even deserve to be nominated. This year however has been a little different though, Paradise Now (from Palestine) has been nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category, Although I haven't seen the movie myself, my gut feeling says that it deserves the oscar, but as I said earlier, the academy is going to make the safe choice of not awarding it. And the reasons for that will be dealt by Aniruddha in his post. Surely, when Brokeback wins the best picture oscar the academy would have made an ostensible progress, given the film's theme and its frank exploration of homosexuality. However, Hollywood seems to be congratulating itself for it's own success. Only movies which are expensively marketed in magazines like Premier, Hollywood reporter, etc. get nominated for the Oscars, and sadly (independent) movies like "me and you and everyone we know" (one of my favorite movies this year and also nominated in Zero categories!!) get left out and never see the light of the day. Coming back to this years nominations, starting with the best picture category - Brokeback will break the ice, and so will Ang Lee for best director for his subtle and sensitive portrayal of the theme. Coming to the Foreign language Film category I have a (safe) hunch that Tsotsi (South Africa)- a very well made movie, will take home the Oscar. I had the pleasure of meeting the director of the movie Gavin Hood a few days back at the premier of the movie here in Dallas. Excerpts of the Q&A session (held after the screeing) will be posted soon. moving to the best documentary feature, March of the Penguins seems to be the box-office favorite and so my safe guess is the penguins will slowly march away with an Oscar. My personal choice for the best actress is Felicity Huffman, but going by the results from award shows in the last couple of months it seems like reese witherspoon may win the oscar. And Hoffman not to be confused with Huffman (Huffman plays a Transsexual, whereas Hoffman plays a Gay!) without doubt will win the oscar in a leading role category (and he rightfully deserves it). It is hard to take a guess at the supporting roles without taking a look at all the performances, but I guess I have nothing much to lose by making a few speculations except that I may lose whatever credibilty I have accumulated over the past few years!! Anyways, just like the academy I would say the safe choices of actors (and having witnessed their pefromances on screen) are Michelle Williams, and Jake Gyllenhall. One last category that I would like to mention is the best animated feature and the winner in this category in all probability will be Dreamworks's Wallace and Gromit.

So there you go, at the end of listing all this I feel like a member of the academy! (I hope I am on the board some day!). But for now I'll have to let go of that feeling and resist it atleast till the end of ceremony.

Happy viewing!!

Prasad.