The Chris Moeller Archives

Oscar Predictions

Thanks to Roger Ebert's web editor, Jim Emerson, for this week's list of unwritten rules in Oscar voting.
He didn't connect the dots by predicting this year's winners, but I will. The 8th Annual Chris Moeller 2004 Film Awards will not be announced until this summer because, once again, the studios did not send any tapes. I won't reveal my overall picks today, but along with the prognostications, I'll share with you who I'm rooting for among the nominees.

BEST ACTOR:
Jamie Foxx hit the trifecta of Oscar favorites this year. He played a beloved figure in the entertainment industry; his character overcame a major physical disability; and though, the character didn't drop dead in the film, the real guy did a couple months before the release of the movie. As Emerson points out, "best" means "most" for Oscar voters, and Foxx undeniably did the "most" acting this year. Show me someone who doesn't think Foxx is going to win, and I'll show you someone who didn't watch the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Awards, and the Grammys. "Now let me hear you say "oooohhhhh"...
I always appreciate Clint Eastwood's subtlety, but his facial expressions are so limiting and his performance stuck in a very cliched, overrated film. DiCaprio was surprisingly good in "The Aviator" despite his terminal boyishness. He didn't stick out like a sore thumb like he did in "Gangs of New York." I wouldn't be upset if he won. I haven't seen the other performances yet, but I'm sure "Hotel Rwanda" qualifies as this year's prerequisite Holocaust nominee. Johnny Depp's the best actor we've got right now, on the whole, so he's my temporary choice.

BEST ACTRESS:
I've only seen two of these performances (Kate Winslet's and Hillary Swank's,) but this is another no-doubter. Swank's character dropped dead in the most melodramatic way in recent Hollywood memory. Bet the farm.
Winslet illuminates the screen anytime she's on it, but her director seemed intent on robbing her film ("Eternal Sunshine") of most of its emotion. Great female roles are so rare in Hollywood that the best performance usually stands out. In the previous seven years of my awards, I've actually agreed with the Academy three times- by far the best category by percentage. I don't have a sentimental favorite among the nominees this year.


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

Anybody but Jamie Foxx. "Collateral" was the biggest piece of shit this year. Foxx had been surprisingly good in bad movies before (i.e. "Any Given Sunday," "Bait") so I got suckered into renting this. I WANT MY MONEY BACK! It might have been the most implausible plot ever on screen that wasn't aware of its implausibility. No more brownie points for elevating bad material.
Thomas Haden Church is my favorite choice here. As I've already explained, he was fabulous, but I'm still trying to gel his nomination with one of the most important rules of the Chris Moeller Film Awards-- a supporting performance has to be supporting. I'm still not convinced that "Sideways" didn't have two lead actors.
I've actually seen all five of these performances already. Clive Owen stole his movie "Closer," and I'll be leaning heavily towards him later this year. Alan Alda and Morgan Freeman nailed their parts, too, and they've both been great in so many other things. Of course, that only matters to Oscar, not to me. For this reason, the often-snubbed Freeman will win.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

I desperately want Virginia Madsen ("Sideways") to win. You see, I fell in love with her this year. Hers fit the perfect description of a "Supporting" performance, turning her movie on it's side, halfway through, changing the central element of the lead character.
Laura Linney was worthy of her nomination for "Kinsey," but this is the stiffest competition in this category- maybe ever. Cate Blanchett may have changed acting forever. Her Katherine Hepburn in "The Aviator" was remarkably inventive. It was real and caricatured at the same time. (It's the equivalent of what Johnny Depp did in "Pirates of the Carribbean.") She did two remarkable things-- first, she stole at least two light-hearted scenes in the early part of the movie, and then, more impressively, she dialed back her performance, and gently handed the movie to her co-star. In a perfect world, there would be two winners.
I actually sense that Madsen will win, becoming the only winner for "Sideways."

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

One day this will be called "the Charlie Kauffman Award;" and he will win this year for another mind-bending product in "Eternal Sunshine," but I'm pulling for John Logan and "The Aviator." Perhaps, I have made it clear in the past how much I despise bio-pics, but Logan avoided many of the genre's cliches. He examined only the early part of Howard Hughes' fascinating life. He celebrated his extraordinary legacy in Hollywood and flight, and then only began to hint respectfully at the mental illness that would ultimately rob Hughes of his sanity and, alas, much of his dignity. Penned by a different writer, this movie could have become a grotesque.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

If Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor don't win this, I'm going to hunt down Joan Rivers, and gouge out her eyes from beneath their surgically-altered lids.


BEST DIRECTOR/BEST PICTURE

Again, I ask you, how can the director of the Best Picture not be the Best Director? In the CMFA's, we don't even attempt to separate the two awards. But Oscar will... again. They'll give "Million Dollar Baby" the Best Picture award because Eastwood pulled out the violin at the end of the film, and Scorsese will get the director's prize. Scorsese did not improve on his pioneering work of the '70s and '80s, but he nearly matched it, and he improved greatly upon "Gangs of New York," his most recent Oscar snub. If they don't give it to him this year, they never will.
I believe "Million Dollar Baby" has already sealed the deal. You have three central acting performances geared almost perfectly towards Academy biases, and then you go and kill off one of them at the end. How about that Jim Emerson stat on Ebert's website?-- Fourteen of the last 20 Best Pictures have killed off a lead character or allowed the lead character to react to the death of a prominent supporting character. "Million Dollar Baby" plays like it was written out of the Academy voting handbook.

You know my favorite. Break out the pinot noir, and party hard a week from tonight. We're the underdogs, but just keep telling yourself- if "The Apartment" can win, we can win. Miracles happen in Hollywood every quarter century or so, and God knows, in Hollywood, giving the Best Picture to a comedy certainly qualifies as a miracle.

posted by CM @ 3:13 PM