Oscar Predictions 2011

Greetings Actualists™,

That is right- I did just make up a nickname for all you loyal Actually, It’s Ashleigh readers who flock to these hallowed web pages daily to gobble up the freshest scoop on pop culture in the land so use your new, trademarked nickname with pride.

My name is A.J. Serrano, younger brother of Ashleigh, and I am stopping by today to talk about movies- more specifically the Super Bowl of the movie world: i.e., The Oscars! This year’s race is definitely the most intense and competitive in recent memory. The fact that all ten Best Picture nominees this year are basically all deserving of the crown puts the cherry on top of the proverbial sundae. 

So before you join your local Oscar office pools and/or place your bets among your circle of friends, allow me to humor you with my picks for the major categories. This is not to downgrade the prestige of an Oscar win in the categories that I do not include in this blog since it is common knowledge that filmmaking is a collaborative process in which every department must be on top of their game to create a good movie. Instead, these following categories seem to be the most anticipated by the majority of movie-loving population. 

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

I absolutely loved Jeremy Renner’s turn as Jem the bank robber in The Town, but we all know that this race is between Geoffrey Rush and Christian Bale. Rush gave another typically stellar performance in The King’s Speech and he seems to be the favorite heading into this weekend. But he already won an Oscar for Best Actor back in 1997 and Christian Bale has been criminally overlooked by the Academy for far too long now. My pick: Christian Bale

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Fifteen-year-old Hailee Steinfeld gave an incredible performance in True Grit and Helena Bonham Carter showed that she can also give a great performance even when not making meat pies out of human flesh or playing croquet with flamingos as the Red Queen, however Melissa Leo was simply unforgettable in The Fighter. Yeah, her recent viral campaign to get the Oscar is way egocentric but I’ll give her a pass on this one because her performance was that good. My pick: Melissa Leo

Best Actor

My pick: Colin Firth. This doesn’t require further explanation. If you haven’t seen The King’s Speech yet, get off your laptop right now and go watch it.

Best Actress

What will the Academy do? Natalie Portman absolutely nailed a difficult role in a movie that pretty much all takes place in her sub-consciousness. But Annette Bening is the four-time nominee and an aging screen legend who was in the type of liberal-minded film that the Academy really loves to award. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bening got the nod, but Portman took on the more demanding role. My pick: Natalie Portman

Best Original Score

Imagine that you are a film composer and a director tells you that he needs you to write him a musical score to a movie about Facebook. I bet the first questions that would come to mind would be: 

1) Facebook is a really nice, useful tool but the idea of a movie being about Facebook just sounds bananas. (I just realized that this is actually not a question but more of an observation) 

And

2) What the hell would the musical score for a movie about Facebook even sound like? 

Well, it would sound like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ genius score for The Social Network- music that has reached the status of being inseparable from the iconography of that movie. My pick: The Social Network

Best Picture

I am going to skip Best Director, mostly because it seems pretty obvious that the safe bet (Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech) seems all but a lock in that category. However, the best picture race is a bit different. How does the Academy want to be perceived with this pick? Do they want to award the big summer blockbuster and give the prize to the worthy Inception? Do they want to play it safe and pick The King’s Speech? Stir up the political pot by rewarding The Kids Are All Right? Appease the artsy crowd with Black Swan? Having been able to experience first hand the marketing campaigns of all ten of these films here in Los Angeles, I can tell you Miramax is pumping a whole lot of dough into The Fighter’s campaign hoping it will take home the top prize. And Disney/Pixar and Warner Bros. are doing the same with Toy Story 3 and Inception, respectively. But this award technically is not supposed to be about what producers can buy their way to the podium at the end of the night, its supposed to award the film from a technical, critical, and social standpoint. Toy Story 3 was certainly the best third film in a series since the Best Picture winning Return of the King but I think it still pales in comparison to The Social Network. Featuring the finest dialogue in decades, outstanding performances, masterful direction, and a powerful story, The Social Network deserves the golden statue on Oscar night.

There you have ‘em, my picks for the Oscars. Hope you all watch this Sunday. Oh and p.s.- if you haven’t seen street artist Banksy’s deliriously funny documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, see it before Oscar night. Peace!