Video Game Forums

As some of you may have heard, there's some sort of stupid awards ceremony taking place in a bit over a week where a committee of aging gentlemen will hand out trophies to the safest, most middlebrow movies of the year (and The Tree of Life). The nominees include some of the year's most critically acclaimed films (and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close).

The full list of nominees can be found on Wikipedia, among several other places on the series of tubes.

So even though I haven't seen all of the nominated films of the year (because I'm a broke college graduate who can only afford to go to the movies every so often) I will, to the best of my ability, comment on the nominees and predict the winners of the four major awards based on hearsay and general trends.

Best Actor
Only one biopic nod this year (Brad Pitt in Moneyball), and a lot of people probably didn't even realize it was a biopic. I could see this one going to Gary Oldman, not because I was particularly impressed with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (I wasn't), but because he's been around for quite a while. I'm going to ultimately give Clooney the upper hand, though, who was nothing short of terrific in The Descendants. Dujardin was pretty great, too, but he was upstaged by a dog in his own film. Why didn't the dog get an Oscar nod?

Best Actress [strike]in a biopic[/strike]
In an optimist's world, this award will not go to Meryl Streep or Michelle Williams... but who are we kidding? Biopics are practically guaranteed Oscars. Meryl Streep will win this.

Best Director
I would definitely consider myself to be a fan of all of these directors. Well, The Artist is the only film I've seen from Hazanavicius, but I liked it enough that I'm interested in seeing his other films. This one is hard to say. Scorsese already one his legacy Oscar for The Departed, but since the Academy hates him for being from New York, I'm not seeing him win a second prize any time soon. I'm splitting my odds between Payne and Hazanavicius. Malick would be a neat upset, though.

Best Picture
I'm going to toss aside Moneyball, War Horse, The Help and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close simply due to the fact that none of them were nominated for Best Director. I'm pretty sure there would be riots if Extremely Loud won anyway. I haven't seen it myself, but reviews have been downright vicious, so I'm wondering how on earth this got nominated in the first place. (Lie. I know already. Excessive lobbying.) What about Martha Marcy May Marlene or Contagion?

Besides the surprising inclusion of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I also feel the need to mention The Tree of Life. Despite having not seen all of the nominees, I feel comfortable saying that it's more than likely the most ambitious and impressive film in the running. To the surprise of probably no one, it seemed to top damn near every film critic's list of their favorite movies of 2011. It's much too unconventional to take home Best Picture, however, and quite frankly, the ending in particular was a too long for its own good. It most certainly deserves Best Cinematography, however.

Anyway, I'm predicting The Artist for Best Picture, which despite being a silent film is really not at all that unconventional.

So yeah... anyone have any comments or predictions or anything? Angry that I tried to talk about films I haven't seen yet?

Yeah, a largely-panned movie like Extremely Loud making the cut over movies like The Ides of March, 50/50, or Contagion is ridiculous (Also Drive and Super 8, but those movies had no chance in hell of getting nominated anyway so)

Of the Best Picture nominees I've seen four (The Artist, The Descendents, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball), and of the four, The Artist gets my pick. Clooney gets Best Actor though.

Also I want The Descendents to get Best Adapted Screenplay, because I want Dean Pelton from Community to have a statue.

I think I might have actually slightly preferred The Descendants to The Artist overall, but it's really a close call and the movies are different enough that it's not even really worth trying to decide.

Two or three years ago The Tree of Life would have easily been my #1 pick, but my taste in movies has been slowly moving in a different direction. I'm a bit more skeptical of opaquely "artsy" films than I was back in film school, though most of my favorite films of all time would probably still fall in the opaquely "artsy" category.

Also Uggie is a shoe-in for Best Dog. Skeletor (50/50) put up a noble fight but there's really no competing. Rowlf from The Muppets might've had a shot if not for The Academy's bias against puppet dogs.

I was really impressed by Uggie. Mostly because my parents got a new dog and that creature is the most poorly behaved thing I have ever encountered. I wish my dog was that awesome.

Also, Elizabeth Olsen got robbed of a Best Actress nod.

Here are all the nominated films I've seen:
The Muppets (Original Song nod: "Man or Muppet")
Deathly Hallows 2 (Art Direction, Makeup, Visual Effects nods)
Real Steel (Visual Effects nod)

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"