It's time to talk about the biggest Oscar showdown in years. Who will win? The little independent movie that could, or the massive worldwide blockbuster with smurf-tastic special effects?
Best
Director
Kathryn
Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
James
Cameron (Avatar)
Jason
Reitman (Up In The Air)
Lee
Daniels (Precious)
Quentin
Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
And the winner will be ... Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker.
The
writers on Gossip Girl could not come up with a juicier storyline. In one corner, we have James Cameron - the
self proclaimed King of the World who dominated the Oscars and the box office with his last movie
(Titanic) and conquered Hollywood as he unveiled the most daring, expensive and
technologically advanced film in years, which has become the biggest moneymaker
EVER.
In
the other corner, we have his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow - a director who has had
some success with the classic Patrick Swayze/Keanu Reeves film, Point Break,
but no one will ever call her Queen of the World.
While Avatar continues to make enough money
to purchase some exotic private island in the Bahamas, The Hurt Locker has barely
played anywhere in America, most people have never heard of it, and it's a
movie that courts controversy because it's set in the middle of the war in
Iraq. Without attention from critics'
groups and other awards ceremonies in the last few months, The Hurt Locker
would have disappeared and barely made a dent when it was released on DVD.
However,
Bigelow is the frontrunner for Best Director.
She has been awarded the Director's Guild Award for Best Director, and
the winner of this award has won the Oscar for Best Director 55 out of 61
times. Why? Like with the Screen Actors Guild, many
members of the Directors Guild also vote in the Oscars. Plus, Bigelow would be the first woman to
ever win Best Director.
David
slays Goliath. The ex-wife beats the
ex-husband. A woman wins for the first
time.
Hollywood
can't resist a story like that.
Best
Animated Feature
Up
Coraline
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
And the winner will be ... Up.
What the heck is The Secret of Kells? Where did this come from? Has anyone reading this piece actually seen the movie or heard of it?
Aside from that, Up wins because it is a very good movie. Pixar has walked away with this award 4 of the 8 times it has been given (including the last 2 in a row) and you have to know Oscar voters are in love with Up, since it was the only animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture this year, and only the second animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture (yes, according to Oscar rules, Avatar qualifies for the Best Animated Feature category, which would make it the third animated film in history to be nominated for Best Picture, but the studio didn't seek out an Animated Feature nomination, so this stat could end up with some sort of asterisk put next to it).
Best
Documentary
Food, Inc.
Burma VJ
The Cove
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home
And the winner will
be ... The Cove.
This could be one of the hardest categories to predict. Some Academy members will vote for a movie because it compels them to support a cause. Others will vote for the movie that tells a story in the most emotional and intriguing way possible. This year, I think The Cove covers both of those.
Best Picture
A Serious Man
An Education
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
Up In The Air
Up
And the winner will be ... The Hurt Locker.
The folks at the Academy wanted films you actually have seen
to be nominated for Best Picture, which should lead to better ratings for the
Oscars show, so they expanded the pool to 10 total nominees, and it
worked.
It's hard to think The Blind Side or District 9 would have been one of the top 5, but, now, they have a chance to win the whole thing. However, they won't.
Right now, it looks like a battle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, just like it is a battle between James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow in the Best Director category.
Here's why I think The Hurt Locker wins. First of all, the film with the most nominations wins Best Picture about 70% of the time. With Avatar and The Hurt Locker both holding 9 nominations, one of them has a good chance at winning the big prize.
Second, 60 times out of 81, the winner of Best Director directed the winner of Best Picture. Since I think Bigelow is taking Best Director, logic leads me to think The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture.
Third, it's an analysis of which voting bloc can be counted on. My friend Jim Judy at Screenit.com made a very telling observation. With 10 nominees, the support for films is spread thinner. The winner doesn't need 50% of the vote. The winner could have as little as 11% of the vote if every nominee gets about the same number of votes.
Independent movies like The Hurt Locker tend
to draw a very supportive, vocal and loyal following, which should not waiver
as the next month slowly passes. Avatar
might be the talk of the town for how much money it has earned so far, but
something else will be #1 at the box office in a few weeks.
Just keep in mind, all of those stats I just threw at you could be null and void in 2010. This category is the one where we can see the biggest surprise because it has been many years since The Academy nominated 10 films in the Best Picture category, so we don't have anything to compare the 2010 race to.
