Oh, who am I kidding? I gave up on the Oscars long before Rob Lowe and Snow White sang their duet.
To hell with "awards from their peers", it's all about money and who has the most to spread around to win one. Besides which, I'll never forgive them for not having Billy Crystal come back to host on a regular basis.
So? I'm being cynical. Shut up.
Sure, there's some interesting nominees this year, but who really cares about who's going to win? Not me, not anymore. It's not as if it will matter one way or another in some actors' careers; some just get lucky, some of their agents have more money than others, whatever.
Anyway, there's only one thing I'm interested in this year:
Who WON'T win.
Let's start with the top Oscars and move down...
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BEST PICTURE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
The Reader - I mean, come on; everyone raise their hands who actually caught this movie. Everyone else and their mother saw the others and whispered at work or their bridge club, "ooh, this was such a good movie", or "ooh, he or she was so good in this" or some such nonsense. But The Reader? I don't even remember seeing any ads for this thing. I don't know what it was even about (and don't write in telling me it was about someone reading something, you goobs), and I don't feel like looking it up. Besides which, all of the "watch-this-because-it's-an-important-film-buzz" was already centered around Slumdog Millionare, so spare me. Give it another week and it'll be on DVD if it isn't already, on the shelf next to Howard's End or some Merchant/Ivory thing.----------
BEST ACTOR
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) - I could have went easy and gone with Richard Jenkins, another actor no one's ever heard of, got one nomination for his "breakthrough" role and was never heard from again, kinda like Frankie Faine's character in that movie The Oscar. But Mickey Rourke? This poor guy never caught a break in Hollywood. For al the fantastic roles he's gotten and great movies he's been in, he has never been recognized for all his hard work...or maybe never paid enough money to be recognized, or whatever. Myself, I'll always love his parts in films like The Pope of Greenwich Village, Angel Heart, Barfly and he was the only object of redeemable value in Michael Cimiono's 1985 fiasco Year of the Dragon. And yes, his was a yeoman effort in The Wrestler, garnering kudos after kudos, but will he get his day in the sun? No. I have a feeling this Benjamin Button garbage is going to run roughshod over this night of self-back-patting with its overload of sentiment and Forrest Gump channeling. And who will get the short end of the stick? That's right: poor old Mickey Rourke. Poor guy. Hasn't he already paid his dues for Wild Orchid?----------
BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)
Angelina Jolie (Changeling)
Meryl Streep (Doubt)
Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Melissa Leo (Frozen River) - Who? Yeah, me neither. Look at the other names: you think little Melissa stands a chance in a pool full of sharks like Streep and Winslet and Hathaway and Jolie (oh, don't get me started on Jolie - we'll be here all night)? At least Anne Hathaway has a foot in the door with The Devil Wears Prada, along with the fact that everyone loves her since her old boyfriend what's-his-name did all that stupid money-laundering or whatever the hell it was that got him in jail. Anne's the poster child for Poor Little Rich Girls everywhere. Melissa, get a few more movies under your belt and then try again. Just not this year.----------
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Josh Brolin (Milk)
Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder) 
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt) 
Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)- I don't care who your are - you could be the reanimated corpse of Richard Burton doing a two-man act with the 1940's Laurence Olivier - you would not stand a chance for a Supporting Actor Oscar this year. Even Downey Jr. playing an white Australian actor playing a black man doesn't stand a chance this year. Not that Ledger didn't do yeoman work playing a wholly detestable villain and not deserve every other award and praise he got (he most certainly did earn all that), but how fair is it for all the other actors in this category to have to go up for an award against someone who has in the last year had more face time and positive buzz than all of them combined? I imagine after the awards, the losers will all be at the same table, enjoying a nice Michael Shannon burger. Yep.
----------
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams (Doubt)
Viola Davis (Doubt)
Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler) - again, as easy as it would have been to go with Cruz, Tomei just seemed a more likely choice, seeing as she seemed to lose that certain something she had when she got her Oscar so long ago for My Cousin Vinny. That, I feel, was either a fluke, someone read the wrong card or their must have been A LOT of money involved. Either way, Tomei just doesn't strike the same chord she used to back in the '80s'. This will be an evening filled with heavy (deserved) praise for Doubt or another category flattened by the Benjamin Button steamroller. Sorry, Marisa.----------
BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
Stephen Daldry (The Reader)
David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
Gus Van Sant (Milk) - Why? Two reasons: one, he's just too much for Hollywood to handle right now. For all the money whoever it was may have put up for him to be nominated, the powers-that-be will NEVER recognize someone so controversial and as outre' as Van Sant. After all, this is a man who walks down the same path of rabble-rousing as Michael Moore does, what with his paeans to school shootings (Elephant), drug abuse (Drug Store Cowboy) and narcoleptic male prostitutes (My Own Private Idaho). Not to say that he isn't talented - far from it - but Hollywood has NEVER taken it unto themselves to reward such unrepentantly inexcusable behavior as being - heaven forbid - ORIGINAL. And Van Sant is certainly that. Oh, and two: I don't think anyone's every really forgiven him for the Psycho remake.----------
BEST ANIMATED FILM OF THE YEAR
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E
Bolt - the reason for this goes way back to before Cars was made by Pixar: back when that inexcusable idiot Michael Eisner was in charge of Walt's baby, he made the utterly bone-headed decision to break ties with Pixar (their biggest money-maker at that time) and have Disney start their own computer animation branch and make movies that were the exact equal of Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo. This fundamentally moronic idea failed on the simple basis that none of Disney Studios' animated movies at that time had the same heart, spirit, wonder and whimsy as any of Pixar's classics. And their very first computer-animated effort (Chicken Little) only reinforced that very same issue: it was a carbon copy of Pixar's works, but without the heart. After Eisner was dumped (thank GOD) and bridges were mended with Pixar, all fell back to normal, save for the fact that Disney Studios KEPT their computer animation branch and kept churning out heartless drones like Bolt - even going so far as to carbon-copy its script from one of their own direct-to-DVD works (101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure), which wasn't that good to begin with. I mean; Good Lord, people - even Kung Fu Panda had Jack "The Man" Black in it. What did Bolt have? Oh wait: I'll answer that...NOTHING.----------
And so there you go: nominations you may take to the bank.
Pick all the winners you want; I'm perfectly content with my losers.
Congratulations, guys and remember: it's just as important for you to have paid enough money to even be nominated.
Dope out.
-TGWD
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