It’s hard to believe that the start of Oscar’s 9th decade has already arrived. Sunday is the big day and I’m admittedly ill-prepared. I keep finding myself looking at the calendar and asking "is it really this coming Sunday?" Well, it is.
If you’ve read the forums or read one of my recent updates on the front of this site, you’ll know the major reason why it’s been such a blur. When you lose interest, it’s hard to get excited about it, which means time doesn’t pass as slowly as you might like. The year Brokeback Mountain was the Best Picture front runner, I was excited and time crept by. Not so this year. We can only hope that we’ll have some excitement. This will be the first time since 2003 when most of the races have seemed fairly well determined, or at least close to finalized, before the actual ceremony.
In 2003, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept all 11 categories in which it was nominated. It was shocking for many of us as we had not expected it to rake in that many trophies in spite of being the prohibitive frontrunner. A similar even may occur this year with Slumdog Millionaire.
However, most of this year’s fun and entertainment will come from seeing what Bill Condon and Lawrence Mark do with the aging awards ceremony. They promise some shocks and are, I wouldn’t doubt, hoping for a few from voters.
As is my tradition, I will be taking the next three days to present all of the Academy’s categories and what I think will happen and what you may be able to expect from this year’s winners. Starting off, are the tech categories, which too many may be the most boring, but in a year of such predictability, may be the most shocking.
Visual Effects
This has become a hotbed for prohibitive favorites in the past, but as last year proved (The Golden Compass upset Transformers), voters can still send us reeling. This year, all three nominees are strong contenders. I could see the Academy picking any of them, but I think the one that will most likely carry through is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. More so than The Dark Knight and Iron Man, the visual effects here are more integral to the story. There are few effects in The Dark Knight that are showy and Iron Man is more chock full of discernible effects, but it’s the subtlety of Benjamin Button that I think voters will most embrace.
This category used to be the place where blockbusters prevailed. They continuousy picked up award after award, making this one of the few categories where the more expensive the film, the more likely it was to win. That maxim still holds true, but more and more serious films are beginning to compete in this category. But the most promising sign for Button is that only once in the Academy’s history has a Best Picture nominee nominated in this category not gone on to win the Oscar. That nominee was Patton which lost to Tora! Tora! Tora! back in 1970. There has also been one instance where a Best Picture nominee has lost to a fellow nominee, but it was still a Best Picture nominee winning the award (Babe over Apollo 13 in 1995). So, history points to a win for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which does have some spectacular effects.
But, always look for the spoiler. Its biggest competition, The Dark Knight, could benefit from the pro-Knight faction of the Academy trying to give it every one of the eight awards they can simply because it was ignored at Best Picture. I don’t know if this is the category for that sentiment to carry over, as it would need 33.4% of the vote at minimum to win (a figure that if it had that level of support it surely would have been a Best Picture nominee). I don’t know if that will trump the opinions of those who want Button, the most nominated film of the year, to carry home a few awards as consolation, but it’s a distinct possibility.
Makeup
Prosthetics. Prosthetics. And more prosthetics. The old adage that a rubbery face earns an Oscar nomination is often true for this category, but you can’t deny that this year’s three nominees are all superb works. There are no nominations for movies like Life or Click this year. Benjamin Button tackles the Academy favorite of old-age makeup. The Dark Knight has that jaw-dropping scene in Harvey Dent’s room late in the film, but most will probably think this is a nomination largely for the work on Heath Ledger’s face paint and wild hairdo, which is a large part of it, but not the entirety. And pounds of prosthetics take up the third nominee, Hellboy II, which is another Academy favorite.
The Academy seems to take breaks in honoring Best Picture nominees in this category, most often not even giving them consideration. In its 26-year history (one of the youngest categories at the Oscars), only 11 of those years saw Best Picture nominees in the ranks. Twice, all three of the nominees were from Best Pictures (1998 & 2001) and a third featured two nominees (2003). However, those three years aside (a Best Picture nominee carried all three), only 3 others actually managed to win a Makeup award (Amadeus, Driving Miss Daisy and Braveheart). Five films failed, all major Oscar nominees, and four of them were Best Picture winners even.
So, Benjamin Button, while building more on the 6/26 pro-win statistic over the 5/26 pro-loss, it still faces stiff competition. This is one of the categories that seems most likely to go to the film (along with Visual Effects), but could just as easily fall to The Dark Knight. Hellboy II just isn’t prime material for the Oscar Winner title, and most voters will likely avoid the film.
Sound Editing
When the Sound Effects category was renamed Sound Editing and revamped, it became more akin to the Sound Mixing category than its more eclectic roots. That makes predicting this category far more difficult than many others simply because there isn’t a sizable history to fall back on (this will be only the third year of the five-nod category).
Looking at the previous two years, Letters from Iwo Jima and The Bourne Ultimatum follow two different mindsets. The former hangs onto the Best Picture nominee equals winner maxim. The latter takes on the most explosive, Sound Mixing companion tradition. This year, there are four films that could hold on to the latter tradition: The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, WALL-E and Wanted. You can probably toss Wanted right now. The film was a surprise nominee for most and that generally doesn’t help a film win. You can probably also toss out Iron Man, which neither has a companion Sound Mixing nod nor a Best Picture nod.
Of the other three, Slumdog Millionaire could be one of the rare films that follows both trajectories. You think it may seem odd, but if you look at the film’s win at the Cinema Audio Society awards (they are more specifically matched to the Sound Mixing category, but…), the movie obviously has a lot of partisan support and the juggernaut is building to a deafening speed. That might put Slumdog into the winner’s bracket. But, not so fast, this category belongs more to blockbusters, war films and the occasional animated feature, than it does to anyone else. There is no film in the history of this category that compares to Slumdog, but there are plenty of comparisons to be made to The Dark Knight and WALL-E. Dark Knight benefits from being filled with plenty of explosions, often key to winning this category. WALL-E has an entire opening half that relies entirely on sound effects to tell the story.
My personal choice would be WALL-E, which I also think may follow The Incredibles and Who Framed Roger Rabbit to a win in this category. But, I wouldn’t put it past The Dark Knight to eke out a victory.
Art Direction
The bigger, the more expansive and the more luxurious the sets, the more likely the film is to win this award. Often this is a companion award to Costume Design, but in recent years, that connection has been severed as often as it has been supported (an even 5-for-5 split in the last 10 years). This year seems ripe with the possibilities of another split. My thoughts on the Costume Design race in just a moment.
For this race, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a sprawling romantic epic with set pieces and locations spanning almost an entire century from early 20th Century New Orleans to the modern day. Sure, the modern sets aren’t going to impress, but a slavish devotion to the other periods will certainly help. Not to mention the fact that David Fincher and cinematographer Claudio Miranda have seen to it that the sets are vibrant and alive, which can only help the film win over voters.
It’s biggest competition probably comes from Changeling which re-creates only one period, but early 20th Century America is a great period to earn votes. The Dark Knight could also play a role, but it is too closely akin to modern America and only the small fantasy elements in the setting give it a chance. Of the categories Knight is nominated in this year, I would say this is the one it is most likely to lose.
What about The Duchess? Or Revolutionary Road? Both films earned nods in both Art Direction and Costume Design (as did Benjamin Button). The problem for Revolutionary Road is that the film is obviously not as well liked as it needed to be. While that hasn’t stopped past films from earning attention in this category, it also takes a relatively recent period (the 1950s) and merely does a good job recreating it. That it was nominated at all is a bit of a surprise, but a win would be one of the night’s biggest shocks. The Duchess on the other hand is just as small and received very little attention during the Oscar season. What helps it is the fact that it’s cut from the same cloth as past winners Shakespeare in Love and Restoration. However, that poses a bigger problem. It’s been more than ten years since a film of the bustle era actually managed to pick up this trophy. The category’s trend towards fantasy only further helps Benjamin Button.
Costume Design
As Marie Antoinette and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (this category’s last two winners) proved, corsets are still en vogue with the Academy. It gives The Duchess such a huge boost that I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the film carried the award. Matter of fact, I think it may be one of the more sure things this year that isn’t associated with Slumdog Millionaire. But, it’s not enough to re-create the Edwardian/Victorian/Elizabethan-style eras of clothing, most of the talk around the film has been how much the costumes were a part of the film. It’s pretty much enough to be the winner.
Then there are the other four contenders. Milk is able to be tossed pretty quickly. While I’ve heard little but praise for the film’s designs, the too-recent aspect of the designs (1960s/1970s era) hurts the film tremendously. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) was the last film to win this award being set after the 1950s. But, that’s not really a great comparison as the outlandish style of the costumes in that film carried it through to a welcome victory.
Revolutionary Road and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button suffer the same fate as a good portion of their costumes come from that era. Button has a slight reprieve in that it also has a good number of pre-’50s costuming. However, the costumes in Button are far from the notable efforts that can triumph an entire film filled with corsets.
That brings us to Australia. The only reason it probably won’t win is that most people don’t like the movie. A movie this much disliked by critics and audiences (a box office dud in the U.S.) isn’t likely to attract voters. That combined with the film’s tangential attachment to its design era and tendency towards haggard and non-glossy clothing on most of the actors (Nicole Kidman and the hoity-toity ball the lone exceptions) makes for an unappealing choice. That leaves the prize to likely fall squarely into The Duchess’ lap with only Benjamin Button a real chance of spoiling in the race.
Sound Mixing
Just what is Sound Mixing? This category is probably the most confusing of all categories for most people and that could be why this category has often gone to the loudest film, not necessarily the film with the best usage of sound. In reality, Sound Mixing is a blending of all of the audible elements of the film: sound effects, dialogue, music and so forth. The change in titles for the category may help people understand its purpose, but that still hasn’t done much to change the makeup of this category’s winners.
In the last 10 years, this category has either gone to an explosively loud picture or a musical. Subtlety doesn’t seem to play much of a role in the decisions of voters with even the Cinema Audio Society’s 2007 winner No Country for Old Men failing to win over the more visceral Bourne Ultimatum. Matter of fact, the CAS has had such a dismal track record that once in the last seven years has the film that won that award also picked up the Sound Mixing award at the Oscars.
These issues are mostly bad news for Slumdog Millionaire. For one thing, while I wouldn’t exactly call the film subtle (certainly not compared to No Country for Old Men) in its use of sound, it also isn’t a bombastic or thrill-a-minute film or a musical for that matter. Add in that CAS-to-Oscar factoid and you have reason to suspect it will not win the award.
What could replace it? Plenty. Start off by tossing both Wanted and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. While the former is certainly a very loud film, it also isn’t a big box office winner. Box office can hurt films in this category as when it’s big and loud, there better not be a bigger, louder or more popular film in the list or it might as well sit this one out. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, outside of the scene at sea aboard the fishing boat, there really isn’t anything spectacular in terms of sound usage that would catch voters’ attentions. It’s a terrific use of sound, but it is not Oscar-caliber.
That leaves The Dark Knight and WALL-E. Although WALL-E might have been a contender in another year, this category just doesn’t go to animated films. The Dark Knight, however, blends box office power, plenty of explosions and a lot of voters who’ll want to throw the film awards outside of Best Supporting Actor. I still think Dark Knight is destined to win this category. If Slumdog Millionaire managed to eke out a victory here, we’re looking at a near clean sweep for the film as it will also likely pick up the next two awards in my Oscar predictions roundup.
Cinematography
What does it take to win Best Cinematography? It has to be either really gorgeous or really dark or even a skillful combination of both. It should also probably not be an ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) winner. But, a lot of these tenets are about to change because Slumdog Millionaire is on a steam-roll that isn’t likely to be stopped here. However, there is still a twinge of doubt in my mind, for if there is one category that is unfavorable to a movie like Slumdog, it’s Cinematography.
Many critics have complained for years that the most gorgeous exterior cinematography usually wins this award. However, in the last several years, that idea has fallen by the wayside. Pan’s Labyrinth, There Will Be Blood, Road to Perdition and American Beauty have laid many of those thoughts to rest. Even those that do have grand exterior shoots still feel a bit more solidly interior-based in execution: The Aviator, Memoirs of a Geisha, Titanic.
But Slumdog does have a lot of exteriors, but most of them are highly gritty. Slumdog also has a lot of interiors, but they are similarly less interesting to look at. But why am I talking about interiors and exteriors? Look at Oscar’s recent history. The eventual winner of this award either picked up or was nominated for the Art Direction award. American Beauty was the last film to escape that trap back in 1999. Before that, it was Braveheart in 1995 and A River Runs Through It in 1992 and several other times in the 1980s and early 1990s. So, since 1995 it has become an increasingly sporadic occurrence. That certainly does hurt Slumdog Millionaire, but the "it is written" mantra will stifle most of those concerns.
That being said, what could take over at the podium? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Dark Knight will battle that spot out. Changeling, while pretty to look at; and The Reader, while a Best Picture nominee, are not likely to win. I doubt The Reader would have even been nominated if Roger Deakins hadn’t had a hand in the film.
The Dark Knight takes on the dark grittiness of past winners like Pan’s Labyrinth and Road to Perdition, but it may be too dark for most voters. The richness of the film’s blacks aren’t likely to impress a gloss-minded voter. Benjamin Button, on the other hand, is so glossy and beautiful that even when you’re in a dark alley or running along a lamp-lit street with fireworks shooting overhead, the film simply pops. It’s the kind of winner that Memoirs of a Geisha, The Aviator and Titanic were. What hurts the film is the Slumdog trajectory and the pro-Dark Knight wing.
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes writing these things out can change my opinion. I’m shifting my prediction back to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button simply because history just seems too much on the film’s side to bet against it. But it is nowhere near a sure thing and Dark Knight or Slumdog could easily take the title.
Editing
That isn’t the case with Editing. There is no question that Slumdog Millionaire will take the editing award. Apart from the fact that the American Cinema Editors have failed only three times in the last twenty years to correctly forecast the Oscars, the film is a marvel of editing. It’s one of the few things I can say is exemplary about the film (even if I don’t think it’s the year’s best editing).
The only real hindrance for Slumdog, though not much of one considering the atmosphere of the year, is that the category tends as often towards Best Picture winners as it does to films not nominated for Best Picture. But as The Departed and Crash can attest, you don’t have to be the best edited film of the year if your film contains enough edits and the editing feels important enough to actually win. And being a fractured narrative bouncing back and forth in time, Slumdog shouldn’t have much trouble winning.
Out of the race are Frost/Nixon and Milk, two films whose placement in the category is testament to their position as Best Picture nominees more than any ability to win the category. It’s sad that films like these can’t win, but it’s a very simple state of existence.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is weak in this category for one simply reason: it’s long. One thing many critics of the film state is that it feels far longer than it needs to be. It’s lengthiness only hurts the film. The Dark Knight, on the other hand, shares something in common with last year’s winner The Bourne Ultimatum. It’s a box office blockbuster with lots of stylized editing. It could also be a spoiler from the point of view that this is one of the film’s strongest categories and it could pull a Sound Mixing/Sound Editing/Film Editing trifecta much like The Bourne Ultimatum and The Matrix previously.
While we may think many of these races have clear frontrunners that have little chance of being taken down, these are the categories that are most ripe for upsets. A swing of voters one way versus another can often shift the balance of power from frontrunners to underdogs and it is the one group of awards that can turn once-underdogs back into underdogs at the last minute.
Tomorrow, we’ll took at the middle-run of categories which include writing, documentaries, short films, music and foreign films.
-Wesley Lovell (February 17, 2009)
