And The Oscar Goes To......

[lpatrice]

Meryl Streep for Best Actress?? For what movie?? As much I love Meryl Streep, I can't see her getting nominated, let alone winning for either Julie/Julia or It's Complicated.

[Deleted]

I disagree, I don't know if she'll win but the Oscars love Meryl and I'll be surprised if she doesn't get a nom for Julie/Julia. It is a biopic after all and they love biopics.

I keep forgetting about Christoph Waltz. I'd love it if he won. I'm going to wait until the Golden Globes and SAG awards to guess the winners for the other categories, but I remain dead certain about Jeff Bridges. It's the kind of movie that the Oscars love to reward and he's way past due. He's in the Hollywood veteran category and they seem to like to give awards to that type.

[Deleted]

Meryl's been nominated 15 times but has only won twice and the last time was 28 years ago. That, plus the fact that "Julie and Julia" was a sizeable box office hit, gives her a very good chance of finally taking home another Oscar.

[jynni]

Jan 10, 2010 1:02:12 GMT -4 lpatrice said:

Meryl Streep for Best Actress?? For what movie?? As much I love Meryl Streep, I can't see her getting nominated, let alone winning for either Julie/Julia or It's Complicated.

Yeah, I can see a nomination but not a win.

I think Sandra Bullock actually has a pretty good shot at a win for Best Actress. She seems to be building quite a bit of buzz going into awards season.

[Deleted]

I think Best Actress is Meryl's to lose. I don't think she actually deserves to win for either film she's been in this year but the fact that this will be her, what, 14th nom after her last Oscar win, will be played up massively and overshadow everyone else in that category.

While I would looove to see Christoph Waltz win I do think there'll be a surprise on Oscar night. Isn't there some old Hollywood actor who's never won before in his category? Because if there is, I can totally see an upset.

[Deleted]

The only other supporting actor I've heard any awards buzz about is Woody Harrelson for "The Messenger" but I think he'll get the happy-to-be-nominated consolation prize and Waltz will win it. Waltz simply had the most talked-about male performance this year and giving a statue to a Tarantino film will make the Academy look hip.

[normadesmond]

Jan 10, 2010 1:17:10 GMT -4 jynni said:

Jan 10, 2010 1:02:12 GMT -4 lpatrice said:

Meryl Streep for Best Actress?? For what movie?? As much I love Meryl Streep, I can't see her getting nominated, let alone winning for either Julie/Julia or It's Complicated.

Yeah, I can see a nomination but not a win.

I think Sandra Bullock actually has a pretty good shot at a win for Best Actress. She seems to be building quite a bit of buzz going into awards season.

Streep already is winning lots of awards. I don't think how serious or frivolous the movie is has much to do with it. It's more about timing. Last year, they felt worse for Kate Winslet going home empty-handed all the time, than for Streep who'd won twice. Having to choose between always-the-bridesmaid Winslet, and Streep, they picked Winslet. This year, her main competitors are Mirren (a recent winner), and a bunch of first-time nominees, extremely young newcomers in the case of Mulligan and Sidibe: if Mulligan wins she'll be one of the youngest winners, and if Sidibe wins she'll probably be the youngest ever for a leading role. Also, the evident Academy preference for younger women doesn't apply here: it doesn't seem to apply to "Living Legends" like Streep, or Katharine Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman who both won a third Oscar at about the same age as Streep is now.

I also think Julie & Julia being a hit helps. Lots and lots of movies can't break into the Oscar race because they're too small and obscure. Several critics including Roger Ebert have been championing Tilda Swinton all year for Julia (not to be confused with Meryl's movie), but nobody saw the movie, it played for like two weeks, and there's no marketing muscle behind it.

The Oscars aren't really about deciding the year's best performances. They're about trying to choose the year's best non-obscure performances. If they really wanted to make the race more interesting and equitable, they should expand the acting lists to 10 nominees, instead of only Best Picture being expanded. That's the only way they're ever going to give tinier pictures a real chance to get in.

While I would looove to see Christoph Waltz win I do think there'll be a surprise on Oscar night. Isn't there some old Hollywood actor who's never won before in his category? Because if there is, I can totally see an upset.

Yeah: Christopher Plummer in The Last Station. He could become this year's Alan Arkin or James Coburn. However, they didn't give it to Ruby Dee, Lauren Bacall, Hal Holbrook, or (most significantly because of his legendary status) eight-time nominee, zero-time winner Peter O'Toole, so obviously being old and trophy-less doesn't always help. Even being a living legend like O'Toole doesn't always work.

[Deleted]

I keep forgetting about Christoph Waltz. I'd love it if he won.

Waltz will have the same problem Ralph Fiennes had when he was up for Schindler's List: no matter how good you are in a performance, the Academy will not give an Oscar to anyone who plays a Nazi officer no matter how good you were in a role.

Yes, some will say Kate Winslet won for playing an alleged Nazi, but the Academy got tired of her getting nominated (tough luck, Glenn Close and Sigourney Weaver), that they gave it to her.

[normadesmond]

Well, they gave it to Anthony Hopkins for playing a cannibal, so anything's possible. I don't actually think Fiennes lost for playing a Nazi, I think it was more a case of a lot of goodwill towards Tommy Lee Jones. All that "he's paid his dues" stuff probably comes into it as well (though it didn't help Peter O'Toole any, so who knows?). I don't really understand why critics were so in awe of Jones' work in The Fugitive, but they were. He was just as acclaimed as Fiennes. I actually find both The Fugitive and Schindler's List overrated, but I'd still pick Fiennes over Jones if it were up to me.

With Waltz, who knows? I think he could be hurt by the fact that, unlike Schindler's List or The Reader, the movie doesn't take the subject matter of Nazism seriously enough. Or seriously at all. I think some Academy members might not be pleased with the overall tone of the film. They may be fine with a comedic tone for the life story of Julia Child, or Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, or Jack Palance hamming it up alongside Billy Crystal in City Slickers, but not when applied to Nazism and the Holocaust. And they might even have a point there.

What will be painful is if it is Christopher Plummer! Christoph Waltz is winning everything this year. Everything. And "Christoph" sounds just like "Christopher" so when they call out the winner's name one or the other is going to get their hopes raised and then dashed. They all say the experience seems to happen in slow-motion at that moment when the envelope is opened and the winner declared.

[Atreides]

As there's always a surprise in one of these major categories, I think Christopher Plummer has the best chance of spoiling the Oscar pools.

If Sandra Bullock manages to win, I think she'll have the best speech of the night. She's very likable and it seems like everything is aligning for her, All About Steve excepted.