The Unpopular Oscars

Ah, Oscar picks. Because who doesn't want to hear my thoughts on Academy Award conteders? I've been an Entertainment Weekly subscriber for years! But I understand how you, in your capacity as "person who reads this sort of site," might get tired of people endlessly guessing who's going to win Academy Awards. So here my plan: I'm not going to bother with the big categories. Best Picture, Director, and the Acting awards are not my problem. These are pretty much guesses anyway, so why not work on the obscure awards, where there aren't so many people vying for attention?

Best Animated Feature Film

I'd like to see Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away win, but I don't think it will. The commercials for both Ice Age and Lilo and Stitch bugged me so much that I didn't see either movie, and I never even considered seeing that movie about the horse or the space pirate thing. I expect that Lilo and Stitch will win. Yup.

Best Original Screenplay

Well. I don't think movies with non-English titles have a chance, so that rules out Y to Mamá También and Hable con ella (although the latter has a chance if you call it "Talk to Her"). Some allegely original screenplays look suspiciously like adapted sceenplays, so I don't see how Gangs of New York or My Big Fat Greek Wedding can win. So I guess Far From Heaven wins.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Mmm. This depends on how you feel about Adaptation. If you think it was a good idea for charlie Kaufman to make half the movie about himself instead of the book he was adapting, then it was a work of genius and should win. Otherwise, you have to pick from one of the other worthy nominees. But with all due respect to Chicago, The Hours, The Pianist, and About a Boy, I liked Adaptation. So I think it's going to win, even though that means giving an Oscar to Kaufman's imaginary brother Daniel.

Best Foreign-Language Film

I'm not going to lie to you: not only have I not seen any of the nominees, I haven't even heard of any of them. So I'm going to arbitrarily claim that Finland's The Man Without a Past is going to win, because it's my favorite title.

Art Direction

Hmm. Normally, you'd think this would go to either a costume drama or something with a lot of crazy elaborate sets. And yet, I don't think The Two Towers is going to win. The way I see it, Frida is about an actual artist. And this award has "art" right in its name. So it will win. That's logic!

Cinematography

My theory is that "award-winning cinematography" is code for "a lot of swooping crane shots". But none of these movies really says "Spielbergian" to me, so I'm just going to go with Gangs of New York.

Costume Design

The top hats in Gangs of New York were pretty good. And whoever designed the outfits in Frida was clearly a genius, although almost anything will look hot with Salma Hayek inside it. Really, though, Chicago is the only one with actual "costumes" in the sense of "spangly tights". So there!

Best Documentary Feature

Hey, Michael Moore finally got nominated. Good for him. Although I personally can't stand him. Anyway, the documentary voting procedure is apparently all wonky, so the standard rule (if I've heard of only one nominee, that should win) doesn't apply. So I vote with my heart: Spellbound is about eight teenagers on their quest to win the 1999 National Spelling Bee. That sounds great! I'd watch that!

Documentary Short Subject

Traditionally, documentaries about World War II win this automatically. But I think the rules have changed in the last few years, so I expect Twin Towers to win.

Best Film Editing

I loved The Two Towers, but I don't think any film that long should get an award for editing. I think Chicago had the most editing, in terms of how often they cut to another camera. So maybe it'll win. Sure. I'll say it will. "Chicago had the best film editing of the year! -Internet Celebrity Monty Ashley"

Makeup

You know you're in an unpopular category when there are only two nominees. One is Frida, a critically-acclaimed movie starring Salma Hayek looking hot in a man's suit. The other is The Time Machine, which had Orlando Jones doing something. I guess it's nominated for it's sensitive portrayal of Morlocks. Frida wins. I hope.

Original Score

John Williams has won a lot of these, but this isn't one of his big bombastic swooping scores that annoy me so much (I do a great impression of the Jurassic Park theme, incidentally). How about Philip Glass? Everyone likes Philip Glass, right? No? Aw, man. But he's great! Okay, fine. Elmer Bernstein has won once and been nominated a million other times. He's due! So Far From Heaven, I suppose.

Original Song

Chicago has a lot of great songs, most of which are not eligible. It has a new song, but it's handicapped by being in the same movie as things like "All That Jazz." Eminem's "Lose Yourself" was nominated from 8 Mile, and that's a good song. I don't think it will win, but at least we'll get the spectacle of Eminem performing at the Academy Awards. U2 had a song about New York in Gangs of New York, and they'll win. Yup.

Best Animated Short Film

The rule is: If I've heard of exactly one nominee, it will win. Mike's New Car is a Monsters, Inc. short and was included on the dvd. It wins. Next!

Live-Action Short Film

I haven't seen any of these. I think you have to live in New York City or Los Angeles to have a chance, and even then you have to haunt the right art houses. You'd think they'd be shown on a cable channel, like possibly IFC or Sundance. And maybe they are. At any rate, I arbitrarily choose Johnny Flynton.

Sound

Hey, we're down to the action flicks! The loudest movie I saw all year was Spider-Man. Well, no, it was actually this 3-D thing in Las Vegas. Anyway: Spider-Man.

Sound Editing

If there were a submarine movie, it would win. For some reason, that echoey "ping!" noise that happens in submarine movies really impresses the Sound Editing voters. You think I'm making that up? I direct you to U-571 and The Hunt for Red October. Although I admit that Das Boot didn't actually win. It did get nominated, though.

But there aren't any submarine movies. So it will go to the movie with the most gunfire (see: Pearl Harbor, The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan). And I think that's Minority Report.

Visual Effects

Well, what did you find more convincing: Gollum, Yoda, or Spider-Man? Personally, I thought Gollum was the most realistic, but I guess he didn't jump around like the other two. And the Ents in The Two Towers were a little iffy. So I guess I'll go with Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones on the theory that all the Visual Effects awards end up at ILM anyway. They wouldn't even have a Visual Effects category without Star Wars, would they?