Oscar Predictions

Best Picture:













Should and Will Win:The Departed: Everything you want in a great movie: exciting plot, unbelievable cast, entertaining and intelligent. It's not The Godfather, but it gets close.









But hedging my bets: Babel could win. I liked the film which is supposed to be a critique of globalization, kind of "why can't we get along?" The "story" doesn't make a of sense, but some of the scenes like the North African mountains, Mexico, Tokyo are fantastic.

Best Director:








Should Win: Clint Eastwood for Letter from Iwo Jima. The movie is a masterpiece anti-war/war film in the same league of All Quiet on the Western Front and Grand Illusion. Eastwood as a director is not only talent, but also has a wonderful taste and style, and a lot of courage.
















But Martin Scorsese will win for The Departed. It's time for him to get one. He is certainly one of the best film directors.

Best Actor:













Forest Whitaker should and will get it for playing Idi Amin better than Idi Amin himself in The Last King of Scotland.But there is a always a chance that the guys in Hollywood will feel sorry for Peter Otoole who should have won a Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia which I loved and give it to him this time for his role in Venus which I hated (imagine a soft porno movie filmed in an intensive care unit of an hospital or a senior citizen home).

Best Actress:














Yes, Helen Mirren should and will get it for playing Queen Elizabeth in The Queen. I liked her since watching Prime Suspect and here she is a Queen.

And I also liked this year Notes on a Scandal, Little Children, Blood Diamond, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, and The Good Shepherd. I hope they'll win something tomorrow.

Comments

aelkus said…
Did you see "A Scanner Darkly?"

It was a great paranoid thriller and a resounding critique of the drug war and the post-9/11 loss of civil liberties.
10:00 AM
Leon Hadar said…
yes, I forgot about it. I loved it. Very original and I'm also a big fan of Philip Dick. And Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor. I saw more of the drug war issue in the movie. If you've seen Minority Report which is also based on a Philip Dick story, that actually is an interesting perspective of the preemtive-action idea, that we have to punish the bad guy even before he does anything bad...Bte, I didn't mention Days of Glory http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444182/ which is playing now, and I thought that Apocalypto was a very original movie.
9:28 PM
aelkus said…
It was a pity that it totally got shut out of the Oscars. But that's life.

I've seen Minority Report, and Philip K. Dick is one of my favorite authors.
12:17 PM
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