Oscar Predictions
2007
The Should
Wins, the Will Wins and the Anyone’s Guesses…
It’s Dench’s sixth nomination, Winslet’s fifth (she’s only 31)
and Streep’s 14th, and none of them has a chance.
by
Dan Hudak
In a welcome
change, the acting categories at this year’s Academy Awards seem
like foregone conclusions while the two biggies — Best Director and
Best Picture — remain crapshoots. But this is for sure: The Academy
hates being predictable (remember Crash?); Al Gore is the
frontrunner for an Oscar (Best Documentary for An Inconvenient
Truth); and nobody will ever care who wins Best Live Action
Short. For the awards people do care about, read on.
Pundits will tell
you Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren have had the lead acting awards
all but on their mantelpiece since their movies opened last fall,
and the fact that each has won just about every award possible this
season makes their coronations on Sunday night seem inevitable. To
dethrone royalty — Whitaker played Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in
The Last King of Scotland and Mirren was Queen Elizabeth II in
The Queen — one must challenge, disarm and captivate, all of
which was done to marvelous effect by Ryan Gosling as a
crack-addicted but well-meaning history teacher in Half-Nelson.
Or one could don an
accent in a morally righteous movie, as Leonardo DiCaprio did in
Blood Diamond, or suppress all one’s natural charm and screen
presence as Will Smith did in The Pursuit of Happyness. Or
you could get the sympathy vote: This is the eighth nomination for
screen legend Peter O’Toole (Venus); with a loss he’ll
surpass his old friend Richard Burton for most nominations without a
win. Welcome to the record books, Mr. O’Toole.
Will win:
Whitaker. Should win: Smith.
Trying to usurp
Mirren are Judi Dench as a fantastically devious schoolmarm in
Notes on a Scandal, Penelope Cruz as a curvy and loving mother
in Volver, Kate Winslet as a bored housewife in Little
Children and Meryl Streep as a fashion magazine editor in The
Devil Wears Prada. It’s Dench’s sixth nomination, Winslet’s
fifth (she’s only 31) and Streep’s 14th, and none of them has a
chance.
Will win:
Mirren. Should win: Dench.
Dreamgirls
co-stars Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy are the favorites in the
supporting categories, but Murphy isn’t as much of a lock as Hudson.
Yes, Murphy won the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards, but
some Academy members may be more inclined to vote for the
twice-nominated (in the 1960s!) Alan Arkin, who was terrific as the
foul-mouthed grandpa in Little Miss Sunshine. Getting their
first nods are Mark Wahlberg for The Departed and Jackie
Earle Haley (who played punk kid Kelly Leak in the original
Bad News Bears movie) for Little Children. Djimon
Hounsou earned his second nomination for Blood Diamond.
Will win:
Murphy. Should win: Arkin.
Former American
Idol star Hudson will have to fend off Babel co-stars
Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza, as well as Little Miss
Sunshine herself, Abigail Breslin. Also nominated is Cate
Blanchett for Notes on a Scandal; she won a supporting
actress award two years ago for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator.
Will win: Hudson. Should win: Hudson.
Speaking of
Scorsese, it appears to be his turn finally to take home a Best
Director Oscar. On the strength of his Directors Guild Award and
Golden Globe win, he’s the clear favorite for The Departed.
But Scorsese fans have watched the master lose on five occasions,
the last of which was to Clint Eastwood two years ago with
Million Dollar Baby; Eastwood is nominated this year for
Letters From Iwo Jima. Scorsese’s biggest competition, however,
appears to be from Babel director Alejandro González Ińárritu,
whose film skillfully intertwines four stories from all over the
world. Happy to be nominated are Paul Greengrass for United 93
and Stephen Frears for The Queen.
Will win:
Scorsese. Should win: Scorsese.
And finally, Best
Picture is more up for grabs than in any year in recent memory. It
seems to be down to three: Little Miss Sunshine won the SAG
Ensemble award that Crash took home last year, as well as the
Producers Guild of America Award, another precursor for Best
Picture; Babel has the type of sweeping, moralistic feel the
Academy loves to reward; and The Departed may be the favorite
given that the winner of Best Director and Best Picture are usually
from the same movie. Also nominated are Letters From Iwo Jima
and The Queen.
Will win:
Little Miss Sunshine. Should win: The Departed.
Comments? E-mail
dhudak22@yahoo.com.
Interview
Billy Bob
Slings a New Role
“While this is
for a broader audience than what they’ve done, it’s still a
subversive movie.”
Billy Bob
Thornton.
Photo: Richard
Foreman
By Dan Hudak
Ask someone to name
Billy Bob Thornton’s most memorable performance and they’ll probably
say the lowlife sex addict in Bad Santa, or the miserable,
drunken baseball coach Morris Buttermaker in the Bad News Bears
remake. As is often the case in an industry where you’re only as
good as your last project, people tend to forget he was
Oscar-nominated for his role in Sling Blade and has played a
variety of characters both good and bad.
“A lot of people
assume I’ve played a lot of bad guys in my career, but I really
never did,” Thornton said. “I did a movie years ago called One
False Move where I played a killer, and I did a few comedies
where I played kind of a smartass, but that’s about it.”
Still, Thornton
concedes that the “smartass” roles are fun, particularly in Bad
Santa. “It was a lot of fun to play that part,” he said. “And
I’m not saying I’ll never do it again, but for now I’d like to play
a few regular guys.”
Try as he might,
his character in The Astronaut Farmer, which opens nationwide
this Friday, isn’t what many would consider “regular.” But he’s
certainly not a jerk, either; Thornton is Charles Farmer, a former
NASA astronaut who’s building a rocket in his back yard with the
intention of launching himself into space. Doubters tell him he’s
crazy and federal agents say they will not allow it to happen, but
that’s not enough to stop a guy with a dream.
“It’s a lot like
the Frank Capra movies of the ’40s in that it’s an emotional drama
with a lot of humor,” Thornton said, going so far as to call this
his “Jimmy Stewart” movie, which he said every actor wants to do at
some point in his career.
Stewart, however,
never had to square dance the way Thornton and co-star Virginia
Madsen (Sideways) do at a town fair. “I didn’t know how to
square dance before the movie, so I and the rest of the cast had to
take lessons, which was quite a fiasco,” Thornton said. “… I don’t
know if they thought we weren’t that good at it or what, but they
didn’t show a lot of our hard work.”
The film was
written and directed by Mark and Michael Polish, heretofore known
mostly for the eccentric gems Twin Falls Idaho and
Northfork. It is mainstream and family-oriented, something of a
departure for the brothers.
“While this is for
a broader audience than what they’ve done, it’s still a subversive
movie in terms of the guy fighting the government and how the
government is not necessarily conducive to dreamers,” Thornton said.
Yes, but is this
guy a simple dreamer, or is he crazy? “I think dreaming and shooting
for a goal is a great thing,” said Thornton, who struggled for years
and nearly starved to death in Hollywood before getting noticed. “I
think if you don’t follow your dreams — or at least give them a shot
— you’re going to be an unhappy person, and that doesn’t do anybody
any good.”
Thornton last
played a grounded astronaut in Armageddon, in which he
co-starred with Bruce Willis.
Comments? E-mail
dhudak22@yahoo.com.
Also opening in
Miami-Dade County this Friday:
-
Amazing Grace, Reno 911!:
Miami, The Number 23.
-
A genuine
must-see: * * * *
-
Entertaining: *
* *
-
Mediocre but
not worthless: * * *
-
A wretched
waste of time: *
