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Oscar 2006 Nomination Predictions

We’ll be completely honest. Predicting Oscar nominees is just no fun anymore.

Brokeback Mountain
Photo: Focus Features

We’ll be completely honest. Predicting Oscar nominees is just no fun anymore. The ubiquity of precursors (and self-important, tubthumping, full-time awards prognosticators like that weirdo over at The Envelope website) all jockeying to be the first to have their say in the race has led to premature declarations even before years’ end (and all but ruined the chances of late-breakers like The New World), has turned each reminder of Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck and Crash’s frontrunner status into an annoying exercise in hegemonious monotony, and has done more to narrow Oscar’s field of vision than anything (if Oscar reporters haven’t mentioned a film in the last 48 hours, that must mean it’s tainted). Even worse, the mere concept of credibility in the world of film journalism has shifted to Oscar batting averages, and film appreciation has become synonymous with poring over columns of statistics. We mean, there are people who get more excited when a film wins an Oscar because they guessed it correctly, not because it was their favorite among the nominees. That’s sick! So long as there are still some people fighting the good fight against the total commodification of film culture, we approach the inevitable Oscar parlor game with at least one eye toward the entire enterprise’s inherent ridiculousness. While we acknowledge the ways the Academy can go right, we’re equally enthusiastic about bitching over the number of ways they intend on fucking it up.

PICTURE: When King Kong’s opening weekend cannonball failed to send the box office pool’s water lines above $50 million, this category lost its only viable blockbuster candidate. Never fear, there’s another crowd pleaser that’s been steadily gaining momentum ever since Oprah was (to hear her tell it) slapped right out of that Hermes boutique. And it makes King Kong’s questionable racial portrayals look like Killer of Sheep. Call it a losing battle against good faith, but last year’s awards for Million Dollar Baby made the prospect of Oscar-nominating something as shatteringly awful as Million Dollar Baby scripter Paul Haggis’s pet project Crash seem impossible. After all, Haggis was one of the film’s nominees that didn’t get to scale the podium that night, and we bet that if you were to ask a sample of Oscar voters for their theory as to why he was felled by the otherwise ignored Sideways, they’d bring up Hilary Swank’s mom and her Universal Studios theme park tee. Crash’s entirety is made up of scenes like that, strung up one against the other. Still, having just seen the trailer for the film on IFC (obviously part of Lions Gate’s massive awards push), we have to admit that it plays well as its own advertisement. What registers to the film’s detractors (mostly critics) as overblown, grating idiocy passing for social commentary also probably plays to mainstream moviegoers (check the film’s rating over at IMDb) as cinema’s first conglomeration of freeze-dried Oscar clips and nothing but. Just pop the movie into the microwave and, in three minutes or less, out comes a brand new outlook on racial prejudice. We still say it’s a disaster, but as we said last year, it’s just not an Oscar race without an outrage of Finding Neverland (nee Seabiscuit) proportions. It’s just that, this year, the outrage stands at nearly even odds to topple the house favorite: Brokeback Mountain. Wouldn’t it be just hilarious if anti-gay prejudice tipped the scales toward Crash’s “can’t we all just get along” whining? We’ve looked under rocks to find anybody who’s still enthusiastic over Walk the Line, but it was literally the only viable, studio-produced Oscar candidate that also packed ‘em into theaters (to the tune of $100 million), so it becomes one of the most unlikely “box office hit” entries in recent memory.

Will Be Nominated: Brokeback Mountain, Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck, Munich, and Walk the Line

Should Be Nominated: The Best of Youth, The New World, A History of Violence, Pulse, and Tropical Malady

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ACTOR: Hilary Duff has told us to raise our voices, but it’s not a call this year’s Best Actor prospects have answered, whose gifts—or lack thereof, depending on who you ask—resonate meekly from their Adam’s apples; the sound produced by their collective larynges couldn’t exorcise Emily Rose, let alone wake a light sleeper. The gay men played by the category’s two frontrunners, Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) and Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain), are scarcely screaming mimis, and David Strathairn’s sluggish Edward R. Murrow from Good Night, and Good Luck, a film structured as a lung in which a political cancer hangs thick, prefers to engage the world vicariously through a television camera. Then there’s Walk the Line’s Joaquin Phoenix, who, as Johnny Cash, sings more memorably than he speaks. Who else, then, to invite to the party? A depression-era boxer who pulls no punches (Cinderella Man’s Russell Crowe), a literati who talks too much (The Squid and the Whale’s Jeff Daniels), or a downtrodden pimp who wants nothing more than, you got it, raise his voice (Hustle & Flow’s Terrence Howard)?

Will Be Nominated: Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain), Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line), and David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck)

Should Be Nominated: Matheiu Amalric (Kings and Queen), Luigi Lo Cascio (The Best of Youth), Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow), Joseph-Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin), and Yuya Yagira (Nobody Knows)

ACTRESS: There are two sure bets here: Reese Witherspoon, whose performance as June Carter in Walk the Line is the curious toast of nearly every critics circle, and Judi Dench, whose bon mot-firing viper from Mrs. Henderson Presents gave the Rex Reeds of the world something to get behind. North Country may have suffered the indignity of poor box office returns, but surely the spectacle of shit-and-semen-based abuse Niki Caro’s hateful film heaps upon Charlize Theron and her Saints of the Steel Mine Kingdom isn’t easily forgotten. With the Norma Rae spot out of the way, that leaves the AmerIndie slot for Felicity Huffman, whose strange but worthwhile performance in Transamerica is probably less threatening to your average Academy voter than Cillian Murphy’s equally brave turn in Breakfast on Pluto. Wishful thinking aside (sorry Q’orianka Kilcher), that leaves Ziyi Zhang, Joan Allen and Keira Knightley to bitchslap each other for the last spot. Allen’s unpleasant character from Upside of Anger might win in the real world, but in La La Land she appears as a less toothsome version of Dame Judi’s Mrs. Henderson. Zhang’s SAG nomination surely means something, but are Oscars going to be as forgiving by giving the actress a nomination simply for surviving the debacle that is Memoirs of a Geisha? That leaves Knightley, whose performance in the perfectly mediocre Pride & Prejudice follows in Winona Ryder’s period footsteps. The world, including Saks Fifth Avenue, is keeping its eye on her.

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Will Be Nominated: Judi Dench (Mrs. Henderon Presents), Felicity Huffman (Transamerica), Keira Knightley (Pride & Prejudice), Charlize Theron (North Country), and Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)

Should Be Nominated: Jennifer Connelly (Dark Water), Vera Farmiga (Down to the Bone), Q’Orianka Kilcher (The New World), Dina Korzun (Forty Shades of Blue), and Rachel McAdams (Red Eye)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Common sense would dictate that last year’s Best Actor nominee Don Cheadle would be the requisite Crash choice to compete with Matt Dillon in a head-on battle between the races, and not this year’s likely Best Actor contender Terrence Howard. SAG certainly did. However, we’re hedging our bets on Howard, because we know a lot of Oscar voters will, too. Not to mention the fact that everyone holds their lighters up before invoking the film’s title. Don’t you think they’ll feel more comfy paying tribute to Howard, who gets emasculated by cops not once but twice, over Cheadle, whose most memorable moment involves making fun of Mexicans’ car-parking habits? Especially given the category’s comic relief slot has already been filled by Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thanksgiving table tantrum, thanks. As much as Universal’s campaign to stuff Cinderella Man down the Academy’s throat has shown a few tentative signs of taking over at the Globes and SAGs, we don’t see the publicists pulling a resuscitation of this caliber off. Paul Giamatti can just count himself lucky he was snubbed last year for Sideways.

Will Be Nominated: George Clooney (Syriana), Matt Dillon (Crash), Paul Giamatti (Cinderella Man), Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain), and Terrence Howard (Crash)

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Should Be Nominated: Alesio Boni (The Best of Youth), Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain), Sid Haig (The Devil’s Rejects), Owen Kline (The Squid and the Whale), and Ian McDiarmid (Star Wars – Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Oprah confirmed the idiocy of Paul Haggis’s notions of how racism moves through society when her “Crash moment” was exposed as shrill fantasy. Turned away from Hermes—not because she was black, but because the store was having a private party and her fame went unrecognized—Oprah played the race card with such foot-in-mouth fervor no one could notice the real motive for her anger was the privilege she felt her celebrity entitled her. Is this why no less than three Crash’s actors are vying for spots in the Best Supporting Actor race but the rich bitch played by Sandra Bullock isn’t in contention? Bullock’s character is the one that most forcibly holds a mirror to the face of your average AMPAS voting member, and as such to reward the performance with a nomination risks self-exposure. An easier to embrace contrivance is Rachel Weisz’s The Constant Gardener saint, a woman whose righteous indignation, coupled with the indignities thrust upon her person, fans a Hollywood elite’s liberal guilt while simultaneously and safely keeping their compassion at bay. Bullock’s Crash ghoul might say, “I’d love to join Green Peace but I don’t want to get raped and killed by a group of faceless Africans.” (We imagine Angelina Jolie is the only one in Hollywood to have called out the film’s bullshit.) Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain), Catherine Keener (Capote) and Maria Bello (A History of Violence) are locks to us, meaning Amy Adams (Junebug) and Frances McDormand (North Country) will duke it out for the last spot. It would give us no greater pleasure than to see Adams get it, but is there a moment in the underseen Junebug that allows the actress to yell “fuck you” at Big Brother through a tracheotomy hole in her neck?

Will Be Nominated: Maria Bello (A History of Violence), Catherine Keener (Capote), Frances McDormand (North Country), Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener), and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain)

Should Be Nominated: Amy Adams (Junebug), Maria Bello (A History of Violence), Dakota Fanning (War of the Worlds), Robin Wright Penn (Nine Lives), and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain)

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DIRECTOR: The entire Academy gets to vote on the winners, but each individual category’s nominations are chosen by that category’s artisans. Actors nominate the actors, musicians nominate the music, and so on. Year in and year out, it’s the directors’ branch who have managed to, if not validate some of Oscar’s past blunders, at least steer voters away from even bigger blunders. So, even though they couldn’t bring themselves to deny Ron Howard his nomination (and subsequent slam dunk win by the Academy voters at large) for A Beautiful Mind, they at least managed to cut dead momentum for Seabiscuit, The Green Mile and Chocolat by refusing those films’ hack directors nominations in this category, which has (in an odd Hollywood endorsement of les politique des auteurs) come to stand as a bookend trophy for the Best Picture category. We’re counting on you, directors’ branch, to put an end to this collective insanity over Crash. Don’t let us down! Actually, it probably won’t be too hard for them to keep Haggis out of their line-up. As far as neophyte directors go, we’d put our money on bad style (Haggis) being trumped by inoffensive style (Capote’s Bennett Miller). And not only does Crash’s entire ethos scream “I’m a wri-tah first, a direc-tah second,” but there’s a sizable pool of venerated, auteur-approved heavyweights waiting to claim their rightful Lynch/Altman/Polanski slots. If only New Line hadn’t completely fucked up the unveiling of The New World, Terrence Malick would’ve been first in line. Alas, they did, and New World will be lucky to get even a cinematography nod. Woody Allen’s Oscar buzz started at Cannes last spring, where the non-competing Match Point got nearly as much love from the press as the entire jury award-winning slate combined. David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence is the critics’ fave this year, which should be more than enough for the directors to finally recognize him. Though critics’ choices haven’t fared as well recently: Todd Haynes, Michel Gondry and Richard Linklater were all snubbed, and the DGA ominously left both Allen and Cronenberg off their ballot in favor of…Miller and Haggis. The DGA also nominated something called I Have Tourette’s, but Tourette’s Doesn’t Have Me over in the TV categories. Just so you know.

Will Be Nominated: Woody Allen (Match Point), George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck), David Cronenberg (A History of Violence), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), and Steven Spielberg (Munich)

Should Be Nominated: David Cronenberg (A History of Violence), Marco Tullio Giordana (The Best of Youth), Terrence Malick (The New World), Steven Spielberg (War of the Worlds), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady)

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