Oh, I Wish I Was an Oscar Meyer Winner

The Academy Awards have successfully managed to become the Super Bowl of awards shows. They mean so much to some, and yet so little to me. If I love a film, I love a film. I don't need the validation of an outside body. For people who are less plugged-in to films in general, awards seem to point them in a direction to see something that they might not have otherwise. But no award can ensure that a film will withstand the test of true quality -- that future audiences will watch and respond to a film. No one who's taking a film history course will ever have to watch 1968's Best Picture winner, Oliver!. They'll be watching and studying Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was released the same year and not even nominated.

Awards mean extra business to a film still playing, such as The King's Speech or Black Swan, but a high-quality winner that isn't rolling in box office gets slighting postscripts -- can we ever read that The Hurt Locker won Best Picture last year without some asshole adding that it was the lowest-grossing winner? What should that have to do with a film's merit? Oh wait, I keep forgetting that this is a business, and that it's fair and reasonable to pit artistic endeavors against each other and decide what's "best." For whom, for whom?

The show itself is another aspect of the carnival -- this year it's being hosted by Anne Hathaway and James Franco, for some random reason. It'll be too long and have crap, time-wasting musical numbers, just like any other year. Someone will wear something weird or say something strange, just like every year. Everyone sitting in the audience will either be frightened or will have been Botoxed into looking that way, just like every year in the past decade. Audiences at home with high-def TVs can now speculate on who's had work done on their faces. West Coast audiences can enjoy watching it live, and early in the evening, which helps make it less of a slog.

For what it's worth (and I would argue, not much in the historical, long-view sense), here are my thoughts on who and what may win tomorrow night.

Best Picture: The King's Speech. What I'd Vote For: The Social Network. The King's Speech is a fine film, but it feels like it could have been made 30 years ago. The Social Network feels like now, and represents a greater challenge in dramatization. Just my opinion.

Best Actor: Colin Firth. Who I'd Vote for: Javier Bardem or Jesse Eisenberg. Firth is widely considered a lock, as much for this role as for his general excellence -- last year's A Single Man might have been a wee bit too gay for the aged Academy members. And Firth was excellent, but so was Bardem, as a dying man with a complicated life and Eisenberg as the blank (or is he?) creator of a communication watershed. How do you decide who's the best unless they're all playing the same role?

Best Actress: Natalie Portman or Annette Bening, but I'm leaning towards Bening for the win. Black Swan was a polarizing film, and older viewers, who may have a greater awareness of the distinction between art and camp, were cool to it. Bening's been nominated (but not won) three times before, and this fourth time might be the charm. Also, she was excellent in The Kids Are All Right.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale. Who I'd love to win: John Hawkes. A study in contrasts -- Bale's performance is so large it overshadows the film that it's in, and Hawke's is small but integral to Winter's Bone.

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo in The Fighter. I don't have any problem with Leo winning, provided that she doesn't allow her stylist to render her unrecognizable, as was the case at the Golden Globes. Very, very scary.

Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network. He's supposed to be a prick to work with, but it's always about the work. I respect that.

Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network. Full stop.

Original Screenplay: The King's Speech may whisk it away on the feel-good vibe, but wouldn't it be cool if Inception won? But would the top stop spinning at the end, or not?

Animated Film: Toy Story 3

Documentary: Inside Job. But really, this year's crop are all good, I'd be happy for any of them. I'm especially glad the nominees does not include Waiting for Superman, which was a weak doc, despite the attendance bump it got from all the pious hand-wringing on the subject.

Cinematography: Roger Deakins, True Grit. Another veteran owed his due.

Editing: The Social Network. I haven't seen a film this well-edited for speed since Goodfellas.

Original Score: I'm hoping for the spare, mood-enhancing music of The Social Network, but we may get stuck with The King's Speech. Chin up.

Original Song: Randy Newman wrote a song for a Pixar movie? Yeah, whatever's from Toy Story 3 will win.

Foreign Language: the Danish film, In a Better World, is supposed to be the front-runner, but Biutiful, from Mexico (but set in Barcelona) was excelente.

The "Throw 'em a Bone" categories -- awards considered to have less prestige in the public's eye, but often given to big, noisy moneymakers so they too can claim critical validation:

Art Direction: The King's Speech or perhaps Inception
Costumes: Alice in Blunderland
Makeup: I hope it's The Way Back, which did an excellent job showing the ravages of Gulag living and continent-crossing on the actor's faces, but it'll probably be the dude with fur on his face -- The Wolfman.
Sound Editing: Inception
Sound Mixing: Inception
Visual Effects: Inception

Short Films: Don't know, don't care. These are the categories that cost you the Oscar pool every year. Poke around online if you care enough to handicap the choices. The only one anyone in the at-home audience is likely to have seen is Pixar's Day & Night, a short that ran before Toy Story 3 and which I found pretty meh. The folks who vote on them actually have to watch them all, so they are a smaller subset of the Academy.

The Oscars, like everything else on the planet, are largely political -- and you and I don't get a vote in this election. Just remember to love what you love, despite what "wins."