Ahh. Oscar night coming up. To me, like a Sunday night football game except my wife will watch it with me.

It’s been a busy year for me, working on this blog, starting a new business with my wife, raising an 18-month old, changing jobs. And then the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences goes ahead and decides to put out these things called Oscar nominations and have a whole glitzy show about it, and I find myself, a total filmfreak, without having seen any of the films on the list! So once again, I have to put my whole life on hold in order to play catch up to see as many of these flicks as I can before this Sunday night, so I can feel properly disappointed when my faves don’t get the nod.

A Year’s Worth of Movies In One Week

Well, not really. I didn’t fare too well in my effort to cram a year’s worth of movie watching into about a week. It was my goal to catch all the films in all of the major categories. Although I didn’t see them all, I saw enough to render predictions on what will happen Sunday night, as well as provide my thoughts on who should win, what got overlooked, and other assorted thoughts about this year’s race for the golden guy.

My Categories

I’m only looking at nominees in the following categories:

Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Director
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay
Best Picture

Sorry, no “Best Supporting Actress.” I have to admit, the only film on the list that I saw was “Michael Clayton,” and I don’t feel like fudging my way around making you believe that I saw them all and think that Tilda Swinton should get the gold. Her performance was riveting, but without anything to compare against I have to abstain. Sorry girls.

So without further ado…

Who Will Win, Who Should Win, and Who Got Robbed?

BEST ACTOR: You’d have to be in a coma to not hear all the buzz surrounding Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in “There Will Be Blood.” The guy’s a pro and certainly gave it his all in this role, but I couldn’t help walking away from the theater with this feeling that Lewis was “ACTING!” in a role that was designed for Oscar glory. In other words, he employed his full-on “ACTOR ACCENT,” steamrolling through every scene with one hand reaching for the statuette and the other hand checking off the blocks on the list of “Oscar Performance Prerequisites,” including the weird maniacal dip into insanity towards the end of the film. I saw that performance already, except it was Leo DiCaprio playing Howard Hughes a couple years back in “The Aviator.” Day-Lewis’ performance was more of a showcase, featuring caricature standing in for character. Nonetheless it was still mesmerizing, undoubtedly distracting audiences and Oscar voters from the fact that oilman Daniel Plainview really isn’t that interesting of a person. Driven. Greedy. Mean. That’s about it. He reminded me of the prototypical vaudvillian bad guy, dressed in black, twirling his mustache as he ties a blonde beauty to the railroad tracks. Please. What about Tommy Lee Jones? I have “In the Valley of Elah” coming in the mail from Netflix today, so I’ll update this post in case I see anything groundbreaking or have the sense that Mr. Jones will somehow be able to overcome the conventional wisdom that points to a certain someone else getting the nod….(see below).

WHO WILL WIN: Mr. Daniel Day-Lewis.

WHO SHOULD WIN: If you want to talk about taking on the persona of a character, dressing up in the skin of someone else, and presenting a true depiction of an actual living, breathing, conflicted, charismatic, devlish, compassionate person, then Viggo Mortenson in “Eastern Promises” is your man. His accent wasn’t an artifice, it was an expression of who he was. And any man who can film an entire vicious fight scene in the buff deserves the nod for that alone. He will never win for this role because not enough people saw the movie and the movie itself is just too violent and against the mainstream to win. I could just see a nice couple, like my wife’s grandparents, watching the telecast on Sunday night of Mortenson taking home the prize, and then going out to see the film and having to leave the theater within about the first ten minutes, stumbling onto the street, reeling in shock and awe at the explicit carnage director David Cronenberg finds to be so enthralling. Sorry, too visceral for most of us.

BEST ACTRESS: A lot people would like to see Ellen Page take home the prize Sunday night for her role in “Juno,” but I don’t think the straight-faced spouting off of lines of unrealistic dialogue constitutes inhabiting a role. Cate Blanchett’s performance was serviceable in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” but the ridiculously over-the-top production values in that film likely will distract Academy voters from going her way. Besides, she’s not really a contender this year. Didn’t you hear that all Oscar nomination ballots come pre-printed with her name on it every year?

WHO WILL WIN: Not Ellen Page.

WHO SHOULD WIN: I’m sorry, what were you saying? Okay. I confess. I didn’t see the other movies. So sue me.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sorry, Casey. Only one Affleck per century is allowed to win an Oscar. Try again in the year 2097. And you, Tom Wilkinson. Not your year. Again. Just because you play a guy on the outer edge of sanity spouting off lines a mile-a-minute doesn’t constitute the best performance of the year. And Javier Bardem. Hypnotic performance. Charismatic. Devlish. Kind of funny. Couldn’t take my eyes off him. But best job of acting the entire year? How many of us have even met a sadistic hitman to get an idea of whether or not he nailed the role? I don’t know. But I know one thing, I’m getting sick of actors getting all lauded for playing assassins, hitmen, contract killers, and other assorted miscreants. Like the simple fact that we’re seeing this bad guy walking around offing people should be enough for us to consider his performance some kind of transcendent characterization that informs us about who we are as people? I need just a hair of complexity if I’m to consider an acting job the best of the year. Bardem’s character in this film, while mesmerizing (there goes that word again), was simply an engine to move the story forward, rather than a character for us to linger upon and contemplate. He was nothing more than a really interesting Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, or Michael Meyers. Sorry. Not enough for me.

WHO WILL WIN: Bardem. Sometimes momentum is everything. And you can’t swing a dead cat around the internet these days without catching wind of the Oscar buzz around this guy that probably has Mr. Bardem clearing a space for the little gold guy up on his mantle.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Phillip Seymor Hoffman, hands down. His performance in “Charlie Wilson’s War” was so nuanced, hilarious, powerful, and enlightening, that I’m shocked he’s not the heavy favorite. Every time Mr. Hoffman wasn’t on screen I was begging for him to come back. He turned the conventional idea of what a CIA agent looks like on its head, and he did it in a chameleonic fashion that was…you guess it, MESMERIZING. It must be one of those things in which a guy wins the award a couple years back and you kind of feel bad about giving the same dude the award again. Frankly, I didn’t love his performance in “Capote,” but he had that accent thing going that Oscar-voters love, so there you go.

BEST DIRECTOR: I’m not going to talk about the “The Diving Bell and Butterfly” because it doesn’t have a chance (and um, I didn’t exactly see it). Neither am I going to talk about “Juno” because, well, I think that the fact that movie is even nominated is some kind of Cultural Experiment the nice people over at the Academy are engaged in, in the effort to scare up some young viewers and ratings for Sunday’s telecast of the event in that prime 18-35 viewing demographic that TV advertisers are so ga-ga about. See, once again, this year’s Oscars are mostly arty fare that the American viewing public doesn’t normally reward with box office cash. But you’ve got Juno here, grossing $126,277,446 in the box office with a whole ton of teeny boppers reciting lines from it like is was the second coming of “Napoleon Dynamite.” (Now there’s a distinction to pine for. Actually, “Dynamite” was a cute movie, cutting edge and vibrant. I didn’t see anyone nominating that film for an Oscar, though… And Juno’s just a pandering facsimile so will somebody give me a break here?). I guess that constitutes talking about “Juno.” Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. But in case you haven’t guessed, I’m not lobbying for Jason Reitman to get the prize. “Michael Clayton” was a solid thriller. Something you don’t see too often these days. Tony Gilroy elicited uniform incredible performances from the entire cast (three Oscar nods), which says a lot about who is at the helm. I think that unfortunately this film wasn’t enough of an “event picture” for the Academy to give Mr. Gilroy the prize. I just don’t think the Academy awards simply a solid job behind the camera. The film in question needs to be “sexier” than that. They’d rather give the prize as a consolation for not winning Best Picture, or as an extra award for the film that does, so the director doesn’t have to go home empty-handed.

WHO WILL WIN: The Coen Brothers, for “No Country For Old Men.” Although I was disappointed in the ending (but later came to at least appreciate it), the movie itself was riveting, tense, layered, and did an incredible job of conveying time and place through its setting and visual story telling technique. Plus they got some pretty nice performances from the entire cast, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and the aforementiond Bardem, in particular.

WHO SHOULD WIN: See above.

***BONUS***WHO GOT ROBBED: Not only is it travesty that “Once” wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, but I think one could make a convincing argument that director John Carney should have been nominated for his expert job in pulling together one of the finest and most original musicals ever made (yes I said that), including fabulously touching performances by both leads. Run, do not walk, to the video store or Netflix and rent this film. You won’t be disappointed.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: It is arguable that it is more difficult to adapt a screenplay from a previous work than it is to write a film from scratch, as adapting a film isn’t simply about taking all of the dialogue from the book or short story and throwing into a 120-page format. Often it requires reimagining the work or rearranging the work, as many books simply are not readily “adaptable,” which requires the screenwriter to assume a level of responsibility over the work (which is difficult to do, especially when the original work is particularly well-regarded) in order to truly make it their own, thereby making the best possible film, which often becomes as original as many “Original” screenplays. That being said, when it comes to evaluating a script in order to determine one to be the “best” of the year, it is really impossible to do so without actually having the script in hand. The finished product on the screen isn’t the screenplay, nor is simply the dialogue the writing. The script is the blue print, the primary foundation for the building that is the finished film. And yet I doubt Academy voters receive scripts in the mail. They’re supposed to simply watch the film and guess 1) what the process of writing the script is, and 2) what the actual script really looked like before the director and actors got their hands on it. This is virtually impossible which basically renders these screenwriting categories guessing games or popularity contests.

WHO WILL WIN: “No Country For Old Men.” I say this without having read the original book or the script itself (just like the vast majority of audiences and Academy voters alike). But as a screenwriter and former screenwriting instructor, I can only take the evidence on the screen and assume, since the writers and directors were the same people – namely, Joel and Ethan Coen – that essentially what was written in the script most likely made it to the screen (the same is obviously true for “There Will Be Blood”). And the evidence on the screen is composed of wonderful structure (with good structure being the essence of good screenwriting) that ties this unique film all together, and provides the actors with ample opportunities to flex their creative muscles within their performances and truly own their characters.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Not that this film should win, but I’ve heard that the writing process for “Atonement” was complicating and challenging, and that the original work is rather complex and dense, making the adaptation diffcult. I’m just saying.

***BONUS***WHO GOT ROBBED: Beowulf. Yes, Beowulf. Talk about taking an inaccessible old text and creating a vibrant, wonderfully rich adaptation. As a former English major, I also really appreciate how Roger Avary, Neil Gaiman, and Robert Zemeckis updated the story line in order to tie together three separate episodes that comprised the original poem. This movie is a phantasmagorical, audacious, exciting, rapturous experience that simply must be seen by anyone who appreciates the lineage of the source material and is looking for some great entertainment. And if it’s still playing in 3D, drop everything and rush out to go see it right now. I mean now. And will someone please tell me why this was not nominated for Best Animated Feature?

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: The fact that “Juno” is up for this one makes my stomach rot, especially considering this film is all about unrealistic characters choking up unrealistic dialogue. I don’t want to talk about this film, so as to not give it any additional energy, positive or negative, in the hopes that it will simply go away. Ratatouille I do want to say a word about. I was simply horrified by the level of violence within the first 15 minutes of this movie (I shut it off after that). Let it be said that this criticism is coming from a guy who LOVED the new Rambo gore porn movie. See the thing here is that Rambo is supposed to be violent. It’s rated R. All you heard about when it came to this flick was that it was violent, violent, violent. Okay. We know what to expect. But with Ratatouille, I don’t care what you say, the vast majority of people comprising the audience for this movie were under the age of probably 12 or so and I can tell you that I watched this (the first 15 minutes) with my tiny daughter and was horrified by the abundance of gun violence in that short span of time. The rat crawls through an apartment building and witnesses two young lovers arguing and shooting a gun at each other. Does anyone in Paris even own a gun? Why did there have to be a gun there? And then the scene in which the rats go into the old farm lady’s house and she pulls out a shotgun and fires about two dozen rounds into all of the interior walls of her home, most of the time dressed in an eerily scary gas mask, like some kind of SS Trooper. What the hell was that about? Couldn’t she just have shooed the rats out of her house with a folded up umbrella? I hate desensitizing stuff like this because in the case of this movie, you got a lot of little kids watching people use guns to solve their problems. And let me tell you the animation is incredible, so these guns are very realistic, very loud, and very scary. Rambo I don’t have so much of a problem with because it’s mostly (supposedly) sensible adults watching that film. But I digress.

WHO WILL WIN: Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton.” Astonishing structure, magnetic characters, rich layering, riveting plot. Enough said.

WHO SHOULD WIN: See above.

WHO GOT ROBBED: Continuing an earlier conversation…ONCE. Again, I implore all who read this to see this movie. It escapes me as to why this movie hasn’t received much mainstream recognition.

BEST PICTURE: I gotta be honest with you. The only nominee here I didn’t see was Atonement. This one falls under the “Movies To See With My Wife” category but we just couldn’t get our act together to get a babysitter and go out and see this film. I was tempted to see it by myself, but my wife would kill me if she ever found out I did this. I’m usually only “allowed” to see guy movies and/or violent movies by myself. Anywho. Since I’ve already talked about all of the other films on this list, I’ll just get to the goods.

WHO WILL WIN: “No Country For Old Men.”

WHO SHOULD WIN: Of the choices available, “No Country,” but as I mentioned, I have a lot of affection for “Michael Clayton,” but I guess it just didn’t move me. “No Country” is so unique, so sparse, so engaging, and very often – so terrifying – that not getting an emotional response from watching it is almost impossible.

***FINAL BONUS***WHO GOT ROBBED: You guessed it. Not only is “Once” the best musical in several decades, but it is perhaps one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Besides the fact that no one saw this movie, one theory as to why this film was ignored by the Academy is because it was too low budget. I believe the Academy likes to reward movies that cost many millions to produce, employ many people, and basically promulgate the whole business of moviemaking. “Once” is so intimate, so gentle, so loving, that it defies every definition of what a romantic musical should be, leaving mainstream movie people confused over what to make of it, if they even saw it at all. To me, “Once” is the promise of creation contained in a little film. It is inspiring because it feels so accessible, no doubt causing viewers to say to themselves, “I could make a film like that,” considering its modest production values. And yet this film is beguiling, for although it seems so simple, so DIY, that it betrays the brilliance behind it. For writer/director John Carney has tapped into the underlying truths of love, music, creativity, loss, and pain. He has created a work brimming with truth rather than fantasy. Rather than being the escape that many of these Oscar nominated films are, it is instead an entry, into ourselves, our histories, and our loves, our dreams, our failures, and our futures. That is what movies should be all about.