March is my favorite month for film. We've got the promise of the Oscars, the Independent Spirit Awards, the death of the February movie lull, and the Cleveland International Film Festival. That being said, here are my Oscar predictions for this year. This is truly a crazy year for the Oscars--lots of underdogs and huge discrepancies between movies that should win, and movies that probably will. (Thanks a lot, Ang Lee.) So I may not do as well this year with my picks. My record was set last year with 14 predictions out of the 20-some major ones. The year before it was 13. This year I've seen all of the nominated movies except for Transamerica and Munich. And of course I haven't seen some of the documentary shorts and foreign shorts and whatnot because I live in Cleveland and those movies usually take about a year to get here.
Best Motion Picture--Brokeback Mountain (But Crash should win)
Best Actor--Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Best Actress--Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Best Supporting Actor--George Clooney, Syriana (But I believe that Paul Giamatti should win)
Best Supporting Actress--Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
Best Director--Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Best Adapted Screenplay--Larry McMurty & Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain
Best Original Screenplay--Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, Crash (But it would be so kickass if The Squid and the Whale won)
Animated Feature--Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Art Direction--Memoirs of a Geisha
Cinematography--Brokeback Mountain (But Good Night and Good Luck should win)
Costumes--Memoirs of a Geisha (All those kimonos!)
Documentary Feature--March of the Penguins
Documentary Short Subject--God Sleeps in Rwanda (total shot in the dark)
Film Editing--The Constant Gardener (A total underdog but I'm sticking by it. Crash will probably win.)
Foreign Language Film--Tsotsi (South Africa)
Make-Up--Chronicles of Narnia
Original Score--John Williams, Memoirs of a Geisha (If Gustavo Santaolalla wins I will hit someone. And it might be you. Or Ang Lee.)
Original Song--It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, Hustle & Flow
Short Film (Animated)--The Moon & the Son: An Imagined Conversation
Short Film (Live Action)--Six Shooter
Sound Editing--King Kong
Sound Mixing--Walk the Line
Visual Effects--King Kong
