2002 OSCAR RACE
Orignally published in 2003.
This year’s Oscar race is well under way and the results promise to be just as predictable as last year’s. But I’ll still be there watching because despite all the politics, despite the painfully embarrassing musical numbers and dance sequences, despite the endless, boring thank you speeches, and despite the fact that they almost never seem to get it right – it’s still tremendous fun.
Chicago is this year’s front-runner and rightly so. It’s dazzling entertainment and worthy of all the accolades it has received thus far. With 13 nominations, it joins an elite group of films including such classics as Gone with the Wind and Forrest Gump, which also garnered 13 nominations each.
Best Picture
PICKS: It’s not the absolute best film of the year, but out of all the nominated films, Chicago is the finest one and it should win. This is a smart, savvy, darkly comic, musical masterpiece that (along with Moulin Rouge) has revived a dead genre – the live action, Hollywood musical. Both films have found a way to reinvent the genre and make it palatable to a 3rd Millennium audience. Moulin Rouge employed a post-modern approach, reinventing the old to make it new in a way that both satirizes and pays homage to the tradition. Chicago simply put a dark comic spin on what’s generally a very light hearted, saccharine genre and found an effective method of merging the musical sequences with the narrative developments in a way that doesn’t seem silly and outdated – and in a way that doesn’t take us out of the story. The two approaches are enormously successful both artistically and commercially.
PREDICTIONS: Not only should Chicago win, it will win. It won the Golden Globe Award for best picture in the comedy/musical category and statistically speaking, the film with the most Oscar nominations usually wins best picture. In addition, the director, Rob Marshall, has won the Director’s Guild Award, which is usually a very strong indication that the film itself will win Best Picture.
NIXES: There are too many nixes to list here but I will say this, there are at least a dozen films I would have nominated in this category over Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Frankly, I don’t share this Rings fever that has infected most of the movie going world. I thought Attack of the Clones was a huge disappointment, but I still would have nominated it over Two Towers. I’m not necessarily saying that Two Towers is a bad movie, and I actually liked it a little more than the first one, but it’s not a good sign when the digital character gives the best performance.
Best Actor
PICKS: I think Nicolas Cage gave the best performance out of the five nominees and should win. I think Cage is still under-appreciated as an actor, despite the fact that he has consistently given top-notch performances throughout his career. Just see Leaving Las Vegas if you have any doubts about his acting ability. His performance in Adaptation is Cage’s best since his brilliant performance in that film and he deserves the Oscar simply becuase he really gives two great performances and not just one. Although he portrays twin brothers, each character is very different and Cage plays them both to near comic perfection. And despite the fact that they look exactly alike, we always know which character is which. It’s a stellar achievement and worthy of the golden statuette even though he probably won’t get it.
PREDICTIONS: It’s hard to say at this point, but I think Jack Nicholson has the best shot at taking the trophy this year. He has received much acclaim for his role in About Schmidt and has already been graced with a few honours including a Golden Globe win which officially made him the most honoured actor in Globe history. In addition, it’s simply a wonderful performance and what makes it so great is how successfully Nicholson is able to transcend both his ‘larger-than-life’ screen persona and his ‘larger than-life’ public persona to play such an ordinary, run of the mill schmuck. It’s quite an achievement and many in Hollywood have already taken notice, as the Oscar momentum seems to be in his favour. The only thing working against him is the fact that he has already won two in this category (not to mention the best supporting Oscar he won for Terms of Endearment) and no actor has ever won three in a lead category. The Academy might just say “enough already” and give the honour to another veteran, Michael Caine, or possibly even Daniel Day-Lewis, who are also former winners.
NIXES: What the @!#* happened to Richard Gere? It’s just seems really strange that almost everyone who worked on Chicago, from the producers right down to the janitors, got nominated except him. Maybe the competition in this category was just too much this year and many worthy candidates got left out. And since Gere plays such a central role in Chicago, it would have been almost as insulting to give him a nomination in the supporting category. But still, what were they thinking? The guy even tap dances for Pete’s sake!
Speaking of worthy candidates who got left out, Leonardo Di Caprio was also snubbed this year, which is unfortunate, because not since his Oscar nominated performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? has Di Caprio done such great work. But again, the competition was too stiff this year and there’s the added problem of which film to nominate him for, since he delivers fine lead performances in both Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can.
Best Actress
PICKS: This is a real tough category in which to make a pick. For me, it’s really a three-way race between Renee Zellweger (Chicago), Nicole Kidman (The Hours) and Julianne Moore (Far From Heaven); and to be perfectly honest, I would prefer simply to declare a three-way tie between them. However, if I absolutely had to choose one, it would probably be Nicole Kidman. The reason is that Kidman doesn’t have a lot of the teary eyed scenes that Moore has or any of the flashy, jazzy scenes that Zellweger has, but her performance is absolutely riveting – even with her unnecessary and distracting prosthetic nose. Also, out of all of them, Kidman is the one who most completely inhabits her character to the extent that we never see her ‘acting.’ Indeed, all we ever see is Virginia Woolf and never once do we see Kidman herself. But again, it’s so close, that I don’t think I could choose between the three of them. Zellweger strikes such a perfect balance between star-struck, wide-eyed naivete and devious, scheming malevolence that she manages to be both titillating and frightening, while Julianne Moore plays her role with such grace, dignity and subtlety, she becomes instantly sympathetic, making the audience ache for her character.
PREDICTIONS: Julianne Moore will probably win because she is the only double nominee this time around and because she has consistently given Oscar-worthy performances throughout her career. The Academy might simply feel that it’s time to honour Moore for all her great work from both the past and the present.
NIXES: Meryl Streep is strangely absent in this category for her work in The Hours. However, many in the acting branch of the Academy probably felt that she has already received her due and that compared to all her other great body of work, this performance (although a fine one) is not quite in the same league with her others. There is also the added dilemma of which category to nominate her in – leading or supporting, since her role seems to fall somewhere between the two.
Best Director
PICKS: This is another tough category, because even though I think Chicago is a better film than Gangs of New York, and even though Rob Marshall did such a fantastic job, I think Gangs is a better example of directing because Gangs’ strength is it’s direction. In other words, the director of Chicago already had a great story and a great script to work with, while Scorsese only had a mediocre story and an average script. Nevertheless, Scorsese, through the sheer merits of his talents as a director, was able to elevate this average material into something special. With almost every scene, every shot, you can see his directing prowess changing the mundane into something out of the ordinary. Indeed, so strong is his directing ability, he manages to compensate for nearly all the inadequacies and weaknesses inherent in the story. In another director’s hand, this script would have resulted in something less than stellar; in Scorsese’s hand the results are a near instant classic. Here, he clearly shows how film is really a director’s medium. And let’s face it, he deserves the honour simply because he’s the director of Raging Bull, one of the greatest films of all time.
PREDICTIONS: Up until recently, I would have put my money on Scorsese simply because it may be the only remaining chance for the Academy to right some injustices from the past – i.e. his denial of the golden statuette for such classics as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas (which many, including myself, still scratch their heads in wonderment at how the Oscar could have eluded him). However, Rob Marshall (Chicago) recently won the Director’s Guild Award which is usually an almost certain bet that he will win the Oscar. Scorsese still might take it, but at this point it looks like it will be Marshall, which would make it the third time that Scorsese is beaten out by a first time director – this is the first feature film directed by Marshall and Scorsese lost out to Robert Redford (Ordinary People) in 1981 and Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves) in 1991. In both instances, it was Redford’s and Costner’s directorial debut.
NIXES: I think P.T. Anderson and Michael Moore are tragically missing from this list for their work on Punch-Drunk Love and Bowling For Columbine respectively. This is a catastrophe of such enormous proportions it leaves me speechless. Enough said.
Best Supporting Actress
PICKS: This is another tough category for me to make a pick. And once again, I think it’s really a three-way race between Meryl Streep (Adaptation), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago) and Kathy Bates (About Schmidt). However, if I had to choose one, it would probably be Meryl Streep because she plays more or less the straight character to Cooper’s and Cage’s funny men; and yet she still manages to hold her own and make her character almost as memorable as theirs.
PREDICTIONS: Catherine Zeta-Jones will probably win because she gave such a luminous performance in Chicago, because in way, she is the embodiment of the all the glitz and glamour that characterizes Chicago, and of course because Streep and Bates have already won the statuette.
NIXES: Cameron Diaz is strangely absent from this list. I think this is a case where the Academy simply overlooked the performance because the role itself wasn’t quite up to par in their eyes. In other words, Queen Latifah got the nomination because she had a juicier role in a better film and not necessarily because she gave a better performance.
Best Supporting Actor
PICKS: Ed Harris should win in this category. This is one of the best actors working in Hollywood, but he consistently doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. He has given a plethora of fine performances – some of them truly great such as his portrayal of the TV executive in The Truman Show (his performance was the best thing about that film). And despite the fact that he has a very macho screen persona, he still manages to play a gay man convincingly without making the character cliché.
PREDICTIONS: Chris Cooper will probably get this one. Partly because he appears to be the front runner thus far in all the other award ceremonies and partly because he plays such an outrageous character with such intelligence, charm and wit, that he simultaneously elicits both sympathy and laughter from the audience.
NIXES: Dennis Quaid – Far From Heaven! Hellooooo! Not only is this his finest performance ever, I’m not sure we’ll ever see anything better from him. Don’t get me wrong, I think Christopher Walken is amazing and I also think he did a good job in Catch Me If You Can. But frankly, I would have nominated Quaid over him because I honestly think Quaid gave a better performance and like Ed Harris, Quaid convincingly transcended his macho screen persona to play a gay man without making the character a caricature.
Chicago is this year’s front-runner and rightly so. It’s dazzling entertainment and worthy of all the accolades it has received thus far. With 13 nominations, it joins an elite group of films including such classics as Gone with the Wind and Forrest Gump, which also garnered 13 nominations each.
Best Picture
PICKS: It’s not the absolute best film of the year, but out of all the nominated films, Chicago is the finest one and it should win. This is a smart, savvy, darkly comic, musical masterpiece that (along with Moulin Rouge) has revived a dead genre – the live action, Hollywood musical. Both films have found a way to reinvent the genre and make it palatable to a 3rd Millennium audience. Moulin Rouge employed a post-modern approach, reinventing the old to make it new in a way that both satirizes and pays homage to the tradition. Chicago simply put a dark comic spin on what’s generally a very light hearted, saccharine genre and found an effective method of merging the musical sequences with the narrative developments in a way that doesn’t seem silly and outdated – and in a way that doesn’t take us out of the story. The two approaches are enormously successful both artistically and commercially.
PREDICTIONS: Not only should Chicago win, it will win. It won the Golden Globe Award for best picture in the comedy/musical category and statistically speaking, the film with the most Oscar nominations usually wins best picture. In addition, the director, Rob Marshall, has won the Director’s Guild Award, which is usually a very strong indication that the film itself will win Best Picture.
NIXES: There are too many nixes to list here but I will say this, there are at least a dozen films I would have nominated in this category over Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Frankly, I don’t share this Rings fever that has infected most of the movie going world. I thought Attack of the Clones was a huge disappointment, but I still would have nominated it over Two Towers. I’m not necessarily saying that Two Towers is a bad movie, and I actually liked it a little more than the first one, but it’s not a good sign when the digital character gives the best performance.
Best Actor
PICKS: I think Nicolas Cage gave the best performance out of the five nominees and should win. I think Cage is still under-appreciated as an actor, despite the fact that he has consistently given top-notch performances throughout his career. Just see Leaving Las Vegas if you have any doubts about his acting ability. His performance in Adaptation is Cage’s best since his brilliant performance in that film and he deserves the Oscar simply becuase he really gives two great performances and not just one. Although he portrays twin brothers, each character is very different and Cage plays them both to near comic perfection. And despite the fact that they look exactly alike, we always know which character is which. It’s a stellar achievement and worthy of the golden statuette even though he probably won’t get it.
PREDICTIONS: It’s hard to say at this point, but I think Jack Nicholson has the best shot at taking the trophy this year. He has received much acclaim for his role in About Schmidt and has already been graced with a few honours including a Golden Globe win which officially made him the most honoured actor in Globe history. In addition, it’s simply a wonderful performance and what makes it so great is how successfully Nicholson is able to transcend both his ‘larger-than-life’ screen persona and his ‘larger than-life’ public persona to play such an ordinary, run of the mill schmuck. It’s quite an achievement and many in Hollywood have already taken notice, as the Oscar momentum seems to be in his favour. The only thing working against him is the fact that he has already won two in this category (not to mention the best supporting Oscar he won for Terms of Endearment) and no actor has ever won three in a lead category. The Academy might just say “enough already” and give the honour to another veteran, Michael Caine, or possibly even Daniel Day-Lewis, who are also former winners.
NIXES: What the @!#* happened to Richard Gere? It’s just seems really strange that almost everyone who worked on Chicago, from the producers right down to the janitors, got nominated except him. Maybe the competition in this category was just too much this year and many worthy candidates got left out. And since Gere plays such a central role in Chicago, it would have been almost as insulting to give him a nomination in the supporting category. But still, what were they thinking? The guy even tap dances for Pete’s sake!
Speaking of worthy candidates who got left out, Leonardo Di Caprio was also snubbed this year, which is unfortunate, because not since his Oscar nominated performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? has Di Caprio done such great work. But again, the competition was too stiff this year and there’s the added problem of which film to nominate him for, since he delivers fine lead performances in both Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can.
Best Actress
PICKS: This is a real tough category in which to make a pick. For me, it’s really a three-way race between Renee Zellweger (Chicago), Nicole Kidman (The Hours) and Julianne Moore (Far From Heaven); and to be perfectly honest, I would prefer simply to declare a three-way tie between them. However, if I absolutely had to choose one, it would probably be Nicole Kidman. The reason is that Kidman doesn’t have a lot of the teary eyed scenes that Moore has or any of the flashy, jazzy scenes that Zellweger has, but her performance is absolutely riveting – even with her unnecessary and distracting prosthetic nose. Also, out of all of them, Kidman is the one who most completely inhabits her character to the extent that we never see her ‘acting.’ Indeed, all we ever see is Virginia Woolf and never once do we see Kidman herself. But again, it’s so close, that I don’t think I could choose between the three of them. Zellweger strikes such a perfect balance between star-struck, wide-eyed naivete and devious, scheming malevolence that she manages to be both titillating and frightening, while Julianne Moore plays her role with such grace, dignity and subtlety, she becomes instantly sympathetic, making the audience ache for her character.
PREDICTIONS: Julianne Moore will probably win because she is the only double nominee this time around and because she has consistently given Oscar-worthy performances throughout her career. The Academy might simply feel that it’s time to honour Moore for all her great work from both the past and the present.
NIXES: Meryl Streep is strangely absent in this category for her work in The Hours. However, many in the acting branch of the Academy probably felt that she has already received her due and that compared to all her other great body of work, this performance (although a fine one) is not quite in the same league with her others. There is also the added dilemma of which category to nominate her in – leading or supporting, since her role seems to fall somewhere between the two.
Best Director
PICKS: This is another tough category, because even though I think Chicago is a better film than Gangs of New York, and even though Rob Marshall did such a fantastic job, I think Gangs is a better example of directing because Gangs’ strength is it’s direction. In other words, the director of Chicago already had a great story and a great script to work with, while Scorsese only had a mediocre story and an average script. Nevertheless, Scorsese, through the sheer merits of his talents as a director, was able to elevate this average material into something special. With almost every scene, every shot, you can see his directing prowess changing the mundane into something out of the ordinary. Indeed, so strong is his directing ability, he manages to compensate for nearly all the inadequacies and weaknesses inherent in the story. In another director’s hand, this script would have resulted in something less than stellar; in Scorsese’s hand the results are a near instant classic. Here, he clearly shows how film is really a director’s medium. And let’s face it, he deserves the honour simply because he’s the director of Raging Bull, one of the greatest films of all time.
PREDICTIONS: Up until recently, I would have put my money on Scorsese simply because it may be the only remaining chance for the Academy to right some injustices from the past – i.e. his denial of the golden statuette for such classics as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas (which many, including myself, still scratch their heads in wonderment at how the Oscar could have eluded him). However, Rob Marshall (Chicago) recently won the Director’s Guild Award which is usually an almost certain bet that he will win the Oscar. Scorsese still might take it, but at this point it looks like it will be Marshall, which would make it the third time that Scorsese is beaten out by a first time director – this is the first feature film directed by Marshall and Scorsese lost out to Robert Redford (Ordinary People) in 1981 and Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves) in 1991. In both instances, it was Redford’s and Costner’s directorial debut.
NIXES: I think P.T. Anderson and Michael Moore are tragically missing from this list for their work on Punch-Drunk Love and Bowling For Columbine respectively. This is a catastrophe of such enormous proportions it leaves me speechless. Enough said.
Best Supporting Actress
PICKS: This is another tough category for me to make a pick. And once again, I think it’s really a three-way race between Meryl Streep (Adaptation), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago) and Kathy Bates (About Schmidt). However, if I had to choose one, it would probably be Meryl Streep because she plays more or less the straight character to Cooper’s and Cage’s funny men; and yet she still manages to hold her own and make her character almost as memorable as theirs.
PREDICTIONS: Catherine Zeta-Jones will probably win because she gave such a luminous performance in Chicago, because in way, she is the embodiment of the all the glitz and glamour that characterizes Chicago, and of course because Streep and Bates have already won the statuette.
NIXES: Cameron Diaz is strangely absent from this list. I think this is a case where the Academy simply overlooked the performance because the role itself wasn’t quite up to par in their eyes. In other words, Queen Latifah got the nomination because she had a juicier role in a better film and not necessarily because she gave a better performance.
Best Supporting Actor
PICKS: Ed Harris should win in this category. This is one of the best actors working in Hollywood, but he consistently doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. He has given a plethora of fine performances – some of them truly great such as his portrayal of the TV executive in The Truman Show (his performance was the best thing about that film). And despite the fact that he has a very macho screen persona, he still manages to play a gay man convincingly without making the character cliché.
PREDICTIONS: Chris Cooper will probably get this one. Partly because he appears to be the front runner thus far in all the other award ceremonies and partly because he plays such an outrageous character with such intelligence, charm and wit, that he simultaneously elicits both sympathy and laughter from the audience.
NIXES: Dennis Quaid – Far From Heaven! Hellooooo! Not only is this his finest performance ever, I’m not sure we’ll ever see anything better from him. Don’t get me wrong, I think Christopher Walken is amazing and I also think he did a good job in Catch Me If You Can. But frankly, I would have nominated Quaid over him because I honestly think Quaid gave a better performance and like Ed Harris, Quaid convincingly transcended his macho screen persona to play a gay man without making the character a caricature.
posted by Rix Flix at 1:53 AM
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