The Oscars 2012: Predictions

Hollywood's annual shameless back slapping is nearly with us again, so for several of the major categories, I've gone through and suggested who I think will win, who from the nominees I think should win and who should have been nominated. Feel free to come back on Monday morning and tell me how wrong I was:

Best Picture

Will win: The Artist. I just can't see it being anything else

Should win: Tricky. It's a fairly patchy category this year, and The Artist was a magnificent film, but my personal favourite was Hugo.

Should have been there: Drive, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and We Need To Talk About Kevin are the three that spring to mind. I'm sure that room could also have been made for Shame. Martha Marcy May Marlene was also a brilliant film, but it's a million miles removed from a typical Oscar nominee. If they got rid of the patronising foreign language category, A Separation would also have been a must, and The Skin I Live In would have been a brave choice. As it stands, the category is something of a stinker.

Best Director

Will win: Michel Hazanavicius

Should win: Although the film itself was an admirable but massively flawed mess, I'm going to go with Terrence Malick.

Should have been there: Lynne Ramsay and Nicolas Winding Refn. Would have been nice to see Pedro Almodovar and Tomas Alfredson in there too.

Best Actress

Will win: A hard one to call. Meryl Streep's momentum seems to finally be burning out, and Viola Davis is seeming ever more likely.

Should win: Again, it's hard to judge, as it's not a particularly strong category and I haven't seen Albert Nobbs yet, although I've heard that Glenn Close is very good. Anyone other than Meryl Streep, then.

Should have been there: Olivia Colman, for giving one of the best performances of any actor or actress all year. Leaving out Tilda Swinton was unforgivable too, and Elizabeth Olsen should have been in with a chance for Martha Marcy etc. Also, Charlize Theron was magnificently bitchy in Young Adult. Basically I'd replace all the nominees.

Best Actor

Will win: Dujardin seems to have confidently emerged as the frontrunner, and I'd say Clooney is snapping at his heels.

Should win: Gary Oldman. Next question

Should have been there: Fassbender for Shame is the first name that springs to mind. In what experts will soon be calling 'The Year of Ryan Gosling' it seems strange that he wasn't nominated for anything. I'd have gone with Drive. Michael Shannon too, for the excellent Take Shelter.

Best Supporting Actress

Will win: Octavia Spencer

Should win: Hmmm... Berenice Bejo, even though she should really be in the Best Actress category. It's not a great category to be honest. Although apparently Janet McTeer is very good.

Should have been there: Vanessa Redgrave for Coriolanus. Without a doubt. Also, Carey Mulligan for Shame. Jessica Chastain has also been nominated for the wrong film, she was much, much better in Take Shelter than in The Help. And although I hated the movie itself, Charlotte Gainsbourg was as terrific as ever in Melancholia. 

 

Best Supporting Actor

Will win: Christopher Plummer. Somebody could take it from him but I very much doubt it.

Should win: I want to say Max Von Sydow because he's one of my favourite actors, but I just can't justify picking him. Christopher Plummer was great, but I'm going to go with Kenneth Branagh, who was outstanding as Laurence Olivier.

Should have been there: Albert Brooks for Drive, and John Hawkes for Martha Marcy etc. Ezra Miller did the seemingly impossible by holding his own against Tilda Swinton, and about the half the cast of Tinker Tailor could safely fit into the list, particularly Benedict Cumberbatch.

Best Foreign Language Film

Will win: A Separation.

Should win: A Separation. There's a couple I haven't seen though, so I can't judge entirely.

Should have been there: The Skin I Live In, La Quottro Volte and Mysteries of Lisbon.

Best Original Screenplay

Will win: The Artist or Midnight in Paris

Should win: A Separation or Margin Call, but I'd be happy with The Artist or Midnight in Paris.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will win: The Descendants or Tinker Tailor

Should win: Tinker Tailor

Should have been there: Coriolanus, for hacking down one of Shakepeare's most unwieldy plays into something lean and streamlined.

Best Original Score

Will win: The Artist. The music does have to carry most of the film, after all.

Should win: Tinker Tailor

And of course, Man or Muppet is quite rightly going to win Best Original Song.

The Muppets (2012)

Did puppeteer Jim Henson know, all those years ago, when he first began to develop his surreal felt vaudeville troupe, just how successful, and how beloved they would become? That they would have fans in every walk of life, and from every corner of the globe? One of those fans is Jason Segel, and like any good fan he was distraught with the Muppets' fall from favour in the early 90s. Unlike most fans however, he has starred in several successful comedies, giving him the chance to put his heroes back on our screens. He also plays the part of Gary, a lifelong Muppets fan who, along with his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) and his Muppet obsessed and suspiciously felt like brother Walter, travels to LA to tour The Muppet studios and theatre. They find the studios derelict and about to be sold to evil oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Cooper, clearly having the time of his life) who secretly plans to demolish them and drill for oil. After tracking down the now lonely and reclusive Kermit in his mansion, they persuade him to track down and reform the old gang to put on one last show and save the theatre.

Above all else, the reason that the new Muppet film works so well is that it has clearly been made by people who love, know, and most importantly, understand The Muppets and their appeal. They have beautifully retained the anarchic, subversive and self referencing humour that shows little regard for logic, narrative conventions or even the laws of physics. Even the celebrity cameos never feel smug or forced, and the songs from Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie are simply superb.

Just as with the Toy Story films however, the bravest decision has been to give the film a real emotional depth. There's a deep and melancholic sadness to much of the film, as the Muppets are forced to battle against the fact that the world has moved on, and that they are seen as relics of a bygone age. When Kermit roams his mansion, gazing longingly at the portraits of his former friends, it seems incredible just how much sadness and loss is conveyed by a green felt puppet. But one of the greatest triumphs of The Muppets has always been that we never see felt puppets. We see fully rounded characters, from the harried Kermit to the perennially optimistic Fozzie Bear, and every step of their journey seems as real as it would with live actors. When Kermit begins a rendition of the original Muppet Movie's 'Rainbow Connection' and is joined onstage by the rest of the Muppets for the song's finale, it's hard not to be moved (or in my case, not to cry). For this has always been the real brilliance of The Muppets: the certain knowledge that even when everything else is looking grey, a song, a dance and a badly cracked joke will always make the world that little bit better.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2012)

For someone with enough of an ego to believe that there may actually be people out there who read this blog, what I'm about to say may sound surprising. If you have already decided to see Martha Marcy May Marlene, please stop reading immediately. It's true that often films can be enjoyed more the less you know about them, but with MMMM, as I will call it from now on, it is ideal to enter the cinema with as little idea of possible as to what you are about to see. For anyone still reading, I'll try and give away as little of the plot as possible.

At the very beginning of the film, we see the titular character, played by Elizabeth Olsen (the one it's okay to like) running away from an unusual, but seemingly harmless rural commune and taking refuge with her estranged sister and brother-in-law. Needless to say, nothing is what it seems. Olsen is not the plucky heroine her flight would suggest, and the 'family' she has fled from, led by father figure Patrick (John Hawkes), is not the eccentric but oddly idyllic retreat it may have appeared. For anyone who knows anything about America in the 1960s, faint bells of recognition should be ringing at the idea of a close knit 'family' of misfits and the disenfranchised living in the wilderness, led by a manipulative 'father' and making night time excursions into people's houses.

Considering that this is Sean Durkin's debut, the directing is brilliantly assured and the performances are uniformly magnificent, particularly the fractured Olsen and the horribly sinister Hawkes, unbearably creepy without ever being overstated. Although it may never seem like it, MMMM is at it's core a horror movie, albeit a sparse, enigmatic and intelligent one. Rather than offer the puerile gross outs of Hostel or the cheap bump in the night shtick of Paranormal Activity, MMMM succeeds where so many horrors fail: it slowly creeps under your skin and then stays there long after the credits have rolled.

I hope this has been unhelpful. Just trust me, and see it.