[Each year, Jesse and Jim offer our expert Oscar predictions leading up
to the Annual ObscureCraft Oscar Prognisticate-Off. Email your picks in
each category to craftj2@gmail.com to enter. Keep track of everybody's
picks
here. Part 2 is
here.]
Best Costume Design
The Nominees: Alice in Wonderland, I Am Love, The King's Speech, The Tempest, True Grit
Jim's pick
Colleen
Atwood, who designed the costumes for Alice in Wonderland, also
designed the costumes for My Chemical Romance's "The Black Parade" music
video. "When I was.... a young boy... my father.... took me into the
city... TO SEE A MARCHING BAND." She has won Oscars in this category for
Memoirs of a Geisha and Chicago.
Antonella Cannarozzi is Italian, and has never won
an Oscar. I'm not sure what "I Am Love" is. Well, it's a metaphor.
Because it doesn't use "like" or "as." But I'm not sure what the deal
with the movie is.
Jenny Beavan, nominated for The King's Speech, won
an Oscar for "A Room with a View." It should also be noted that The
King's Speech is a period piece.
Sandy Powell
won for The Young Victoria, The Aviator, and Shakespeare in Love. She is
nominated this year for the gender-bending adaptation of Shakespeare's
"The Tempest."
Mary Zphres has worked with the Coens before --
according to Wikipedia they have frequent collaborations, but the only
Coen film listed is O Brother. She also designed the costumes for
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. She is nominated
this year for True Grit.
This award usually goes to period dramas -- the last
four winners were The Young Victoria, The Duchess, Elizabeth: The
Golden Age, and Marie Antoinette.
I looked at
some pictures from The Tempest. Doesn't seem very period-y, probably due
to Helen Mirren being past the age of menstruation. (Rimshot!)
So I'm giving this one to The King's Speech. Let's hope the Academy agrees with me.
The pick: The King's Speech
Jesse's pick
It is a common complaint among those who like to complain about such
things that the Best Costume Design award is really an award for the
Best Frilly Period Dresses And/Or Bodices. Am I the only one who thinks
Joseph Gorden-Levitt's vest in Inception should win some sort of award?
Yes, Jim, I've started wearing vests. But based on the last few winners they should just rename this category Best Corset and be done with it. As much as I loved Geoffrey Rush's pinstriped suit in The King's Speech, the protagonist did not wear a single corset.
The pick: Alice In Wonderland
Art DirectionThe nominees: Alice In Wonderland, Harry Potter 7.1, Inception, The King's Speech, True Grit
Jesse's pickSay
what you want about his movies - say that they are empty, facile
exercises in style over substance that have aged about as well as
Al
Davis - but Tim Burton is Mr. Reliable when it comes to this category. Behold his previous winners!
Sweeney Todd
Sleepy Hollow
Batman
I checked, with YOUR
PRECIOUS RESEARCH, and found no other modern director whose movies have
been so frequently honored in this category. Cameron has two for Titanic
and Avatar, and Spielberg's got two for Schindler's List and Raiders of
the Lost Ark. Those are four of the biggest movies of all time. Burton
won for Sleepy Fucking Hollow.
The pick: Alice In Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland? Well, it mad a hell of a lot of money -- that's for
sure. But there's been a big backlash against the whole 3D thing as of
late. Well, at least from Roger Ebert -- Roger Ebert hates 3D even more
than I do, which is saying something.
I'm giving this to The King's Speech. Why? Because,
Burton aside, shit like Howards End, The Madness of King George, The
English Patient, and Shakespeare in Love win this category. And Tim
Burton's wife is in the movie. And she was in Howards End.
Live Action Short
The Nominees: The Confession, The Crush, God of Love, Na Wewe, Wish 143
Jim's pickThe Confession: Quiet
and sincere 9-year-old Sam is worried about making his first
confession. His conscience is clear, therefore he cannot hope for any
relief from the experience. He and his friend Jacob decide to remedy
that situation, but their initially innocent prank turns unexpectedly
tragic.
The Crush: An 8 year old schoolboy is so besotted with his teacher that he challenges her boyfriend to a duel...to the death.
God of Love: A
lovestruck, lounge-singing darts champion finds his prayers are
answered -- literally -- when he mysteriously receives a box of
love-inducing darts.1994
or thereabouts.
Na Wewe. There is a civil war on in Burundi. A genocidal
conflict opposing Hutus and Tutsis... We are witnesses to one of those
sadly frequent episodes : the attack by the rebels of a minibus
transporting ordinary passengers. A Kalashnikov bursts out. The bus
stops, the passengers get off. There follows a selection separating
Hutus and Tutsis. But who is a Hutu, who is a Tutsi? Na Wewe means You
Too in Kirundi.
Wish 143: David,
a teen-aged terminally ill hospital patient, is visited by the
Wishman, who can offer him the opportunity to meet footballers or try
something exhilarating before he dies. Sadly the Wishman cannot fulfil
David's one desire, to lose his virginity. A newspaper advert does not
have the desired effect but, thanks to the friendly and wholly
unconventional hospital chaplain, David does indeed get his heart's
desire in the company of warm-hearted working girl Maggie.
Sounds like Na Wewe to me. Na Wewe?
The pick: Na Wewe
Jesse's pickYou had me at genocide.
The pick: Na Wewe
Animated ShortThe nominees: Day and Night, The Gruffalo, Let's Pollute, The Lost Thing, Madagascar carnet de voyage
Jesse's pickRather
than looking up the plot summaries from IMDB, I am going to make up my
own plot summaries based on the titles and select a winner from there.
Day and Night: The animated sequel to the 2010 Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz action smash hit "Knight and Day"
The
Gruffalo: A sensual exploration of the love triangle between a griffon,
a buffalo, and Mark Ruffalo, done entirely in pastels.
Let's Pollute: An internal BP training video on offshore oil rig operations.
The Lost Thing: An animated argument between two nerds about the ending to Lost.
Madagascar carnet de voyage: The movie "Madagascar", except in french this time.
I think, based on these entirely made up descriptions, we have a pretty clear winner.
The pick: The Gruffalo
Jim's pick If your description of The Gruffalo isn't the actual story, I'll be
quite disappointed. The questions I usually ask about Animated Short:
"Are any of these by the Wallace and Gromet people?" "Are any of these
by Pixar?" "Are any of these crazy French movies?" "Are any of these
about the holocaust?"
That, coincidentally, is the order -- from least likely
to most likely -- of the chances of each type of animated film winning
the award. It's like rock, paper, scissors, except with a cartoon
holocaust.
I'm tempted to give my vote to "Let's Pollute," but
movies about the environment and global warming are so three years ago.
Al Gore got his Oscar and now EVERYTHING IS BETTER. There can't be
global warming because "there's so much snow, take that liberals."
Global warming can't exist because there are still eight foot mounds of
snow all around my town and you can't park on the streets and there's
only one lane for traffic on two-way roads.
So, Pixar it is -- Day and Night for the win.
The pick: Day and Night
Animated Feature
The Nominees: How to Train Your Dragon, The Illusionist, Toy Story 3
Jim's pick
Wait, wasn't The Illusionist the crappy version of The Prestige with Paul Giamatti? They turned it into a cartoon?
Pixar
always wins this category. Pixar always wins. There have been some
years where Pixar didn't win -- because they didn't put out a movie, or
the movie was so mind-numbingly bad that the only reason people went to
see it was to see the Attack of the Clones teaser (I'm looking at you,
Monsters Inc.) It doesn't matter if something like Persepolis or The
Triplets of Belleville is nominated -- nope. Pixar.
So, Toy Story 3 is going to take this one home. And it will surprise no one.
The pick: Toy Story 3
Jesse's pickI'm actually excited to see the Illusionist, which comes from the same
studio that produced Triplets of Belleville, one of the first inductees
into the Movie Night Movie Project. I'm sure you'll be interested to
know, by the way, that there is now a RedBox a 3 minute walk from my
front door, a RedBox from whose cursed depths I have extracted and viewed three movies. Those three
movies are: Dinner For Shmucks, Easy A (which I only watched because the other movie Suzi brought home was Human Centipede), and the Karate Kid. My opinion
on the Red Box and the movies that come out of it remains mostly
unchanged (Karate Kid didn't even have karate in it, it had kung fu, a
difference which is explicitly referenced IN THE MOVIE).
Toy Story 3 and its
assault on socialism wins.
The pick: Toy Story 3
Foreign FilmThe nominees: Biutiful, Dogtooth, In A Better World, Incendies, Outside The Law
Jesse's pickI
have seen none of these, so willy rely entirely on what the pundit
industrial complex has told me. Biutiful is the favorite, having scored a
nomination outside of the Foreign Language category (Best Actor for
Javier Bardem, a fact which will allow Julia Roberts to continue to
believe that there is justice in the world
).
But will Dogooth be the No Man's Land to Biutiful's Amelie? Remember
that, Jim? Remember when I won the Oscar pool because I correctly
predicted that upset? Remember when I brought it up every year when we
talk about this category?
So here's your chance to try to get me back. I'm sticking with the
favorite, Biutiful. Will you step out into no man's land with Dogtooth?
Jim's pickOh man, you are really big on bringing up that No Man's Land thing. One
of these days I'm going to step into the street without looking first.
My head will turn left and I'll see that bus barreling down towards me.
The last thoughts to go through my mind will be "Jesse predicted that No
Man's Land would win Best Foreign Language Film!"
I'll go with Biutiful. Because I've heard of it.
The pick: Biutiful
