The King Will Speak at Tonight's Academy Awards

I write 2 Oscar posts. The one I am doing right now and the one I will write after the show. I personally don't see the need for any more than that because what makes the Oscars fun is the concept of the Oscars and what they represent, which is glamour and old Hollywood excess. It doesn't matter who wins. Winning an Oscar is about the equivalent of picking a name out of a hat (except foreign film). The voter need not see a single one of the nominated films to cast their ballot and they don't even need to be the one doing the voting. So, the awards are meaningless, which is why I don't dwell on them and don't get up in arms over Christopher Nolan not getting nominated or whether or not Toy Story 3 should be allowed to be nominated in Best Picture and Best Animation. Life's too short, let's just enjoy the ride and see how my ability to predict political voting is this year.

Best Foreign Film: This category is always up in the air and one I get wrong because A) I haven't seen all of the movies and B) the voters have to have seen all the movies. Regardless, I'll take my best guess and do what I did last year, going with the Golden Globe choice of Civilization because I think Susanne Bier is a brilliant filmmaker who doesn't get nearly the credit she is due in North America.

Best Animated Feature: The truly best film in this category will not win. Nothing has a shot over Toy Story 3, which made the most money in 2010 and tricked just about everyone into thinking it was a great movie due to 10 minutes at the end.
Who Should Win: The Illusionist
Who Will Win: Toy Story 3

Best Adapted Screenplay: I think this will be one of the categories where the true best will shine and may be one of the only awards, besides Original Score, that the Social Network will walk away with.
Who Should Win: The Social Network
Who Will Win: The Social Network

Best Original Screenplay: I always wonder what the Academy considers to be a good screenplay. Is it the dialogue, the structure, the characters? If it's dialogue and character than Inception doesn't have a chance, not it it does anyway. I actually have the insider advantage here as I covered the screenplay for The King's Speech about a year ago and indeed, it was very good. I wonder if I'll get a raise when it wins?
Who Should Win: The King's Speech
Who Will Win: The King's Speech

Best Director: The Golden Globe went to Fincher, the DGA went to Hooper; the DGA usually is the definitive word. If Hooper wins this one, and I think he will, The Social Network doesn't have a chance at best picture as it will probably also sweep the acting awards as well and Oscar generally doesn't argue with the DGA. Poor Aronofsky, his time will come eventually.
Who Should Win: David Fincher
Who Will Win: Tom Hooper

Best Supporting Actress: This is a tough one. I think we can strike out Jacki Weaver because Animal Kingdom doesn't have the push behind it that would lead to a win. Melissa Leo and Amy Adams could potentially split the vote and cancel each other out for The Fighter, leaving Helena Bonham Carter and Hailee Steinfeld. Oscar loves the British but Steinfeld should win for her scene alone in True Grit between herself and the crooked business man. Last year in the writing category I picked the actual best script and was wrong so I think I'll go with the obvious this year instead.
Who Should Win: Hailee Steinfeld
Who Will Win: Helena Bonham Carter

Best Supporting Actor: It's down to Christian Bale and Geoffry Rush. Oscar likes weight loss and weight gain but King, I think, is going for a sweep and Oscar almost always votes British so I will too.
Who Should Win: John Hawkes
Who Will Win: Geoffry Rush

Best Actress: I think this one is fairly obvious although I'm not so sure Portman truly was the best as she was just one part of Black Swan's whole. I found Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole to be far more engaging to Portman's "acting" in Black Swan. However, Oscar likes stars who put themselves through physical strain and Portman certainly did that, plus, Kidman gave one of those "quiet" performances that Christina Bale, at the Golden Globes, said no one really ever gets noticed for.Wouldn't it be fun if Oscar pulled a punch and let Anette Benning, who is just as deserving, have the win?
Who Should Win: Nicole Kidman or Anette Benning
Who Will Win: Natalie Portman

Best Actor: Let's continue to vote British.
Who Should Win: Jesse Eisenberg
Who Will Win: Colin Firth

Best Picture: Not much to say here. Once again, despite 10 nominees, just as it always was when there was 5, the race comes down to two. The Social Network was the best movie of the year for me, but the King's Speech is more of an Oscar movie and currently has much more momentum behind it. Plus, if Hooper and Firth win there's no chance for the Social Network to take it.
Who Should Win: The Social Network
Who Will Win: The King's Speech

Rabbit Hole (5 out of 5)

Rabbit Hole is one of those movies that starts out about the death of a child and slowly opens up into new ideas and new realizations until it finally opens up into profound questions about the infinity of the universe, the mysteries of space and time, the complexities of happiness and the impossibility of life and death. It makes you realize just how finite and un-malleable time really is, how large and impossible life can be, how truly insignificant we are within whatever it is out there beyond the solar system that we have no concept of and that could, beyond all living logic and reason, stretch on forever and ever amen. It makes us appreciate the little, simple things that we can grasp onto and understand because, when it all comes down to it, it is, all we really know in this big, complex mess of a world. What’s above the clouds and beyond the stars isn’t for us to know, which is fine, we've got our own stuff to deal with anyway.


That’s what Rabbit Hole is about: it’s about whittling the world down into manageable things in order to take steps forward, one day at a time, to find order in the mess and ultimately guide a life into, hopefully, happiness with as little destruction and suffering along the way.

Oh yes, this is a movie of ideas. All true drama is. Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman) have lost their young son. Howie moves on while trying to appear as if life continues. He willingly goes to the loss groups and finds comfort in watching a video of him and his son on his Iphone.

Becca however, seems composed and yet cold, putting everything inside. She's confused but doesn’t know about what, can’t stand the pathetic people at the group, wants to rid the house of everything that reminders her of her son and resents her mother (Diane Wiest), who also lost a son, for trying to relate to her. Her son, after all, was a 4 year old who ran out on the road while her brother was a 30 year old heroin addict who overdosed.

Soon Becca, off from work, begins following the boy who hit her son until they finally meet face-to-face and talk in the park. She finds comfort in him, realizing that he is just a boy, riddled with guilt, trying to move on. Was he going too fast that day? It hardly matters in the grand scheme. The two spark up a friendship of sorts in so much as that they feel that each is probably essential to the others recovery or else just a way for Becca to continue to hold on as best she can. He may have taken her son but, is he really to be blamed? Is anyone?

And then the movie, without breaking it’s narrative simplicity or quiet emotional power, begins pulling back to reveal larger, more profound concepts, not just about life and death, but about the universe and the possibility that maybe there is another, alternate one where, right now, in their suffering, these people could be happy.

It’s not so much a question of Heaven, but rather a question of if this is all there is. Is life only as it appears before us; what you see is what you get? Or are there things out there, working, somewhere else out of our sight, where things are better, happier, nicer? Where little boys can’t be taken away because they aren’t 30 year old heroin addicts? And maybe there isn’t and such thinking is just a means to grab on to any semblance of hope in order to cope with the hand you’ve been dealt. The movie doesn’t try to answer these questions. How could it? These thoughts are simply the logical extension of death, which, in a sense, gives one a whole new perspective on life.

The film was directed by John Cameron Mitchell who has done an about face from the flamboyance and excess of his first two features Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus. Here Mitchell isn’t flashy or sexy but rather stark and desolate as he allows his characters to cope with this situation on their own natural emotional terms. Sometimes humour sneaks through, but then again, why wouldn’t it, as humour seems the only natural way to cope with tragedy.

And then the film ends, as Hereafter did, with the three most profound words that can come in any work that deals with life and death: I don’t know. That is, after all, all we every really know on the subject.