Oscar Nominations!!

Okay, that might have been a bit too excited. But still, love them or hate them, the nominations are in, which means in less than two months, we will have Oscar winners. Now I enjoy the Oscars mainly because I pick my favorites and then howl, hoot and curse and jeer anytime my choice is snubbed and cheer, scream, laugh and clap when my favorites win. Yes watching the Oscars with me is a bit of an odd experience. This year, I have the added bonus of having seen a great number of the nominated performances and films. Has the Academy made mistakes in the past? Yes. The two most notorious, in my mind, are Tommy Lee Jones winning best supporting actor for The Fugitive (1993) and Marisa Tomei winning best supporting actress for My Cousin Vinny (1992). Although I feel I should mention the travesty that is in rewarding Ron Howard for anything.

So, I've already done a preliminary take on my favorite movies of the year. Now, I'm picking my horses so to speak for the awards. Here we go.

Best Actor - Terrence Howard blew me away as a pimp trying to escape his desperate livelihood through rap. He blows away the competition in this category too.

Best Actor, Supporting - A weak category in my opinion this year, none of the performances leaps out as particularly memorable. In fact in several cases I've expressed that I wish there had been less of them in the movie not more. William Hurt was certainly the most entertaining in History of Violence (2005), so I'll go with him. But I must say I would love to have seen Ciaran Hinds or Michael Lonsdale from Munich (2005) nominated, both gave amazing performances.

Best Actress - I'm woefully underinformed in this category, having seen only two of the performances. I'm basically going with a coin flip because I liked both Keira Knightley's and Reese Witherspoon's performances about equally. I literally just flipped a coin, I'm not kidding. Congratulations Keira, you're my front runner.

Best Actress, Supporting - Remember what I said about best actress? Its worse in this category. I'm one for five. But as Michelle Williams didn't particularly impress me, I'm going to blind pick on of the four remaining nominees. Frances McDormand, eh she was good in Fargo. Okay, I support Frances McDormand now.

Best Director - For being able to evoke the 50s both in atmospheric smoke and jazzy sound, while faithfully telling a tightly scripted historical drama, I'm giving it to sophomore director George Clooney. And he acted in it too!

Best Film - Ahh the big one. I could ramble on about the complete snub of Walk The Line (2005) but I think the category is fairly well represented in good films, though I might be a bit bitter if Crash (2005) wins the night. For overall effectiveness, I think Munich crushes its competition.

Miscellaneous awards

Best Adapted Screenplay - Is this an award for how well a screenplay was adapted? Or an award for the best screenplay of those which were adapted? If the latter, then I find it arbitrary and an excuse to give screenplays two categories. Munich for me.

Best Original Screenplay - Go Woody!! Match Point (2005)

Animated Feature - I'm embarrassed for the Academy that this is a category.

Original Song - It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, I don't even particularly like rap music and I enjoyed this song in the film.

Original Score - Why no achievement in unoriginal score? I've seen some brilliant use of music that was in no way an original score. If there is a category for adapted screenplay there should be one for adapted music.

Final thought, Jake Gyllenhaal was more impressive in Jarhead (2005) than in Brokeback Mountain (2005).