<<

Section:GDN RR PaGe:10 Edition Date:070223 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 21/2/2007 21:21 cYanmaGentaYellowblack

10 | Friday February 23 2007 The Guardian | Friday February 23 2007 11 Oscars 2007

Best Film Best Best Actress Best Supporting Actress Best Supporting Actor Best Director

Peter Will win: Little Miss Sunshine. I predict Will win: for The Will win: for The Queen. Will win: for Little Miss Will win: for Little Will win: Paul Greengrass for United 93. Bradshaw a landslide for this feelgood underdog Last King of Scotland. A towering The Coronation will be an irresistible Sunshine. The Academy loves a plucky Miss Sunshine. The Academy loves an The Academy will honour Greengrass’s ensembler; the solemn “Babble” is too performance, richly pleasurable to spectacle. oldster. adorable youngster. achievement, even if the fi nished work Guardian fi lm much like last year’s Crash. watch. Should win: Helen Mirren. Should win: for The Should win: for is too gruelling for them. critic Should win: The Departed. Scorsese’s Should win: Forest Whitaker. Should have been a contender: Departed. Wahlberg delivers the hard- . Former Should win: Paul Greengrass. return to form: surely time the Master Should have been a contender: Damian Gretchen Mol for The Notorious Bettie edged Mamet-ish dialogue like a soldier. wannabe Hudson brought passion to the Should have been a contender: Mel was rewarded. Lewis for Keane. A powerful, painful, Page. Mol brought style and gentleness Should have been a contender: Ben part. Gibson for Apocalypto. Bigoted? Should have been a contender: United deeply exposed performance. to this bizarre true-life story. Affl eck for Hollywoodland. Affl eck’s Should have been a contender: Deborah Implausibly repentant? Sure — but a 93. A magnifi cent all-time Top 10 lister. melancholy, self-aware performance François for The Page Turner. Chilling, brilliant fi lm-maker. deserved a chance. , sociopathic. The big three.

Hannah Will win: Letters from Iwo Jima. It’s Will win: Forest Whitaker for The Last Will win: Helen Mirren for The Queen. Will win: for Dreamgirls. Will win: Jennifer Hudson for Will win: . Surely! McGill about war; it’s macho, yet emotional; it’s King of Scotland — big performance by a She just seems to be unstoppable this Improbable comebacks are always in Dreamgirls. Everyone wants to see the Though Eastwood could profi t by directed by an ex-actor… all the signs much-admired, under-garlanded actor year. with a good chance. look on Beyoncé’s face. Oscar’s love for -turned-directors. Director, are there. Should win: for Half Should win: for Little Should win: Alan Arkin for Little Miss Should win: Adriana Barazza for Babel. Should win: Martin Scorsese. If he Edinburgh Should win: The Departed. Not Nelson — the outside choice, but an Children. She’s always being Sunshine. Great comedy performance Her character’s behaviour may make no doesn’t get it this time, he will surely fi lm festival Scorsese’s best, but he’s always in a amazing performance. pipped at the post, and this is her best from a three-time nominee who sense, but her acting is terrifi c. stab someone to death with a biro. class of his own. Should have been a contender: James work ever. deserves to fi nally take it home. Should have been a contender: Should have been a contender: And the award goes to… Should have been a contender: The McAvoy for The Last King of Should have been a contender: Should have been a contender: Michael Catherine O’Hara for For Your for Inside Man. Such a fun, Proposition. A proper epic, with Scotland. Oscar has a strange idea about Gretchen Mol for The Notorious Bettie Sheen for The Queen. So good as Tony Consideration. She plays — beautifully confi dent genre fi lm, directed with grace real originality and intelligence. what constitutes a lead role. Page. She is absolutely spellbinding. Blair, but doesn’t get any buzz. — an actress with obsessed with Oscar. and verve.

Our panel of experts make their predictions for the big night. David Will win: The Queen — secret donation, Will win: Peter O’Toole. Eight “thank Will win: Helen Mirren. Dead cert. Will win: Alan Arkin. It’s his turn. Will win: Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls. Will win: Martin Scorsese. The industry Thomson “with gratitude” from tips you, but no thanks” is cruel and unusual Should win: Helen Mirren. But for Prime Should win: Mark Wahlberg in The The fi lm has to get something. knows it’s now or never . And to test William Goldman’s maxim that, in the movies, Academy votes. punishment. Suspect 6. Departed. Surrounded by ham, he Should win: Adriana Barraza in Should win: . For taste, Writer Should win: no fi lm at all, owing to Should win: Peter O’Toole Should have been a contender: delivered mustard. Babel. Some real work in unbearably tact, and the most royalist fi lm since nobody knows anything, we asked Monkey the cat (pictured, and critic above scandal Should have been a contender: Robert in Longford. The Should have been a contender: Daniel pretentious fi lm. Alexander Korda. Should have been a contender: The Downey Jr in Fur. For insouciance in scariest performance of the year outside Craig in Infamous. In many ways, the Should have been a contender: Should have been a contender: Douglas right) to pick his Oscar winners. Who will come out on top? Lives of Others — the best fi lm of the the face of a big barbering job. American politics. arrival of the year. in Infamous. The most McGrath for Infamous. If the second year. intriguing moment of the year. Capote fi lm had any other title than the Best Picture Best Supporting Actor Best Original Screenplay Best Documentary one it has ... Babel Djimon Hounsou Blood Diamond Babel Deliver Us From Evil The Departed Mark Wahlberg The Departed Pan’s Labyrinth An Inconvenient Truth Letters from Iwo Jima Eddie Murphy Dreamgirls Letters from Iwo Jima in Fragments Xan Brooks Will win: Babel. It’s this year’s Crash: Will win: Peter O’Toole. I can’t shake Will win: Helen Mirren. If she doesn’t, Will win: Alan Arkin. A Hollywood Will win: Jennifer Hudson. J.Hud’s Will win: Martin Scorsese. A lifetime Little Miss Sunshine Jackie Earle Haley Little Children Little Miss Sunshine Jesus Camp Film editor, grandiose catnip for the Academy an illogical hunch he’ll upend bookies’ the shock waves will probably topple survivor, and likably boisterous in Little plucky, rags-to-riches story will play achievement award in all but name. The Queen Alan Arkin Little Miss Sunshine The Queen My Country My Country Guardian voters. favourite Forest Whitaker. the Hollywood sign. Miss Sunshine. well with the voters. Should win: Paul Greengrass. For his Unlimited Should win: Letters From Iwo Jima. Should win: Ryan Gosling. Riveting as a Should win: Penélope Cruz. A revelation Should win: Jackie Earle Haley. For Should win: Jennifer Hudson. For cool-headed mastery of United 93. Best Actor Best Supporting Actress Best Adapted Screenplay Best Foreign Arguably Eastwood’s most humane and crack-addicted young teacher. in Volver: her best performance by a creating the fi nest pathetic-yet- providing the one truly soulful element Should have been a contender: Leonardo DiCaprio Blood Diamond Adriana Barraza Babel Borat: Cultural Learnings of America Language Film daring work to date. Should have been a contender: Ion country mile. dangerous bogeyman since Norman in Dreamgirls. Mel Gibson. Yes, yes, I know Ryan Gosling Half Nelson Babel for Make Benefi t of Kazakhstan After the Wedding Denmark Should have been a contender: United Fiscuteanu. for his deadpan tour-de- Should have been a contender: Kate Bates. Should have been a contender: Eva — but Apocalypto showed such lunatic Forest Whitaker The Last King Jennifer Hudson Dreamgirls Children of Men Days of Glory Algeria 93. Few fi lms made such an impact, or force in The Death of Mr Lazarescu. Dickie for Road. Surely they could Should have been a contender: Leslie Green. The Bond babe is such base panache. of Scotland Abigail Breslin Little The Departed Pan’s Labyrinth Mexico raised so many issues. have found room for one more Brit. Phillips. If O’Toole can be nominated, matter. Green worked a kind of alchemy The Pursuit of Happyness Miss Sunshine Little Children The Lives of Others Germany why not his cantankerous cohort? on the role. Peter O’Toole Venus Notes on a Scandal Notes on a Scandal Water Canada Monkey Goes for: Babel After an initial lack of Goes for: Leonardo DiCaprio. Sniff s Goes for: . Some indecision Goes for: Eddie Murphy. No messing Goes for: Jennifer Hudson. It looks like Goes for: Stephen Frears. Heading off , Best Actress Best Director Best Song Best Animated Feature The cat interest, he lies down across the posters tentatively at Leo, then wanders over this time. He initially seems to be doing about here: he heads straight for he’s moving straight for Cate Blanchett. he stops just to sniff hopefully at Frears The Devil Alejandro González Iñárritu Babel Our Town Cars Cars of both Babel and The Departed, then to stand between Forest Whitaker and his patriotic duty and favouring Helen Murphy and sits down. But then he stops with his front paws and the Queen. His job done, he makes Wears Prada Martin Scorsese The Departed Listen Dreamgirls Happy Feet — alas for Scorsese — adjusts his back Will Smith. Looks at them both carefully Mirren, then reconsiders and turns on Jennifer Hudson. Diffi cult one to call, tracks for a warm place to sleep by the Kate Winslet Little Children Letters from Dreamgirls Monster House legs so that he is squarely on Babel. then heads back for Leo. to Judi Dench. Lets out small meow, but in readjusting himself to clean his radiator. Judi Dench Notes on a Scandal Iwo Jima Patience Dreamgirls stretches, and settles himself squarely front leg, it seems Hudson has the edge. Helen Mirren The Queen Stephen Frears The Queen I Need To Wake Up Honorary Award on top of her picture. Well, she is Penélope Cruz Volver Paul Greengrass United 93 An Inconvenient Truth playing a cat-lover...

Welles again the following year, when and . Swank, with two of Scorsese’s most remarkable fi lms his real masterpiece, The Magnifi cent her two expressions and her many, were both seen off at the last fence by Ambersons, was mugged and left for many teeth, fi rst won best actress for mediocre movies from superstar actors BE INSPIRED Oscar’s greatest dead by, of all people, Mrs Min iver. playing a woman pretending to be a turned dreary directors. In 1980, Raging man; her second, for Million Dollar Bull, a labour of love that summarised BE INSPIRED The greatest fi lm magician of his Baby, playing a female boxer who looks all the great advances of the new “DIDN'T YOU KNOW? THEY CAN 3 home country — indeed, a man who scarily like . It’s the reverse Hollywood of the , was beaten by helped to build but then outgrew his version of the Tootsie tranny template ’s very ordinary Ordinary ONLY KILL ME WITH A crimes own national fi lm industry — Alfred for Oscar-snagging. People. And in 1990, just when you OSCAR WINNING Hitchcock spent the next 20 years in thought Scorsese might have earned happy Californian exile building a body Ah, the glory years of the Hollywood himself a little Oscar justice, Goodfellas GOLDEN BULLET.” The Academy vote of work so singular and technically 6renaissance! What bounty was crapped on by Kevin Costner’s striking that it still throbs and hums besmeared our screens in that halcyon bland and unremarkable Dances With MOVIES FROM £4 T.E. LAWRENCE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA with lessons for young fi lm-makers season of brave cinematic trailblazers Wolves. Even a lesser Scorsese movie, doesn’t always get it today. And he never won an Oscar. Not building their cathedrals of son et The Aviator in 2004, lost to the slick and for Notorious, not for Rear Window, lumière… Oh, wait, 1976 was the year meretricious Million Dollar Baby. An right. John Patterson nor Vertigo nor Psycho nor The Birds. Earthquake came out, wasn’t it? Ah, but even lesser movie, The Departed, will lists the 10 it should In 1967, when his creative high tide had it was also a year with a stunning line- probably net Marty his guilt-Oscar this long since ebbed, they dragged him out, up for the best picture nod. It seemed year, 31, 27 and 17 years too late. £4 £4 £5 £6 pink and beaming, his usual sinisterly for once as if geriatric Hollywood (ie, be most ashamed of avuncular old self, and slapped the the fools who vote) had recognised The enormous condescension special Irving Thalberg Memorial award the new breed and fi nally understood. 9of posterity is all that Kramer In 1994, Forrest Gump was the in his hot little hand. It’s the kind of Look at those nominees: Alan J Pakula’s Vs Kramer deserved, and a quarter- 1perfect movie tie-in for the Gingrich prize conferred on those already on the one masterpiece, All the President’s century on that’s all it has left. A TV takeover of Congress the same year. Like fast track to the emergency room or a Men, which changed America’s political movie gussied up with cutesy star the New Right, Gump was culturally plot at Forest Lawn. It’s like ambulance- language forever; Network, which turns, an adorable kid and a vaguely retrograde, politically reactionary and chasing, a guilty acknowledgment of predicted, almost to the letter, the misogynist undertone, it beat out Bob self-servingly revisionist about matters past sins by the voters. very media-industrial complex now Fosse’s magnifi cently dyspeptic All That ranging from the Ku Klux Klan and strangling America’s national discourse; Jazz and Martin Ritt’s rah-rah Norma Vietnam to the Black Power movement The victory of Carol Reed’s Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory, a proper Rae. But the 800-pound gorilla in the © Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. © 2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. and Aids as God’s vengeance for unremarkable musical Oliver! over leftie movie from a major studio; and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that night © 2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. 4 © 2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. promiscuous, citifi ed women. Writer- ’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Taxi Driver, the most shocking and was ’s last gasp BEST PERFORMANCE BY BEST PICTURE (1985) BEST PERFORMANCE BY BEST PERFORMANCE BY director Robert Zemeckis’s message in 1969 is another sad reminder of kinetic movie of the decade, by its as a great director, Apocalypse Now. It AN ACTOR IN A LEADING AN ACTRESS IN A AN ACTOR IN A LEADING was — crudely summarised, as he’d like exactly how clueless and out of touch greatest new fi lm-maker. And what arrived trailing a big, badass reputation ROLE (2002) LEADING ROLE (1976) ROLE (1999) it — stay stupid, stay home, don’t ask the Academy was in the cauldron years actually won? Rocky, of course. Colour that did it no favours come voting questions and hate those who do. It of the late 1960s. Vietnam, the most me punch-drunk and push me down the time. Incredible to think, now time has was the biggest-grossing movie of the important, convulsive issue of the stairs. sifted away the chaff of 1979, that this £7 £7 £7 £8 year, ensuring easy victory over , was basically off the table as a movie, whose catchphrases have sunk insurgent indie Pulp Fiction which, for movie subject, but surely Kubrick’s A formidable reputation, the long- into the American lexicon, whose best all its shortcomings, was easily the most 2001, which echoed the soon-to-climax 7term acquisition of power and sequences are seared into the world’s vigorous and inventive mainstream Nasa space programme and off ered a infl uence in Tinseltown, and a steady collective retina, could have been American movie of the year. Pulp boon to acid dealers nationwide, had adherence to the gutless conformity eighty-sixed by a trifl e like Kramer Vs Fiction had a Gump of its own, except more contemporary resonance than of the McCarthy era were more than Kramer. he was called the Gimp, and they wisely a big-budget musical set a century enough to compensate for a boring

kept him locked and chained in the STEVE STARR/CORBIS earlier. But Hollywood was demented talent and an even more boring fi lm. Everybody loves an underdog, basement. by its anachronistic attachment to the Cecil B DeMille’s The Greatest Show on 10 but this is ridiculous. Little Miss Broadway musical throughout the Earth, a toe-curlingly tedious and empty Sunshine had such a struggle getting surfed into the 1941 rock’n’roll 1960s, and thus Kubrick was circus melodrama, may rank as the made that one was inclined to forgive its © 1962, renewed 1990 Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. TM ® & Copyright © 2004 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved. © 2003 MGM Home Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2 Oscars on a tidal wave of nine doomed to lose. worst movie ever to win best picture (I’d messy script and its poorly integrated © 2005 BY LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. nominations for his directorial debut, put Gump up there, mind). And yet it cast. That mood lasted until I got to ACHIEVEMENT IN BEST SCREENPLAY BEST PICTURE (1963) BEST ADAPTED WINNER OF SEVEN ® , including four for himself Pssst! has an Oscar. So was able to see off competition as stiff as the parking lot, by which time I’d DIRECTION (2006) (1996) SCREENPLAY (1973) as actor, co-screenwriter, director and 5does . has High Noon, Moulin Rouge and The Quiet forgotten everything about it. Until the INCLUDING BEST PICTURE, BEST DIRECTOR co-producer. But Hollywood, always two. It hardly matters whom they beat Man. If the 1950s off ered an equally Oscar nominations were announced. threatened by genius, had grown tired out for these dubious victories: what’s depressing example of Oscars for This mouse that roared should have of the Boy Wonder and all his smart disturbing is that they were rewarded emptiness, it was surely the best picture been stomped on a long time ago. 3 FOR o £20 f y f OR AS PRICED l e n r o a p k p c AND BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY (1963) li to * Offer only applies to in-store CDs / DVDs bearing these stickers e s . Titles are subject to availability. While stocks last. s d to stickere new ideas, no matter that he was for deeply unimpressive work. Angela victory of 1956 for Around the World in The notion that it’s fi t to compete for Individual titles which appear elsewhere in the store, outside of this campaign may be priced differently. Prices may vary online. revolutionising studio fi lm-making Bassett, who could act these three to a Eighty Days, which is quite unwatchable an Oscar in any category — it doesn’t ACADEMY AWARDS® is the registered trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and . with every creative decision he made. standstill while doing her ironing, was today. What were they thinking in the even come close — is further evidence Best picture went to one of the worst right when she mocked Berry’s victory 1950s? It’s not like they were on drugs of the Academy’s mile-wide streak of movies in the monolithic canon of for the forgettable (and indeed, now yet in Hollywood. sentimentality and gullibility in the : How Green Was My Valley. thoroughly forgotten) Monster’s Ball. face of a canny Oscar campaign. If this © 1962, renewed 1990 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ACADEMY AWARDS® is the registered trademark and service mark of the Academy of Ford always won more awards during Tomei is a fi ne actress, but her shrill Like most great directors, Scorsese beats The Departed, I expect Martin Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. his more liberal Popular Front period Joisey-goil supporting role in My Cousin 8has endured numerous insults Scorsese to pull out a machine-gun and of the late 30s, and hardly ever for Vinny was a recurring-guest sitcom part at the hands of the Academy. For a fi re randomly into the voting members

his breathtaking westerns, so it’s an EVERETT COLLECTION/REX writ large. Incredibly, among those she man who has done so much to change as they run screaming for the exits. And injustice for him too. They stuck it to From top: Citizen Kane, Marisa Tomei and Rocky beat were , American movie acting, it’s ironic that he’d be within his rights, too.