Best Film Slumdog Millionaire The Curious Case of Benjamin Button may have garnered the most Academy Award nominations — thirteen in all — but the romantic-fantasy film apparently has as many fans as it has detractors, while
Frost/Nixon and
The Reader, despite the latter’s World War II/Holocaust subject matter and the fact that Oscar-miracle worker
Harvey Weinstein is behind it, are two dark horses.
Had it been nominated,
The Dark Knight would have been a strong Oscar contender, but since it wasn’t included in the Academy’s shortlist then that’s the end of that.
Like
Brokeback Mountain three years ago,
Slumdog Millionaire has become this year’s Oscar favorite as a result of a mixture of numerous critics’ awards and solid box-office receipts. However, like
Brokeback Mountain,
Slumdog Millionaire may end up suffering from
too much early positive buzz.
In case Academy voters decide that the hyperkinetic drama about a poor young man who wants both to become a millionaire and find the love of his life in modern India isn’t all
that good, I’d say that
Milk, about slain gay civil rights leader
Harvey Milk, would be choice #2. After all, let’s not forget last year’s close-to-home (for most Academy members — who reside in California) gay marriage debacle, which made lots of people realize that anti-gay bigotry remains as alive and as ugly as ever.
Nonetheless, for the time being I’m betting on
Slumdog Millionaire.
Best Foreign-Language Film Waltz with Bashir
The best foreign-language film category is always difficult to predict because only a small percentage of (usually
much older) Academy members vote for the nominees and winners.
My guess would be
Ari Folman’s
Waltz with Bashir (Israel) simply because it revolves around Jewish issues, always a favorite theme among those who vote in that category. Also weighing in its favor are the recent headlines about the war in Gaza, which make
Waltz with Bashir, though set in the early 1980s, a timely entry. As a plus,
Waltz with Bashir has received excellent reviews and has already collected several awards in the US, including a
Golden Globe for best foreign-language film, the
National Society of Film Critics best film award, and the
Los Angeles Film Critics‘ best animated film prize.
The only other major competitor is
Laurent Cantet’s
The Class, France’s entry and last year’s Cannes Film Festival
Palme d’Or winner.
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany),
Departures (Japan), and
Revanche (Austria) are all dark horses.
Best Documentary Feature Man on Wire James Marsh’s
Man on Wire is the odds-son favorite to win the best documentary feature award, as the
Sundance winner has been one of the most widely acclaimed films of 2008 and has already amassed about a couple of dozen awards and mentions from US-based critics’ groups.
Encounters at the End of the World,
Trouble the Water,
The Garden, and
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), no matter how good, have little chance of winning.
Best Animated Feature WALL-E
Despite its flabbergasting loss at the
Annie Awards (to fellow Oscar nominee
Kung Fu Panda), WALL-E is the hands-down winner.
Bolt is the third nominee.
Best Director Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
The fast-paced
Slumdog Millionaire will earn
Danny Boyle his first Academy Award. Whether there’ll be a second or a third somewhere in the future, I have no idea.
In another year,
David Fincher could have been a strong contender for
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but again, the film has a number of detractors.
Ron Howard,
Gus Van Sant, and
Stephen Daldry are the other nominees.
Danny Boyle photo: Ishika Mohan/Courtesy of Fox Searchlight
Courtesy of Focus Features
Best Original Screenplay Dustin Lance Black, Milk
The best original screenplay will be a battle between the gay activist and the lonely robot. Because live-action films tend to be taken more seriously by Academy members, my bet is on
Dustin Lance Black (above, lower photo) for
Milk. In Bruges,
Happy-Go-Lucky, and
Frozen River are the other nominees.
Best Adapted Screenplay Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
With a screenplay by
Simon Beaufoy (right) adapted from
Vikas Swarup’s novel,
Slumdog Millionaire should come out on top in this category as, generally speaking, the best film winner also takes a best screenplay award.
If there is an upset in this category, I’d say that it would be
David Hare’s screenplay for
The Reader.
Frost/Nixon,
Doubt, and
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are the other nominees.
Beaufoy photo: Courtesy of Fox Searchlight