The 77th Annual Oscars: Our Predictions

We predict The Aviator will win big.

Unlike last year, when Hobbits owned the night, this year’s Academy Awards race is truly a race. Although you can narrow most categories down to just two or three major contenders, just who the eventual winner will turn out to be is almost impossible to say with 100% confidence. Nevertheless, we at threemoviebuffs.com never shrink from expressing our opinion and so here goes our predictions of who will win the major awards this Sunday.

Best Supporting Actress:
Even though The Aviator is Dicaprio's film, Cate Blanchett gives the performance that stays with you. Her first scene playing golf with Hughes is breathless. She rattles on in perfect Hepburn cadence, dazzling both Hughes and the audience. She steals every scene she is in and after her character exits the movie, you wish she had a bigger role. Who she is competing against for the best supporting actress Oscar is moot. She deserves to win regardless of whom else is nominated.

Best Supporting Actor:
Morgan Freeman is superb in Million Dollar Baby. His acting is just so effortless and his interactions with fellow stars Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank are the glue that holds the movie together. Too often, the Academy slights a role that really deserves to be in the leading category, or just the reverse, gives a supporting nod to what is really just a glorified cameo. This, however, is a textbook example of a true supporting role. Let’s look at the competition. Alan Alda is a great talent but his performance in Aviator lacks any real buzz. Jamie Foxx was great in Collateral but hell there’s no way he’ll get both awards. Clive Owen in Closer doesn’t stand a chance. It’s probably the least seen movie in the category. That leaves Thomas Haden Church as the only real competition for his role as the best friend in Sideways. The clincher here is Academy sentiment. Historically the Supporting Acting awards have gone to performers on the autumn side of their careers and Morgan Freeman is one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors who thus far has never won a golden statuette.

Best Actress:
Who knew that lightening could strike twice? Hilary Swank, whose career sank into mediocrity after her first Oscar win for Boys don’t Cry, has managed to elevate herself once again to Academy Award status. Her portrayal of Maggie in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby is a knockout. Sadly for Annette Bening, who is just as deserving of an Oscar for her role in Being Julia, her hopes for a win will be dashed again, as they were when she went up against Swank in 2000. In this case, it’s simply a matter of the big movie riding roughshod over a little movie that not enough people have even heard of, let alone actually watched.

Best Actor:
Jamie Foxx has given the most Oscar worthy performance by an actor this year. Far more than just a spot on impersonation of Ray Charles, Foxx discovers the soul inside the man, showing very clearly the genius of Ray but also the inner demons that tormented him. The Academy has always been a sucker for big showy roles like this one. Yet in the nearly eighty years of Oscar history only three previous performers have won the top acting prize for playing famous real-life singer/entertainers. James Cagney did it way back in 1942 for playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, Barbra Streisand did it in ‘68 as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl and Sissy Spacek followed suit twelve years later as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter. On Sunday night, look for Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles to join this very elite group.

Best Director:
In race almost too close to call, Martin Scorsese should walk away with the best director Oscar, narrowly capturing it from the jaws of Clint Eastwood. And when he does win, it will be for the same reason that so many other long-Oscar-deprived veterans of Hollywood win; his body of work is just too great to be ignored. While the pundits quibble that The Aviator isn’t Marty’s best work (although personally I found it to be his most enjoyable), it’s good enough for no one to feel ashamed about voting for him, which wasn’t the case two years ago when he failed to win for Gangs of New York. So although technically the award will be for The Aviator, it will actually be for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, etc, etc.

Best Picture:
It is long, dramatic and reveres Hollywood history. The Aviator should definitely win the Academy award for Best Picture. All of the competitors are noted for a particular thing, like Sideways writing and wine tasting, Jamie Foxx's performance in Ray, the plot twist in Million Dollar Bay, the British accents (theirs always at least one) in Finding Neverland. The Aviator rises above all of the components that went into making it. It is the most solid film in the pack.