The Award Season is Full of Grit and Made for Kings

Every year at this time I am excited to see what films the Academy has chosen to nominate.  I have this weird Love/Hate relationship with the Oscars and the Academy, but it is like a weird cultural train wreck that I can never look away from.

The Academy has this thing they do almost every year which is to pick the best movies and performances to nominate, but then (usually) give the award based on popularity or politics, at least in my humble opinion.  This year I do not think it will be any different, but we are always hoping.

This year I will run down the list in the two main categories that I am concerned with and give my predictions as to who will win, why, and who should win and why they will not.

Let us start with my favorite topic:  Best Director.

David Fincher for The Social Network
The Coen Brothers for True Grit 
Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
Tom Hooper for The King's Speech
David O. Russell for The Figher

These are some very high-class directors and a very competitive match up, both in my pick to actually win and my pick on who should win.  David Fincher is an amazing director that with a normal group and with one of his normal films I would choose hands down, but in this group with this film...he is not my first choice in any way.  The Social Network is a good, well directed, well acted film, but is it the best direction of the year?  No.  What it is though is the most popular film of this group and the most likely that the Academy will grant with this honor.

The Coen Brothers are one of my favorite production teams that make some of the highest caliber of American films in the past 20 years.  I love them and I love their version of the Charles Portis novel True Grit.  It is, as the name states, gritty and fun at the same time.  The acting was wonderful with two of the best performances of the year, but as with David Fincher, in this group with these films...I have to pick against them.

Tom Hooper is a wonderfully gifted director with such credits as John Adams and Elizabeth I and has shown good poise with her newest offering, but in then end what make this film great is the performance or Colin Firth, not the direction.

This leads us to David O. Russell who is one of the most underrated directors of the past 15 years who brought us the great films of I Heart Huckabees and Spanking the Monkey.  While a great film mind, with this group he does not and should not stand a chance.

Now we get to my horse in this race.  Mr. Darren Aronofsky.  I love this man and I love his neo, semi-Kubrickian, art-snob style of wonderful film making.  I have not and will not miss his work and with Black Swan, this was no exception.  Anyone that could make such a haunting film and produce the performance out of Natalie Portman should win every award in the book.  He won't win though.  The Academy does not like Artsy directors anymore and for some reason seems to find all art films as pretentious.  He will continue to make great movies and sooner or later the Academy will feel that he has paid his dues and grant him recognition as they will this year with David Fincher.

Now, as I have rambled for quite awhile, the Best Picture award is about int he same boat the as Best Director.  I am sure that The Social Network will win surpassing the great films mentioned above along with the other great movies of the year in Toy Story 3, Winter's Bone, Incenption, and 127 Hours, the last being directed by the great Danny Boyle whom the Academy finally granted the Best Director Award to a couple of year ago after 15 years of making brilliant films that never got their attention.

So to wrap it all up, here are my emotional pick, the horses that I am rooting for in this race:
Best Director: Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
Best Picture: True Grit
In the end though, in my heart deep down and am completely sold that both of those awards are going to go to:

Oh well, it is what it is and we cannot force the Academy to do anything.  While I am not trying to take anything away from David Fincher or this fun and almost Vonnegutesque film, I doubt you will ever convince me that this was the best film of the year or the best directed.  David has paid his dues in the film industry with such greats as Se7en, Panic Room, Fight Club, and the beautiful sad The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which if you did not cry during that movie, you are probably not human...



...Same goes for Toy Story 3.