THE 2007 MURIELS WRAP-UP: BEST PICTURE, HIGHLIGHTS IN INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENTS

The Palme D’Guinea Pig, otherwise known as the Muriel Award for Best Film of 2007 has been announced! It was a close vote, but despite a last-minute surge in voting on behalf of Because I Said So (Kidding! The Muriels have far more credibility than that!), the winner is... Well, why don't you go check for yourself. Paul Clark, curator of the Muriels, asked me to write briefly about the movie, and he has gathered seven other writers to wax ecstatic about the big winner, as well as the four runners-up. Here's Paul himself on one of the five favorites among Muriel voters:

“Much has been made of the obsessive attention to detail David Fincher brought to Zodiac, but his brilliance is in how he uses this meticulousness to subvert the expectations we have from a murder mystery. Fincher uses the minutiae of the Zodiac case to illustrate the roadblocks in the way of the case being solved… After nearly a quarter of a century, the case is more or less back where it started- literally, as the first character we meet is also the last we see- and all the hard work and sacrifice and obsession over the Zodiac case has amounted to little or less to nearly everyone involved.”

And that's not all...

Steven Carlson on Ratatouille: “What impresses most, though, is the way that Bird uses the American perception of animation as kid stuff to his thematic advantage. With food as his metaphor and Anton Ego as his vessel, Bird puts forth a consideration of the simple loves that start many of us on the road to cinephilia.”


James Frazier on Gone Baby Gone: “When was the last time a mystery was so thematically rich and deeply moving, utilizing an impeccable balance of cerebral, emotional, and visceral pleasures? Ben Affleck's directorial debut seems like the work of a seasoned filmmaker; its intimate familiarity with the lower-class Boston setting, the gripping but methodically paced narrative, the seemingly casual elicitation of great performances from an excellent ensemble cast. This suggests not the work of a rookie, but a real pro, or at least someone who paid damn close attention to the way his better directors ran the show.”

Alex Ross: “No Country for Old Men is the most quietly ferocious movie you'll ever see. I can't stop thinking about the brilliant sound design choices by Joel and Ethan Coen that lift the movie from a simple genre exercise into another level of terror and excitement. In the same way Ennio Morricone fashioned a theme out of creaks, drips and cracks for the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West, here we have an entire "score" made out of footsteps, desert wind, breezes through an open window, distant passing trains and simply the sound a man makes when he's contemplating what his next action will be that won't result in his death. All these sounds are heightened because no note (whether dialog or effects) goes wasted, wrapping the viewer in silence and putting us in the same mindset as the characters, where fate seems to be waiting behind the corner.”

Andrew Bemis: “There Will Be Blood shouldn't work. With its collision of stark images of a landscape about to be violated, abrasive music and unapologetically large-scale performances, Paul Thomas Anderson's fifth film could have easily been a well-intentioned mess and an interesting curiosity on a developing filmography. Instead, There Will Be Blood achieves a demented harmony and proves its much-debated director as one of our strongest and most original auteurs. For all the filmic influences woven into the film, it's no pastiche - no film in 2007 was so singularly strange, beautiful and disturbing.”


There’s also an entire section devoted to short pieces by writers in which they hail films that were less popular with Muriel voters, the Muriel Best Picture Also-Rans:

Craig Kennedy on Syndromes and a Century: "It sounds like a mess, but I loved every minute of it. What does it all mean? I don't know. You tell me. Unattached to logic, but somehow managing to beguile and captivate, it's a fascinating cinematic puzzle that defies easy explanation."

James Frazier on 3:10 to Yuma: “Out of all of the great films this year, I wouldn't have guessed that my favorite would be the remake of a Western, but here it is…”

Paul Clark: “Lake of Fire illuminates what may be the only reasonable method of trying to resolve the abortion debate- not shouting, but listening. To take time to hear the beliefs of others with an open mind rather than simply propping ourselves up with our prejudices. To learn to see the complexity of the debate, rather than operating simply in shades of black and white, like children or, yes, zealots. And to try to understand the women- the conscious centers of the abortion debate- rather than simply demonizing them.”

Hedwig van Driel on The Darjeelign Limited: “Anderson knows just how to use Owen Wilson's head and Adrian Brody's long limbs, and while there are some too-precious moments, this movie has been far too easily dismissed."

Jason Alley on Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: “The fractured time structure has taken some flak, but I found it extremely effective at slowly peeling back the layers of this family’s still-open wounds like an onion. Even the fact that Hoffman and Hawke look nothing alike becomes a vital part of the story."


And speaking of Also-Rans, Paul doesn’t let the ball drop with films. There’s an entire section of the Muriels devoted to Individual Achievements that tended to get lost in the year-end shuffle toward award season, and the Oscars in particular.

My thanks to Paul for inviting me to join in the fun as one of the Muriels voters and contributors, and for giving me a forum to write not only about the 2007 Muriel Best Picture winner, but Carice van Houten and John Carroll Lynch as well. I’m already looking forward to the 2008 awards; I just hope we have as much good stuff to write about this time next year as we do this year.

O DEATH, O DEATH: Two Perspectives, One End

"Death? Why this fuss about death. Use your imagination. Try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." - Isaac Asimov

“One of the great pleasures of No Country for Old Men has been the huge amount of introspective analysis it has inspired in critics and bloggers and blog commenters and the movie-going community in general. It's been going on to a degree since the movie played Cannes, it really picked up when the movie was finally released, it has continued these months before the Oscars and it continues even today. I don't know how else you could describe a great movie.”

– Craig Kennedy, from a comment posted under the article “No Country Under the Skin” found at Jim Emerson’s Scanners

*************************************************************************************

The few words Craig left under the latest consideration of the workings of No Country for Old Men at Jim’s site really hit home with me. It did so because it made me realize just how valuable the amount of intelligent discourse on this movie, which some, as is their right, dismiss simply as a well-crafted genre thriller, has been to my appreciation and understanding of it. There have been miles and miles of great back-and-forths at Jim’s sites, and here as well, as to the relative merits, weaknesses, meanings and intentions of No Country for Old Men, and as with any great film the discussion is unlikely to stop now that it has received the official coronation of awards season.
It so happens that the centerpiece of the article under which Craig’s comment appeared was a letter written to RogerEbert.com by a man named Nicholas Rizzo who was in the midst of considering his own mortality “on several fronts” when he wrote it. Rizzo’s point of view reframed the discussion of the film yet again, away from thoughts of the historical consistency of dark forces crushing men’s souls, or of Chigurh as Evil Incarnate, toward one in which the movie speaks about the inevitability of aging and death. Rizzo wrote:

“I don't think this movie was so much about an ultimate evil so much as our ultimate ending. Rather, about our ultimate aging, decline in usefulness whether true or not or simply relative to the youth of any generation. The ultimate finality of time. Its categorical nature is represented by Anton's "code of ethics" that can't be broken. People always saying, ‘You don't have to do this,’ is their bargaining with the finality of their own death... not with Anton.”

I read Jim’s article again today, and Craig’s comment for the first time, on the same day that my best friend’s mother sent along an e-mail linked to a video that she insisted would change the perspectives of those on her e-mail list who would just take the time to watch it. Oh, great, more time-consuming Internet platitudes, thought I, having been rendered just a little bit cynical about all the feel-good pieties and other such stuff I’m routinely subjected to by well-meaning family members of my own. One other hurdle for me: it was an excerpt from the Oprah Winfrey Show. I usually like to get all my literary advice, as well as thoughts on matters emotional, psychological, sociological and financial from friends, family and/or professionals—for years it’s been good, solid policy for me to leave Oprah the hell out of as much as I possibly can.

But I weathered the embarrassment of watching a 10-minute segment of Oprah at work today, and I must say I’m glad I did. The segment is a reprise of Professor Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture,” a talk he gave to students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University which became a viral hit on the Internet, which was taped and has been viewed over a million times since its original posting. Pausch is a virtual reality pioneer who originally gave the lecture as a way of dealing with the fact that he was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and had, at the time of the Oprah taping, but months to live. Pausch’s decision to deal with his situation in a head-on manner is intended to inspire others in similar dire circumstances, to be sure, but it’s also a legacy to communicate his philosophy of life to his three young sons, who are likely too young to understand exactly what their father is going through, let alone his perspective on it.

And it is a particularly illuminating video to consider in light of the most recent discussion about No Country for Old Men. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell makes certain decisions about how he will live out his life with the knowledge that he has faced death and will continue to face it, even as he recedes from a life that forces him to confront it on a daily basis. The discussions on Jim’s site and elsewhere surrounding these points of view on the film tend to make it an even richer experience. I’ve been shaking and stirring Pausch’s remarkable fortitude and strength around in my head all day, mixing it up with the brutal realizations afforded by the Coen Brothers’ film, and I must say the resulting cocktail has been inspirational indeed. A clear-eyed perspective on death may be a difficult thing to come to grips with, and no two of us, I dare say, is likely to come away thinking about the subject in the same way. But no matter how we approach it, death does indeed come to us all. And it seems to me that experiencing No Country for Old Men and Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” are two not-mutually-exclusive ways that we can face it up to it ourselves and decide what we can do until it comes knocking.



Randy Pausch presents a reprise of his “Last Lecture” on The Oprah Winfrey Show

THE 2007 MURIELS: BEST LEAD PERFORMANCE (FEMALE), CARICE VAN HOUTEN

The 2007 Muriel Awards march on! Paul Clark’s alternate Oscars have logged, since we last checked in, entries on Best Cinematography, Best DVD Release, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Performance (Female), Best Supporting Performance (Male), Best Cinematic Moment of 2007 and Best Director.

This morning Paul has posted my thoughts on the Muriel Award Winner for Best Lead Performance (Female) of 2007, Carice van Houten for Paul Verhoeven’s wild and harrowing Black Book.

I’ll have a couple of other pieces for the Muriel Awards before the celebration is finished, and will, of course, keep you up to date on when you can see those exclusively on Paul’s site Silly Hats Only.

IT'S THE COENS' COUNTRY AND WELCOME TO IT: Last-Minute Thoughts on Oscar 2007

There’s an otherworldliness to watching the red carpet parade and the Oscar ceremony itself, even when you live in Los Angeles and watch the madness as it begins with the cordoning off of streets one week before the big show. But when you see the Oscar telecast in a setting largely untouched by everyday Oscar fever and hype—say, Eugene, Oregon, where I saw Sunday night’s trophy give-away—it seems even more remote than ever. Saturday night my best friend, his wife and I took in a packed showing of No Country for Old Men at the local mall septillion-plex as a way of setting in motion the Oscar steam engine that would pull into the station round about that same time tomorrow. It was, however, a bit of a surprise to me when several members of the audience for the film were vocally derisive when the screen went to black after Tommy Lee Jones’ dream monologue, not a great harbinger for general audience acceptance of No Country despite it being the Coen Brothers’ biggest hit to date. And the reaction was certainly a big difference from the movie-hip reverence with which the movie is more typically greeted down here in Tinseltown. There was laughter, some hissing, and the woman behind me was complaining loudly: "That's up for an Academy Award? Jesus Christ, we wasted the opportunity to see a good movie tonight!" I'd like to think she took me completely seriously when I turned around and suggested she run straight to the 9:45 showing of 27 Dresses in order to get the taste of the awful piece of shit she just endured out of her mouth. (Update: My friend Blaaagh is the one who accompanied me, and as he reminds me in the comments column below, the majority of the audience seemed to be with the movie. If I made it sound somehow as though there were a riot about to break out, I apologize.)

I still believed going in that No Country would reign supreme on the night; but I also had pretty good reason to believe, given the fact that neither Transformers nor Pirates of the Caribbean 3 were nominated for major awards, that the show itself would be a ratings dud. (In fact, reports Tuesday confirm that it may be the lowest-rated Oscar show ever.) But since I’m not an ABC executive, I can’t see any good reason to agonize over that. Oscar will honor whoever Oscar will honor, hit or no hit, ratings or no ratings.

And that was proven out immediately when the costume design Oscar went to Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a movie I thought the Academy would work strenuously to ignore this night. It was also an instant severe blow to my chances in the office Oscar pool. But in a strange way, knowing I’d screwed up so early kind of took the pressure off of following my own pool ballot and wondering if anyone else was doing as well as I was. Well, Elizabeth: TGA turned out to be a nasty surprise to just about everyone, which meant that all was not lost just yet re my movie-centric gambling. And aneurysm-inducing Diablo Cody prize notwithstanding, the rest of the night had many nice surprises, a couple of wince-inducing ones, and only a few bumps of any note along the way.


One of my favorite moments of the night was the encore appearance of Best Song co-winner Marketa Irglova, whose mike went dead after partner Glen Hansard’s effusive and sincere thank-you (“Make art! Make art!”). First, Stewart’s brilliant off-the-cuff remark: “God, that guy is soooo arrogant!” Then, whether Stewart prodded for it (I’d like to think he did) or it was a producer’s idea, Irglova coming back out to finish what she never got started was a perfect people’s Oscar moment, and well-deserved. I just hope it makes Sid Ganis, Gilbert Cates and the other showmen behind the Oscars realize that playing off the winners before they’ve had a chance to express themselves—in essence bowdlerizing before the fact the very reason the Oscars are held in the first place, to honor specific achievement in film and give the winners their moment in the spotlight— is an unpleasant manifestation of Hollywood arrogance. Hopefully, if the Irglova Experiment proves anything to these folks, it’s that the acceptance speeches should be the last things cut or otherwise mercilessly truncated.

If they're looking for Ocar flab to trim, well, I for one almost always get squirmiest during the Best Song performances. Only rarely does the category offer anything close to the caliber of Hansard and Irgolva’s moment. The song from August Rush was probably better than the movie, though the three Enchanted numbers were deadly dull. I thought it was fairly brave of Amy Adams to go out there, basically in the character of Enchanted’s Princess Giselle, and chirp out a number that skirts satire, but ultimately backs away from it, like “Happy Working Song.” But I have to admit alliance with Kim Morgan when she said that Adams’ charmed innocence act is getting a touch thin. How about her and Patrick Dempsey in a remake of Panic in Needle Park for a change of pace, eh?

Kim reminds us of some truly wonderful moments, though. Javier Bardem’s win, and then his heartfelt acceptance speech, half of which he dedicated to his mother in Spanish, had my tears flowing early on. And in addition to Tilda Swinton making me look like a much better prognosticator than I really am, her gobsmacked speech, which began with a very sincere-sounding “Oh, no,” quickly spun into a riot of sideways Clooney worship, a big noogie from a freshly Oscar-winning co-star to her leading man that was utterly disarming.

And I would agree with Kim also that I did not need to be reminded of Jerry Seinfeld and Bee Movie again—how much did DreamWorks/Paramount have to spring for that little appearance, which amounted to little more than an ad for the upcoming DVD, I wonder. But, that said, any bit that gets a clip from Irwin Allen’s The Swarm into play on Hollywood’s night of nights is a-okay in my book. The writers made excellent hay of a clip from the ersatz disaster pic, as the climax to a bit in which Seinfeld’s bee points himself out in famous movies bee scenes (including the attack on Bill Murray from Rushmore).


But it also reminded me that, back in the spring of 1979, Oscar actually invited The Swarm to the real party. Allen’s go-to costume designer Paul Zastupnevich, whose career with the disastermeister stretches back at least as far as Lost In Space, got the second of three Oscar nominations he would get for his arguably undistinguished work on Allen’s movies for The Swarm-- the first being The Poseidon Adventure, the last being, appropriately enough, When Time Ran Out…

As far as the host goes, I thought Jon Stewart was pretty much right on the button most of the night; only going flat a few times over four hours is a pretty good track record. In addition to the great cracks about Clinton and Obama (“Normally when you see a black man or woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty. How else are we supposed to know it’s the future?!”) and Norbit (“Even Norbit got a nomination, which I think is great. Too often the Academy ignores movies that aren't good."), he even took time to play a match of Wii tennis with the 11-year-old vocalist from the August Rush song. And then there’s that whole bring-back-Marketa business, the goodwill off of which I think he’ll be riding for a good long time.

Of course the Coen Brothers were at once benignly cracked and expectedly short-winded (“Thank you,” murmured Ethan upon conquering his mile-wide grin after their first win of the night) and sincerely eloquent (“Thank you for letting us play in our little corner of the sandbox.”) These two were only slightly uncomfortable and seemed to really enjoy this strange moment that they so clearly deserved, punctuated as it was by cuts to Joel’s wife Frances McDormand, who was beside herself with delight, and the unexpected sight of Cormac McCarthy himself in the audience, surely seated near the No Country, giving his tacit blessing to the coronation of this blistering and brilliant adaptation of his work. (One only hopes that director John Hillcoat, of last year’s The Proposition, matches the standard set by the Coens with his own McCarthy adaptation, that of The Road, the filming of which is what accounts for the robust beard attached to Viggo Mortensen’s face on Oscar night.)


And if I might get a little E! channel for a moment, I was most delighted to see Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Marion Cotillard, Katherine Heigl and Jennifer Garner amongst the females looking especially lovely Sunday night. The boys were best represented by Javier Bardem, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Viggo Mortensen and Josh Brolin, who I wish I could be on Oscar night just so I could sit next to Diane Lane. And a special shout-out to Gary Busey: Hope you enjoyed the festivities, friendo, as it’s probably the last one you’ll ever be invited to!

Finally, since she made writing this piece ever so much more difficult by trumping all my own reactions and doing so in such an entertaining way, I will leave my last word on Oscars 2007 in the capable hands of Kim Morgan, who counts herself with me in the anti-Juno brigade. I had my aneurysm, to be sure, and I knew it was coming, so now that the threat of major Oscar damage is past I wish Juno Godspeed on its way toward an enormously successful DVD which I can completely ignore. But before I do, here’s Kim on Diablo Cody:

“Diablo Cody, beloved hipster-ex-stripper-screenwriter-goddess, wins Best Original Screenplay for the indie hit Juno, a movie soaked with forced, overly quippy one-liners that either delighted or seriously exasperated audiences (I was one of those exasperated)-- and all she can come up with is, ‘I especially want to thank my fellow nominees.’ Or, ‘This is for the writers!’ Diablo! Honest to blog! Where was your arsenal of smarty-pants wisecracks and pop-culture Soupy Sales-isms? This is the Oscars, Home Skillet. This is your time on stage. As you wrote, this is ‘one doodle that can't be un-did.’ But hey, you pulled off the leopard dress, tats and your Louise Brooks bob. So at least you looked great. But... another thing. What was with your glum exit offstage? Was Harrison Ford taking you to Oscar detention?”

Ah, Diablo in Oscar detention. What an image. That’ll definitely last me until next year!

AND THE OSCAR GOES TO...

My friend Nathaniel R of The Film Experience has posted his Oscar predictions and now must sweat it out like the rest of us to see what happens tonight. In addition, he has created the hilarious image below suggesting what he thinks might take place, and what I hope takes place, once all the pre-game festivities are dispensed with and the statues start flying. I hope your Oscar ballots are all ready to go. If not, visit Nathaniel and crib from him instead of me-- you're likely to do a lot better in the long run! I will be sitting high atop Springfield, Oregon, just under the water tower, overlooking the fogged-in, rained-in cityscape of Eugene, and doing my best to cheer the Coen Brothers on to a historic four-for-four as the show gets underway. Enjoy it, everyone, for tomorrow is just another work day. And be sure to have a list at hand, as I surely will, to remind you of all the great movies and artists that never won Oscars which you can use to console yourself if and when your favorite takes a dive.


There's more to this swell picture, and Nathaniel will ensure it meets your eye...

UPDATE FEB. 25 10:30 p.m.: Just off the plane from Eugene, and I'm heading to bed. It is nice to know that, the inevitable Diablo Cody statue notwithstanding, the Juno bug has effectively been slain. Now it's on to a hugely profitable DVD that I don't have to pay any attention to! How nice it was to go to bed last night knowing the best picture of 2007 actually won the award. I will try to cobble together some more thoughts tomorrow, before all memory of Oscar fades. But until I do, please check out Kim Morgan's Oscar piece at MSN.com. Kim says just about everything I would say and more, and she's a lot more fun to read. I'm not sure there's anything left to say after her keen article, but if I think of something I'll do so tomorrow.

THE 2007 OSCAR WRAP-UP: NO LOCAL PARTY, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD-SCHOOL OSCAR BAIT

Why, Mr. Day-Lewis, did you just win an Oscar for Best Actor, or are you just glad to see me?

Thank God, AMPAS and the WGA—we will not be denied our Oscar party this year! I’ve had Oscar gatherings at my house every year since I moved to Los Angeles 20 years ago, and, oh, what a crushing blow it would have been to have had to swallow the news that this year there would be no memorable moments from the Kodak Theater. As Conan O’Brien speculated last January in his writer’s strike diary (published in Entertainment Weekly), “Blasphemy! Horror! The Golden Globes are canceled and the Oscars may be next. I want no part of a world that refuses to congratulate itself.” Fortunately, we have been spared the waves of dementia and disorientation that plagued O’Brien in the final, desperate passages of his tome. All is well in Hollywood. The Oscars will be on your TV this coming Sunday, February 24—pregame shows beginning as early as 3:00 p.m. Well, they are in Los Angeles anyway, where our priorities are, to quote Conrad Veidt in The Thief of Bagdad, as straight as the letter alif. The streets surrounding Hollywood and Highland— the heart of Hollywood, in other words— have been blocked off since last Sunday. God help the poor family intent on spending $60 just to get into the El Capitan to see Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus—Best of Both Worlds that has to run that security gauntlet.

The difference for me this year is that I will not be watching the Oscars from home, but instead from high atop a neighborhood hill in Springfield, Oregon, overlooking Autzen Stadium, where I will be taking in the glitter in the luxurious manse of my best friend Bruce (Blaaagh to many of y’all). My wife and daughters pretend that this is sad news, that they will miss me. I suspect, however, that the opposite is true. This year, no grown men will be screaming at the TV over the announcement of the winner of the Best Sound Mixing award. No stale Cheetos will be ground into the carpet. There will be no post-show moping about how one day Laura Linney will get her due, goddamn it.

(I kid about the volatility and general level of raucous fun of my Oscar party, but I swear to you that on any given year it looks nothing like this:



No offense, but anyone showing up to my house in a tux, or even a tux T-shirt, on Oscar Night, would be shown the back door.)

The girls will get to bed on this Oscar school night on time, perhaps even early, with no swearing and drunken laughter to keep them awake. My wife will shut off the lights five minutes after the girls are tucked in and proceed to tuck herself in with a good book, most likely one that would be far too literary and difficult for Hollywood to ever consider adapting. She will fall asleep without the sound of Billy Bush, Joan Rivers, Richard Roeper and the local ABC news crew, all decked out in tuxes and gowns, squawking and echoing inside her skull. She will, this one year, strive to forget that Hollywood even exists on this night of nights. And she will go to sleep not knowing, yet suspecting, that once again, even given such a quality crop, the goddamned worthless Oscars will screw up and give the big prize to the wrong movie. There may be blood, but there will not be Oscar bling-bling. The 2007 twist, however, is that front-running movies this year, from No Country for Old Men to There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Away from Her and Ratatouille actually deserve the pole position, and traditional Oscar bait like Atonement isn't likely to be a serious contender for any major awards. (The less said about potential spoiler Juno the better, particularly since I've already grouched about it at length.)


Actor Ian Charleson enacts the aneurysm on schedule for me when when Juno wins for Best Screenplay

Yet up in Springfield, there will be bombast and blasphemy and pulverized snack foods settling into the deep shag. My best friend and I will see the Oscars together for the first time in nearly 15 years, and no matter what does or doesn’t happen on TV all will be right because of that. I’ll be hopping a plane to Eugene Thursday morning, which means that it’s time now, before I have no other time, to go on the record with my phony baloney Oscar predictions. Those of you looking for a quick fix for your office Oscar pool are warned right away that you’d be better off cribbing someone else’s notes. I’ve held about 20 years worth of office Oscar pools to go along with my legendary Oscar parties, and I’ve won the pool exactly once (the year Million Dollar Baby took home the gold). So if I were you, I would recommend heeding the soothsayings available from Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times or Entertainment Weekly before giving the following picks more weight than one of Paulie Bleeker's orange TicTacs. Much like compulsively trotting out my Oscar nomination predictions, the posting of my predictions for the actual awards feeds little else beside some dark desire to be publicly humiliated, in addition, of course, to the hungry little squirrel that keeps the revolving treadmill of my fragile ego constantly rotating. So let’s gorge the little bastard, shall we? Here are my picks for this year’s Oscar winners:

PICTURE: No Country for Old Men (Worst nightmare: A Juno win anywhere, but particularly here.)

ACTRESS: Julie Christie (please, Lord…)

ACTOR: It’s madness, but I’m following my heart-- George Clooney. (But really, if Daniel Day-Lewis loses, look for the sun to not rise on Monday morning.)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Javier Bardem (though Hal Holbrook could easily upset)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett is not the force that Bardem is in the Supporting Actor category, so the Lifetime Achievement Award Syndrome has a much better chance of reigning supreme here. But Ruby Dee is gonna be this year’s Lauren Bacall. Shaky limb, here I come: Tilda Swinton.

DIRECTOR: Joel and Ethan Coen

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: No Country for Old Men

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Is typing this now worse than hearing it on Sunday? I think not: Juno. (What I wouldn’t give to see the rat or the awakening lawyer steal the cheese from Diablo Cody…)

ANIMATED FEATURE: With all due respect to Persepolis, it’s gonna be Ratatouille.

ART DIRECTION/SET DESIGN: Sweeney Todd…

CINEMATOGRAPHY: My gut tells me the deserving winner, Roger Deakins, gets hurt by being double-nominated, which paves the way for a win by Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood.

COSTUME DESIGN: Atonement

FILM EDITING: No Country for Old Men. The Coen Brothers incredible (is it also unprecedented?) run of four Oscar wins begins here.

MAKEUP: You thought last year was bad? The ultimate Eddie Murphy snub comes this year when Oscar awards the movie that allegedly caused voters to turn away from Eddie’s Dreamgirls performance: Norbit! Norbit! Norbit! Norbit!

ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORE: He should have won for The Incredibles, but I’ll be happy when Michael Giacchino wins for Ratatouille.

ORIGINAL SONG: Enchanted’s happy ever after crashes and burns here. The winner: ”Falling Slowly.”

SOUND EDITING: Voters will remember Jonny Greenwood’s score and think it was something the sound guys did. No Country is too quiet, therefore no real sound to speak of, right? Winner: There Will Be Blood.

SOUND MIXING: The left hand knows not what the right hand does in this category. Winner: Transformers.

VISUAL EFFECTS: Transformers

FOREIGN FILM: The Counterfeiters

DOCUMENTARY: No End in Sight

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Sari’s Mother

ANIMATED SHORT: Madame Tutli Putli

LIVE ACTION SHORT: The Tonto Woman

Let the public dunking begin!


IT WAS 34 YEARS AGO: God bless Robert Opel and his shortcomings...

And if that’s not enough Oscar action for you, there’s plenty of other places to go that will make the time between now and Sunday evening pass like an outtake from Jumper.

First, just to prove to yourself that you don’t know everything there is to know about the Academy Awards, check out Film Site’s comprehensive guide to the Oscars-- all the nominees in every category in Academy history, plus a ton of other facts to clog up your brain pan that you hope will dislodge and come spilling out in front of the water cooler.

Paul Clark has the latest on the 2007 Muriels including up to the minute entries for Best Body of Work, the year’s Best Ensemble Performance, the Muriel for Best Music (Original, Adapted or Compiled) and, fresh as this morning's coffee, B