2010 Oscar Picks--The 83rd annual Academy Awards

Here are my picks--I will list the nominees in the eight major categories (Best Picture, Best Director, the four acting categories and the two screenplay categories). I will list who I think should win, who will win, and who deserved a nomination (save for the screenplay awards, there I will just list who will and should). All the other categories I will simply predict a winner.

Best Picture:

Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Will Win: The King's Speech
Should Win: Inception
Wish You Were Here: Nobody--this is the best crop of films to be nominated for Best Picture in a long time. None of these films deserve omission.

Best Director:

Darren Aronofosky, Black Swan
Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit
David Fincher, The Social Network
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
David O. Russell, The Fighter

Will Win: Fincher
Should Win: Christopher Nolan, Inception
Wish You Were Here: See above

Best Actor:

Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King's Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

Will Win: Firth
Should Win: Franco
Wish You Were Here: Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception

Best Actress:

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Will Win: Portman
Should Win: Portman
Wish You Were Here: Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right and Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Best Supporting Actor:

Christian Bale, The Fighter
John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Will Win: in an upset, Rush
Should Win: Bale
Wish You Were Here: Andrew Garfield, The Social Network

Best Supporting Actress:

Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Will Win: Steinfeld, in what is probably the evenings closest race
Should Win: Steinfeld
Wish You Were Here: Marion Cotillard, Inception

Best Adapted Screenplay:

127 Hours – Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy from Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
The Social Network – Aaron Sorkin from The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
Toy Story 3 – Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich; characters based on Toy Story and Toy Story 2
True Grit – Ethan Coen and Joel Coen from True Grit by Charles Portis
Winter's Bone – Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini from Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Will Win: Sorkin
Should Win: Sorkin

Best Original Screenplay:

Another Year – Mike Leigh
The Fighter – Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson
Inception – Christopher Nolan
The Kids Are All Right – Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg
The King's Speech – David Seidler

Will Win: Seidler
Should Win: Nolan, though Seidler is equally deserving

Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
Best Animated Short: The Gruffalo
Best Art Direction: The King's Speech
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, True Grit
Best Costume Design: The King's Speech
Best Documentary Feature: Inside Job
Best Documentary Short: Killing in the Name
Best Editing: The Social Network
Best Foreign Language Film: Incendies
Best Live Action Short: The Confession
Best Makeup: The Wolfman
Best Score: Alexandre Desplat, The King's Speech (though the award should go to Hans Zimmer for Inception)
Best Song: "If I Rise" from 127 Hours – A.R. Rahman, Rollo Armstrong, and Dido
Best Sound: Inception
Best Sound Editing: Inception
Best Visual Effects: Inception

Biggest Applause on the "In Memoriam" reel: Dennis Hopper

Mission Statement

So, why create a blog in the first place? Aren't I about the forty-millionth person to jump on the blog bandwagon?

The immediate answer is simple: I was laid off from my job a month ago, I screw around on message boards enough anyway, my wife keeps nagging me to do so (not that I married her because I care one iota about her opinions), or maybe I just have too much on my mind.

The larger answer may be a bit more difficult, but I think it has to do with wanting to be in charge of something. I've never been a boss or a supervisor, I've never been an editor-in-chief, or president, or captain of a team. In my professional life, I'm a perpetual "at will" employee, at the mercy of the whims of outside forces. In starting this blog, the ultimate force is me. The Review Pile lives or dies at my mercy. I can only make it great--or awful--if I will it so. Control, wanting something you can absolutely call your own, maybe just a place where your mind can flow unfiltered and unsanitized--a place where you aren't having to worry about violating a corporate anti-harassment policy, or cussing in front of a kid, somewhere completely free to speak your mind. Maybe that's the larger answer, and if I'm only carrying on a conversation with myself then so fucking be it.

Why "The Review Pile" then? Well, a few reasons. The first reason is that on the message board I most frequent, there is an annual thread called "Every Movie You Have Seen In... (in this case, 2009)" where all you have to do is list every film you see throughout the year. Some simply list, others write little mini-reviews, and some (myself included) have written essay level work about the films they have seen. Since movies are pretty much my biggest passion--in my freshman dorm, I was given the moniker "Jon The Movie Guy"--I figured it would be a nice thing to do, simply for posterity's sake.

Well, I think I've evolved a little further than that.

When you realize, "Shit, I've just devoted twenty whole minutes to why I think Sandy Bullock hasn't lived up to her potential as an actress", you either have a problem, are a total obsessive, or you watch way to many movies. It's all three for me, so I figured "Hey! I'm gonna start a blog!"

I'm also a notorious hoarder and collector (not to the unhealthy extent that I need to be profiled on the A & E Network or something like that). I've got a collection of comic books that has been growing exponentially since 1993 (damn you, Tommy Wiley and the X-Men cartoon!). A year working at a record store pushed my CD collection into the 400+ range (damn you employee discount!) (And for the record, I still prefer to buy whole albums on CD. I'm one of those troglodytes that showed up late for the I-Pod party.). I have shelves of books, DVD's, VHS tapes (yeah, I still watch those too), watch too much sports throughout the year. I've spent my whole life consuming entertainment; it's about time I started to create something for myself, even if it is as insipid as writing a review of what I've just seen. A fair warning: if you start to follow this blog, you're going to collect stuff right along with me.

I'm also going to try and focus my obsessions. One of the first projects I'm going to start is to watch every film that has won the Best Picture Oscar and write a review on each. Anyone see that movie or read the book Julie & Julia? I didn't, but it looked like one of those movies where the preview tells you the whole story, in this particular case how one lady (Julie Powell) attempts to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking within on year. Well, I only have to watch (and re-watch, in many instances) eighty-two films. I'd like to do that before the next Oscar ceremony, which gives me about 138 days to accomplish my task (the 82nd Annual Oscar Ceremony is on March 7th, 2010).

Why watch every Best Picture winner? For starters, film awards--and awards in general--are fraught with controversy and I'd like to be able to form my own opinion on what a "Best Picture" should really be. It should also be an interesting tour through the last eighty years of history. Film, as the ultimate, most dominant, and most influential artistic medium over the last century, has had much to say about our own culture and has made as many diverse changes as we have. Finally, I'm interested in knowing my own opinions on the subject.

So stick around. I'm bound to talk about more things besides movies and comics and sports. If you love me, let me know. If I piss you off, let me know.

My review of Wings, the first Best Picture, will be posted tomorrow.