Thursday, February 21, 2008

Echo calls the Oscars

Pardon the overabundance of movie posts as of late, but tis the season. On to business. Them Academy Awards committee folk are questionable, so here's your chance to get the scoop on this year's films from someone slightly less questionable. Without further ado, here are my picks for the "big six" of the 2008 Academy Awards. Not necessarily who I think will win, but rather who I think deserves to win. For a look at all the candidates, check out IMDB.

Best Motion Picture of the Year
While I feel No Country for Old Men is fantastic and more accessible than There Will be Blood, my nod for picture of the year has to go to the gritty oil epic. With an astronomically good performance from Daniel Day Lewis casting a shadow over all other actors and actresses this year, superb writing, direction and a genuine contribution to "film as art," Blood was quite simply the best movie to grace the silver screen this year. Screw you Atonement. If you steal another award from this masterpiece I'm gonna hunt you down like a rabid dog and put you in the ground.

Best Actor
Um...gee...maybe I'll go with George Clooney in...WRONG! Daniel Day Lewis by a mile.

Best Actress
Daniel Day Lewis. Seriously, he's THAT good. Seriously though, I'm going with Laura Linney in The Savages. In all honesty, I haven't seen the film yet, but that doesn't stop the Academy from voting now does it?

Best supporting actor
Is the Day Lewis joke old already? Fine. We'll give it to Javier Bardem, the second best performance of the year overall and one of my favorite roles of all time. I think I could hear him say "call it, friend-o" a hundred times a day and it would never get old.

Best supporting actress
Though I think it's awesome Cate Blanchett was willing to take a huge risk with I'm Not There, the few scenes featuring Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton were dy-no-mite.

Best Director
A real tough one. The four directors' work I know from the selections managed wonders, but There Will Be Blood was the most powerful of the lot, largely due to the phenomenal direction by Paul Thomas Anderson. In the end, though, there were no losers in this category.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Best Documentary? How about Best/Worst host?

-Ryan Winslett said...

I didn't see the documentaries this year. I'm a little annoyed half the categories are to films nearly impossible to actually see.
As for hosts, I don't know about the worst, but I loved Ellen last year. John Stewart was pretty good this year, but Ellen really got physical with the show and had some fun.