The Best Of A Bad Year

2005 was not a great year for movies. Studios speculated endlessly on why that was, but the truth of the matter was there just really wasn't anything worth seeing. In 2004 I saw 121 films. Granted, I was on a personal mission to average 10 movies a month for that year, but I'm soooo glad I picked 2004 instead of 2005 to set that little goal for myself. I never would have made it. In 2005 I saw 46, which when I counted them up, kinda surprised me. I thought I had seen way less than that. That's not to say there weren't some good movies. There were several. (Many based on comic books I might add. "Batman," "Constantine," and "Sin City" leap quickly to mind.) There just weren't any truly GREAT movies. So the Oscars this year don't hold as much excitement for me as they usually do... which is fucked up and unfair since I'm finally back in Hollywood for them again... So, here are my predications in the major categories for tonight's awards. For the first time in a long, long time I haven't seen a lot of the nominated films, so a lot of these are pure speculation on my part.

Best Supporting Actress - I'm going with Rachel Weisz. I love her and I actually saw "The Constant Gardener" and thought she was great in it. Although I do think that Amy Adams could be the dark horse canidate here. All I ask is that it doesn't go to Michelle Williams...

Best Supporting Actor - Gotta be George Clooney. He's nominated in like every fucking category this year, but this is the one I think he gets. Paul Giamatti could get it to. He wasn't great in "Cinderella Man," but voters may want to make up for the fact that they fucked him out of a nomination for "Sideways" last year...

Best Actress - This race is a toss up. I could see either Reese Witherspoon or Felicity Huffman winning it. Personally, I'm pulling for Reese.

Best Actor - I'm so torn on this one. As you all know, I LOVE Joaquin Phoenix. He was #1 on my "list" for a long time and he's still solidly in my top 5, but I just don't know if he can beat Phillip Seymour Hoffman... and I don't know that he should. PSH is an amazing actor and is way overdue to win on of the little gold guys. I'm happy with either one of them walking away with it.

Best Director - If anyone other than Ang Lee wins this I'll be very, very surprised.

Best Picture - The general consensus seems to be that this'll go to "Brokeback Mountain." It probably will... but I'd like to see "Crash" pull off the upset just because I'm sick of Brokeback winning everything... and besides, "Crash" was a damn fine film. All the nominees in this category are a little weak this year. None of them scream "Best Picture" to me and I'm disappointed that "A History of Violence" didn't get a nod.

So there you go. My predictions for what it's worth. Honestly, the category I'm most interested in is Best Animated feature. I'm hoping "Hauru No Ugoku Shiro" ("Howl's Moving Castle") takes it, but "Corpse Bride" or "Curse of the Were-Rabbit" would be fine choices as well... I do have to say that it's odd for me not to have plans on Oscar night. Two years ago Lindy and I were out here for the big ROTK Oscar bash and it was amazing. We had a lot of fun, but that year aside, we always at least had our own little Oscar night gathering. By last year at this time, things had already started to get weird between us, but we stuck to the tradition and still got together to watch the awards. I miss that. I'm sad to have lost that, but it seems to be the way of things. I can't pinpoint any one moment where things went irreversibly wrong, but it must have happened. I never understood why people who had been married for a long time could suddenly find themselves in the middle of a divorce, but now I have a better idea of how it can happen, and sometimes you really don't even see it coming. Things just happen so quickly that you don't have time to repair all the damage and before you know it, it's just over. That makes me sadder than anything else. To know that maybe it was just meant to work out that way. It was ka's plan all along that you come to this particular fork in the road and each of you is destined to take a different road to your destiny... Wow, look at me being all reflective and shit all of a sudden... enough of that... No darkness for me today please and thank you... I'm off to the book store and the comic book shop and then am going to settle in to watch the Oscar festivities...

"All right, fine. It's 'ka,' everybody's favorite whipping-boy. That's what the great unseen world is for, after all, isn't it?So we don't have to take the blame for our acts of stupidity?" -- Stephen King - "The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass"