82nd Academy Awards (Oscar Predictions) February 23, 2010

I’ve put this off for a while for a few reasons, the first of which is: This will be a damn weird year. There are ten Best Picture nominees, but also there is a weighted ballot system (rank your films from 1 to 10, as opposed to check your favorite and that’s it). Plus, I’m in Korea so it is unlikely I will be able to watch the Oscars live, so I may as well have some fun with my predictions this year.

It’s also a weird year because the movie winning most of the awards if ‘The Hurt Locker’, which made practically zero money, and the movie winning almost no big awards, ‘Avatar’, made the most money ever. Here’s a rundown of what I think will win and what I would vote for.

Best Picture
Prediction: The Hurt Locker
My pick: Avatar

There are plenty of good movies, but everything nominated has flaws. I’ve listed them elsewhere so I won’t retype them here. ‘Avatar’ deserves to win because it was the most seen movie of the year, by far, and it will be remembered (by some, spitefully) many years from now. I do have a feeling, though, that ‘Inglourious Basterds’ may be closer to the top prize than most think….

Best Director
Prediction: Kathryn Bigelow (for ‘The Hurt Locker’)
My pick: Kathryn Bigelow

She deserves it, she was the best director of the year, give her the Oscar.

Inglourious Basterds (a lengthy analysis) February 15, 2010

Chapter One
Get the Tarantino Talk out of the way

I plan to discuss ‘Inglourious Basterds’ at length and, with that, to not confuse the movie itself with its writer/director. I do admire Quentin Tarantino for a few reasons and think ‘Pulp Fiction’ is a truly great film. He has had a good career with one great film (Pulp Fiction), three good films (Kill Bills, Basterds), and handful of films I can stand to watch, but could do without (Death Proof, Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown). But, having made a great film, doesn’t that put him above at least 90% of the directors working today? Sure it does. Is he the best currently-working writer/director? Nah.

Chapter Two
I Bet You’re Glad…

… that I didn’t make the first chapter as long as Tarantino did in ‘Basterds’. We’ll get to that in a moment.

One thing Tarantino has always done (and what makes his writing so unique) is take roundabout paths to get to his point. Let’s look at the scene in ‘Pulp Fiction’ where Jules is interrogating Brett about Marsellus Wallace. His whole point is to get Brett to admit that he tried to fuck Marsellus Wallace (if you need a refresher, you can watch the scene here). But Jules begins by asking what Marsellus Wallace looks like, ending up at “does he look like a bitch?” and ultimately “well then why’d you try to fuck him like a bitch?” That scene is almost old enough to be deemed a “classic”. But my point is that the whole scene takes us in loops and we really don’t know what’s going on until the end — and then it’s all so clear. Once it is finished we feel like we went on a ride.

This works when it is with dialog for a few minutes. The problem comes when it is for an entire scene (that is more than a few minutes), which happens at least twice in the movie.

The first is during the opening chapter. At about 17 minutes, we get three things: Hans Landa is The Jew Hunter, smart, and toys with people; that Shosanna escapes and her family was killed by Nazis; and we are placed in World War II. This scene could have been sufficiently shorter and given us the same things. Hans Landa seems to be wasting both LaPadite’s (the farmer’s) time and ours. I understand on a first viewing this scene is tense. I was anxious, just as you were. But when it was finished, I found myself wondering, was all of that really necessary? The problem is that it is at the beginning of the film and we know nothing of Shosanna and her family. Maybe Tarantino was counting on our sympathies for the Jews to make the scene tenser, but I don’t think that was accomplished. Also, whatever happened to LaPadite? Shosanna wasn’t pissed at him, or want revenge against him?