Published on: February 22, 2013
As usual at this time of year, I'd like to go on the record with my Oscar picks. After all, the Academy Awards are on Sunday evening, and I think it is important to note just how out of step I am with popular tastes.
As in the past, I will tell you who I think will win, and who I would vote for if I actually had a vote. And in the latter category, I will not be bound by who is actually nominated.
And, to be completely upfront, I should note that I have not seen all the nominees....though I would estimate that I probably saw 30-=35 movies last year. (Not as good as my all-time record, the year that I saw 150 movies.)
Who I think will win...Best Picture:
Argo, which I thought was a terrific movie, and which seems to be winning all the other various awards. Plus, Ben Affleck gets a lot of credit, as he should, for reinventing his career.
Best Actor:
Daniel Day-Lewis, for
Lincoln. This is a lock.
Best Actress:
Jennifer Lawrence, for
Silver Linings Playbook. This is pretty close to a sure thing, and she was very good in the movie...though to be honest, I don't she's quite earned all the plaudits she is getting.
Best Supporting Actor:
Robert De Niro, for
Silver Linings Playbook. He's acting royalty, and it's been a while since he's been in a movie that didn't seem beneath his talent.
Best Supporting Actress:
Anne Hathaway, for
Les Miserables. Again, probably a lock. She killed that song. Really killed it.
Best Director:
Steven Spielberg, for
Lincoln. This is really a guess on my part, but it may be compensation for
Lincoln not winning Best Picture.
Who I would vote for...Best Picture:
Zero Dark Thirty, hands down my favorite movie of the year. It has been criticized for celebrating torture, but the people who said that were not paying attention. What it did was make us face the fact that sometimes we make ethically questionable decisions for the right reasons, and ask ourselves whether that is good enough.
Best Actor:
John Hawkes, for
The Sessions. As a man confined to an iron lung and yet yearning for both love and physical intimacy, Hawkes was extraordinary. He should have been nominated.
Best Actress:
Jessica Chastain, for
Zero Dark Thirty. She is wonderful as the driven, sometimes myopic CIA analyst who takes the hunt for Osama Bin Laden personally.
Best Supporting Actor:
Alan Arkin, for
Argo. Just because whenever I think of him in the movie, I smile. For some reason, his performance has stayed with me.
Best Supporting Actress:
Helen Hunt, for
The Sessions. She probably should have been nominated in the Best Actress category, in which case I would have voted for her there. Regardless, Hunt played the sexual surrogate who helps a man with physical limitations go beyond those limits, but also feel something akin to love. hers is a brave and nuanced performance.
(By the way, if Hunt had been nominated for Best Actress, I probably would have cast my vote in this category for Judi Dench in
Skyfall, the James Bond movie that not only broke franchise records this year, but also tilled new ground for the 50-year-old series. As M, the spymaster in charge of MI6, Dench gave emotional shadings to her role, showing the toll that responsibility can take, but never shirking either her job or her greater moral and ethical responsibilities. Go figure - after 50 years, it ends up that Judi Dench is the ultimate Bond woman.
Best Director:
Kathryn Bigelow, for
Zero Dark Thirty. The Oscar-winning director of
The Hurt Locker has done it again, constructing a nail-biting movie that, while at its heart a thriller in the same way that
All The President's Men was, managed to go beyond the genre to consider he impact of terrorism and warfare on the human soul.
I have a couple of wonderful wines to recommend to you this week...
• the 2010 Willamette Valley Vineyards Dijon Clone Chardonnay, which is a lovely, full-bodied chardonnay, which is what I love. (Plus, it is from Oregon's Willamette Valley. Can't do better than that.)
• the 2008 Piaggia Euiserva Carmigano, a rich, luscious red wine that is perfect with lasagna or any other Italian food. My son Brian gave it to me as a gift, and you should be so lucky.
BTW...Today happens to be National Margarita Day. Don't know about you, but I plan to celebrate.
Finally, I did see one movie this week:
A Good Day To Die Hard. I went because I have such fond memories of the first two in the series that I was desperately hoping that the new one, the fifth, would somehow recapture the rambunctious fun of
Die Hard and
Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Sad to say, it did not.
That's it for this week. Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you Monday.
Slàinte!