Biggest Possible Oscar Fuck Ups

With the BAFTA-Awards tonight the race is close to being over and since the BAFTA’s can have the habit of changing the Oscar dynamics, I was thinking of the biggest possible Fuck Ups that can happen come Oscar night.

Alice in Wonderland for Best Art Direction or Costume Design

Art Decoration and especially Costume Design are categories that usually don’t align with the other awards. Unless your big Oscar movie is a period piece the Costume Design or Art Decoration will be handed to a boring period drama (The Duchess) because they are themost obvious candidates for this instead of the most sophisticated.

Which makes Alice in Wonderland a clear example: It is in-your-face-Art-Direction, it has “look we have costumes” written all over it. And given the horrible quality of the movie’s story the only merit it has is that it is overstuffed with Tim Burton things.

Hailee Steinfeld for Best Supporting Actress

The little girl Hailee Steinfeld plays the lead role in True Grit, a remake by the Coen brothers and for competitive reasons the studio pushed for a supporting actress nomination instead of a lead actress nomination. Why? Because Steinfeld wouldn’t be able to compete with Portman and Bening.

Steinfeld does a great job with True Grit and it is remarkable that she is able to hold her ground while playing side by side with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin – but awarding her for supporting actress is just ridiculous.

How can you judge a lead performance with other supporting categories? It is irrational and awarding her for it would only give room for further “nomination tactics” and illogical choices.

Natalie Portman not winning for Black Swan

Come on Oscars! You could do right this time! Portman is fantastic and you could hand her the Oscar NOW – instead of giving it to Annette Bening and to Portman a few years later as an apology. Do the right thing, Portman deserves it!

How to train your Dragon winning over Toy Story 3

I love Dragon, it is one of my favorite films this year. My assumption that it would be wrong if Dragon would win in the best animated movie category is not based on “It’s not as good as Toy Story” but on a logical contradiction:
If Dragon would win over Toy Story 3, then we could assume that the Oscar voters deem it a better film. But if that were so, then why wasn’t Dragon nominated for Best Picture and Toy Story 3 was?

The fact that Toy Story 3 is nominated for Best Picture makes this category very pointless indeed.

Helena Bonham Carter winning Best Supporting Actress

I love Carter, she’s a great actress, but this is just wrong. It was baffling enough that she was nominated over Barbara Hershey and Mila Kunis (Black Swan). If the Oscar voters decide to give King’s Speech everything (add Sound Mixing as another possible fuck up) it could translate into a win for Carter. A decision wrong on so many levels it can only be topped by one:

Geoffrey Rush winning Best Supporting Actor

Yes, the whole world loves King’s Speech, a movie for the ages and so on and so forth.

I don’t really care for this movie, but the acting from Rush and Firth was top notch.
But…

This is Christian Bale’s year. Like Natalie Portman Christian Bale’s role in The Fighter is just beyond anything else in the supporting actor category. His manners, his looks, the way he nailed everything pitch perfectly.

Bale reminds me of last year’s Christoph Waltz or 2008’s Heath Ledger – the universally praised and loved performance. He has won every major award he was nominated, so we should safely assume that Bale has it in the bag, but one can never know, how big the love for King’s Speech is.

If he gets shafted, then it’s another of those things when you will see the Fighter in 10 years, you will automatically think “Wait, didn’t he get an Oscar for this… No? Why not?”

So I just hope that (same with Portman) they make the right decision.

Bring on the BAFTA-awards!