Archive - The 80th Annual Academy Awards: 2008 Oscar Picks

As I was looking through old Oscar related posts this morning, I was reminded by my 2010 post that I had also made picks on my old myspace blog a couple of years earlier.  Prior to deleting my myspace account years ago, I made sure to copy all of my reviews from that blog space for my personal records.  Out of curiosity, I went searching through that old file to see what I could dig up.  Low and behold, I found that earliest of Oscar picks posts regarding the 80th Annual Academy Awards from February 24, 2008.  For completeness sake, I have reproduced that post here.  It has been edited for formatting purposes only.  The content has not been changed.


Sunday, February 24, 2008 


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Tonight’s Oscars - My two cents
Current mood: nerdy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities


I've managed to get away from posting any movie reviews the last couple of months, but with the 80th annual Oscars tonight I thought I'd share my picks for some of the larger categories (where applicable, I haven't seen all films/performances nominated there's just too many!):

Click on the links if you want more info on the movie or the actor/actress/director.

Best Motion Picture of the Year:
No Country for Old Men - This is probably my favorite flick from the past year.  Excellent performances turned in by 3 major characters (Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin).  Michael Clayton also had 3 excellent performances (George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton) but Bardem's creepy Anton Chigurh puts No Country over the top.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:
Daniel Day Lewis (There Will be Blood) - Day Lewis' oil tycoon Daniel Plainview is the strongest performance of the group that I've seen (never caught Depp in Sweeny Todd - but I've got a hard time believing it could top Day Lewis).

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:
Ellen Page (Juno)* - Page's turn as a pregnant teenager is the only one I've seen in this group so I'll do the wholly uninformed thing and go with what I've seen.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:
Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) - His villain is hands down the best supporting performance of the year.  Tom Wilkinson's take as a lawyer who's lost it (Michael Clayton) would probably win any other year.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role:
Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) - I'm a big fan of this movie so I may be slightly biased AND I have not seen Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There.  Ruby Dee was excellent in American Gangster as was Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton, but neither had the screen time that Ryan did.  Ryan's druggie mother of an abducted girl really gets you thinking.

Best Achievement in Directing:
Ethan Cohen, Joel Cohen (No Country for Old Men) - This one is a virtual toss up between the Cohen's and Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will be Blood) in my mind but I'll go with the Cohen's because No Country was more suspenseful and that's just my kind of flick.

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen:
Diablo Cody (Juno) - I haven't seen The Savages or Lars and the Real Girl, but the script for Juno was well written, quick witted, and highly entertaining.

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published:
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will be Blood) - I've only seen 3 of the 5 films in this category, but I'll go with Paul Thomas Anderson here.  He deserves to get something for this film.

All of the rest of the categories are the technical/design awards which I won't even try and pick.  I will say that if Transformers DOESN'T win Best Achievement in Visual Effects there is a serious problem.  Who would have thought that Transformers of all movies could end up with an Oscar!?  Also, hopefully the Bourne Ultimatum comes away with one of the editing awards.  That movie just kicked all kinds of ass.

I don't think I really went out on a limb on any of my picks (at least in the categories I had actually seen the majority of the nominees) with the exception of Amy Ryan but I guess we'll see here in a couple of hours.

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