Awards season is by far the best time of year for a movie fan. Not only is it an opportunity to see stars and directors in their finest, it’s an opportunity to experience the best (popular) movies of 2009.

My first experience with Oscar was in 2005. Being an overly overt fan of Finding Neverland, I would slam front runner Million Dollar Baby amongst friends and family. Of course after seeing Million Dollar Baby, I admit my narrow mindedness as it is a far superior film.

This morning, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the nominations for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. I will try to pilot the major categories as best as I can to give an idea of what to expect on March 7th, 2010.

Best Picture

It is hard to gauge where voters will steer this ship. In an unexpected move, the Academy moved the nominee number to 10 this year. This pegs for a wide variety of material and target audience. Avatar and Inglorious Basterds should get pre-hype as they have captured other organization awards. Avatar took home the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama while Basterds received the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture award from the Screen Actors Guild. In order to round out the top five, I would bet on The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, and The Blind Side being favorites.

On to who will win. As Hollywood loves money, Avatar would be the best pick. But as history shows, Hollywood doesn’t always love the hype (a la Brokeback Mountain). Avatar isn’t a great movie (it isn’t really even good) therefore I believe the field is open. A quirky comedy like Up in the Air could finally bring home an Oscar for Jason Reitman (missed on Juno and snubbed on Thank You For Smoking). The Hurt Lockercould potentially be this years Crash, an indie drama about bomb technicians in Iraq. The Blind Side has be known to be a motivating, tear jerking drama that showed the acting chops of notoriously bad Sandra Bullock. Even the animated (lovely) favorite from Pixar, Up, could potentially garner enough voters.

Who will win: I believe Hollywood rewards Avatar as it is the most popular choice

Who should win: Up in the Air or Inglorious Basterds were phenom films of 2009.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Subcategories are much easier to predict as the field is generally narrowed to four or five. Jeremy Renner was wonderful to watch in The Hurt Locker, a gung-ho American bomb technician in Iraq (although I couldn’t help draw comparisons to his military portrayal in 28 Weeks Later). Morgan Freeman was bland in Ivictus and for further explanation, my review of the movie can be found on this blog. I haven’t seen A Single Man (Colin Firth) and George Clooney (Up in the Air) is always the Oscar darling (received nominations in 2006 and 2007). With the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) as guidance, I believe it is safe to put money on Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Yes, I believe The Dude, Bridges character in The Big Lebowski, will win come March 7th.

Who Will Win: Jeff Bridges

Who Should Win: George Clooney. I haven’t seen Crazy Heart but Clooney was enjoyable in Up in the Air.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

It is a rarity to find an award that Meryl Streep is nominated for and not expected to win. Sandra Bullock’s sweep of the Golden Globe and SAG categories should propel her to Oscar stardom. I don’t believe Carey Mulligan will capture enough voters for her An Education performance and while Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) might be too fresh (first motion picture role) for the award. While Helen Mirren was rewarded for her role in The Queen, Bullock will prevail.

Who Will Win: Unfortunately, Keanu’s sidekick (Speed) will win this year.

Who Should Win: Probably Sandra Bullock. I haven’t seen The Blind Side and I will refrain from knocking it too hard, but it’s Sandra Bullock.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

The Lovely Bones failed to capture the hype it had a year ago. Peter Jackson’s followup to King Kong won’t bring him the record love LOTR: Return of the King did. I predict then that Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones) will rest at the bottom with Woody Harrelson (The Messenger) and Christopher Plummer (The Last Station). While Matt Damon was inspiring in Invictus, it’s still Invictus. All signals point to Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds. Speaking four languages while taking on the controversial role of a rewarded Nazi SS was magnificent.

Who Will Win: Christoph Waltz

Who Should Win: No one other than Christoph Waltz

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

This category is a bit more muddled than Best Actress. The leading ladies of Up in the Air (Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick) will probably cancel each other out. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s nod was greeted as a surprise and that leaves Penelope Cruz (Nine) and Mo’nique (Precious) as the frontrunners. The Academy does like musicals which could propel Ms. Cruz above Mo’nique but, I expect that Mo’nique ultimately wins as she took home both Golden Globe and SAG awards.

Who Will Win: Mo’nique

Who Should Win: After staring in Phat Girlz and Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School, this is an unexpected turnaround.

Best Animated Feature Film

I enjoyed Fantastic Mr. Fox and the return to 2D animation by Disney was welcomed with The Princess and the Frog, an Up upset would be shocking.

Who Will Win: Up

Who Should Win: Up…again

Best Original Screenplay

This category should be decided between The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal) and Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino). Up deserves the recognition and any Coen Bros. work (A Serious Man) is sure to not disappoint. Rounding out the category is Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman for The Messenger. All in all, this one could go anywhere.

Who Will Win: I will go out on a limb and say Up. Moving and popular, this touched all ages.

Who Should Win: I enjoyed Hurt Locker but much of the movie was placed on acting and I believe the vulgarity of Inglorious Basterds might drive a few voters away.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner will almost surely win this category for their work in Up in the Air. Although An Education and Precious could prove to be dark horses, I suspect District 9 and In the Loop to provide little competion

Who Will Win: Up in the Air

Who Should WIn: Up in the Air

Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron

Best Director

Interestingly enough James Cameron (Avatar) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) were former lovebirds. I believe Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) will be rewarded for screenplay instead of directing and Tarantino (Basterds) and Lee Daniels (Precious) should be on the outside looking in.

Who Will Win: James Cameron if voters want to see another “I’m the king of the world” proclamation (see Cameron’s Oscar acceptance speech for Titanic) or Bigelow if voters want to pick someone deserving of the award.

Who Should Win: Kathryn Bigelow

Odds and Ends

Since I have hit all of the major categories, I will offer some minor predictions for the smaller awards. I suspect Avatar to sweep Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. Sound mixing will likely be between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. Up and Avatar will compete for Best Original Score and I suspect Best Sound Mixing will be another dog fight between The Hurt Locker and Avatar.

By Evan Lisull

GINGRICH: Why is that our problem? I mean, why — what — if the — if the — what — what is it — why are we protecting these guys? Why does it become an American problem?

Of course, Newt’s issue isn’t the chinamen (dude, not the preferred nomenclature – Uighurs, please), and he is right that this shouldn’t be an American problem – after all, as Hilzoy has painstakingly pointed out (executive summary), this has absolutely nothing to do with this country’s Jihad on Terr-ah OCOFKAGWOT. Or at least, until the Bush Administration decided to name them a terrorist organization, in spite of the fact that the Uighur-Chinese conflict was, as Newt implies, not an American problem. It became an American problem when we proverbially peed on their rug, keeping them detained for seven years even though the administration detaining them found that they were not, in fact, enemy combatants.

Like his Lebowskian counterpart, Newt is more right than he will ever know. This shouldn’t be an American problem, just as the soap opera of internal Pakistani politics shouldn’t be an American problem, just as the conduct of the Cayman Islands should not be an American problem. Newt and his new BFF Harry Reid want to act as though America can simply draw a line in the Sonoran sand – “across this line, you do NOT” – ignoring the fact that this line was weakened the minute we started playing world police, dropping bombs intermittently on those countries with names we couldn’t pronounce. Playing fast and loose with international sovereignty cuts both ways. Oh, but, y’know, 9/11. Rule of law? Bitch, please.

Meanwhile, FOX had better start drafting “Meet the Uighurs.” First episode: “Ham Dinner Hijinks.”

Reporting from the nation’s top show
By Evan Lisull
Curtis James Jackson III seems prima facie to be a typical swing voter. He initially came out in favor of Hilary, citing his approval of her husband’s administration, but later switched over to Sen. Barack Obama. Except of course, that Mr. Jackson is more commonly known by his rap moniker “50 Cent”; and 50 is a convicted felon, and cannot vote.

I recount this Eight-Mile-infused election tidbit with my colleague, but his mind is elsewhere, a Cheshire cat grin breaking out across his face as his thought processes reached their apex. “Dude, let’s watch…the Dude!” I chuckle, and indeed, for it is an ideal hortatory for a haze-filled Tuesday night. The popcorn pops, and, for an all-too-brief moment, things are going well. Life might not be fucked, after all.

Enter John Goodman, in all his corpulence, playing “Walter Sobchak”, Vietnam vet. Only it’s not Walter; it’s John McCain – “Are you sure this is the right movie?” – and as Sir Chipmunk Cheeks himself begins his soliloquy, the planet shifts just slightly, just enough for me to realize that everything has gone wrong. “No, John, you’re not wrong“– John?!?– “you’re just an asshole.” I calmly get up, smile blithely, walk to a stranger’s bathroom, and vomit profusely. I cannot believe this.

These candidates: I look around and everywhere I see them, ghosts haunting the corporeal machine, lighting cigarettes on the stairwell and advertising Coca Cola. Forget niche culture; we’ve got the Great Vortex. The boundaries have been shattered, politics becoming movies becoming advertisements becoming disposable ink pens.

Once again, politics have ruined my life.

Right now, it is dead season in the Long, Long March to Pennsylvania Ave. (known aptly on the Daily Show as the Clusterfuck to the White House), but news anchors and their caustic blogging cousins are still in high drive, and like PCP users after getting the hit of a lifetime, they are read to fuck anyone up. Thus, anything is and has been fair game, from the candidate’s sartorial choices to the length of their toenails to their daughters (“How much? How much for the little girls? How much for your women?”). One daughter, in particular, brings the boys to the yard, and she ain’t in the dairy industry. She’s Meghan McCain, and she makes the Bush Twins look so 2007. She blogs, she’s sassy, she’s sexy (this is politics, remember– anyone thirty or under is automatically “hot”), and her luggage is carried by a Chinaman named Mr. Lee. She establishes her credentials amongst the will o’ the wisp known as the “Youth Vote” by listing Vampire Weekend among her favorite artists, and The Big Lebowski among her favorite films.

This led Jonathan Chait of The New Republic

A main character in the film is Walter obchak, a gruff, lovable, hot-headed, moralistic foreign policy hawk who’s often confused about the facts and constantly invokes his experience in Vietnam. I wonder what she thinks when she watches it.

As if this weren’t enough, we also had to kill Rocky Balboa, the much-loved boxer who may or may not have had a speech impediment. “Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common,” said Sen. Hillary Clinton at a Philadelphia rally in early April, “I never quit. I never give up. And neither do the American people. So when I see Rocky in his warmups, I can’t help but see a pantsuit…not really. But will I ever hear the lines, “I had no prime, I had nothin’!” and not consider the implications?

Of course, this is the same “Rocky” played by Sylvester Stallone, the HGH-pumping actor who endorsed Sen. John McCain for the presidency, a man who wants to ban the substance. McCain is also supported by Heidi Montag, who apparently is a “star” on the “hit show” The Hills, featured on MTV, the same network that hosted a debate with Mike Huckabee, who was supported by Chuck Norris, whose legends of powress have clogged the Internet tubes.

It’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon on crack, only a lot less fun.

It would be one thing if this were a one-way, East-bound highway from LA to DC. But increasingly, politics is becoming pop. Already, Washington is known as “Hollywood for ugly people.” The chief executive spends three innings shooting the shit about baseball with Joe Morgan. Politicians (or their aides) have their own Facebook and MySpace pages.

This back-and-forth results a serious intellectual failure: for many, especially those among our generation, politics is merely a stem on the Great VH1-MTV-TMZ Tree of Pop. Political preferences are not based in philosophical consideration, experience, or empirical studies; they are based solely on personal preference. They are “supporters” of political parties and members in so far as we are “supporters” of Law and Order or the Dave Matthews Band.

Expect only drawn-out demise from such a state of affairs. A citizenry that cannot distinguish between entertainment and politics will soon learn that all roads lead to Rome, a Rome where intellectuals mock Emperor Claudius’ death on the crapper while the principles of the Republic are flushed away.