Academy Awards – Press Play Video Blog

On Hollywood’s False Nobility, and the Growing Power of Hype

Hollywood has always thrilled at its power to pluck a Lana Turner from the
soda fountain at Schwab’s, but it takes onanistic pleasure in the dark side of
its hype machine, too: how believing too much in Tinseltown’s promises can transform
nobodys into somebodies—Monroe, Harlow, Dean, and, even worse, poor
anonymous never-weres like Peg Entwhistle, the frustrated actress who
suicidally leaped off the H of the Hollywoodland sign in 1932. (Rather than die
instantly, she bled to death from a broken pelvis. This town doesn’t cut anyone
a break.)

Most movies about Hollywood’s illusion factory lie somewhere between
self-flagellatingly critical and winkingly celebratory:The Player, Sunset
Blvd.. Get Shorty, Barton Fink, Boogie Nights, Ed Wood, The Stunt Man, Singin’
In The Rain, Tropic Thunder, Bowfinger, LA Confidential. There are some
notable exceptions, such as Adaptation (reality can’t be shoehorned into
art, and certainly not into movies) or Sullivan’s Travels (legitimate pleasure
in movies is a noble pursuit), but most others hold true to playwright Wilson
Mizner’s adage that life in Hollywood is “a trip through a sewer in a
glass-bottomed boat.”

Despite its ambiguity about the Hollywood hype machine, the Academy’s
sentiments about the hard work of making art is completely unambiguous. Ray,
Shine, Precious, Atonement, Hustle And Flow—it celebrates films affirming
the redemptive power of creative craft, and how devoting oneself to its
difficult demands is a way into a better life. (Part of the 2010 Oscar Best
Picture race was between films declaring that devoting oneself to a difficult
craft will save you (The King’s Speech) vs. devoting oneself to a
difficult craft will destroy you (Black Swan). The King’s Speech
won.)

In 2012, both Silver Linings Playbook and Argo
were up for Best Picture, and any smart bettor would have fingered Silver
Linings Playbook as the shoo-in because of its “art saves all”
theme—how a recently released mental patient (Bradley Cooper) and a grieving
temptress (Jennifer Lawrence) heal themselves through ballroom dancing. Argo‘s got no art, just a bunch of hype conjured up by a CIA agent (Ben Affleck) and a pair of weary Hollywood
old-timers (John Goodman and Alan Arkin) looking to spring some hostages with a
story about a non-existent movie. “Art saves” vs. “Hype
saves” is no contest—but, strangely, the Academy didn’t see it that way.

Wink-wink movies about the illusory nature of Hollywood are nothing new. When
Gene Kelly crows at the end of Singin’ In The Rain “Stop that girl! That girl running up the aisle! That’s the
girl whose voice you heard!” it’s a moment of triumph: the illusion
factory drops its veil to celebrate the creators at the core. However, when you
drop Argo‘s veil and there’s nothing there. We’re
not even going to pretend anymore, the Academy announced. Sixty years after Singin’, Argo‘s
Best Picture win legitimized the triumph of hype over art. It announced a new
era of Hollywood sociopathy, where not even style replaces substance: lies
replace style replace substance, and you’re expected to nod and smile all the
way to the box office as your hand closes on a fistful of air.

But come on, you say, lives were saved. Doesn’t that justify a certain kind
of noble falsehood, like in 1997’s Best Foreign Language Oscar winner Life
Is Beautiful, where a father’s perverse recasting of a concentration camp
as game show enables his son to escape with hope unscathed? Or Schindler’s
List, where a German businessman conceives of a semi-truthful scheme to
save Jews in his employ? Or The Counterfeiters, where a group of
concentration camp inmates survive by making fake money? Or Jakob the Liar,
where a Jewish man keeps hope alive in the ghetto by making fabulous stories
about the messages he hears on a secret radio—and then succors the audience
with an alternate, sunnier ending?

The common denominator of all those movies is that they are Holocaust
survival stories. When Argo shamelessly borrows
that “noble falsehood” genre blueprint, it brings the same invisible
weight to a story completely unconnected to the Holocaust. It makes clear
exactly what we’re supposed to think about the movie’s Middle Eastern villains,
while deftly sidestepping any accusations of making a movie about Nazis in
keffiyeh.

But if the villains in Argo are really Nazis,
then what does that make our heroes? Argo‘s borrowing
of the “noble Holocaust deception” genre requires the appointment of
Hollywood as a sovereign Jewish nation, a connection that’s irresponsible at
best and slanderous at worst. And in addition, the surrogate Jews escape at the
end because of cunning, justifiable lies, and the illusion-casting power of
Hollywood in their back pocket—an unflattering toolkit that harkens back to
anti-Semitic canards about how Jews do business and who really runs Hollywood.

Argo is dishonest and shameful for the way it
privileges hype over art. But its willingness to cloak itself in the horror of
the Holocaust for sheer narrative convenience, as well as to milk racist
reactions on both sides of the conflict between the Jewish and Muslim worlds
for emotional resonance, proves it’s the most morally bankrupt movie to ever
win Best Picture. It’s more than dishonest. It’s dangerous, and awarding it
Best Picture showed a lack of concern about the parallels Hollywood is drawing
when we’re at war with the Middle East. Worse, it remains to be seen if
upcoming releases like Edge of Tomorrow, Elysium, or the reboot
of Robocop—all pure entertainment, none legitimized as lauding true
historical events like Argo—are going to play faster and looser with those
parallels in their own metaphorical war landscapes. And considering the
vociferous response to Argo in Iran (the movie is banned, and a feature The
General Staff is being planned as a
rebuttal), those won’t go ignored, either. The only response to the poisonous era
Argo’s Best Picture win has possibly ushered into American moviemaking is its
own oft-repeated refrain: “Argo fuck yourself.”

Violet LeVoit is a video producer and editor, film critic, and
media educator whose film writing has appeared in many publications in
the US and UK. She is the author of the short story collection I Am Genghis Cum (Fungasm Press). She lives in Philadelphia.

VIDEO: What Does Oscar-Winning Cinematography Look Like?

https://vimeo.com/59908268

As a bonus to the “Who Should Win” video essay series that identifies this year’s truly deserving Oscar winners, this video compiles some of the most impressive visuals from the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. Of all the Oscar categories, this one may lend itself best to a simple video compilation of clips that lets you decide for yourself which movie deserves to win. All you have to do is watch and decide. Or is it really that simple?

Of course, one can’t evaluate all the films in their entirety in one sitting. I’ve limited the selections for each film to two standout clips not exceeding a total of 90 seconds. To do this, I enlisted the suggestions of the Twittersphere. Over a dozen people tweeted their standout shots and images from the nominated films, with several moments getting multiple mentions and thus finding their way into this compilation reel. Based on sheer number of enthusiastic tweets on their behalf, it seems that Skyfall and Lincoln are the popular favorites.

I made one additional tweak to the video by removing the audio from the clips. It may be a bit jarring to watch these scenes without a soundtrack, but it’s for the sake of placing sole emphasis on the images and camerawork. I hope you’ll agree with me that, by and large, the visual artistry on display speaks quite well for itself.

Looking at these clips, I have my own opinion on who should win, but I’ll keep mum, as I’d rather see you cast your vote in the comments section. Perhaps a subsequent discussion below might tease out my favorite.

VIDEO ESSAY: Who Should Win the Oscar for Best Lead Actor

Part of "Who Should Win," a series of video essays co-presented by Indiewire Press Play and Fandor.

Two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington earns his sixth career nomination as drunk airline pilot Whip Whitaker in Flight. Washington’s best moment is the film’s best moment: a riveting sequence where his plane is in free fall. Washington pilots the scene, cutting through the hysterics with a commanding cool. The rest of the film shows his character’s slow descent into alcoholic self-destruction, a chance for Washington to play ugly anti-hero. But there are few surprises to his portrayal of a self-hating drunk.

Daniel Day Lewis is also a two-time winner, and he’s the favorite to win another as the title role in Lincoln. It’s a complete performance, fully studied in physical manner, every gesture carefully considered and invested with charismatic warmth. But there’s something kind of self-contained about it, to a lesser degree than Denzel Washington’s. All the same, the kind of performance that you feel obligated to revere, like staring at an animatronic version of the Lincoln memorial.

The contender most likely upset Day Lewis is Hugh Jackman. His appearance in Les Miz is one of the best things about the film—he does the best job of selling the movie’s live performance concept. Even when his singing is off, it seems work, as a way of expressing his character’s conflicted moral state. And while the film is aimed to squeeze every teardrop out of its material, Jackman doesn’t dwell on the melodrama. He portrays a man’s journey to salvation with a survivalist urgency and vigor.

But I’m most impressed by two performances that aren’t favorites to win, even though both actors are in nearly every scene of their films, and convey a risk-taking vulnerability that deserves recognition.

Bradley Cooper surprised a lot of people with a breakthrough performance as Pat, a man fighting bipolar disorder inSilver Linings Playbook. Cooper runs his character through a gauntlet of manias and rages. With a simple shift of his voice, or a darting eye movement, he flips the switch to show his character’s mind jumping off the tracks. but he never overplays these emotions, giving room to reveal the comic absurdity of his condition. And for all his antic outward energy, he also does a lot of taking in. Over the course of this movie, he has to interact and respond to a dozen different characters with their own issues and button-pushing tendencies. There are moments where Pat’s reactions show an ability to see outside himself, which takes his character and Cooper’s performance to another dimension.

Finally there’s Joaquin Phoenix, who lays it on the line as Freddy Quell in The Master. This is a film whose success or failure mostly hinges on the credibility of its lead, whose self-destructive impulses lead to displays of outrageous, alienating behavior. The key question is whether Phoenix is just chewing scenery, or is really tapping into a genuine sense of torment.

Some of his acting choices tread close to gimmickry, his body bent in anguish, his mouth twisted like Popeye the Sailor. But over time, Phoenix reveals what’s behind his grotesque appearance. The crucial scene is his initial psychological processing. Here he his challenged to confront his inner demons and the result is one of the most riveting scenes of the year.

This truly is acting that feels alive like nothing else. It’s here that Phoenix’s character reveals his conscience. And from this point on, Phoenix takes us through a turbulent journey of a soul awaking to recognize itself. The Master is a wild, unresolved movie that at times loses control in its probing of a group movement. But what stays true throughout is Joaquin Phoenix, a performance totally committed to its character in all its ugliness and wonder.

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of IndieWire’s PressPlay Video Blog, Chief Video Essayist for Fandor’s Keyframe, and a contributor to Roger Ebert.com. Follow him on Twitter.

VIDEO ESSAY SERIES: Who Really Should Win the Oscars

Press Play presents "Who Should Win," a series of videos that evaluates the nominees of each major Oscar category to decide who really deserves to win the Academy Awards. This is the second year that Press Play has applied its video essay power to make its Oscar determinations (see last year's video series). This year's video series is co-presented by Indiewire Press Play and Fandor.

In case you haven’t noticed from all the TV commercials, full-page ads, talk show appearances, news articles and blog posts, the annual Oscar game is in full swing. Academy Awards voters have until February 4 to cast their ballots, basing their decisions on any number of factors, namely all of the aforementioned campaigning plus any word-of-mouth buzzing through Hollywood.

We aren’t fully privy to insider knowledge, but we do have access to the one thing that, in a perfect world, really should matter the most: the movies themselves. And so, with the purpose of centering the Oscar conversation back to where it really belongs, we present “Who Should Win,” a video series co-presented by the Press Play video blog at Indiewire and Fandor.

For the benefit of your Oscar pool ballot, inside each video you’ll also find our predictions for who is expected to win. But the web is cluttered with so many of these prognostications that we lose sight of could be the most fulfilling aspect of this exercise: discussing the merits of each of these nominated artists. Let the debate begin.

Who Should Win: Best Lead Actor

Who Should Win: Best Supporting Actor

Who Should Win: Best Supporting Actress

Other categories to come soon. Keep checking back and weighing in!

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of IndieWire’s PressPlay Video Blog, Video Essayist for Fandor’s Keyframe, and a contributor to Roger Ebert.com. Follow him on Twitter.

VIDEO ESSAY: Who Should Win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor

Part of "Who Should Win," a series of video essays co-presented by Indiewire Press Play and Fandor.

This year’s Best Supporting Actor nominees are all previous Oscar winners, which eliminates some of the career achievement concerns that can affect these awards. Let’s hope that puts more emphasis on the quality of the performances, which are all worthy of consideration.

As a wisecracking, world-weary Hollywood producer, Alan Arkin gives a light-hearted lift to Argo’s political thriller proceedings. In Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones plays the salty senator Thaddeus Stevens. Jones’ performance lives in his eyes. It shows the mental activity of an old man challenged to rethink his politics in order to achieve his lifelong dream of abolishing slavery. Jones is currently the narrow favorite to win the Oscar, but I think there are three performances better than his.

In Django Unchained, Christoph Waltz is a ruthless bounty hunter whose conscience awakens when he helps a freed slave on his quest. Waltz is a master of playing surface-level civility. But in this film, he peels away those layers ever so gradually to reveal his moral outrage seething underneath.

Robert De Niro gives his best performance in years in The Silver Linings Playbook. He plays a football-fixated father, whose attempts to help his son are undermined by his own manic temperament. It’s a display of late-career virtuosity, showing the emotional range he’s mastered over a lifetime: from explosive menace to wisecracking warmth. In this film, he adds an extra dimension through a sense of advanced age and frailty, which he uses to disarming pathos in this scene. But as it turns out, this emotional display is a put-on, as he just wants to loop his son into a crazy scheme. De Niro’s character is an inspired creation of demented obsession, charged with startling vitality.

But I have to give the top prize to Philip Seymour Hoffman for his work as the self-help guru Lancaster Dodd in The Master. It surprises me to say this because I’m not even sure if it’s a complete performance—by the end, his character seems to disappear into the movie’s unresolved clouds of ambiguity. But for the first 90 minutes of The Master, Hoffman is key to making this film work. He’s a pillar of authoritative self-control, a counterbalance to Joaquin Phoenix’s utterly unhinged lead performance.

But Hoffman is doing more than just playing the straight man. There’s an unforgettable scene where Hoffman’s Dodd first processes Phoenix. From Dodd’s face and his line of questioning, we see a refined man fascinated by a wild beast of a human, but we catch a glimpse of that same wildness lurking in him as well. That wildness explodes in a later scene when Hoffman is ambushed, and his lack of self-mastery is exposed. In just these two scenes, Hoffman is able to chart out the entire three-dimensional psychic landscape of a character. It’s this richness that keeps us watching even as the film takes us to increasingly difficult territory.

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of IndieWire’s PressPlay Video Blog, Video Essayist for Fandor’s Keyframe, and a contributor to Roger Ebert.com. Follow him on Twitter.

VIDEO ESSAY: Who Should Win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress

For

Part of "Who Should Win," a series of video essays co-presented by Indiewire Press Play and Fandor.

Anne Hathaway is the favorite to win Best Supporting Actress as Fantine in Les Miserables, and that’s just wrong for three reasons. First, she gave a much richer performance as the sly Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises. Second, she’s not even the best supporting performance in Les Miz—that honor goes to Samantha Barks, who’s more nuanced as Éponine—but of course, Éponine always gets overlooked. I think Anne Hathaway is a great actress, but this is the worst performance in this category. It’s a sad puppy act pitched at shrieking full volume, while ripping off Sinead O’Connor and Falconetti’s Joan of Arc. This performance doesn’t just beg for an Oscar, it grovels for it.

Sally Field has won two Oscars, and she’s nominated again as Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln, playing an unstrung, emotional foil to the constantly composed president. Field brings an intelligence and dignity that gives an edge to her character’s moments of hysteria. She’s able to convey a mind that’s alert and articulate even when it spins in sadness.

Jackie Weaver is the surprise nominee for Silver Linings Playbook as a mother trying to deal with her son’s bipolar disorder. She has only a handful of lines, mostly appearing in cutaway reaction shots; it’s practically a silent movie-type performance, and not a bad one at that. Expressive even in her silence, she’s a graceful, accepting presence amidst a cast of crazies.

Amy Adams has roughly 20 minutes of screen time in The Master, and boy does she make the most of it. She gives a hand job, turns her eyes black and gives the stare of death while naked and pregnant. Her unnerving intensity casts a spectre over The Master—it’s a pity that she wasn’t utilized more. She practically deserves her own movie.

Another character who deserves her own movie is Cheryl Cohen-Greene, the sex surrogate played by Helen Hunt in The Sessions. Hunt has nearly twice as much screen time as any of the other nominees, which may give her an unfair advantage. But this is the most full-bodied performance of the five. Not just because Hunt appears fully nude, but because she conveys a generosity that gives the film intimacy, as well as intrigue. Hunt’s character helps a disabled man experience the joy of sex. Her confident voice and reassuring gestures make a bizarre situation seem perfectly normal. And just like her character, Hunt manages to give so much of herself while not giving herself away. It’s a performance within a performance, one that explores the personal boundaries of a very unique profession, whether it be sex therapy or screen acting.

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of IndieWire’s PressPlay Video Blog, Video Essayist for Fandor’s Keyframe, and a contributor to Roger Ebert.com. Follow him on Twitter @alsolikelife

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Sarah D. Bunting wins the Oscars Death race as she surveys the race for Best Documentary Shorts

[EDITOR'S NOTE: It's over! With her inclusion of Best Documentary Shorts in this series, Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com has succeeded in watching every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. Congratulations, Sarah, for winning the Oscars Death Race. You can catch her down at the local bar treating herself to a pleasant alcoholic beverage, celebrating her hard-won victory. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here. ]

Documentary Shorts Sarah 61, Oscars 0; 24 categories completed, race won

The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement. A salute to the many men and women who took enormous risks for the movement without needing name recognition, TBoB introduces us to James Armstrong, a barber in his eighties, on the eve of Barack Obama's election. You can't necessarily separate the man from his relationship to the fight for integration (his sons integrated Graymont Elementary in Birmingham), but I'd rather have seen a tighter focus on the man himself, letting those stories come through him. The talking heads and footage of the inauguration made the film a little flat overall.

God Is The Bigger Elvis. The film that completed the Death Race, it will always have a special place in my heart — but it's a visit with Dolores Hart, once an up-and-coming starlet who foreswore Hollywood to join a Benedictine order almost 50 years ago. Now a mother prioress, she and other nuns talk about that decision, the process of communing with God, and the evolution of their understanding of intimacy. The bittersweet reveal towards the end is lovely and sad.

Incident in New Baghdad. The film is told from the POV of Ethan McCord, an infantryman present at said incident, and runs footage that is truly stern stuff as McCord gives his perspective on what really went down. Its strength is the way it acts as a confessional for McCord, but I think it needed a few more minutes of him and a few less of pointed Fox News coverage.

Saving Face. This one knocked me back a step. I hadn't known about the epidemic of women getting acid thrown on them in Pakistan, but this horrible problem (if that's a big enough word for it; I feel it isn't) was on the rise. In 2011, a member of the parliament got a bill through that made it punishable with a life sentence, but prior to that, many victims had to continue living with the husbands and in-laws who had maimed them. Others tried to rebuild their lives and self- esteem through plastic surgery and support groups. Some very upsetting footage; a fairly conventional triumph-over-adversity doc, but well done of the genre.

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. Starts out rivetingly, with home movies of the March 2011 tsunami carrying a moving carpet of destruction towards a hillside — houses, cars, fleeing people. The tension dissipates once the film moves into its central topic: that the cherry blossoms which return to Japan each spring are a symbol of national spirit and resilience. Unpoetic shots of aftermath debris, contrasted with Malick-y portraits of the blooms themselves, get repetitive, but there's interesting stuff here; look out for the tree wrangler (who refers to himself as "the cherry master") who talks about the beauty and terror of nature, and how "we forget the terror."

Should win: No clear leader in my opinion, but the one that really stuck with me is Saving Face.

Will win: My sense is that The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossomhas the lead here.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here.

SCORE CARD UPDATE: Sarah D. Bunting wins the Oscars Death Race

Current score: Oscars 0, Sarah 61; 24 categories completed

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Best Cinematography:

Best Sound Mixing:

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Best Documentary Feature:

Best Documentary (short subject):

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OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Picture

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The end is rapidly approaching and Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is down to the category for Documentary Shorts. Here, she picks the Oscar in the Best Picture category. She has very nearly watched every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here. It's a tough job. But, someone has to do it.]

NYMag's David Edelstein posits that The Artist is a lock for the gold on Sunday, and I don't disagree, with the conclusion or the reasoning. It's a weird year for the Best Pic slate, with a lot of seriously-flawed-at-best material; it might come down to the least of nine evils.

The evil-lope, please…

The nominees

The Artist. As Edelstein notes, it's charming — charming enough. Some found it too self-consciously charming, but a lot of people saw it…and a lot of people felt good and smart about themselves for seeing it. The presumptive winner.

The Descendants. Went off the boil a few weeks ago, which is fine by me, as I despised it across the board. Not a terrible pick for your pool, but unlikely.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Man, people are REALLY afraid of Scott Rudin, eh? …I would drop a "just kidding" in here if I could find another reason for the nomination, but I can't. Widely, and correctly, reviled by critics; no chance.

The Help. Wonderful performances almost get the white-guilty writing out of its own way, but not quite. A long shot.

Hugo. I admired it a great deal, and while it's not something I will rush to buy on DVD, of the group this year, I think it's the most…complete, I guess. It's a story for all ages, the acting is good, the writing is a little strange but mostly good, the director pushed himself and the format, and it's pretty. It could win, but I would bet it for Best Directing, not here.

Midnight in Paris. A past-masters nomination, I suspect, for a likeable but redundant Woody Allen movie. No chance.

Moneyball. A very good movie that exceeded my expectations by a wide margin; it's built well. For whatever reason — too niche? — it's not in the discussion, which is unfortunate, but the nomination is the award.

The Tree of Life. A part of me wants it to win, because it didn't work for me, but I still think it's important, from an event standpoint and from a "half the fun of watching movies is talking about them afterwards" standpoint. Plus, watching people lose their fookin' minds on Twitter about it at 11:55 PM? Awesome. "Divisive" won't get it done, though, and I don't think it has enough friends in the room.

War Horse. Gorgeous but undisciplined outing from Spielberg that might feel too "children's" to pull many votes. Doubtful.

Who shouldn't be here: I'll just say it: most of them. EL&IC is the most egregious, but this is another category where it's not who's here. It's who's not.

Who should be here, but isn't: I was disappointed in Tinker Tailor, but it's ambitious, at least, and it's better than several of the nominees. So is Win Win. So is Meek's Cutoff. So is the entire Best Foreign Language category. Seriously, where is A Separation — it pulled a screenplay nom, it got decent distribution compared to its category-mates, and it has a basic understanding of how human beings speak to one another, which is not something you can say for about half the BP slate. Where's Rango? Where's Bridesmaids, for that matter?

I get a whiff of "let's not bother nominating things the Academy voters won't make an effort to see" from the nominees this year. …Well, every year, but it's not usually the bulk of the list. I have absolutely no problem with nominating popular entertainments that did big box office, but if films got passed over as too challenging to the voters, that's horseshit. The rest of us have to pretend to take these awards seriously for 17 months out of the year, so the voters can take them seriously too, or they can step aside. Fall asleep reading subtitles? You're excused. Can't follow complicated plots? You're excused. "But how do I get the 3D glasses to go over my bifoca–" You're excused. You don't have to drive to Montreal and back in one day to see Monsieur Lazhar like one crazy lady I might mention, but if "best" means "least likely to inconvenience members of the industry whose kings we are crowning in front of the entire world on TV"? Not good enough.

ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA! …Hee. Sorry about that. I'm a little tired over here. To the prediction-mobile, let's go!

Who should win: Hugo or Moneyball

Who will win: The Artist

Who needs a binky and a nap: This brother

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the races for Best Original and Adapted Screenplay

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Oscars Death Race is almost over and Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is busting out her predictions for the Academy Awards 2012. She has very nearly watched every single film nominated for an Oscar this year. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Adapted Screenplay is an interesting case, at least to me: what's getting voted on, exactly? Is it the screenplay qua screenplay? Or is it the skill of the adaptation? I realize I shouldn't think too deeply on these criteria, but the category this year points up the distinction I've just mentioned, for two reasons: 1) the source material is quite varied (two novels, a play, a non-fiction book, etc.); and 2) two adaptations of wildly popular book series didn't get nominated. More on that in a sec; first, the nominees.

The Descendants has this locked up, I believe, though it's probably the only statue the film will receive. I wish it could get some other statue, like for Best Hawaiian Shirts or Best Bridges Imitation By Another Bridges…something that's not for writing.

Hugo is one I'm surprised to see nominated, but that's probably because the movie registers more visually; people who have read the book almost uniformly praise the film version. I really liked the way the writing's phrasings and tone reflected the fabulism of the plot, and I wouldn't mind a win for it, but it's not happening.

The Ides of March. The movie had pacing problems, but I don't know that that's the screenplay's fault. The first half is gripping and it does do some things extremely well (the scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the SUV is an example of how it elided things and expected us to keep up). But this isn't the nom I thought we'd get from TIoM — George Clooney's acting and the way he's shot combined to make him, for the first time in a while, genuinely menacing and villainous onscreen; I also thought Ryan Gosling might get some attention. But it's this, and this came out too early. No shot.

Moneyball is, for my money, the best writing on offer here. It's Sorkin-y, but in the good ways; it lets the actors work, but isn't too indulgent of them; and it brought what I assumed was an unfilmable book to the screen. If I had a vote, I'd spend it on this.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy does have an argument. My understanding is that it had its work cut out as far as trying to tame the sprawling John le Carré plots (the last time the material was attempted, it was a miniseries), and while I've heard it called murky and confusing, I didn't agree, or think that opacity was a bad thing in the second place. If the criterion is "how well did the screenplay address the challenges presented by the source," TTSS may have had the biggest distance to cover. But…again, I wonder why it's the script that gets the nod and not Tom Hardy, or the set design or cinematography. And it did win the BAFTA. Solid pick.

Anyone not belong here? I like Payne's other stuff, so I'm not that bent about it, but The Descendants is not good writing.

Anyone not here who should be? Dragon Tattoo, perhaps. I do think Jane Eyre should have gotten a nomination; that material is not for everyone, but Moira Buffini's version chops out the bulk of what alienates people about it, and gets to the good stuff.

Should win: Moneyball

Will win: The Descendants

Original Screenplay is a bit easier to assess in theory; in practice, the diversity of the nominations in 2012 make it tougher.

The Artist will win a lot of its categories, and it may win this one too — but the narrative and its structure are rather conventional (or, if you're one of the film's detractors, "derivative"). The concept isn't the same thing as the scripting, but I don't know whether that's considered a relevant distinction. A solid bet.

Bridesmaids. I liked the movie, but I had some issues with the length, and with the frat pandering. The writing did shine in the less showy scenes, like the scene at the beginning with the two friends at brunch, but I don't think it should win, and it won't.

Margin Call. JC Chandor attempted to split the difference between McGuffin-y vagueness and arcane specifics; I get the reasoning, but it failed. I'm betting he has good writing in him; this wasn't it. It's not impossible that he wins, but it doesn't seem to have legs.

Midnight in Paris. The customary nom for Woody Allen, but it's minor work. No shot.

A Separation is the best work here by a good distance, and at the highest difficulty level. The overlapping dialogue, the order and timing of the reveals, get more impressive the more you think about them.

Anything here that shouldn't be? Margin Call.

Anything that should be here but isn't? Win Win, maybe? Or Melancholia.

Should win: A Separation

Will win: The Artist