BIG D PITCHAS PRESENTS:
THE 79TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS
by Diego Kontarovsky

I don't know why Leo is being nominated for Blood Diamond.  His performance in The Departed was the balls!  But if they nominated that, it might have to be for Supporting, and maybe they wanted to nominate him for the lead in something.  He's really excellent in everything he does, so any time he wins for anything, I'm on board, I guess.  You never know what factors exactly lead to certain nominations.  I see Peter O'Toole's name on there, and I suspect that he's there because he's Peter O'Toole.  If it was some other old guy giving the exact same performance, it's possible nobody would have seen it.  I don't know; that movie looked dumb.  From what I've gathered on all these Oscar shows, Forest Whitaker apparently scared the shit out of everyone who saw The Last King of Scotland, but was also very human and nice, so it's essentially his Oscar until the envelope says otherwise.

At least, according to the entertainment gossip collective.

As for the two I saw, both performances are top notch.  Will Smith trying to be a good dad made me feel like someone was stabbing me in the heart.  But I'm gonna give it to Gosling because his commitment to roles is absolutely chilling.  Not as chilling as a large cannibal king, but enough for the purposes of this award.

My pick for Best Leading Actor: Ryan Gosling.
 

I think all these guys were good in their roles (in the case of Djimon, I'm going by the trailer).  Alan Arkin is a little surprising, although I suppose there's nothing technically wrong with his performance.  Sometimes people get nominations just because they are somehow associated with projects that are incidentally great.  Like Queen Latifah being nominated for Chicago.  I think this may be a case of that.  People really love Little Miss Sunshine, and they can't think of ways to healthily express this love, so they do crazy things like nominate Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin for Oscars.  But we'll get to her in two shakes.

I've noticed that sometimes you'll meet people whose every thought is fueled by insecurity and the desperation to appear smart or cool.  You will typically find them coming up to you after a movie and asking you a question about it and waiting for you to answer, so they can then reply with "Really?  Because I thought..." upon which they will throw a prepackaged, deliberately quirky opinion at you that is so offbeat and unexpected that it must be revolutionary.  I bet these are the people who come out of a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, and Alec Baldwin and say, "You know what my favorite performance was in this?  Mark Wahlberg."  And that's why he's the only actor in that movie nominated for an Academy Award.

Jackie Earle Haley is certainly wonderful as quite possibly the most creepy character in any movie in 2006.  He was both frightening and real, which might remind people of the two things that Forest Whitaker was in his highly favored cannibal king turn, so that could sway some voters.  And if we're talking intensity, we can't forget all the tense moments we shared with Djimon Hounsou in the Blood Diamond trailer.  "That makes us partners!"  "I am not your partner!!!!"  "What if I help you find your family!!!!!!!!"

But if we're talking a masterful command of drama, comedy, poignancy, and funk, then I need say no more than the words "Jimmy got soul."

My pick for Best Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy.
 

This is an fairly comprehensive sampler of legendary actresses, with the notable exception of Penélope Cruz.

Judi, Meryl, and Kate are certainly no strangers to glowing critical acclaim.  However, every television program and article I've seen and read (respectively) has been adamant about one thing above all.  And that is that Helen Mirren is the surest bet since the Harlem Globetrotters.  Evidently, the odds of her not winning are worse than the odds of Crystal Pepsi being elected President of the United States.

To be frank, I had no idea who the hell she was before The Queen came out.  And I don't think I would mind if she or Dame Judi took the golden statuette home.  And Meryl Streep was absolutely spellbinding in The Devil Wears Prada, so I would be even more pleased if she took it for herself.  My official endorsement, however, goes to Kate Winslet.  She's pretty much the Mozart of funny little actresses in wistful, serious movies.

My pick for Best Leading Actress: Kate Winslet.
 

I'm already prepared to just throw this thing at Cate Blanchett, despite hers being the only movie in this category I didn't see.  The reason for this is the same reason that she is better than the entire chain of Little Caesars pizza stores-- she always delivers.  Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi were fine, but they have the misfortune of being in a movie that was boring and stupid.  So whatever skill or nuance they put into their performance, I had no patience for.

Then there's little Abigail Breslin.  The bad news for her is that Queen Latifah lost her Oscar in 2003.  BUT she lost it to her co-star, Catherine Zeta Jones.  So unless Alan Arkin wins both Best Supporting Actor AND Best Supporting Actress, just because of how fucking fabulous he was as Grampa Whatshisname, then she still has a shot.  Just not... realistically.

With Jennifer Hudson, you just have to think about one thing.  Could anyone else on this list have played that role?

Besides Cate Blanchett.

My pick for Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson.
 

I never had any intention of seeing Monster House.  It looked good for kids, but I already saw a short film once about a house that ate kids, and that was enough for me.  And I truly did mean to see Happy Feet, because the trailer kicked fucking ass, but tragically, I just didn't.  I was spending a lot of days trying to stretch my dollars, and Happy Feet was a casualty of that.  I think I saw Bobby instead.  I'm assuming Elijah Wood's performance in both movies was comparably magnificent.

Cars I did see, and though it wasn't one of my favorite Pixar movies, it was still a really good film.  Owen Wilson notwithstanding.

My pick for Best Animated Feature: Cars.
 

Now we get into some of the nominations that I might be even less qualified to assign.  So let's just grit our teeth and get it over with.

Which is something I hope to hear one day, when I'm ready to father children.

Dreamgirls had some pretty good art.  The whole movie felt very musical and period piecey in its visuals.  The Good Shepherd was very officious and devoid of personality, which I think was really the desired effect.  Pan's Labyrinth looked pretty freaky and fantastical in its advertisements, so I gotta assume that was a success.  Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was beautiful in its piratical art direction.  Then there's The Prestige, which was in a league by itself.

It's a tough choice.  Especially when I don't know what I'm doing.

My pick for Best Art Direction: The Prestige.
 

This one will be a little tougher.  I didn't see The Black Dahlia, although I am aware that Brian DePalma is usually known for his cinematographical creativity.  I wouldn't be surprised if that piece of crap turned out to have been shot brilliantly.  I really wanted to see Children of Men, and still do.  I expect that it was a regular tour de force of cinematography.  I don't know why The Illusionist is on here.  It seems to me that the kinda bullshit that was a draw for this movie falls under the category of art direction.  What, then, are you doing in cinematography, you dumb shit?!

There's Pan's Labyrinth again.  I would never see this movie.  If I'm going to see a foreign movie, it might as well be about something that interests me.  And I stopped caring about girls entering magical fairy lands days ago.

Then there's The Prestige again, which was like catnip for me.  I just don't have enough sensory information to make a blind call on this one, so I guess I have to go by my two magician movies.  One was the brightest jewel of 2006, the other was the biggest piece of shit of 2006.  Decisions, decisions.

My pick for Best Cinematography: The Prestige.
 

Curse of the Golden Flower and Marie Antoinette are historical things, which is usually what you see getting nominated for costumes.  I think even if the costume person for these movies was a person of profound mental retardation, they'd still get nominated just because they used historical costumes.  So we won't be paying any attention to those two.

Then there's Dreamgirls.  This movie is also a period piece, but it spans a couple decades so that the costumes have a chance to evolve on screen.  I don't remember what they looked like specifically, but I remember there was lots of them and they were lots of fun.  Dreamgirls could win it.  Honestly, I never think about movie costumes till three seconds before they announce the winner.  They rattle off the nominees and color pencil sketches of the movie costumes will start flashing on the screen, and everyone in the room frantically shouts out their pick based on those three seconds.  And if they win, they think they're an expert on costumes, even though they're really just deciding who has the best color pencil sketches.

The Queen doesn't get any credit from me.  These are basically all the outfits the people wore in real life about ten years ago.  Talk about the easiest fucking job in the world.  You want a goddamn Oscar for that?

The Devil Wears Prada is the most modern day-set nominee on the list.  And the movie is actually all about the clothes in it.  So even though Dreamgirls was a shitload of costume fun, ya gotta respect a movie that gives you a stiff one over all the glamour of the fashion industry.

My pick for Best Costume Design: The Devil Wears Prada.
 

All right, here we go.  As you can see, I watched all these movies.  So now you're really gonna get some quality movie comparison.  First is Babel.

I hated this fucking movie, so why the fuck would I want the fucking director to win?  Next!

The Departed.  Martin Scorsese has a voice that I've really started to dig over his past few movies.  He always gets nominated and always gets passed over, and I never have a problem with it, but I would've been equally jazzed if he had won any of those times.  I'm not saying he should get one just because he keeps getting passed over.  I am saying that he's consistently boss.

Come to think of it, I guess I do have a problem with that pedophile rapist who beat him in 2003.

Letters from Iwo Jima.  I've come to expect nothing but masterpieces from Clint Eastwood.  Flags of our Fathers didn't get me too hot, but considering that he immediately followed it up with A WHOLE 'NOTHER MOVIE THAT RULED ASS, I think we can let that one slide.  Anyway, he is a genius, like Scorsese.  If either Eastwood or Scorsese won, that would be ideal.  I can't decide between either of them, so I'm going to have to pick arbitrarily.

The Queen was cool, and United 93 made me carsick.  Neither one makes me want to kick Marty or Clint outta bed.

My pick for Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed.
 

All right, I saw none of these.  Let's go through them with the help of some internet-culled synopses.  Deliver Us from Evil is apparently about the true story of a pedophile priest.  An Inconvenient Truth is the one where Al Gore lectures about global warming.  Iraq in Fragments is probably something about things happening in Iraq.  Jesus Camp is about an insane Christian summer camp for children.  And My Country, My Country is another one about Iraq.  Okay, since two of them are about the same thing, they cancel each other out.  And the pedophile priest one is kinda similar to the Christian summer camp one, so those two are out as well.  I guess I gotta give it to Gore.

Seriously though, I've heard from people that An Inconvenient Truth is an incredibly important movie that everyone should see.  A few months ago, I had a coupon for Blockbuster, that I think I used on An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder or something.  Or maybe it was something else.  Anyway, I remember finding out that An Inconvenient Truth had been out on video and being pissed, because I would have used my coupon on that.  Not that renting a movie at regular price is a staggering blow to my bank account, but I, like most Americans, am motivated primarily by coupons, and Blockbuster never gives me enough.  I think Al Gore is great.  I think the purpose of this documentary is great.  I hope to see it soon.  In the meantime, I give it the official Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.  Congratulations, Al!

My pick for Best Documentary Feature: An Inconvenient Truth.
 

Why is there only four of these?  Were there really that few worthwhile documentary shorts this year?  Remind me to make a documentary short and get it nominated for an Academy Award in 2008.  This might be the hardest pick of all for me, because as I write this, the Oscars telecast is already airing, and I failed to secure information about these movies I didn't see earlier in the day, so looking them up now might lead me to a website that spoils which one of them won.  So I'm going to have to go by titles alone.

The Blood of Yingzhou District sounds like it's about something bad happening somewhere far from where I live.  Sounds like the exact thing I would hate to sit down and watch.  What else ya got?  Recycled Life.  That sounds like it could be interesting, but also maybe kind of instructional and boring.  Rehearsing a Dream sounds intriguing.  How do you rehearse a dream?  Already I'm curious to see the fucking thing.  Two Hands is understated and simple.  Could swing either way.  I'm between the last two and the nonexistent phantom fifth nominee.

My pick for Best Documentary Short: Rehearsing a Dream.
 

God, Babel got nominated for everything this year.  Maybe I'm in the minority for thinking it blows shit, but one day history will prove me right.  In the meantime, I'm certainly not going to award it recognition for its editing.

I'm not sure how Blood Diamond and Children of Men were edited.  The trailers were cut okay.  They maintained my interest and made me want to see the movie.  So aside from committing the crime of completely pissing all over the movie's actual pacing, and probably having been edited by someone who had nothing to do with the movie itself, they are adequate considerations.

The Departed was chopped like a fine cuisine.  The opening titles punched me in the face, and the rest of the movie made love to me.  And I don't know if the goal of an editor should be to make me want to puke, but if not, then United 93 just made my decision a hell of a lot easier.

My pick for Best Film Editing: The Departed.
 

I don't mean to sound like an ignorant horse's ass, but when they present the Foreign Language Film award, I'll probably be discussing how my Little Caesars pizza tastes with the other people in the room.  They may not be as good as Cate Blanchett, but you can't beat their prices.

First we have After the Wedding, from Denmark, which is about a guy who goes to a wedding and faces difficult memories from his past.  My guess for the ending is that he has sex with someone at the wedding.

Then we have Days of Glory (Indigenes), from Algeria, which is about North African troops fighting in France during World War II and realizing how shitty their rulers treat them compared to France.  My guess for the ending is that they decide to live in France and just be chill.

Then we have The Lives of Others, from Germany, which is about a secret police Commie spying on a playwright and doubting whether he should turn him in or not.  I guess he likes the playwright.  My guess for the ending is that he tells the playwright the truth and together they write a play about it and win a prize.

Then we have Pan's Labyrinth, from Mexico, which is about a girl in the Spanish Civil War who goes into a magical fairy world and has to perform tasks.  I would expect this one to win since it was apparently wonderful enough to merit a big release in the states.

Then we have Water, from Canada, which is about an eight-year-old girl in 1938 India who is forced to live in a big place for widows, cuz I guess her husband died or something.  This Indian thing is from Canada?  Call me crazy, but I think they got a ringer.  Anyway, my guess for the ending is that they kill the head guy running the big widow place and they all flee at the end, for freedom.

I'm tempted to go with After the Wedding, on the off chance that my sex ending guess turns out to be right.

My pick for Best Foreign Language Film: The Lives of Others.
 

This is another one that I can't think about until seconds before they announce the winner, when they show little clips of the nominated movies.  And why only three nominees?  You gotta feel like shit if you worked as a makeup person on a movie last year and the Academy sees your movie, but decides it would rather nominate NOTHING.

I saw Click on video a while ago.  I'm trying to remember what they did for makeup.  I think it was just prosthetics for the different time periods represented in the film.  That kinda stuff is fairly commonplace today, whereas Apocalypto had crazy Mayan tribes.  That slight edge of novelty makes me want to pick Apocalypto, even though I didn't even see it.  I am conflicted by the hypocrisy of voting for something I didn't see versus the idiocy of voting for something that my mind tells me wasn't as good.

And there's that third one again.  You know what?  I'm getting really sick of Pan's Labyrinth.

My pick for Best Makeup: Apocalypto.
 

This one also poses a problem.  I didn't remember any of these scores, so I went to Amazon.com and played little bitty clips of each of the soundtrack albums.  That should give me an exact idea of the scope of each movie's entire score.

First I listened to Babel.  It was mostly eerie guitar strumming, and occasionally someone would start singing.  I couldn't tell if that was just songs mixed in with the score, or if that was part of it.  Overall, pretty good.  The Good German had a cool old-timey feel with some other stuff that sounded like intrigue!  And other things!  Notes on a Scandal started out okay, but then the clips wouldn't load and I got really pissed and went to the next one.  Pan's Labyrinth sounded good too, very fantasy and dream-like.  And The Queen sounded fine, but then those clips wouldn't load either.  Whatever!  I saw that movie and don't remember pissing myself with joy over the score.

My pick for Best Original Score: The Good German.
 

Although I did not see An Inconvenient Truth, I downloaded all five of these songs and listened to them before I made my decision.  So this should be a pretty fair pick.

Dreamgirls had a lot of good songs, as you can see from its dominance over the nominees list.  These are not the best songs from the movie, but you are not allowed to nominate songs that existed before the movie.  Only original songs written specifically for the movie.  Of the three Dreamgirls nominees, my favorite is easily "Listen," performed by Beyoncé Knowles.  The question is, does it stack up against those other two race horses?  Well, first we have "I Need to Wake Up," by Melissa Etheridge.  It certainly deals with an important subject matter, but you're not gonna catch me whistling this bitch in the shower.  Then we have "Our Town," by Randy Newman and James Taylor.  I like it a little better than the Etheridge one, but it's still a bit too light for my tastes.  I'm gonna have to go with my girl Deena on this one.

I was surprised that "Never Gonna Break My Faith" from Bobby was not on the ballot.  This is a really kickass tune.  It was nominated for a Golden Globe, but it got beaten out by some Prince song from the penguin movie.  Whatever.

My pick for Best Original Song: "Listen" from Dreamgirls.
 

I don't care too much who wins this year, except that I hope it's not Babel.  I don't typically find myself wishing misfortune on anyone, so I don't want to will failure on it.  But I did name it the 4th worst movie of all of 2006 in an article aptly entitled The Top Ten Worst Movies of 2006 That I Saw.  I am filled with indifference over The Queen, although it definitely wasn't the best movie of the year.  And I was utterly flabbergasted when I saw that Little Miss Sunshine was nominated.  I am, however, happy to see movies like that getting recognition.

For me, it's a question of either The Departed or Letters from Iwo Jima.  They are both worthy of the title, each one put together like a giant Swiss watch made out of miniature Stradivarius violins.  I have to ultimately go with The Departed, because it works on multiple levels, whereas Letters from Iwo Jima is a little too heavy to just sit down and enjoy.

My pick for Best Picture: The Departed.
 

Okay, I saw none of these.  But I got the plot summaries!  Unfortunately, I jotted them down out of order, so I'll have to read them and see if I can match them up with their corresponding title.  Here we go.

"A singing bird sits in front of a dressing room mirror as a mechanical arm prepares him for his grand performance."  The only one that makes sense here is Maestro.  Too easy.  So far, that is my pick.

"While trying to bury a nut during the Ice Age, Scrat uncovers a frozen time machine."  This combines two things I love: the Ice Age squirrel, and a time machine.  Sorry, Maestro, but my new pick is No Time for Nuts.  I figured that was the title because it mentions both the time machine and the nuts, like right in the title.

"The poor street urchin of Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale finds visions of happiness in the flames of the matches she lights to keep warm."  What classic Hans Christian Andersen tale?  Clearly, this is The Little Matchgirl, because it involves both a girl and matches.  You know, this title matching game sounded more fun and challenging when I thought of it a couple paragraphs up.  But a fucking kindergartener could do this shit.

"Kasper, a young poet in search of inspiration, travels to Norway to meet the celebrated writer, Sigrid Undset."  What?!  THE Sigrid Undset?  Holy shit!  This sounds like the best fucking movie ever!  I'm joking; no one knows who that is.

"As his weary instructor looks on in disbelief, an alien abductor-in-training tries to maneuver a sleeping farmer onto their spaceship."  Well, the last one had a poet in it, so that would be The Danish Poet, which makes this one Lifted.  There, I did it, woo hoo.  But now I have a dilemma.  This alien thing sounds just as cool as the time-traveling squirrel.  I guess, solely for tie-breaking purposes, I'll have to go with the one that features a celebrity.

My pick for Best Animated Short Film: No Time for Nuts.
 

Looks like I put these plot summaries in order, so no game on this one.  Not that it was much of a game.

Binta and the Great Idea: "A seven-year-old African girl tells the stories of her cousin, who longs to go to school, and her father, who has an idea that he hopes will change the world."  Well, frankly, I don't see what these two things have to do with each other.  If this live action short film is as vague as its synopsis, I'm afraid you're not standing on solid ground here, Binta.

Éramos Pocos: "When his wife leaves him, Joaquín and his son turn to her mother for help with the cooking and cleaning."  You'll forgive me if I just step outside to vomit from the disgusting gender stereotyping at play here.  However, it also sounds potentially damn funny.  Sometimes it's hard to just go by the synopses.  Which begs the question.

If no one has seen these god damn things, why are we watching them receive awards?  Put these shits online or something!

By the way, for all I know, they are online.  I didn't start researching this baby till the day of the Oscars.  Not to take all the air out of my argument!

Helmer & Son: "A busy son is called to the rest home where his father has locked himself inside an armoire."  My only question is, does the father lock himself in the armoire out of incompetence, or is he just being difficult?  The movie undoubtedly answers this question and dozens more.

The Saviour: "Malcolm, a door-to-door Mormon evangelist, is in love with a married woman."  Yeah?  What's he gonna do about that?  Good luck!

West Bank Story: "A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands on the West Bank."  I hadn't realized this before, but it turns out I actually saw this thing back in 2005, right after I completed a musical short for my Directing III class.  I showed my movie to this guy at the film school and he didn't like it, so he showed me West Bank Story as an example of a good musical short.  And West Bank Story was pretty good, so at least this guy knew half of what he was talking about.

My pick for Best Live Action Short Film: West Bank Story.
 

Okay, here's two Oscars I'm very curious about.  Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.  I have no idea what the fuck the difference is between the two.  For the purposes of my Oscar pick, I'm going to assume that Sound Editing means the guy in charge of recording all the sounds, and Sound Mixing means the guy in charge of putting them together electronically.

Like we can tell the fucking difference when we're watching the movie.

Another detail that really tickles my fancy is the fact that the nominees for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing are identical, except for one.  Sound Editing has Letters from Iwo Jima and Sound Mixing has Dreamgirls.  Was the mixing not good in Letters from Iwo Jima?  You'd think it would be the same as Flags of Our Fathers, unless Eastwood switched up crews.  If so, he clearly shouldn't have.  The real question is, how can a movie only be nominated for one of the two things?  Is one of them getting robbed?  I would need to consult with some kind of sound expert on this.  He could clear it up easy I bet.  "Yeah, the sound mixing in Dreamgirls was great, but their sound editing was a fucking joke.  You want to hear some good sound editing, go see Letters from Iwo Jima.  But don't listen to their sound mixing, because their sound mixing sucks my fucking dick."

I don't know how to make this decision.  I guess there was good sounds in that pirate movie.

My pick for Best Sound Editing: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
 

As I mentioned earlier, I made a musical short once.  Smoothing out the levels for the music and vocals against each other was the third or fourth biggest pain in the ass I've ever had to deal with in an editing room.  So my full respect goes out to Dreamgirls.  And maybe I'm just uneducated in the matter, and balancing music and vocals is actually the easiest thing in the world to do, but I have no further knowledge about sound mixing to apply to these proceedings, so Dreamgirls it is.

My pick for Best Sound Mixing: Dreamgirls.
 

Once again, another award category with empty slots instead of actual movies.  Fuck you, X-Men 3!  Seriously though, this is a problem.

Poseidon doesn't hold a place in my heart for its visual effects, so that's off the table instantaneously.  It's clearly a competition between Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Superman Returns.  Besides, Poseidon ain't winning no Oscar.

One of the most impressive things I saw last year was Bill Nighy as Davy Jones.  When I found out that this character was done entirely in motion capture with no need for prosthetics, I just about plotzed.  Those visual effects are fucking incredible!  But some of the stuff in Dead Man's Chest was not as amazing as that.  Davy's undead pirate crew, for example, was spectacular, but not super mondo spectacular.  Superman Returns, however, was fangasmic all across the board.  Every shot of Superman doing anything brought me to full arousal.  I am not a gay man, but I would totally make out with CGI Superman in space.

Never thought I'd say that.

My pick for Best Visual Effects: Superman Returns.
 

I'm wondering if the different mediums from which these screenplays were adapted is taken into consideration when voting on this award.  Little Children comes from a book, and a book already comes with a good chunk of the hard dialogue and idea work already done for you.  The Departed is based on a Chinese movie called Infernal Affairs, and Chinese movies, though a pain in the ass to translate, come with a fully fleshed-out cinematic structure and visual template.  I think the hardest thing to write here must have been Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, because they were writing dialogue that would have to be used in unpredictable situations.  This required absurd amounts of preparation, as well as the need to improvise right on the spot.  They ended up writing way more material than is seen on the screen, to account for every possibility.  They also had to take these unscripted segments and tie them all together into a solid narrative.  It's like working with Robin Williams.  And then the result just happened to be a nuclear supernova of hilarity and social commentary.

My pick for Best Adapted Screenplay: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
 

This is interesting.  The screenplay for Babel.  Arguably the worst aspect of the entire movie.  Nominated for an Academy Award.  I'll give it the Oscar-- for BEST PIECE OF SHIT!

I'm really just torn between Letters and Little Miss.  One of them pays tribute to fallen men of honor, which is just tops, and the other brings laughter by way of a dysfunctional family.  For me, the edge has to go to Little Miss Sunshine.  I just have that much more love for humor.

My pick for Best Original Screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine.

So there's all my picks.  Pretty good, huh?  At this point, I would like to shame the Academy voters for not acknowledging the writing, directing, or acting in The Prestige.  Thanks.  If I wanted to watch an awards show that was a goddamn joke, I'd be watching the Emmys.

THE AFTER: WHO ACTUALLY WON.

All right.  Now we're going to do the whole ballot over, with my seen it/haven't seen it icons still gracing the lists of nominees, but this time, with the winner brilliantly highlighted for your informational enjoyment.  The asterisk * indicates which one was my pick.  When the two match up, I get a point!

And because you may not have seen the Oscars or are perhaps reading this in the distant future, I have allowed a bit of SPOILER SPACE, the size of three small paragraphs, for you to gather your bearings.

The ballot here is presented in the order at which it aired in ABC's Oscars telecast on Sunday, February 25, 2007.  That means I can also talk about the hijinks of the show itself all within my article of picks.  That makes this the best Oscar picks article ever written.
 

I failed at making a correct pick here, but I at least gained a deeper understanding of the nominees when Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman came out and they showed a bunch of those color pencil sketches up against the real footage.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 0.
 

For this one, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly came out and did a sensational song and dance about comedians at the Oscars.  Then they showed some clips from the three nominees, and I saw where I went wrong with my pick.  Apocalypto had creepy tribal makeup, and Click had great prosthetic makeup, but Pan's Labyrinth was full of crazy monsters.  And that would be why Pan took this one as well.

At this point, Pan's Labyrinth had won every Oscar in 2007.  Things were not looking good for every other movie that had come out in 2006.  But (spoiler alert) things evened out with the third award.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 0.
 

The Pan's Labyrinth streak ended with the award for Best Animated Short Film, thanks to the fact that Pan's Labyrinth was neither of these things.  This one was presented by Abigail Breslin and Jaden Christopher Syre Smith.  After announcing the nominees, Jaden accidentally started reading the teleprompter for the next award before Abigail had a chance to announce the winner, but he caught himself and played it off like nothing.  This cat most definitely inherited the genetic smoothness of his superstar parents.

The movie that won here looked like the most boring one.  I later found out that Lifted comes from Pixar, which would have most definitely switched my pick vote had I known at the time.  For those keeping count, this was the third award in a row where I agonized over two losing nominees.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 0.
 

Abigail and Jaden stuck around to award the Best Live Action Short Film.  And yes, there was a joke about them being short.  The Oscars never skimp on giggles.

It was cool to see this guy win for the funny West Bank Story.  For those wondering how it was hitting festivals in 2005 and winning an Oscar in 2007, or why the first nominee is English translated into parenthetical Spanish, while the second nominee is vice-versa, I can say that there are answers for all these questions, but I am not the man to provide them.  Continue your search elsewhere.  In the meantime, I finally got a point.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 1.
 

Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear came out and did a schtick about sound guys, upon which Greg Kinnear's sound was cut off.  Ha ha ha!!  But more importantly, the clips they showed while naming the nominees provided precious clues as to what the hell a sound editor does, as opposed to a sound mixer.  There were shots of sounds being recorded (guns being fired, vegetables being squished) and guys sitting at computers looking at movie footage.  Part one of my investigation was complete.  Anyway, the winner here was Letters from Iwo Jima-- the one sound editing nominee that hadn't been nominated for sound mixing.  INTERESTING.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 1.
 

Okay, this one was presented by Jessica Biel and James McAvoy.  I don't know how they assign people to awards.

As they read the nominees, they played a bunch of shots of guys at mixing boards.  Great.  Now you know the difference between the two jobs.  One does everything, the other just comes in and adjusts various knobs.

The winner was Dreamgirls, which of course was not nominated for its sound editing.  So each movie that was only nominated for one sound thing ended up winning for that thing.  I think it's obvious what happened here.  The votes for those four other movies were split between categories, while fans of Dreamgirls and Letters from Iwo Jima were able to more effectively concentrate their votes.  Let's remember this little episode for next year.

Oh, and I looked it up.  Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima pretty much did have the exact same sound crew.  So fuck if this voting process makes any sense.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 2.
 

The award for Best Supporting Actor was appropriately presented by Rachel Weisz, since she was last year's Best Supporting Actress.  They always have the winning actors from previous years present the award to their successors, but they reverse the genders.  This is probably just in case the actor happens to be nominated again.  You can't have Tom Hanks open an envelope and say "And the award goes to me.  Okay, bye," because no one would believe him.  Obviously he wants to win; let someone else read the thing so we'll know it's for real.  Another reason is because then you can have fun sexy things like Adrien Brody smooching Halle Berry on the lips without her prior consent.

Alan Arkin won, and it was later made evident to me that he was obviously winning for a career of great performances, and not necessarily the one in Little Miss Sunshine.  He also additionally theorized that they gave it to him because they're afraid he will "keel over" soon, and then they wouldn't be able to give him one again.  This is bullshit because there were other actors who deserved this specific Oscar more, such as Eddie Murphy, who I hear left the ceremony right after this category.  What a dick!

My Oscar pick score after this award: 2.
 

This one was presented by Cameron Diaz because she is the voice of a very famous cartoon character in the Shrek movies.  Shrek the Third will probably be nominated next year.

As a side note, I hate it when someone involved with a nominated production is selected to announce the winner, because then they make a really big show of emotion when their thing wins, which is a nice fuck you to everyone else, or they're very empty and fake when their thing loses.  Same thing goes if they're good friends with the nominee.  Let's keep an eye out for this practice in the coming years.

Pixar is king of the world in my eyes, so I'm always sad to see them lose.  But what was fun is that when they were naming the nominees, they cut to shots of CGI characters from the respective movies sitting in the audience.  And when the winner was accounced, the penguin started cheering, and the cars and Monster House kids were visibly pissed off.  Of all the awards presented tonight, these guys (and Eddie Murphy) are the only nominees who didn't give a shit about losing gracefully.

My Oscar pick score after this award: Still 2.

Helen Mirren and Tom Hanks came out for this one, and they did something that was kinda cool when naming the nominees.  They played a tiny clip of each movie while one of them read the description from the screenplay, so you could get an idea of how the writer imagined everything.  The Borat description sounded very simple and technical while some of the others were a bit more poetic.  I wonder if all the voters read each of these screenplays before voting, or if they just VOTED FOR THEIR FAVORITE.  I'm sorry, I just hate popularity contests.  And award shows.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 2.

The presenters for Best Costume Design were The Devil Wears Prada's own Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt.  But blow me down, there were no color pencil sketches on this one!  Instead, they showed living, breathing models wearing the actual costumes, moving around mechanically like ungainly robots.  I honestly don't remember if they did this at any previous Oscars.  But if not, I guess we have innovative Oscars telecast producer Laura Ziskin to thank for shit like this.

I forgot to analyze Anne and Emily's reaction at having to give the award to a rival nominee, but I can say with near certainty that they were both very warm on the outside, and at the same time inwardly detached and emotionally distant from the whole thing.  And that's understandable.  It's a gut-wrenching task, but you just gotta disconnect yourself and muscle through until the cameras are off.  This is a rough business to be in.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 2.
 

Gwyneth Paltrow presented this one.  Whatever.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 2.
 

Best Visual Effects was presented by Naomi Watts and Robert Downey Jr.  As they read the nominees, they showed some really cool clips of the raw footage evolving into the finished effects.  Of course, none of this was as cool as the fact that at that moment, Naomi Watts was carrying Liev Schreiber's baby inside of her.  I think that's what history will remember about that night.  Not who won the Visual Effects Oscar.  Or who should have won it.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 2.
 

Next came Clive Owen and Cate Blanchett to present the award for Best Foreign Language Film.  Amazingly, it was the one from Germany.  Funny how Pan's Labyrinth wins for every subcategory it can possibly be judged on, and then loses for a category that combines them all and judges the final product.  Like Frankenstein's monster, a body of individually beautiful parts may have amounted to a very ugly creature.  Maybe it's a case of peeps spreading their votes.  Like, they gave some to Pan's Labyrinth, so they can give this one to something else guilt-free.  There's really no way to know.

Incidentally, this gives me my third point of the night.  I strongly believe that I don't deserve this point, since I based this pick on a very arbitrary comparison of paraphrased synopses.  But I'll take it!

My Oscar pick score after this award: 3.
 

This one was presented by George Clooney, in keeping with the tradition of past winners presenting awards to their opposite sex counterparts.  You'll notice that for Supporting Actress, Dreamgirls beat Little Miss Sunshine, and for Supporting Actor, Little Miss Sunshine beat Dreamgirls.  Was this obsessive-compulsive balance a conscious choice by idiot voters, or simply coincidence?  I don't like that this question comes up as often as it does.

I guess what's interesting about this is that Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar after winning the Dreamgirls role over Fantasia Barrino, who had won American Idol over Jennifer Hudson.  Which is a more important victory?  A Best Supporting Actress Oscar or the title of American Idol?  I think history favors Oscar winners.  Although American Idols are chosen by much larger juries.  I would personally rather have a Best Supporting Actress Oscar than be the American Idol.  You're probably thinking that I'm a guy, so how can I have an Oscar for girls?  It's because I'm such a good actor.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 4.
 

The award for Best Documentary Short was presented by Eva Green and Gael García Bernal.  I guess this is where they toss the spare celebrities they don't know what to do with.  As they rattled off the names and showed very brief clips from each thing, I got my first look at the nominees I had judged solely on their titles.  Apparently, Recycled Life was about recycling garbage, and Two Hards was about a piano player.  My pick, Rehearsing a Dream, consisted of very drab footage of some dancers on a stage.  I exclaimed, "Fuck!" knowing that I had failed at making a good pick.  And, sure enough, this other thing won.  But I guess that's easier to sleep with than my total guess win for Best Foreign Language Film.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 4.
 

Kind of a no-brainer with this one.  Everyone in Hollywood loves Al Gore, and they kept asking him all night if he wanted to announce anything (meaning his potential candidacy for the presidency).  But no dice there.  Which raises the question, which is a more important victory?  The American Presidency or the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature?  As things stand now, people will forever have to announce Bush as "Former President George W. Bush" and Gore as "Academy Award winner and Former Vice President Al Gore."  Bush is jealous, probably.  The best part of this was that the presenter was Jerry Seinfeld, who did an awesome comedy bit about going to the movies.  So it was a good part of the show to be a lover of liberal thinking and humor.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 5.
 

Presented by Hugh Jackman and Penélope Cruz, this one went to the same guy who won last year for Brokeback Mountain.  It's a pretty good score, I guess.  They all sound good.  I guess that's why they're nominated for Oscars.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 5.
 

Apparently the Academy agrees with my thinking about the Original Screenplay.  Or, they're just trying to be trendy and hip, and this is all just an awful coincidence.  At this point, I was pleased that Babel was so consistently failing to steal awards from more worthy recipients.  With the exception of that Original Score one, but that one's okay.  The presenters for this Original Screenplay Award were Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.  I wonder if they're sick of each other yet.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 6.
 

The show went overtime during the acceptance speech for this award.  So, just for future reference, if you ever have to miss the Oscars and you just want to see the good stuff at the end, don't even record the Oscars.  Record the Barbara Walters Oscar Special that comes right after it.  It is essentially 28 minutes of the Oscars ending and 2 minutes of Barbara Walters talking.  If you want to see Barbara Walters, record the subsequent Evening at the Academy Awards special where Richard Roeper talks about the winners.  Unless you live on the East coast, where the Barbara Walters thing rightfully aired before the Oscars so that they could end the ceremony and go right into the live post interviews.  Being currently on the West coast, I got it backwards.  Instead of Richard Roeper talking about Marty Scorsese, I gotta sit through the spectacle of Barbara Walters asking Helen Mirren and Eddie Murphy if they think they're going to win tonight.   Why would they do that?  No one cares about these interviews now.  Hollywood is ridiculous.

The Award for Best Original Song was presented by Queen Latifah and John Travolta, two performers with musical connotations, and the winner was "I Need to Wake Up," by Melissa Etheridge.  This result is complete horseshit.  "Listen," from Dreamgirls is one billion times a better song.  My theory here is that all the Dreamgirls votes were spread so thin over the three nominees that they actually lost because they had too many good songs.  How disgusting is it to lose thrice at once?

There's also the annoying possibility that this is just the Academy voting for things they like, such as Democrats (Al Gore is one) or gay rights (Melissa Etheridge is a lesbian).  There's nothing wrong with these things, and it is good, I suppose, to promote saving the planet.  Save the planet, everyone.  Fuck.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 6.
 

With this award, Children of Men officially lost every award it was nominated for.  Scorsese's editor won it again, naturally.  Presented by Kate Winslet.  I wonder how they decide who presents what.  Do the celebrities ever negotiate for a better award?  Or do they do as they're told?

"You have to get me something better, Dallas.  Editors are like the plumbers of Hollywood."  "Kate, I'm telling you, this isn't just some technical award.  Editing is big."  "What about Best Song?  I have a beautiful voice!"  "Kate.  Listen to me.  Editors manipulate reality with the touch of a button."  "And I am telling you... I'm not going..."  "I'm hanging up now, Kate."

My Oscar pick score after this award: 7.
 

Not counting Jodie Foster's presentation of the souls lost to Hollywood in 2006, the podium wasn't even cold from Kate Winslet's tasty bodice when it was announced by Philip Seymour Hoffman that Helen Mirren, not Winslet, was the Academy's Best Leading Actress.  Well, that was the one call everybody was 100% on.  Wasn't gonna stop me from picking with my heart.

I saw on one of those pre-Oscar red carpet thingies that Kate Winslet is the youngest actress ever to rack up five noms.  She better be careful, or she could become the next Scorsese.  Nomination-wise; not looks-wise.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 7.
 

Did Reese Witherspoon really win an Oscar last year?  Anyway, she presented the Best Actor award to Forest Whitaker as Blood Diamond officially lost every award it was nominated for.  Looks like a good way to get an Oscar these days is to play some kind of royalty, or cannibal.

Peter O'Toole amazingly went unrecognized for what was essentially a nomination for every performance he's ever given.  With eight nominations spanning 45 years, he is now the most nominated actor never to win the Oscar.  He did receive an Honorary Oscar in 2003, which could be the reason why more Academy voters felt no remorse in giving it to the cannibal.  I later heard John Travolta on Letterman saying something about how O'Toole didn't get it because they "had already given it to one old timer (Alan Arkin)."  Assuming Travolta knows what the fuck he's talking about, that's evidently how it works in Hollywood.  You'll forgive me, though, if I don't file that little nugget under UNIVERSAL FACT.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 7.
 

I haven't been paying attention to who's been presenting the Best Director Oscar in previous years, but this one was presented by Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg.  A regular superhero trio of directing.  They busted George Lucas' balls for a little bit about not having ever won an Oscar, providing everyone in the world with a hearty laugh at his expense.  Then they finally read the nominees.

The best way to describe my thoughts about this award in the moments leading up to it is with an homage to non-Oscar winning human joke George Lucas-- it was like the Duel of the Fates.  Martin Scorsese was Darth Maul, the evil Sith lord out for psychotic revenge with his double-edged lightsaber.  And Clint Eastwood was Qui-Gon Jinn, the wise old Jedi Master who relied on his trusty traditional blade.  Now, we all know how that particular Star Wars battle turned out, and Oscar night ended the same way.  But, also not unlike in The Phantom Menace, I wanted them both to win.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 8.
 

And finally, the last and most important award of the night was presented by Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton.  I will be honest and say that there were points in the night when I would think back to the Golden Globes and fear that Babel might win this one as well.  And a very real part of my fear was the fact that I walk through the Kodak Theater all the time, because it houses the huge garage where you park if you want to go to Grauman's, or El Capitan, or anywhere else in that Hollywood area.  And when you walk out through the lobby, there's a series of glass panels with the names of every Best Picture winner in history, with spaces for future decades' worth of winners already marked with the individual years.  And I was scared shitless at the thought that every time I walked through there, I would see the word BABEL etched in big black letters, and I would be horrified every time.  But with two sweet words uttered by Jack himself, my fears melted into joy and pleasure.  He does that to me.

My Oscar pick score after this award: 9.

So that was the 79th Annual Academy Awards.  Ellen DeGeneres was a good host.  She did a lot of funny bits with the audience throughout the night, such as handing a screenplay to Martin Scorsese and asking Steven Spielberg to take a picture of her with Clint Eastwood, then asking him to frame it better.  There was also these performance artists who would tumble around behind a giant screen and contort their bodies into perfect shadow replicas of nominated movie logos.  I don't know how we ever got through an award show without these guys.

And after 24 Academy Awards of Merit, I came out 9 in 15.  That's a 38%.  F.  I am really bad at this.  Hopefully next year I can be more prepared by thinking of writing this article before the actual day of the Oscars, and doing some actual research on the nominees.  The one thing that will not change, however, is my wont of picking who I like, and not who I think other people will like.  That is my vow to you, gentle reader.

Also, I noticed at the end that air travel to the Academy Awards was provided by United Airlines.  Funny, because one of the movies nominated for stuff tonight was about the gristly and heroic death of everyone aboard the hijacked flight United 93.  Was this product placement?  "You've seen the movie, now ride the airline."  Fuck me.

-- Diego Kontarovsky

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