Oscar Predictions: Argo Triumphant

The Oscars are tomorrow night and I'm very excited. This is the first time in years I've seen all nine of the nominated Best Pictures (thanks to Amazon Prime for Beasts of the Southern Wild), all but one of the acting nominees (sorry, Naomi Watts), four of the five feature documentaries (thanks Netflix), all of the animated and live-action shorts. So here are my predictions and I hope to clean up at a friends' Oscar party.

Picture: Argo

I still don't get why this well-made, but conventional thriller is the expected winner. Is it the backlash against the Affleck snub? Is Lincoln too talky? Probably a combination. This is an action-oriented, feel-good picture that gets your heart racing. It certainly did mine in the closing sequence which departed from the truth significantly, I hear. I understand the disguised diplomats just sailed through the airport in Iran without a hitch, but that would have made for a boring ending.

Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

There has been some movement among Oscar pundits that Emmanuelle Riva might be a surprise winner if Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence split the vote, but Lawrence will probably edge it out since she gets to cry and is American. Chastain had only that one tear at the end.

'Django' and the American Culture of Violence

I went to Quentin Tarantino's latest bloodfest Django Unchained at the local multiplex yesterday in order to be able to say I had seen all nine nominees for the Best Picture Oscar. While driving to the cinema, I was sort of dreading it and looked upon the outing as more of an obligation so I could win the Oscar pool at an upcoming award-show party rather than as a pleasure. I was not wild about Pulp Fiction and only watched the first 20 minutes of Inglorious Bastards on TV and knew the director-screenwriter's penchant for ultraviolence. But whoa, did this picture blow me away and not with disgust.

Django is sort of an anti-spaghetti Western  or an inside-out Gone With the Wind. Tarantino uses the cliches of the lone gunfighter, Clint Eastwood movies to rip apart the brutal culture of America's slavery-lovin' past. (It's interesting that another Best Picture nominee, Lincoln, also deals with the issue but through a John Ford, feel-good Steven Spielberg lens.) The title character (Jamie Foxx) is a slave who joins a white, German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to kill evil racists outlaws disguised as upstanding citizens. After many adventures, the duo attempt to rescue Django's wife (Kerry Washington), now bound to the dandyish Calvin Candy (Leonardo DiCaprio) at his massive plantation Candyland, a symbol for the entire corrupt slave system.