When the Oscar nominations were announced last week, I quickly counted the number of the nine Best Picture nominees I had seen. It was quick because I hadn’t seen any of them.
Since then I’ve been able to see two of them, “Django Unchained” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” with the potential to see four or five more of them by the end of this weekend, including “Argo,” “Lincoln” “Les Misérables,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” The remaining two, “Amour” and “Life of Pi,” will probably have to wait for awhile.
I make a point every year to see as many of the nominees as possible, simply because I like watching movies and I want to see what others have deemed to be among the best of the year. More often than not, when having seen the majority of the nominees, I can predict the winner. It’s probably one of few real skills I have in life, although it’ll never make any money for me. Unless I got bold and decided to bet on the winners in Las Vegas, but the risk of being wrong scares me too much.
My prediction is not necessarily my personal favorite. If that were the case “Midnight in Paris” would have been my pick last year, not “The Artist,” which did win and which I have yet to see. Others have told me I should, and now that it’s on Netflix Instant I probably will, but it just hasn’t looked appealing enough for me to take the time to see it. Nevertheless, I predicted it would win last year, based on the amount of buzz the media made about it.
Based on the two nominees I have seen from this year’s crop, “Zero Dark Thirty” stands a good chance of earning Kathryn Bigelow her second Best Picture Oscar (the first was for the rather underwhelming and overrated “The Hurt Locker”). Of all the 2012 films I’ve seen so far, it’s by far my favorite one as the story of one CIA agent’s mission to capture terrorist Osama bin Laden is compelling and had me on the edge of my seat throughout its long-running length.
Standing in its way of Oscar gold is the unwarranted criticism of the torture scenes portrayed in the film. While they can be difficult to watch at times, it’s fact that such torture was used to obtain information from terrorists, and it’s this information that the movie said ultimately led to the raid that killed bin Laden.
The torture scenes are mild compared to the violence in Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” an exploitation film about a slave (Jaime Foxx) who gets to avenge the horrors committed against him and his wife while in captivity. The violence gets so heavy at times I found myself looking away until I knew the scene was over.
I enjoyed “Django Unchained,” although I’ll put many of Tarantino’s others films well ahead of it, including “Pulp Fiction,” “Inglorious Basterds,” “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” “Reservoir Dogs” and “True Romance” (while this film wasn’t directed by him, Tarantino wrote the screenplay).
If this film won the Best Picture, I would be shocked.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the statue went to “Lincoln,” “Zero Dark Thirty” or “Argo” (which won the Golden Globe for Best Drama Sunday), based on the amount of media buzz these films have received. And right now, even though I haven’t seen two of those three, I predict “Lincoln” will win it.
My writing about this, ironically, is part of that media buzz, so if “Lincoln” was to win, I helped my own cause.
It’s just my way of ensuring a correct prediction. Now I should bet on it.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Jan. 18, 2013.
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