This Sunday, the biggest award show of the year will be announcing its winners for the best in film for 2008. The Academy Awards have been, for better or for worse, the ultimate voice in films since 1927. 2008 was a very decent year in films, however not perfect. So here, I will announce my picks, snubs and who will win at this year's ceremony.
As a side note, I will not be making choices in the categories in which I have not seen any of the films. This currently includes: Documentary Short and Short Film (Live Action).
So here we go:
Best Short Film (Animated)
-La Maison En Petits Cubes
-Lavatory-Lovestory
-Oktapodi
-Presto
-This Way Up
Who should and will win:
While Lavatory-Lovestory is arguably the most emotional of the nominees, Presto
continues to show that the folks at Pixar not only dominate full-length animated films, but
that they are also at the forefront on animated shorts. The physics alone of this one are incredible, and creates one of Pixar's best shorts yet.
Who should have been nominated:
While WALL-E stole audiences' hearts, the short film attached to the DVD release, Burn-E, deserves some recognition at Pixar's second best short of the year. The short does a great job
of extending the world of WALL-E while also introducing the audience to some great new characters.
Best Documentary Feature
-The Betrayal-Nerakhoon
-Encounters at the End of the World
-The Garden
-Man on Wire
-Trouble the Water
Man On Wire is quite possibly one of the biggest shoo-ins when it comes to the awards this year. The story of Philippe Petit as he attempts to tight-rope walk across The Twin Towers
was one of the most critically loved and most talked about documentaries of the year.
Who should have been nominated:
One of the biggest disappointments this year is what has been left off of the list of
nominated documentaries. Here is just a sampling of some of the great documentaries left
off the list this year: Chicago 10, Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stone rockumentary Shine A Light,
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Religulous and My Winnipeg. But three films, which I
consider not only the best documentaries of the year, but best films of the year that it is a
shamewere not nominated are Bigger, Stronger, Faster*, American Teen and Young @
Heart. Each of these films took documentaries this year to a whole other emotional plane
and they all deserved to be nominated.
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
-Bolt
-Kung Fu Panda
-WALL-E
Who will and should win:
This one is a no-brainer: WALL-E is one of the best animated films in years and deserves
this award. While Kung Fu Panda and Bolt were both incredible and would have won any
other year, it's hard to beat that little robot/
Who should have been nominated:
While it is a rare occurrence that the Academy gets it completely right, this year they came
as close as possible. These are without a doubt the three best animated films of the year, but
some recognition for the surprisingly good Horton Hears A Who! would have been nice.
Also, while it was nominated for best foreign film, Waltz With Bashir should have also
received another nomination for its combinations of animation styles.
Best Achievement in Visual Effects
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-The Dark Knight
-Iron Man
Who should and will win:
The Dark Knight and Iron Man both did incredible things with visual effects, but they were
along the lines of visual effects that have been seen before. What made The Curious Case
of Benjamin Button so revolutionary was that it took visual effects and made it emotional.
Benjamin Button furthered what visual effects could do and took it to another level.
What should have been nominated:
The three nominated films all worked with gigantic budgets where money isn't an option
and were only limited by the director's imagination. But Matt Reeves' Cloverfield worked
with such a limited budget and the improvised and hand-held feel made a very realistic and
creepy new use of visual effects.
Best Achievement in Sound Editing
-The Dark Knight
-Iron Man
-Slumdog Millionaire
-WALL-E
-Wanted
and for Best Achievement in Sound
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-The Dark Knight
-Slumdog Millionaire
-WALL-E
-Wanted
Who should win:
What was fantastic about what WALL-E did with sound editing is that they created sound
What was fantastic about what WALL-E did with sound editing is that they created soundfor two completely different worlds: the destroyed remnants of Earth and the futuristic space
station of the Axiom. With animated films, nothing exists and all sound must be created. And
when listening to WALL-E, the amount of work that it must have taken to accomplish this is
staggering.
Who will win:
What will probably come out on top in this very close race is The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight was a technological marvel and the Academy will feel the need to make up for not nominating The Dark Knight and will most likely nominated the fantastic achievement in sound here.
What should have been nominated:
These five nominations are fine and understandable, but Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Tropic Thunder and The Hulk could have also been thrown into mix of the current nominees.
So that was part one of three of my Oscar predictions, or as I'm going to call it, "The WALL-E love fest", check back soon for part two and three before the big night on Sunday.
Photos from RottenTomatoes
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