Continuing along with my fearless predictions for Sunday night's Academy Awards. My competition is with good NY pals Lorraine and Dennis. But you can use my picks for your office pool, too. Scroll back to yesterday for the crappy categories. Today, it's "meat and potato" time.
Supporting Actress: This is an easy one. A lock that none of you should get wrong. Take it to the bankerino. There's one clear winner. Amy Adams for The Master. Thanks for playing. Nobody liked your movie anyway. Jacki Weaver for Silver Linings Playbook. I had to look up your picture to see which character you played. I am guessing lots of other people had to do the same thing. Helen Hunt for The Sessions. Thanks for playing, too. And showing us ALL of your business. The crime is that your co-star John Hawkes wasn't even nominated.
So the real race is between two horses. Well, fillies. Sally Field was Abe's wife in Lincoln. The First Lady was supposedly a little unbalanced. Sally Field is supposedly a little unbalanced. How much acting was needed? Well, despite the fact that I did like you....I really, really liked you...you're not winning, Gidget. Because when you allow yourself to get a bad haircut and physically starve yourself with nothing but Nutricrisp bars for weeks, you secure your Oscar. That, along with one heart-breaking solo, nailed the award for ANNE HATHAWAY for LES MISERABLES.
Supporting Actor: This is likely the tightest race of all the acting categories. And it has happened in the last four weeks for some reason. Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master. See Amy Adams above. Alan Arkin for Argo. A nice job, but you got your lifetime achievement Oscar a few years back for Little Miss Sunshine. One to a customer, Mr. Arkin. Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained. Didn't you just win one a few years ago? Who do you think you are, Christoph? Tom Hanks?
The race is a close one between Robert De Niro for Silver Linings Playbook and Tommy Lee Jones for Lincoln. Now, yes, De Niro has won before, but disco music was still new back then. This could be his lifetime achievement honor. Plus he finally acted in a movie that didn't restrict to playing that goofy type of character he did in all those Billy Crystal movies. Personally, I take points off on Jones' side of the ledger for being Al Gore's friend, but other Academy members may not. Plus he played a radical Republican who wanted to abolish slavery. Now that's an acting job. I think this could really go either way, but I will bet on ROBERT DE NIRO for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. How did I break the tie? De Niro has smiled in public once over the past six months. Jones has not.
Actress: Some pundits out here think this is getting close. I think the pundits are wrong. Let's rule out two from the get-go. Naomi Watts was dynamite as the waterlogged mom in The Impossible. But lots of grimaces don't necessarily make an Oscar winning performance. If that was the case, Alan Sues would have been the most acclaimed actor in Hollywood history. Quvenzhane Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild? She's the youngest person to ever be nominated for an Oscar. Well, Tatum O'Neal, your record is intact. Wallis is over-matched and, in two years, we will find her cracking wise like Gary Coleman on some Nickelodeon sitcom.
The early frontrunner was Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty. That was before everybody discovered she was simply playing a lighter and less bi-polar version of Clare Danes in Homeland. So, the contest is between young and old. Emanuelle Riva for Amour is making a run for it and certainly moving a lot faster than her stroke-riddled character did in the movie. But it might be too little too late. Silver Linings Playbook had one nomination in each of the acting categories. It has to win one or two of them. And that makes the winner JENNIFER LAWRENCE for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.
Actor: Why am I wasting your precious reading time plus the wear and tear on my typing fingers? If you get this one wrong, you're an idiot. The winner will be DANIEL DAY LEWIS for LINCOLN.
Director: The drama about this category has been fascinating. Ben Affleck was not nominated for Argo probably because stunned Academy voters were in a shock that he actually made a great film. Meanwhile, it's become the greatest injustice to any one person since Rosa Parks was shuffled off to the back of the bus. Or Hattie McDaniel was forced to sit next to the kitchen. As a result, Affleck and Argo have scored all the other awards as consolation prizes. Plus he personally secured the Director's Guild Award.
But he can't win the Oscar. Of those that can, there's one who has been shamelessly campaigning for it. And, since Hollywood doesn't like to piss off their former wunderkin, the winner will be STEVEN SPIELBERG for LINCOLN, a good but not as-great-as-Spielberg-wants-you-to-think movie.
Picture: Nine nominees this year and I've seen seven of them. I couldn't be bothered by either Beasts of the Southern Wild or Django Unchained. If I had to rank my personal preference for the ones that I did see, they would go as follows:
7. Zero Dark Thirty.
6. Life of Pi.
5. Lincoln.
4. Silver Linings Playbook.
3. Amour.
2. Les Miserables.
1. Argo.
And, almost miraculously, I think that's the way it will go on Sunday night. Forget all the nonsense about the Ben Affleck snubbing. Argo is a classic Best Picture winner. Well-made with something to say and exciting to boot. In my book, it was the Best Picture of the Year.
So, unless you have a reading impairment and can't understand what I just wrote, the winner will be ARGO.
Good luck to all. Don't blame me if you lose.
Dinner last night: German salami sandwich.
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