With the Oscars set to be awarded this Sunday, we thought we would depart from our usual format and offer up our predictions for who will be the big winners. In keeping with the theme of our site, we have managed to see none of the movies actually nominated this year with the exceptions of Moneyball and Bridesmaids. The odds-on-favorite, The Artist, we didn’t even know existed until the Golden Globes this year. So it is with our usual level of in-depth analysis that we will attempt to predict the winner of each category.

Now we know what you must be thinking, “Hey, we don’t come here for reviews or predictions based on actual knowledge of the material, we come here for reviews and predictions equivalent to blind stabs in the dark”! To that we say, don’t worry. Everyone already knows Moneyball and Bridesmaids aren’t going to win anything so we might as strike them from the nominees altogether, and thanks, we didn’t think anyone was paying attention to us anyways.

2012 OSCAR PICKS

Actress in a Supporting Role: Octavia Spencer – The Help
She’s won every other major award and there’s no reason to think she won’t get this one too.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Christopher Plummer – Beginners
In the battle of Dragnet vs. Judge Dredd we are going to have employ the same logic used for Supporting Actress here. He’s won everything else so why not this as well? That said, silent film/acting is in this year so it could just as easily go to Von Sydow.

Documentary Short: Daniel Junge & Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy - Saving Face
While normally any title with the name Elvis in it would get our pick, we doubt the Academy would share our views.

Documentary Feature: Joe Berlinger &  Bruce Sinofsky - Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
We figure it’s between this and If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front. Due to the timeliness of Paradise Lost 3 however, we are gonna have to lean that way.

Costume Design: Sandy Powell - Hugo
Normally anything remotely Elizabethan would get the nod. Given Powell’s track record though and the fact that Hugo is still a period piece, she’s sure to add another one to the collection.

Animated Feature Film:  Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal - Chico & Rita
No Pixar to contend with this year so it’s technically up for grabs but look for the Academy to shy away from the CG films this year. So flip a coin between A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita, that’s what we did.

Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki - Tree of Life
This one isn’t even close. Tree of Life might as well have been called A Series of Beautiful Images. It would probably be the biggest upset of the nite if Lubezki doesn’t win.

Visual Effects: Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossmann & Alex Henning - Hugo
Hugo is to visual effects what Tree of Life is to cinematography. They exist to service the fields they’re nominated in.

Art Direction: Dante Ferretti (Production Design) & Francesca Lo Schiavo (Set Decoration) - Hugo
Again, look for Hugo to take any and all visual awards.

Makeup: Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight & Lisa Tomblin - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
It’s between Albert Nobbs and The Boy Who Lived but it probably isn’t as close as most would think. Most of the above team have been working on the Potter Franchise from the very beginning. Look for their dedication to be acknowledged with the win.

Music (Original Score): Ludovic Bource - The Artist
Hard to go against John Williams (especially when he’s has not one but TWO nominations in the same year) but we are going with The Artist. Old Timey score gets the nod from an Old Timey Academy

Music (Original Song): Bret Mckenzie, “Man or Muppet” - The Muppets
Going with The Muppets. Why? Cause they’re the Muppets.

Short Film (Animated): William Joyce & Brandon Oldenburg - The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
How can you not go with an animated film that has a bunch of flying books in it? Sure to get the Oscar if only for the effort.

Short Film (Live Action): Andrew Bowler & Gigi Causey - Time Freak
It’s called Time Freak.

Sound Editing: Ethan Van der Ryn & Erik Aadahl - Transformers: Dark of the Moon
It pains us to even think of a Michael Bay Transformers movie winning any sort of award, but it’s hard to go against any movie where a bunch of heavy machinery turns into robots and beat each other up.

Sound Mixing: Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush & Peter J. Devlin - Transformers: Dark of the Moon
See above.

Foreign Language Film: Asgar Farhadi - A Separation
We are taking the Hollywood Foreign Press’ lead on this one.

Actress in a Leading Role: Michelle Williams – My Week With Marilyn
With no clear front runner, we are siding with the Golden Globes again. Michelle Williams for the win.

Actor in a Leading Role: George Clooney - The Descendants
This is a pretty even field but using “The Descendants or The Artist” formula (which clearly states that The Descendants will win the performance awards and The Artist will win the craftsman awards), Clooney wins.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Steve Zaillian & Aaron Sorkin, Story by Steve Chervin –  Moneyball
So we lied and the next two picks will be of movies we actually have seen. However, seeing as how neither of these will be chosen due to their actual content, you should give us a pass. This is more about the amount of effort needed to bring Moneyball to the screen than the actual result (which is quite good incidentally).

Writing (Original Screenplay): Annie Mumolo & Kristin Wiig - Bridesmaids
This is a purely political pick on Hollywoods behalf. Don’t get us wrong, this movie is fantastic and we don’t mean to suggest that it doesn’t actually deserve it, but this would really be  the Academy’s way of saying “See? We give Oscars to comedies” without really giving an Oscar to a comedy.

Directing: Martin Scorsese - Hugo
We really can’t see anyone else winning this seeing as how the Academy only appreciates his lesser works. So this year when he’s giving his acceptance speech, just turn the volume off and pretend he’s talking about Goodfellas or Cape Fear.

Best Picture: Jim Burke, Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor – The Descendants
Gotta go with The Descendants again. It was designed to be Oscar bait from the words “Fade In” and we fully expect the Academy to take said bait.

Bonus Picks:
The final face they linger on during the “In Memoriam” portion of the program will be Whitney Houston.

The show will go past midnite EST.

It’s that special time of year in Hollywood. No, not Award Season. It’s B-Movie season! That time of year where the Top Five dump all their least-likely-to-be-nominated-for-anything movies (even a Razzie) into theatres and watch hungry audiences fight over these scraps of filmmaking. While there are always a few standouts at this time of year, some films go above and beyond the call of duty, screaming for attention. Man on a Ledge is such a film. While other films might attempt to sucker people in with mysterious titles like The Grey or One For the Money, Man on a Ledge knows exactly what it is. A movie about a man standing on a ledge for 102 minutes and it’s damn proud of it…for some reason.

As far as I know…

Man on a Ledge stars Sam Worthington as a convict trying to clear his name of a crime he claims he did not commit. Naturally, the only way for him to do that is to break out of prison, travel to Manhattan, rent a penthouse hotel suite in the heart of the city, dress to the nines, and walk out the hotel window onto a ledge 20 stories above the sidewalk. Once there, he needs to get the attention of the public, who in turn will get the police to swarm the area, who will waste millions of tax payers dollars sending every available squad to cordon off the area and do crowd control, all so that he can have a chance to plead his case to the police psychiatrist (Elizabeth Banks) while currying favour with the public through such clever devices as “making it rain“.

But, of course, this is all a diversion.

Across the street, a team of his best-ies will be performing some B&E via explosives so they can gain access to the fortress of the real culprit, Ed Harris, and find the truth that shall set Sam free! The only problem is they can’t seem to decide how to best spend their time: completing their task and making a speedy getaway or dry-humping all over Ed’s personal belongings. Arguably they would be getting back at Ed exploring either option, I know I’d be pissed if the best friends of someone I had imprisoned broke into my den and left their seepage all over the place but only one of these options would actually help their friend. So what did Ed do to get everyone so riled up in the first place besides being a rich old white guy? He accused Sam of stealing a diamond worth more than most NHL teams. Naturally everyone assumed Ed was telling the truth (rich old white guy vs. an Aussie remember?) so they threw Sam in the clink for the crime of being too Dickensian.

Once Sam’s team navigates through Eds evil lair in a manor normally reserved for the Mission: Impossible crew, they snatch the diamond, rendezvous with Sam (on a less precarious ledge but a ledge nonetheless), prove his innoncence to Banks, and bring justice to the world. Normally this would be the end of it but then Ed would still win in an odd way because he’d end up getting 3 square a day and a gym membership with no annual fees while Sam would have to apply for jobs during a recession while sporting a significant blemish on his resume. So instead, after the dust has settled and he’s off the hook, Sam pockets the diamond anyways. After all, he’s earned it what with that whole “wrongful imprisonment” bit, right?

I suppose this is done in an attempt to make Sam a modern day Robin Hood but all it really does is prove Ed to be a good judge of character while completely negating our heroes journey. The best way to prove your not a criminal is to wait until no one is looking (or only commit crimes you were wrongly accused of committing beforehand thus enacting double jeopardy)? This is where Man on a Ledge consistently fails. Absolutely none of it is believable. Proving you didn’t commit a crime by committing it? Asinine. New Yorkers that would hang around any “street spectacle” for more than 10 minutes? Preposterous. Ed Burns being cast in anything that wasn’t written or directed by himself? Absurd.

Aside from the ridiculous plot, there isn’t much else to critique. The director manages to get his actors to do an adequate job of spewing the script over frame after frame of decently exposed film that appears to be put together from a beginning to an end. However all this does is make for an entirely forgettable experience (and a fearfully common one at that).

So if you haven’t already seen any of the nominated films of the past year it’s best to do so now while movies like Man on a Ledge and it’s ilk are occupying theatres (and don’t forget the “snubbed” ones)!

As far as I know…

15 years ago, the once lauded Brian De Palma began his descent into irrelevance by kickstarting the “turning gen-x TV shows into feature films” fad with Mission: Impossible. Today, Brad Bird, the highly acclaimed director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille, looks to jump from the computer animated world to live action features with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Whether or not he will avoid the same fate as Mr. De Palma remains to be seen but hey, if things don’t work out for him there’s always that computer art degree to fall back on.

As far as I know…

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol follows Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, a member of an elite group of secret agents known as the IMF. For those that weren’t old enough to watch TV in the 1960′s, that would be the Impossible Missions Force. While on a routine infiltration assignment at the Kremlin (because Russians are the villain du jour in Hollywood), someone decides to blow up the building and frame Ethan for the crime. When Hunt returns to his commanding officer (played by Tom Wilkinson) he is informed that not only are the Russians threatening retaliatory nuclear war but he and the entire IMF have been disavowed by the President. Because you can’t just get blamed for blowing up a Kremlin or two without getting disavowed (which for some reason is the only punishment that can be doled out to an IMF agent).

Moments later their car is attacked, Wilkinson is supposedly assassinated, and they plummet into an Eastern European River. Now his mission, “should he choose to accept it”, is to clear the names of the IMF and it’s agents in order to prevent nuclear annihilation. So he enlists the help of his fellow disavowed agents to take down their prime suspect (a man by the name of Hendricks) using a vast array of super-gadgets, concept cars, and halloween masks.

Impossible? Not really. For the most part this is the same plot as the original Mission: Impossible movie but of course Mission: Slightly More Difficult Than The First One doesn’t have the same ring to it as Ghost Protocol. The only thing that actually seems impossible is that after being disavowed as many times as Hunt has he wouldn’t have just been fired by now. But nothing, not even unyielding job security, is truly impossible for Hunt, aka Tom Cruise. Clearing your name of an international conspiracy while performing gravity-defying wire hanging tricks? Did it in Mission: Impossible. High speed car chases/wrecks/firefights on bridges? Mission: Impossible III. Surviving the Limp Bizkit scourge that swarmed the nation at the turn of the century? Mission: Impossible II. Running towards the camera for extended periods of time while everything behind you gets destroyed? War of the Worlds. Actually that seems to be a staple in most of his movies but the point is, if anyone can handle a seemingly difficult situation it’s Cruise.

That isn’t to say that these things are done poorly, in fact for the most part they are done quite well. Bird is clearly a very capable director with an eye for action and has the luxury of a fine cast. The problem is that after your main character has tackled impossible mission after impossible mission things are bound to get repetitive or, at the very least, slightly more possible. So it begs the question: why not shake things up?

The James Bond movies, a franchise the M: I series shares many similarities with, struggled with this same problem for years. When substituting the lead actor was no longer enough of a change they decided to reboot the titular character altogether. For a while, they even danced around the idea of killing off 007. So why not kill off Hunt and hand the reigns over to Jeremy Renner? After all, Ghost Protocol is basically designed to pass the torch to someone else. Even the title seems to be trying to distance itself from the rest of the franchise in the hopes of establishing a spin-off. But this is a Tom Cruise movie, and Tom Cruise can’t die.

So if you have no intention of drastically altering the M: I universe and you’re really not going to offer audiences anything new, why bother trying to squeeze blood from the M: I stone? Because if a studio wanted to make an Action! movie with Tom Cruise and tried calling it something like Valkyrie or Night and Day instead of Mission: Impossible – “Your Action! Title Here” no one would go to see it. The bottom line is the M: I series still has cache. But regardless of how bankable the franchise is or whether or not Cruise will step aside for the good of it, Ghost Protocol is still a highly polished movie in its own right. So if you are being forced to choose between seeing Breaking Dawn for the tenth time or taking a chance on this aging model, it’s certainly worth a shot.

Finally in the spirit of the holiday season, here’s a gift spy pro-tip for the writers of a potential M: I 5 – Impossible Missions Forever: if your main characters are going to be disavowed and trying to maintain a low profile, it’s probably best to not have them driving around in the concept car featured so heavily in the marketing campaign. Those kinds of cars tend to attract a lot of attention.

As far as I know…

- M.C.