The Oscars Are Here!!! (Part 1)

It's that special time of year folks. It's the Academy Awards! The nominations have been up since January, but I have not been able to post anything until now. I think I'll get most of my predictions correct this year. There are a couple categories that are troubling me, but hopefully I'm right about them.

Just like last year there are ten nominees for Best Picture. The nominees for Best Picture are Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, and Winter’s Bone. The King’s Speech gained the most nominations as the film received twelve of them. True Grit followed with ten and then The Social Network and Inception, with eight each. Now let’s get on with the predictions.

The Best Actor nominees are Javier Bardem for Bitiful, Jeff Bridges for True Grit, Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network, Colin Firth for The King’s Speech, and James Franco for 127 Hours. Jeff Bridges won last year so unless he can pull a “Tom Hanks” win, he won’t get the award. Jesse Eisenberg did a great job in the Social Network, but he’s young and the Academy will most likely make him wait. Colin Firth has got this one all wrapped up. The main is that he is in a period piece playing King George, who has a stuttering problem. He must overcome this problem in order to deliver important message during World War 2. The Academy eats this stuff up. Historical figure plus overcoming the odds to succeed equals Oscar win. In my opinion, I though Franco’s performance was the best one of the year. However, there are two reasons why he will not win. He’s the host of the Oscars this year and some Academy voters might think it’s a tacky to have a host win an Oscar. Secondly, it just wasn’t his year. However, he will be back at the Academy and hopefully the next time he will win.

The Best actress nominees are Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right, Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole, Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone, Natalie Portman for Black Swan, and Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine. It’s nice to see newcomer Jennifer Lawrence because she did such a fantastic job in Winter’s Bone, that I expect her to do well in the future. She is a newcomer though so the Academy will make her wait. The real competition is between Natalie Portman and Annette Bening. At first it looked like this would be a tight race, but Portman really amazed people with Black Swan. Portman has nearly won every award in the awards season, so she is a lock. However, this Bening’s fourth nomination so the academy may feel the need to reward the veteran for their past snubs. They’ve done this before with other nominees it may happen here. I highly doubt it though.

That's Part one. Stay tuned for Part two (Best Supporting Actor and Actress categories). Peace out.