The Playlist’s Oscars Predictions For The 80th Annual Academy Awards

Our 2008 Oscar picks (for the films 0f 2007) are probably boring and safe to many some. That’s totally fine. We’re not here to get cute or creative. We pick with our heads, not with our hearts and we’re here to win Oscar pools (like we have 6 of the last 7 years). Weighing that factor, cross-checking this aspect, taking the temperature, charting the momentum, ugh. It all gets a little much after a while. Thankfully, we’ve mostly tuned a lot of it out this year (or relatively anyhow). In past years we’ve second guessed ourselves by reading too much, but this year we’re admittedly not as clued into the smaller catergories as we have been in the past. It’ll work for us and against us. Whateves, we’re due to lose soon [ed. nice preemptive strike].

Without further ado, here’s the Playlist’s official picks for the 80th annual Academy Awards (be forewarned, we reserve the right to change these posts up until the Oscars start, but we won’t lie about our ballot if we change it last minute and we’ll make a note if we do. Also, where’s the Oscar party, *hint, hint* Brooklyn friends?).

Best Picture
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel And Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Best Actor
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

Yes, Marion Cotillard is the dark horse (no, not Ellen Page, dummies). But she’s french, the movie’s in french, she’s too new, and almost as many people didn’t see ‘Rose’ as they didn’t see “Away From Her.”

Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

God, this one is a toss up. We feel like no one saw “I’m Not There,” but yet everyone loves Cate Blanchett. It’s between her and Amy Ryan we think (though last time we charted this category we said it was a race between Blanchett and Ruby Dee, but the latters extremely limited screen time is something that will work against her we think)

Best Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

Best Original Screenplay
Diablo Cody, Juno
Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Brad Bird et al, Ratatouille
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages

There’s a lot of last minute chatter and support for Michael Clayton, actually much more in the Best Picture and Best Categories, but those won’t penetrate. If Clayton can peek through at all, it’s here. That said, there’s no fucking way (we just wanted to acknowledge the Clayton supporters). There’s rarely ever a celebrity screenwriters. When their is, they win.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Christopher Hampton, Atonement
Sarah Polley, Away From Her
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Joel And Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

Best Animated Feature
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf’s Up

Duh. Would love to see “Persepolis” win. Hell will freeze over first.

Best Art Direction
American Gangster
Atonement
The Golden Compass
Sweeney Todd
There Will Be Blood

Best Cinematography
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Anyone winning but “Atonement” is fine by us, but ‘Assassination’ and ‘Diving Bell’ are our personal faves.

Best Costume Design
Across the Universe
Atonement
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
La Vie en Rose
Sweeney Todd

Huh, why not Atonement or Elizabeth? Cause Todd won the Costume Guild award.

Best Documentary Feature
No End In Sight
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
Sicko
Taxi to the Dark Side
War/Dance

Best Documentary Short*
Freeheld
La Corona (The Crown)
Salim Baba
Sari’s Mother
*We had Sari’s Mother inititally, but we changed it to Freeheld. Let’s hope this doesn’t come back to haunt us.

Best Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Best Foreign Language Film
Beaufort (Israel)
The Counterfeiters (Austria)
Katyn (Poland)
Mongol (Kazakhstan)
12 (Russia)

Best Makeup
La Vie en Rose
Norbit
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Best Score
Dario Marianelli, Atonement
Alberto Iglesias, The Kite Runner
James Newton Howard, Michael Clayton
Michael Giacchino, Ratatouille
Marco Beltrami, 3:10 to Yuma

Personally we’d love to see Marco Beltrami win this and we were pleased as punch to see him earn a nomination over many of the larger Oscar Best Picture favorites. There’s some convincing talk that “Ratatouille” will upset, but we’re going to stick with what we got.

Best Original Song
“Falling Slowly” (Once)
“Happy Working Song” (Enchanted)
“Raise It Up” (August Rush)
“So Close” (Enchanted)
“That’s How You Know” (Enchanted)

Only because three Enchanted songs semi-logically split the votes between themselves, but we wouldn’t be surprised if any one of the three wins.

Best Animated Short*
I Met The Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Even Pigeons Go to Heaven
My Love
Peter and the Wolf
*We have a feeling we might keep changing our minds here up until night of, but maybe not.
Always a crap shoot, but ‘Walrus’ is about a Canadian teenager meeting John Lennon. Everyone loves the Beatles, no? Our second guessingness is telling us to go with Peter and the Wolf, though Canadians do well in this category which also gives a leg up to Madame Tutli Putli (which we changed our pick to from ‘Walrus’ on Friday night).

Best Live Action Short*
At Night
The Substitute
The Mozart of Pickpockets
Tanghi Argentini
The Tonto Woman
*We had Tanghi on Friday morning, but switch to Mozart, Friday evening, we will not be changing these all weekend.

Best Sound Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country For Old Men
Ratatouille
There Will Be Blood
Transformers

Hmm, never thought that we had Transformers twice, that may not happen. Maybe we should leave it as is, but uh, we’re going to lose this category.

Best Sound Mixing
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country For Old Men
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma
Transformers

Best Visual Effects
The Golden Compass
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Transformers

Only you’ll really know the truth, but if by following our picks directly leads you to winning your respective Oscar pool, you are morally obligated to post in our comments section and say so. Conversely, if closely following our Oscar predictions directly leads to you losing your Oscar pool (because you know you second-guessed yourselves because of us) you are morally obligated to either post in our comments section or track us down in New York and punch us in the mouth (at least give a head’s up by yelling, “incoming”). For more of our general feelings on the matter, things we felt were overlooked this past year, our 2007 breakthrough performances piece, and our Oscar nominations predictions, before the nominations were announced.

Postscript: Wow, we shit the bed. Only got 13 correct. A poor showing for us, indeed. We did at least come in 2nd in both of the money pools we entered. Also, we entered a fun online pool with our friends ThePunkGuy and the First Order Historians. The rules were easy. The loser had to watch the worst picks the winner and those that didn’t lose chose. All we know is we didn’t lose (we seem to have tied for the win).