Monday, March 19, 2007

Oscar Maven Wins Again


At the 2006 Oscars or the Brokeback year, I won our Oscar night with 17 out of 24 categories correct. That was with a reasonable amount of research and being relatively pure when it came to not screening nominees beforehand. I had gotten complacent and distracted in the weeks leading up to the Oscars. Then there was my husband's trash talk. We decided this year to get an Oscar like trophy for the winner of this year's Oscar prediction game. My husband started to crow how the trophy would look nice on his side of the bed. A sense of dread came over me. This could be the year that my dominance in prediction would end since I hadn't studied enough. I prepared myself to be gracefully defeated.


This year I only won with 14 out of 24 categories, because I watched The Departed, Cars, and Monster House. In error, I picked Cars to win for Best Animated Film, since I had no idea about that film about dancing penguins and I thought it would be Pixar's year. I knew Martin Scorsese was going to win for Director, even though The Departed was a mediocre movie, but it was so hard voting for the movie for Best Film and picked Babel instead.


I also fell in love with Pan's Labyrinth through its musical score and got blindsided by my pre-screening love of this movie in the Best Score and Best Foreign Film. After listening to the scores on NPR, I really thought Pan's Labyrinth would get it over Babel, because of its memorable melodic score over a rather non-traditional score. I had heard about "The Lives of Others" about the Stazi in East Germany and thought it may win, but promptly forgot about it when I was rushing through my ballot and only focused on voting for Pan's Labyrinth as much as I could.


Who knew Eddie Murphy would be left out in the cold? I also thought United 93 would get something like Best Editing. Silly me, since Marty's editor has been his career long editor and I should have caught that.


My win had a lot to do with Best Song and Best Documentary. My opponents for some reason didn't think that Inconvenient Truth would win in either category. Many felt that since Dreamgirls was nominated for three songs, that one of the songs would have to win. It is obvious they didn't heed the big rule in such things. When one film gets nominated in a category multiple times, votes are split, and the odd nominee benefits. I know my father, the Foxnews devotee, purposely voted against Inconvenient Truth because he thinks Gore is dangerous for this country.


Another reason I won was the Best Costume Design. My rule of thumb is historical dramas always win this category. Many thought that since "The Devil Wears Prada" was about fashion it would win, but contemporary fashion normally doesn't win.


No comments: