This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 25, 2010 - Having already said that the Academy Award for best original song will be handed to "Crazy Heart"'s "The Weary Kind," it's worth remembering that the rules governing the musical awards seem to change every year. Last year Bruce Springsteen's song for "The Wrestler" was ignored, reportedly because the Academy's musical panel had decided to downplay music that only appears during end credits (!?). This year, one of the best instrumental scores, Carter Burwell's music for "Where the Wild Things Are" was declared ineligible, presumably because of its close intermingling with Karen O's songs.
Unfortunately, the nominees for best original score somehow ignored a lot of other interesting music, including Burwell's "A Serious Man" and Marvin Hamlisch's hilarious retro-muzak score for "The Informant!.” The five films that got nominated are a pretty diverse bunch, with two old hands (Hans Zimmer and James Horner) and three rising new composers (Desplat, Beltrani and Giacchino). It's a hard call, but I'm guessing that Giacchino's music for "Up" will walk away with the oscar.
Best Animated Short Film
Three of the films in this category are almost models of the Academy taste: "French Roast," "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" (the weakest in the bunch) and "The Lady and the Reaper" are whimsical, European and brief enough to keep from wearing out their welcome.
The fourth film "Logorama" is a powerhouse of a different sort, a relentless tribute to action movies set in a world made entirely of corporate logos. It's loud, fast and brutally clever and while I suspect that it may offend the more genteel Academy voters, in an ordinary year it would be the film to beat.
But the fifth nominee - and the best of the five, in my opinion, is Nick Park's "A Matter of Loaf and Death," the latest Wallace and Gromit adventure. Consider this: the W & G feature, "Curse of the Were-Rabbit," won the award for best animated feature in 2005 (and deservingly so). Of the three previous W & G shorts, only the first, "A Grand Day Out," failed to win an Oscar, and that was because it was beaten by Park's own "Creature Comforts." Is it possible that Academy members have had enough of the cheese-loving Wallace and his industrious dog?
Not very likely.
Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design
Two difficult categories to predict. Both tend to favor costume pictures, but rarely does the same film grab both awards. The art direction voters tend to go for big, detailed sets; the costumers like period detail and historical accuracy.
My patented Guess-O-Meter tells me that this year the award for best art direction will be handed to the dreary "Sherlock Holmes," while the voters for best costume design will find it hard to resist paying tribute to a fashion legend in "Coco Before Chanel."
The Lens blog is provided by Cinema St. Louis.