Our Picks for 2005 Oscars
Wes Rickards, 02.04.05

Ah, the Oscars. For one glamorous night, celebrities toe the red carpet, hoping that the movie attached to their name rises above the rest of the table scraps produced in 2004.

People who have no business being famous, such as anyone on the E! Channel, will undoubtedly fawn over this over-hyped event, while many of the casual viewers leave wanting to know why what they watched actually mattered. In essence, it's the Super Bowl -without cool commercials.

This year was supposed to feature the ultimate clash of good and evil - Jesus vs. Satan - with the role of the Prince of Darkness being adequately suited by Michael Moore.
AP Photo

But "The Passion of the Christ" received only three nods for minor awards, and "Fahrenheit 9/11" was completely snubbed. In fact, it gets worse for Moore. Now the award for Best Documentary may go to a film dedicated to attacking the fast food industry.

But it still should be an exciting year. Of course, I'm basing that statement on nothing. Regardless, let's go to the picks.

Best Supporting Actress
The nominees are Cate Blanchett, Laura Linney, Virginia Madsen, Sophie Okonedo and Natalie Portman. First of all, I think it's funny that Blanchett was being nominated for her role as Katherine Hepburn in "The Aviator." I mean, her role necessitated that she needed to pretend to be a good actress - which I imagine was a stretch.

But you know it's a bad year for actresses when the girl who played Queen Amidala in "Star Wars" is the front-runner for the award. Apparently, the nominating committee missed her stale performance next to C-3P0 in favor of her work in "Closer," where she had a "brave and courageous" performance as a stripper. It's always strange when someone portrays a low-life that they're immediately labeled by Hollywood as courageous.

Today, it seems like they'll give you a Presidential Medal of Honor if you pretend to be a crazy homeless person by going into Burger King and yell at the trash cans. In any event, Portman is my pick for this category.
AP Photo

Best Supporting Actor
The nominees are Alan Alda, Thomas Haden Church, Morgan Freeman, Clive Owen and Jamie Foxx (for "Collateral"). Or, as most people know them, the guy from "M*A*S*H", the guy from "Wings", Red from "Shawshank Redemption", one of those guys in "Bourne Identity" and finally, that guy from "In Living Color."

I just can't see an award going to Alda. To me, it would be like giving Bob Denver a lifetime achievement award.

As for Foxx, he's in contention for Best Actor, so he probably won't win this.

My pick for this category is going to the man who has been one of the finest actors over the last decade or so, but has never brought home an Academy Award (no, it's not the guy from "Wings"). This is Morgan Freeman's fourth nomination-(and some of his movies that he was fantastic in, such as "Se7en", aren't among them),-and thus becomes my pick to win. Congratulations, Red. Dufresne is waiting for you at Zihuatanejo.

Best Actress
The nominees are Annette Bening, Kate Winslet, Hilary Swank, Imelda Staunton and Catalina Sandino Moren. This is billed as a rematch between Swank and Bening, who faced off against each other in 1999, when Bening lost, despite being heavily favored to win because of the gawd-awful film "American Beauty."

This time Bening is nominated for her role as a middle-aged actress who desperately tries to hold on to her fleeting fame, which essentially meant that Bening was playing herself. I don't even know if there was a movie attached to it, or if they just filmed Bening doing everyday things such as going out to buy milk.

Even if it was, I can imagine that movie having the same tagline, "go see Annette Bening in her most courageous role yet, as a middle-aged actress desperately trying to hold on to her fleeting fame, in the film 'Standing in Line at the Post Office'."

Swank wins, because this is the only major category that her movie "Million Dollar Baby" doesn't have to go against anything from "The Aviator."

Best Actor
The nominees are Don Cheadle, Jamie Foxx, Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp. There's a 40 percent chance that an African-American will get this award, which is amazing considering that the great black actors of our day such as Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Denzel Washington and… umm… Damon Wayans aren't among them.

Unfortunately, I don't think that either of them should get the award. I think that Foxx's role in the biopic "Ray" was slightly overrated because Ray Charles passed away shortly before the film was released.

We're all thankful Foxx's performance wasn't like his most famous previous role "Wanda" from "In Living Color." I just think that the Academy should be a little more judicious before doling out the Best Actor award to the guy who starred in "Booty Call." That's not to say that he can't win, but it took awhile for Tom Hanks to be taken seriously by Hollywood after "Bachelor Party."

Don Cheadle played a role that really showed the horrors of Rwandan genocide, so he doesn't stand a chance. After all, the Rwanda fiasco highlighted the inaction by the United Nations and the Clinton administration, something that the leftists in Hollywood can't be too happy about. Sure, the movie didn't explicitly blame either of those two groups, but neither did "Black Hawk Down."

Johnny Depp won't win, because the theme for this category and the next two that I'm going to talk about is the match between "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Aviator."

I do think that Eastwood will get the win in this contest because… he's a better actor than DiCaprio. That's not a shot against Leo, but this is a guy who didn't get a nod when "Titanic" swept the Oscars.

I think the iceberg got a nomination for best supporting actor that year, but not DiCaprio. Besides, I just don't think that his portrayal of Howard Hughes was crazy enough. Hughes went mental during his last few years alive. Would it have been too much trouble to see one scene with DiCaprio walking around with tissue boxes on his feet?

Best Director
Alexander Payne, Mike Leigh and Taylor Hackford were nominated, and they'll be watching in their seats as either Martin Scorsese or Clint Eastwood makes an acceptance speech.

I've already handed out three awards to people associated with "Million Dollar Baby," but not this one. For six consecutive times, Scorsese has been come close to winning it all but came up empty, the kind of feeling known only to Scorsese, Buffalo sports fans and J-Lo's bridesmaids.

While Eastwood is certainly a great director, he hasn't paid his dues in the same way that Scorsese has - and sometimes it isn't even fair. His movie "Taxi Driver" - named by the American Film Institute as one of the best 100 movies ever - lost to "Rocky." Even worse, a few years later "Raging Bull" - another top 100 film - lost to Robert Redford's "Ordinary People." That's the cinematic equivalent of going to the Louvre and replacing the Mona Lisa with the painting of dogs playing poker.

Best Picture
The nominees are "The Aviator," "Finding Neverland," "Million Dollar Baby," "Ray," and "Sideways." Sideways was supposedly a good movie, and people were shocked when its star Paul Giamatti didn't get a nod for Best Actor.

It's rare for a movie to win Best Picture when its star isn't nominated for Best Actor or Actress, although the last time it happened was in 2004 when "Return of the King" swept the Academy Awards. The only other time that phenomenon happened in the last 15 years was when "Braveheart" earned the top slot. That's not to say that "Sideways" won't do it, but I'm saying the odds are against it.

I wanted to say that "Finding Neverland" will win, but then I found out that the movie wasn't about the police investigation into Michael Jackson's estate.

"Ray" is my dark-horse selection, but as I mentioned before I think its popularity was unfairly overrated. Besides, this movie came out at a time when the two front-runners for the Oscar were "The Passion of the Christ" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," meaning that the Academy was looking for anything competent to honor that wouldn't irritate half the country.

So once again, that brings us back to the battle between "Million Dollar Baby" and "The Aviator." But "The Aviator" has Alec Baldwin as a character, and that's usually the kiss of death for any decent film. However, "Baby" gets points deducted for being a sports film, which never wins the Oscar (no, "Gladiator" doesn't count). Yet I think that people have been waiting for a decent Scorsese film for years to rally around and give an Oscar, but have been disappointed - why do you think "Gangs of New York" was hyped the way it was? But finally, with his first decent film since "Casino," the voters can push him over the edge.

As for Eastwood, he's already struck gold with "Unforgiven." Besides, the Academy seems to embrace his work anyway, so it stands to reason that he will have the chance to get another Oscar nod the next time around. After all, "Mystic River" was nominated for Best Picture, despite the fact that one of my friends said that it was the "most depressing" movie she'd ever watched. So the big winner of the night goes to-Martin Scorsese.

All in all, the Oscars will be a big, extravagant celebration covered by a media that is taking a break from criticizing the Bush administration for holding a big, extravagant celebration. It will be a night when most will forget about things like tsunamis and global tyranny, and focus on the things that really matter, like the type of dress that Gwyneth Paltrow is wearing.

And so, I conclude with the same quote I did last year, because nothing sums up the entire experience as well as the late Johnny Carson. Simply put, the Oscars are "two hours of sparkling entertainment, spread over four hours."