Oscar! Oscar!

Time to look into my crystal ball:

Best Picture: Letter From Iwo Jima
The Departed is a decent film but we have certainly seen better, especially from Scorsese. Babel is a sham. I won't be too surprised if the award eventually goes to Little Miss Sunshine or The Queen, but my money is on Eastwood.

Best Director: Clint Eastwood
Many people will go for Scorsese in this category. But let's face it, first it's an adaptation that doesn't stray too far from the original, and second, Scorsese was never the darling of Oscar. The political climate in the US seems to favor our good old Clint to pocket that little gold man.

Best Actor: Forrest Whitaker
Oscar has a soft spot for underdogs these days, not to say anything about peculiar roles. It's Forrest Whitaker's turn to receive the Oscar nod. DiCaprio's performance in The Departed/Blood Diamond is solid but short of outstanding. He'll be a serious contender in the future though.

Best Actress: Helen Mirren
Veni, vidi, vici. Helen Mirren rulez! Her onscreen persona overshadows all the regulars in this category. Now, bow before your majesty!

Original Screenplay: Pan's Labyrinth
Torn between Little Miss Sunshine and Pan's Labyrinth here.

Adapted Screenplay: The Departed
No contest.

Best Editing: United 93
Two serious contenders in this category: United 93 and Babel. Babel feels tedious and jumbled at times, so... Did I mention Babel is a sham?

Best Animated Feature: Happy Feet
Talking cars? Gimme a break. I prefer dancing penguins.

Best Foreign Language Film: Pan's Labyrinth
Easy one.

Best Documentary Feature: Any film but An Inconvenient Truth
Can you seriously believe a guy who claimed to have created the Internet and failed to spell potato correctly to enlighten you on climatology? Al Gore is a joke, and this fear-mongering, political propaganda branded as a documentary sucks big time. Anyone wants to have a more balanced view on the state of global warming should read Patrick Michaels instead.

Lady in the Water

Lady in the Water is a fairytale through and through. Sorry, no more startling plot twists - what you see is exacty what you get. The story defies logic, it's unreal, and it's absoultely otherworldly or just plain goofy. A savior of the purest intend is here to rescue humanity from utter destruction by inspiring a prophet? A guild, a guardian, a healer and a symbolist are aligned to assist her? Little do we remember it's all the stuff that fairytales and myths are made of (Joseph Campbell will have a field day with this one). Adults find it compulsory to act like one - i.e. to be rational at all time, sneering at the sight of any out-of-the-ordinary propositions and refuse to so much as comprehend anything that are ostensibly childish or freakishly quirky. It's almost like the lost of innocence is a blessing! What have become of us?!

Lady in the Water has sent sniffy critics around the world arching their eyebrows, not least because the only character who gets killed in the movie is one of the jaded, navel-gazing know-it-all colleagues of them. At one point, the audience is led to believe that the critic indelibly portrayed by Bob Balaban is the prophet-in-the-rough. Obviously, M. Night Shyamalan's cutting those stodgy, pontificating critics, who believe themselves to be the ultimate judge of cinematic beauty, down to size. The film has its share of flaws but since when nit-pick gets in the way of appreciation, since when the mere appearance of innocence makes us squint, since when we lost touch with our inner child, and since when being sarcastic and cynical the birthmarks of film critics as well as the badge everyone prides himself wearing? I know it's the cynics not the meeks who have inherited the world, but it doesn't mean we have to be one of them.

Like Hitchcock, MNS enjoys making cameos in his own movies. But this time around, he's not taking some petty little parts. By stepping into the shoes of a prophet destined to be sacrificed for the betterment of mankind (in real life, the film does amount to a career suicide and it does leave MNS's reputation in tatters which is most unfortunate and unfair. I've read somewhere that he's having trouble securing financial backing for his next movie - The Green Effect), MNS is telling us in our face: I mean what I said, don't call me corny! Lady in the Water professes his faith in the goodness of the world, his doubt about the cult of reason, and above all, his calling for the audience to hark back to their childhood when fanatsy tales are their escape and the sources of hope they can tap into. It's a story about having faith in yourself and the people around you, about how everyone is connected(six degrees of seperation, anyone?), about finding your purpose in the world, and about believing. It's a mortal crime to write off an artist who has a few misfires. The same goes with MNS (The Village really sucks!).