5 Off My Head - Statue Envy

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So the Oscar nominations are tomorrow. Not that you'd know it if MNPP were the only site you read, although I shudder to think what it is you would know if MNPP were the only site you ever read. Hey you'd be an expert on Joel McHale's underpants! I should go around the country giving lectures on that subject, really. Just call me Professor Underpants!

Alright I am getting away from myself here. Let's start again. The Oscar nominations! Tomorrow! And for some reason I've been paying a lot of attention - or at least more than I normally do - this time around. (You can credit The Film Experience's marvelous pod-casts with keeping me in the loop.) There's just a lot of good stuff in the mix. Even the movies I wasn't nuts for (Argo, Django, Lincoln, et al) had things in them I do like. Hell I won't even be angry about Anne Hathaway's probable win in Les Mis since she was a good part in a very bad movie, and anyway I just like her. She deserves all the Oscars for this!

The wig alone. 

Anyway I see everybody's giving their predictions for the nominations tomorrow and while I have no intentions of going that far - at this point there will be a couple of surprises, but it's pretty obvious nothing truly thrilling like say Holy Motors for Best Picture will occur. Shuffle around the same batch of names and it'll be somebody from therein. I could fall deep down the well of all my unlikely wishes and hopes for nominations, but it's kinda masturbating at windmills at this point. So instead of that, and in an attempt to stay positive (and not say stuff like FUCK ALAN ARKIN), here are five possible probable  nominations that I'll be super happy about, should they for sure come to pass.

ParaNorman for Best Animated Film (my review) -- Far superior to Tim Burton's oft flat Frankenweenie (review) on every level. I liked Brave alright (review) but it hardly lingers. I haven't seen Wreck It Ralph but that movie looked like sort of a headache. ParaNorman on the other hand has bewitched me. It's been six weeks since I first saw it and I've kind of wanted to watch it again every day since. We're destined to have a life-long love affair, I do believe.

How To Survive a Plague for Best Documentary (my review) -- A deeply moving paean to all of those who worked so tirelessly while they and the people they love were falling down around them. It manages to express so much rage and horror and unimaginable sadness with on-the-ground tenacity and humor and humanity. It's exhausting and exhaustive and incredibly necessary film-making.

Michael Haneke for Best Director (my review) -- Okay this is the nomination that I'm the least sure will really happen - it seems to me as if Amour is the kind of movie that people look at sitting next to their TV and feel the briefest pang of guilt before deciding to watch another hour of The Real Housewives of Abu Dhabi marathon instead. And I can't blame 'em - I found the film devastatingly moving but out of all of Haneke's many devastating movies this is the one I have the least desire to re-subject myself to because man it just cuts too close, ya know? But that's what he does! And he does it too well.

Moonrise Kingdom for Original Screenplay (my review) -- Everybody seems to agree that the Academy will toss this bone to Wes Anderson, even when his wonderful film, which seems to have actually caught on with audiences too, should be in the talk for the bigger prizes if you ask me. This is the where the movies with actual originality always get shepherded to. Eh, we're being positive - yay Moonrise! Anderson's script is Anderson full tilt boogie but man does it dance.

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty for Best Actress (my review) -- I thought Jennifer Lawrence was the best thing about the sloppy (not in a good way) Silver Linings Playbook (review) so I'll be fine with her winning if she's the Pretty Young Thing to take it this year, she is my Katniss after all! But Chastain and ZDT are like a rhino and its tickbirds - they both feed off my enthusiastic reception, they feed well, very well, back and forth, symbiotically and junk. I am totally head over heels for them both right this minute.

Which probable nominations will make you the happiest?

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