Oscar Night Predictions: Every Slumdog Has His Day

I feel like a fraud. As of two nights ago the only Oscar-nominated films I'd seen were The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder and Wall-E. My bragging rights came from having caught Waltz With Bashir at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

This might not seem like a big deal to some, but I used to run a commercial mainstream entertainment website for four years and even my current co-workers ask me, "I thought you some sort of culture vulture?" Some vulture. Some days I barely even get a whiff of the corpse, let alone get a good chew, especially when it comes to movies. I suppose that comes with the territory - an early-morning job and an active two-year-old. But still.

Last night I may have stumbled across the solution, though it feels like a Faustian bargain. A friend passed along a website (http://www.watch-movies-links.net/) where all the Oscar-nominated films are steaming, along with some 10,000 other films. We watched Slumdog Millionaire on the laptop with no problem. It was clearly a screen and had some occasional pixelization issues, but the stream never dropped, never buffered.

I do have some problems with this. I know I lost some of the visual wonder of having not seem this on a big screen or even in a DVD format on my TV. I also think content creators should get paid. I get that films cost money — I'm no privacy advocate.

That being said, I loved the experience. I popped on the site, typed in a name of what I wanted to see, clicked and it played. No fuss. I want to see these film, but I can't right now, so what can I do. This site embodies what we have been promised for years — being able to chose what you want to watch, when you want to. Truly personalized and on-demand.

This site could be the Napster of movies and the studios need to learn the lessons of the music industry and not try to quash it, but get behind it and find a way to monetize it. There will always be pirates, but make a site like this that is simple to use, delivers a good product and for a reasonable price and I will pay and so will others. It's why iTunes has succeeded.

The other point of this rant is I will likely be catching up with the other films soon, but don't actually believe that you need to see them to enter — and win — an Oscar pool. And with that, here are my predictions for what they are worth.

BEST PICTURE
Slumdog Millionaire

DIRECTING
Slumdog Millionaire

ACTOR, LEADING
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler

ACTRESS, LEADING
Kate Winslet in The Reader

ACTOR, SUPPORTING
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

ACTRESS, SUPPORTING
Viola Davis in Doubt

SCREENPLAY, ORIGINAL
Milk

SCREENPLAY, ADAPTED
Slumdog Millionaire

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Waltz with Bashir

ANIMATED FEATURE
WALL-E

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Slumdog Millionaire

VISUAL EFFECTS
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

ART DIRECTION
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

COSTUME DESIGN
The Duchess

FILM EDITING
Slumdog Millionaire

MAKEUP
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Trouble the Water

DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Conscience of Nhem En

SHORT FILM, ANIMATED
Presto

SHORT FILM, LIVE ACTION
Spielzeugland (Toyland)

SOUND EDITING
The Dark Knight

SOUND MIXING
The Dark Knight

ORIGINAL SCORE
Slumdog Millionaire

ORIGINAL SONG
Down to Earth from WALL-E

And here are my sources:
EW's Oscar predictions
Film Experience
Awards Daily: Oscar Contender Tracker
New York Magazine: Oscar Predictions You Can Bet On!

And after a couple of years of live blogging this Hollywood love-in, I think I will leave that task to the millions of others who have taken to the sport. I may drop in at The Ampersand, just to see what they have to say, but other than that I might just watch the show.

Update:
I got 16/24 right, about my usual par. Last year was 15/24, so having watched fewer films made no real difference whatsoever. I bet against Slumdog twice (what was I thinking?) and lost on a few of the smaller tech categories. I also went for Rourke in the 50/50 contest and got the short stick. Ah well.

Other than that, a fairly tight show, though they could drop at least one of sound categories and maybe the original song, which is mostly played over closing credits and has nothing to do with the film (Slumdog notwithstanding.)