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Dale’s 2009 Oscar Roundup

oscar statue Reference: Roger Ebert’s 09 Oscar Page | Official Oscars Website | IMDb Oscar 09 Page | Wikipedia 81st Academy Awards Page

Here are my thoughts/picks for the major categories of the 81st annual Annual Academy Awards show- to be held on February 22, 2009. Links in this post are to my reviews of each on The Daleisphere. The rating I gave each to each appears in (parenthesis). Movies where I indicate [RCS ] indicate a ‘review coming soon’

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has 13 nominations, Slumdog Millionaire has 10, The Dark Knight and Milk each have 8 nominations, Wall-E has 6 and each of Doubt, Frost/Nixon and The Reader have 5.

Best Picture

Slumdog Millionaire should win Best Picture and I predict it will win. It was the best picture of 2008.

I rated each of the following movies 5 out of 5 in my reviews. In my opinion, each were better overall movies than those nominated other than Slumdog Millionaire:

Still, I would give the Best Picture Oscar to Slumdog Millionaire.

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Sydney Pollack – An Appreciation

Syndey PollackI liked Sydney Pollack. I really liked him. My first memory of him was his performance in Tootsie (1982). For years Sydney essentially played the same character over and over – usually a strong, no-nonsense, humane executive, agent, or ‘all-business’ leader type. But, unlike some actors who do that, Michael Caine for example, I’ve never grown tired of it.

I’ve enjoyed watching him interviewed on Charlie Rose a half dozen times. I’ve followed him in the press. He seemed like a really nice guy – certainly intelligent, highly respected and very good at what he did.

He was consistently good in Tootsie (1982), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Random Hearts (1999), Changing Lanes (2002), The Interpreter (2005) and Michael Clayton (2007).

Of course he was also a producer and a terrific director. Actually a better director than he was an actor having directed The Way We Were (1973), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Electric Horseman (1979), Absence of Malice (1981), Tootsie (1982), Out of Africa (1985), The Firm (1993) the remake of Sabrina (1995) (though the original was better), Random Hearts (1999), and The Interpreter (2005) among many others. Not all were great but most were very good.

Without a doubt he was a top-tier Hollywood director but I’ll miss his on screen performances the most.

Reference: imdb6 | wikipedia12 | Appearances on Charlie Rose