It's that time of year again. The red carpet is rolled out and all talk surrounds a little gold statue that America calls Oscar.
This year's Academy Award nominations seem to include a lot of independent productions, which in the past few years have gone from being the black sheep of the filmmaking business to the exotic others.
Best Picture
A Beautiful Mind will definitely win for Best Picture. Directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, the Academy couldn't ask for a more perfect combination.
This is Howard's first Oscar nomination and last year Crowe scored big at the Oscars winning Best Actor for his role in Gladiator, which also won for Best Picture.
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Crowe has mastered the art of schmoozing both the press and the public.
I haven't seen Gosford Park or In the Bedroom, but I hear they are both amazing films as well as A Beautiful Mind's toughest competition.
In short, A Beautiful Mind probably was not the best film made in 2001, but it was certainly an impressive character study.
The Academy loves strong character studies — you may remember a very popular and recent one in a film called Forrest Gump.
Best Director
My pick for Best Director must be Ridley Scott for Black Hawk Down. This is Scott's third nomination.
He was nominated in 1992 for Thelma and Louise and in 2001 for Gladiator, but has yet to win an Oscar.
Don't get me wrong, the competition is rough, but Scott's Black Hawk Down blew me away.
The movie is strong partly because of its story, but Scott took this amazing story one step further and led a huge ensemble cast through a war that America new very little about.
Best Actor
Moviegoers are impressed by transformation. This is further proven with the nominees for Best Actor. Russell Crowe is a schizophrenic, Sean Penn has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old, Will Smith went from the scrawny Fresh Prince to Muhammad Ali, Denzel Washington is a rough and corrupt detective and Tom Wilkinson is a father whose son falls in love with an older woman.
Although I loved Smith in Ali, my vote for Best Actor must go to Denzel, not because we are both Sagittarians, but because he is an amazing actor who has received little credit for his work. Washington has been nominated five times for an Oscar. He won in 1990 for his supporting role in Glory. Washington's impressive filmmography includes Philadelphia, Courage Under Fire, Crimson Tide, The Pelican Brief, Malcolm X and The Hurricane.
Best Actress
I'm going to tell it to you straight — my pick for best actress has little to no chance of winning the Oscar, but she was in one of my favorite films and I think she is a wonderful actress. My vote for Best Actress goes to a youngin' — Renée Zellweger. Not only did Zellweger make Bridget Jones's Diary worth seeing, she nailed the character of a single woman and had an impeccable British accent. You may remember Zellweger as Tom Cruise's love interest in Jerry Maguire, but since that film, she has truly shined. In One True Thing, she starred opposite Meryl Streep, who is one of the greatest actresses around. Zellweger put forth an amazing performance.
Now that I've disclosed my pick, I'll tell you who I think will probably win — it's a race between Judi Dench for Iris and Sissy Spacek for In the Bedroom. Dench is becoming a favorite of the Academy having been nominated for an Oscar four times in the past five years. In Iris, she received much praise from critics for playing a woman struggling with Alzheimer's disease. Dench won an Oscar in 1998 for her supporting role as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love, even though she was on screen for only eight minutes.
This is Spacek's sixth Oscar nomination; she has won in this category before in 1980 for her role in Coal Miner's Daughter.
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