Oscar 2008 Predictions: Best Film, Foreign Language Film

Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men

I haven't been following too closely the debates about who will or won't be nominated for the 2008 Academy Awards, though a few front-runners — No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Ratatouille, Joel and Ethan Coen, Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Christie, George Clooney, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page — have become rather obvious after U.S. critics, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and the Screen Actors Guild began announcing their winners and/or nominees.

That said, I have also read here and there comments on how this film, that star, or that sound technician (joke) will fare in the voting.

The list below is incomplete and quite likely not all that accurate. The only reason I'm bothering with this is because Alt Film Guide has been getting numerous queries about potential Oscar 2008 contenders.

By the way, that's not to say that I couldn't care less about the Oscars. Not at all. In fact, as much as I disagree with many — most? — of the Academy's choices, I find the Oscars fascinating — partly because of their place in movie culture and partly because I'm a list fanatic.

So, here they are:

Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood

Best Film:
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Into the Wild
Michael Clayton
Atonement

Possibly: Juno, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, American Gangster, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Kite Runner

Best Foreign Language Film:

The foreign-language film category is the one that usually interests me the most. It's also the most problematic to hazard a guess because the (few) people who vote in this category tend to be (quite) older — I've been to foreign-language film Academy screenings where the average age of the audience was 102.

They are also much more conservative than the already conservative Academy. Compounding matters, I wonder how many of them actually bother watching more than the required absolute minimum number of films.

Anyhow, strong possibilities are Cannes winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania), the much-ballyhooed Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, France), the highly popular and multiple Goya-nominee The Orphanage (above, Juan Antonio Bayona, Spain), and the David di Donatello-winning The Unknown (Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy).

Also, those Academy members have shown a penchant for films featuring cute little boys, e.g., Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso, Kolya, The Thief, Children of Heaven, Central Station, Life Is Beautiful, The Chorus, As in Heaven. If the trend continues, M for Mother (Rasoul Mollagholipour, Iran) and The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Cao Hamburger, Brazil) have a good chance at landing a nomination.

Films with Jewish themes/characters and/or Nazis/World War II are even more popular — see Sophie Scholl – The Final Days, Paradise Now, Downfall, Zelary, Twin Sisters, Nowhere in Africa, Divided We Fall, etc. (The fact that Black Book failed to land a nomination last year was nearly as eyebrow-raising as the absence of Volver in the list of nominees.) This year, there's Beaufort (Joseph Cedar, Israel), The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky, Austria), the aforementioned The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, Katyn (Andrzej Wajda, Poland), and probably a few others I'm unaware of.

But most importantly, those Academy voters love sentiment and gooey situations, in addition to a spoonful — sometimes a whole bucket — of mediocrity. Therefore, many excellent submitted films go unnoticed, while many lesser ones end up with a nomination. Hopefully, this year it'll be different. But don't hold your breath.

See Oscar 2008: Best Foreign Language Film Shortlist

No End in Sight by Charles Ferguson

Best Documentary:

That's a hard one as well, for it's another special category. Michael Moore's Sicko and Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight will most likely get a nod.

Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild

Best Director:

Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Sean Penn, Into the Wild

Possibly: Jason Reitman, Juno, Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton, Ridley Scott, American Gangster, Joe Wright, Atonement; Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; Sidney Lumet, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead