Oscars Betting Predictions – Best Picture Is A Deep Field

THE FAVORITES

Avatar (+110)
I walked in to Avatar with a “glass half empty” kind of viewpoint. The friends I talk to about movies are usually high-class nerds and pantheon-level geeks and each one I talked to about Cameron’s latest couldn’t even find the words to describe it. I didn’t know if that was a good thing, but when you silence a geek then you’ve done something good. More often than not, if you disappoint a geek, they can easily find the words to dissect the things they hate the most (case in point: Daredevil with Ben Affleck). When my geek infested circle of friends implored me to “just go see the damn movie” I knew I should be expecting something special. That’s why I was a little intrepid about my expectations.

The first ten minutes of this movie were the hardest, but only because I’m near sighted and the 3-D made me feel like I was peering through the layered fabric of  neighboring dimensions. Once those affects wore off, however, I was simply astounded. I knew thirty minutes in to this movie why my friends had told me I was going to “see something special”.

What Avatar achieved at the box office is nothing compared to what it accomplished as a production. Visually it was the most jaw-dropping movie I had seen since Terminator 2 and the 3-D was a spectacular element. The movie was essentially the biggest budgeted cartoon of all time, but never once did you feel like you were sitting in your living room on a Saturday morning.

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And isn’t that what movies are supposed to do? Aren’t they here to relieve us of our daily regimen and take us to distant place, or far out situations?

That being said, one of the reasons this movie shouldn’t win is because of the story itself. One of the only changes I would make is to have Giovanni Ribisi’s character more heavily involved simply because it’s kind of silly to have Stephen Lang’s character take over all the decision making when he’s being employed by Ribisi’s character in the first place.

What I love about Avatar is its groundbreaking production values and its promise that all the untold imaginings of creative minds can be actualized. What I don’t like about it is that it’s simply not that gripping of a story. I was cheering and rooting for the heroes the entire way, and I was left in awe…but a movie is not just about visual affects and spending lots of money. It should be, and always will be, about story telling, which is unfortunately where Avatar falls short.

It’s not that the actual story isn’t told well, paced poorly or messily arranged. Simply put, it’s that the plot itself is not compelling or diverse enough to last in the memories of movie goers. To take a page out of David Spade’s routine, I lie this movie the first time I saw it when it was called Fern Gully. If Avatar wins, it will only be because it unhinged the once closed door on the limitless possibilities of production companies like Cameron’s.

The Hurt Locker (-150)
There are cameos from Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pierce and David Morse, but their performances don’t dominate the movie. If anything, you barely notice they’re in the movie at all. In fact, the only thing that dominates you about the movie is its suspense, which is a relief to find in an age of movies that is born and bred on the backs of big name, Hollywood stars and production values that could feed the third world.

That’s what makes The Hurt Locker so special. It’s a movie that doesn’t beat you over the head with its point. If anything it simply relies on the organic drama of the movie’s events and lets the natural anxiety precipitate to the viewers.

It’s probably what you expect from a film that was made knowing that the story would carry the movie to its sublime ending. What The Hurt Locker actually excels at is averting from revealing to us the tired messages of war movies like Saving Private Ryan and Platoon. Instead, you just walk out with your hand gripping your chest thinking, “That was a great movie…”

Not until I sat down to write this column did I really consider the story of this movie. In short, there’s nothing memorable about the story that I can really tell you. There’s a troubled lead character, flanked by an overtly determined supporting actor and a goof just trying to survive. When William James, the lead character, returns state side he’s not seen bickering with his wife or really struggling with a normal life. All we really see is a guy who prefers the focused insanity of defusing bombs in a war torn environment over the daily obscurity of picking out a box of cereal. The movie ends with James carrying the same notion of disparity from his life in America as he began the movie with.

The Hurt Locker doesn’t tickle your philosophical mind, nor does it try to fluster your moral outrage. It’s clean and messy at the same time.

THE PREDICTION
Essentially the Oscars will be telling us whether they prefer bigger productions over purely simple story telling. The Hurt Locker was made with 1/20th of the budget of Avatar. Cameron also made $2.5 billion at the box office, while Bigelow’s movie only secured $18 million.

If the Oscars were handed out for financial success and innovative production and visuals that will set the bar for the industry, then Avatar wins hands down. It’s like no other movie I’ve ever seen before it. Yet what this category is about is the best picture of the year. The Oscar committee should stand by what has been the cornerstone of the movie industry and the element of The Hurt Locker that simply makes it a better movie – story telling.

Best Picture Prediction: The Hurt Locker (-150)