Mimi's Hits and Misses for Oscar® 2010

  And Mimi's hits and misses were:

There is a link on the right sidebar of this blog to the winners of the Oscar for the best of 2009, awarded at the 82nd Academy Awards television gala, 7 March 2010. It will remain there until the 83rd awards next year. Also, see the two previous posts below.

Here are the misses in my choices of 82nd Academy Award winners. I promised my readers that I would explain about the choices I made to win, and why I think I missed. I am doing this not to justify my choices, but to possibly help others who like to play the game, "Who Will Win?"

Thus, here goes. I abstained from choosing winners in any short-film categories because short films are not readily shown in theaters or issued on DVD. Obviously, I did not see any of them. That left 17 categories. Out of the 17, I missed 4, that is the best I have ever done.

However, two of those missed were awards that I hardly ever miss, Best Actress and Best Foreign Language Film. I was unable to see any of the nominated foreign language films because they were not shown in any near-by theaters and not yet released on DVD. Does anyone know a theater that is not in a big city and shows foreign language movies? I don't think so.

Regarding the Best Actress category. I was unable to see THE BLIND SIDE although Bullock won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Best Actress award, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' members usually vote the way SAG members vote. SAG members are the biggest voting block in the Academy.

I know all that, but I simply couldn't see Bullock over Streep. Since they never release vote tallies with any of these awards, I rationalized it may have been a close-win fluke. I forgot that real-live Academy members have remarked to me that they were going to vote for so-and-so for a certain award but a their guild chose another so-and-so; therefore, they were going to vote for the guild's choice. I'll remember that next time.

I have only seen two movies that Sandra Bullock is in, CRASH and MISS CONGENIALITY. I really liked CRASH and, like the best film winner this year, I was saying CRASH will win the best film Oscar, and everyone was asking, "What?" As far as Bullock being in CRASH, I never noticed, only discovering she is in it when I looked her up on the IMDb. I do remember seeing MISS CONGENIALITY. The movie is cute and funny. In it, Bullock is amusing to watch but her performance is no big whoop. I saw snippets of SPEED. Few acting chops there, either.

Sandra Bullock is popular with the current age group now the majority in the Academy. So, the award may have simply been because those voters like THE BLIND SIDE, and they like Sandra Bullock the lady. It would not be the first time this was the case. From all accounts she is extremely popular in the film community and a very likable person. I intend to see THE BLIND SIDE when I can get the DVD, and I promise to keep an open mind when I evaluate Sandra Bullock's performance against Meryl Streep's in JULIE & JULIA, which I have seen.

I also missed Art Direction because I really liked the art direction in SHERLOCK HOLMES. However, since that was the only nomination the movie received, I should have known better and gone for AVATAR. The art direction for AVATAR was very artistic and pleasing to the eyes. So, that miss goes down as an absolute strikeout.

Then, there was the win that came like a bolt out of the blue, Best Adapted Screenplay: PRECIOUS: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire by Geoffrey Fletcher. The Writer's Guild gave that one to Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, and I always vote the way the Writer's Guild goes. It works 99 percent of the time, but not this year.

You can scroll down to the previous posts to see the list of winners and my picks. If you would like to read a transcript of winners' acceptance speeches, as well as see the winners with all nominees, click the title of this post.