Wesley Morris's Oscar predictions

''The Class,'' starring Esmeralda Ouertani and Rachel Regulier, is up for best foreign language film. (PIERRE MILON/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS)

By Wesley Morris

Globe Staff / February 20, 2009

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The 81st Oscars say more about the people who make movies than about the movies themselves. All five best picture nominees are serious. A romantic fantasy with great production design and the two stars of "Babel"? A big movie about a disgraced president from the director of "Apollo 13" and "A Beautiful Mind"? A drama about a Nazi prison guard, the fling she has with a German boy, and her shot at redemption? With such conventional company (in order, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "The Reader") even an inspired movie like "Milk" seems like Ye Olde Biopic. "Slumdog Millionaire" didn't spring from that formula, but winds up fitting in its own crowd-pleasing way. So if you've entered an office pool and have no idea which end is up with, say, best adapted sound editing. (Neither do we! It's a fake category) take a look at our list of wishes and predictions for Sunday's awards ceremony. We may not help you win your pool, but we're trying. WESLEY MORRIS

BEST PICTURE

Will win: "Milk"

Should win: "Milk"

Was robbed: "WALL-E"

Shouldn't be here: "The Reader"

WESLEY MORRIS: The most flaccid batch of nominees since "Braveheart" trampled "Babe" and "Apollo 13." This year, the conflation of Indian indigence and Hollywood redemption makes "Slumdog Millionaire" an obvious winner. But surely of 5,000 or so voters, a significant number will see "Milk" as an even more self-congratulatory choice - for its political topicality instead of its artistic ingenuity. It's almost too good for this year's show.

BEST ACTOR

Will win: Sean Penn, "Milk"

Should win: Sean Penn, "Milk"

Was robbed: Michael Sheen, "Frost/Nixon"

Shouldn't be here: Frank Langella, "Frost/Nixon"

MORRIS: With great respect to Jenkins, the underrated Pitt, and the overrated Langella, Penn descends from Mount Self-Seriousness and reinvents his bombastic style. And yet it's something more, since rather than noticing how much of Penn has gone into this Milk, you notice how little of him there is. As good as Rourke is, you're not seeing him turn water into wine. He was better in "Sin City."

BEST ACTRESS

Will win: Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"

Should win: Melissa Leo, "Frozen River"

Was robbed: Sally Hawkins, "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Shouldn't be here: Kate Winslet, "The Reader"

MORRIS: If it was a decent year for women in movies, this collection suggests that's truer in the supporting categories. Mother Superior Streep belongs in the new "Friday the 13th," for instance. The race really comes down to Winslet and whether voters are conned into seeing as brave her scrupulous performance as a Nazi guard. She's owed, they say, but by that karmic math, isn't Leo? If ambivalence over Winslet sets in, the winner is Hathaway's jabbering junkie.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Will win: Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"

Should win: Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"

Was robbed: Eddie Marsan, "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Shouldn't be here: Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Doubt"

MORRIS: It's conceivable that mournfulness could have upgraded Ledger to the other actor category a la Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs." But his inventive, truly scary Joker doesn't capsize "The Dark Knight." He enhances it. Meanwhile, Hoffman gives an outstanding lead performance that's been stuffed here alongside Shannon, who's the best thing about "Revolutionary Road."

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Will win: Penélope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Should win: Penélope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Was robbed: Hiam Abbass, "The Visitor"

Shouldn't be here: Amy Adams, "Doubt"

MORRIS: I could have gone with Tomei for her shrewd body language, Davis for her gravity while facing down Meryl Streep's impersonation of the Joker, Henson for her enlivened sidestepping of an archetype, or even Adams for her latest variation on vestal purity. But I picked Cruz not because she did anything new (she squawked and bleated in "Blow," too) but because her performance gave drama and soul to an increasingly shallow comedy.

BEST DIRECTOR

Will win: Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire"

Should win: Gus Van Sant, "Milk"

Was robbed: Christopher Nolan, "The Dark Knight

Shouldn't be here: Ron Howard, "Frost/Nixon"

MORRIS: Snooze. Predictably, all five of these guys have been nominated for some of their most ostensibly accessible work. "Benjamin Button" is nothing if not a feat of craftsmanship but it lacks Fincher's vision. Van Sant, while having made a movie biography, applies enough avant-garde and real human energy to qualify as inventive. But Boyle's bulldozing insistence on the triumph of good cheer over everything else wins.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Will win: Simon Beaufoy, "Slumdog Millionaire"

Should win: None

What a sleepy batch. Eric Roth really did a number on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story: He turned it into "Benjamin Gump." If "Slumdog" wins everything, this prize will be part of the onslaught. Never mind that - Bollywood dancing, aside - it's the weakest thing about the movie.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Will win: Andrew Stanton, "WALL-E"

Should win: Stanton

It's a pleasure to see Courtney Hunt's screenplay here, and it's possible that Dustin Lance Black will win either as part of a "Milk" sweep or as a consolation prize. (It's actually more interesting to see what Gus Van Sant did with the script.) But Stanton will likely win for writing a movie better than most of the actual best picture nominees.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Will win: "WALL-E"

Should win: "WALL-E"

"Bolt" and "Kung Fu Panda" have a lot to recommend, but every year there's one nominee whose greatness is misapprehended and miscategorized. With "WALL-E," there's an adult awkwardly seated at the kid's table.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Will win: "Waltz With Bashir" (Israel)

Should win: "The Class" (France)

Laurent Cantet's perceptive look at a single Paris classroom is about the school of school and the school of life. But Ari Folman's well-liked animated military memoir is more or less about Israel, so the Oscar goes to it.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Will win: "Man on Wire"

Should win: "Man on Wire"

The unstructured emotionalism of "Nerakhoon" and the vague authorship of "Trouble the Water" were problems for me. And Werner Herzog's film had great, Herzogian humor and flights of almost supernatural beauty. But the delicacy and spirit of James Marsh's reenactment of Philippe Petit's promenade across the World Trade Center's twin towers is a surprise mostly for what it doesn't say about the towers.

ORIGINAL SONG

Will win: "Jai Ho," "Slumdog Millionaire"

Should win: "Jai Ho"

ORIGINAL SCORE

Will win: A.R. Rahman, "Slumdog Millionaire"

Should win: Rahman

Danny Elfman composed some of his most fun, least intrusive music for "Milk," but he should just get out of Rahman's way. His rhythmic, clanging, propulsive sound was, for me, the heartbeat of Boyle's movie (he's a double nominee in the original song category). A vote for him is also a vote to obliterate this category's defensive attachment to classical Western orchestration.

FILM EDITING

Will win: Chris Dickens, "Slumdog Millionaire"

Should win: Elliot Graham, "Milk"

Typically, this is the "how long is your film" award. All the nominees whittled miles of footage into movies over two hours. That standard should win "Benjamin Button" the Oscar. But "Slumdog" had more cuts per second, and maybe that's how the average voter judges. But "Milk" is definitely the most playfully, artfully assembled of this gang.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Will win: Anthony Dod Mantle, "Slumdog Milllionaire"

Should win: Claudio Miranda, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

The problem with "The Reader" is how pretty it looks. There are some astounding shots in "Changeling" (mostly of Angelina Jolie's face). The daylight, exterior images in "The Dark Knight" are more arresting than their nighttime counterparts. And what else is "Benjamin Button" if not a gargantuan scrapbook? But Mantle wins voters' backward admiration for sending his camera through the streets and ghettos of Mumbai and not getting dirty. Where, oh where, is the ever-ingenious Harris Savides for "Milk"?

MAKEUP

Will win: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

Should win: "The Dark Knight"

ART DIRECTION

Will win: "The Dark Knight"

Should win: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

The nursing home, the brothel, the shipyard, the giant hotel lobby, the complete transformation of New Orleans into a kind of postwar, pre-Katrina fantasia: "Button" is the sunny opposite of how the Batman turned Chicago into the dark side of the moon.

COSTUME DESIGN

Will win: "Australia"

Should win: "Milk"

Catherine Martin's clothes and sets are always a high point of any Baz Luhrmann production (he's her husband). The "Australia" costumes could almost be refashioned as a label for Target. Meanwhile, the 1970s are always a kitsch pageant. But Danny Glicker really saves his zaniest ideas for big parties and some street rallies. What's amazing in "Milk" is the restraint on display.

ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Will win: "La Maison en Petits Cubes"

Should win: "Presto"

LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM

Will win: "Manon on the Asphalt"

Should win: "Toyland"

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

Will win: "The Witness - from the Balcony of Room 306"

Should win: I didn't see them all.

SOUND MIXING

Will win: "Slumdog Millionaire"

Should win: "WALL-E"