Here are the five Academy Award nominees for Best Picture: The Curiuous Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, MILK, The Reader and Slumdog Millionaire. Which do you think will win? Which do you want to win? What's missing? Vote and discuss.
I haven't seen any of these films and so have no personal interest in the outcome whatever it may be.
But just looking at it from the "political" viewpoint of what motivates Hollywood and how Academy members react to certain stimuli, I think
Slumdog Millionaire has the best chance of winning. Hollywood meets Bollywood, a market ripe for exploitation and a win-win situation for the movie industry, especially with a multi-ethnic president in the White House and Hollywood's bent for doing the politically correct thing in hopes third-world natives will think we are friendly and really care about them.
If not
Slumdog, then it will be
MILK. A popular gay politician elected to office in San Francisco; one of the first (maybe
the first) openly gay politician, murdered by a homophobic nut, big spectacular California celebrity trial, featuring one of the most silly California defenses--"Not guilty, because I was high on Twinkies, your honor." This is a truly California story, and most Academy members live and work in that state. I'm pretty sure Milk was a Democrat, and the Democrats are still celebrating their presidential victory. A movie honoring a murdered gay Democrat would be just so politically correct that it might edge out
Slumdog. Penn will probably get the best actor award for his role as Milk, and that may carry the picture into the winner's circle too.
(Sounds like possibly a better candidate the more I talk about it.)
Moreover, I hear both of these movies actually are very good. So, I hear too, is
The Curiuous Case of Benjamin Button. So many people in this forum seem to like it that it might just edge out
Slumdog and
MILK on its own cinema merits. If the Academy passes up Pitt for best actor, they just may give
Button the Oscar to make up for it.
It won't be
Frost/Nixon for three major reasons: 1. A big chunk of today's movie audience is simply too young to remember anything about Nixon or Watergate; 2. A lot of us who are old enough to remember are tired of talking about it. 3. And most important, a movie about Nixon is just not politically correct, especially in California. Not even a movie that chastises him.