Here lies...
PAUL GIAMATTI, with whom no Best Actor list is complete this year. And, alas, his snub makes my best actor list and Oscars in 0% agreement (down from 100% last year -what a sudden divergence of opinion). I was thisclose to predicting this snub. I felt it would be Depp or Giamatti that was the "snub story" but I got it wrong. Should have gone with the one I'd be most upset about. Than I would have predicted 5/5 for Best Actor which was really hard to do this year. Instead I got 4/5 correct.
UMA THURMAN, the Bride from
Kill Bill (Volumes 1 & 2) will go down in movie history just like iconic heroine/divas such as Scarlett O Hara, Princess Leia, Ripley, Holly Golightly, etc... but no Oscar attention will reflect Uma's towering creation, the best of her uneven career (just nudging out her other two sensational performances; June Miller in
Henry and June and Mia Wallace in
Pulp Fiction.)I predicted she'd be snubbed but the next time I see an Academy voter the camera is going to zoom in on my eyes and you're going to hear that funny/scary furious sound cue that happens when the Bride sees her various nemesis for the first time in each Volume of Tarantino's bloody opus.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. This Best Picture shouldabeen is what the Academy will be most shamed about in future history as not a one of the middlebrow-grand Best Picture nominees can match this movie in tenderness, imagination, structural profundity, resonance, romantic fireworks, creativity, intelligence, or cinematic wonder. Ah well,
Singin' in the Rain didn't get a Best Picture nomination and
Citizen Kane didn't win and [insert your own Oscar shame here].
So, what do they know anyway?
But congratulations to the nominees who survived the brutal five-per-category cut.
