Oscar nominees

OK, folks, a difficult year but here are my predictions for the Oscar nominees in the major cateories. To be announced tomorrow morning!

BEST PICTURE
“Into the Wild”
“Juno”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country For Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood”
Joel and Ethan Coen, “No Country For Old Men”
Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”
Sean Penn, “Into the Wild”
Julian Schnabel, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney, “Michael Clayton”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”
Johnny Depp, “Sweeney Todd”
Ryan Gosling, “Lars and the Real Girl”
Viggo Mortensen, “Eastern Promises”

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
Julie Christie, “Away From Her”
Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”
Angelina Jolie, “A Mighty Heart”
Ellen Page, “Juno”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck, “The Assassination of Jesse James…”
Javier Bardem, “No Country For Old Men”
Hal Holbrook, “Into the Wild”
Tom Wilkinson, “Michael Clayton”
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, “Charlie Wilson’s War”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There”
Ruby Dee, “American Gangster”
Catherine Keener, “Into the Wild”
Amy Ryan, “Gone Baby Gone”
Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton”

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
“Juno”
“The Savages”
“Michael Clayton”
“Ratatouille”
“Lars and the Real Girl”

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
“Into the Wild”
“No Country For Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”
“Atonement”

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
“Persepolis”
“Ratatouille”
“The Simpsons Movie"

Happy Days

“Don’t overdo the bag,” says Winnie (Fiona Shaw), buried up to her waist in a pile of sand and rubble, possessing only a bag of simple objects – toothbrush, umbrella, pistol – with which to relieve the tedium of her constricted existence. Winnie is a master at rationing out her activities in order to create some semblance of variety in her life, a mastery matched by that of Shaw and director Deborah Warner in utilizing the limited theatrical resources bequeathed to them by Beckett during the first act of Happy Days, a transplant from London’s National Theatre now playing at BAM.

Winnie’s monologues are as rich as her possessions are economical and Shaw, her lilting Irish tones a perfect match for Beckett’s quotidian poetry, unpacks every bit of humor and pathos from within them. Shaw brings an almost impossible athleticism to this immobile role, emphasizing in lightning-quick succession Winnie’s hauteur and her vulnerability, her boldness and her fear. This Winnie is a determined winner, pluckily optimistic (or insanely delusional, take your pick) despite her desperate situation and the first act plays as a humanistic paean to man’s (or, in this case, woman’s) capacity to make bleakness bearable. In the shorter, more severe second half, with Winnie buried up to her neck, the production falters; Shaw, with only her expressive face in view, still evokes empathy, but the conception of Winnie’s brutish, subhuman husband (Tim Potter), who crawls out of his hole to share a final tableau, lacks assurance. At the production’s overly abrupt conclusion, one recognizes anew that none of us, even people as resourceful as Shaw, Warner, and Winnie, can fend off the inevitable blackness forever.