The WORD's Oscar Picks '07

Oscar picks?

Look, I spend all my time when I'm sitting around not here in front of a computer screen typing up my useless, uniformed opinions sitting around my apartment watching TV, reading comics and wallowing in pointless self-pity, so it goes without saying that I have failed to see any of the films nominated for any Oscar this year. Hell, the only movie I dragged my sorry ass out off my couch to actually see in a theater last was Clerks II, which, sadly, was completed passed over by the Academy. This, however, will not stop me, in my capacity as semi-professional Pop pundit, from spouting off about who should or shouldn't win in a couple of categories.

For Best Director, it probably is about time, after a three decade career and several previous nominations without a win, that Scoresese takes the statue home. In the Best Actor category, while I haven't seen The Last King of Scotland, I hear Forrest Whittaker really tears up the screen in it and I've always liked him in any other film he's been in, so he's my pick as well as that of people who've actually bothered to watch this film.

And I see that in the Best Foreign Language film, the Academy, unlike the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which dispenses the Golden Globes, has actually adhered to the spirit of the category by nominating only actual foreign films, rather than American films made in a foreign language by actors turned director trying to be "arty," such as Mel Gibson's Apocalypto or Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima, which took the Globe in the category. Of course, as to which film actually wins, I don't give a crap because I didn't see any of them and most of them never even played in Columbus, Ohio anyway.

If I can actually stay up to the end of this snoozefest, I'll report on my impressions later in the week.