It's Oscar Weekend!!!

This post has nothing to do with fitness or healthy living or anything like that. You may want to click away if that's all you want to hear about. Instead, today's post is about one of my favorite events of the year...

The Oscars. 

I LOVE THEM. Even when they're boring and everyone complains about them, I still have more fun watching them than 80% of TV during the year. And it's finally here! Sunday is Oscar Night!

I'm invited??? Oh, to watch on TV...
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I really love movies, but I also really love movie industry gossip. I don't mean who's dating who (although I won't deny I read that, too). I mean, who's using what angle to get Academy members to vote for them, what is Harvey Weinstein doing to get his actors or films a little naked gold man statue, and is there really an Oscar curse on the Best Actress award? (Nope, it's just that apparently women who win Best Actress are more likely to have sleazy spouses; look at the list and tell me I'm not right on this)

I mean, I love you, Sandy, but clearly your husband was a tool before you won the Oscar.
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Anyway, Sunday night I will be watching the red carpets and commenting on everyone's dress (and ranting about my dislike of Giuliana Rancic as an interviewer, whose name I'm not sure I spelled correctly but I'm not checking so HAH), checking off my Oscar ballot, and probably drinking champagne.

Because it's not Oscar night if you're not being fancy and classy, right?

This year's awards gossip was extra fun to keep track of because there isn't a clear leader going in to the Academy Awards. Every awards show led to something different (except for Daniel Day Lewis winning, that happened a lot).

Now, after Emmanuelle Riva winning Best Actress at the BAFTAs, it looks like the Best Actress race is wide open. And can Ben Affleck be only the second director in history whose film wins Best Picture without even a Best Director nomination? 

OMG I love this stuff so much.

Sourabh and I have used an elaborate scoring system in the past for the Oscars: 5 points if your first choice wins and 2 if your runner-up choice wins. I would totally do a 1-5 ranking system, but that might be over the top.

Oscar ballots! Not quite as important as voting ballots, but a close second.
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This year, Sourabh won't be around for the Oscars since he's competing in a moot court tournament, so Sarah, who shares my love of this Major Event, is joining me for champagne and yelling at the TV.

It should be awesome.

I've shared my predictions and runner-up choices for the Big Four awards here, along with my reasoning. Please share your picks, laugh at me for caring about this silly show, argue with me for liking Zero Dark Thirty more than Argo, and come back on Monday when I talk about my workouts and potentially rant/rave about who won what.

Best Picture

Argo
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It's won most of the "best picture"-type awards going into the Oscars. People think Ben Affleck was cruelly denied a nomination as Best Director (um, he inflicted Gigli on us, I think we're just even now). However, only one other film in history has won Best Picture when the director wasn't nominated for Best Director -- that would be Driving Miss Daisy. Can Argo be the second? I'm not 100% sure.

Also, I don't actually want Argo to win. I thought it was good, but I thought Zero Dark Thirty was a better film (Lincoln is only a great film because of Daniel Day Lewis's performance, in my opinion, and suffers from a lot of Steven Spielberg being... Spielberg). And I'm really rooting for my runner-up choice...

Runner Up - Silver Linings Playbook 
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Harvey Weinstein is behind this movie and he's crazy good at campaigning. Um, he got a French silent film to win Best Picture last year, remember The Artist? No? Because it wasn't that good and his campaigning still got it Best Picture. Plus, voters love a good mental illness with redemption story.

I still think Argo will likely win, but it's a toss-up between Lincoln and this as runner-up. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see Argo, Lincoln, or Silver Linings up on the podium at the end of the night.

Best Director

Steven Spielberg 
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Since Ben Affleck isn't nominated, I think this comes down to Spielberg and Ang Lee. And I think Spielberg is more likely to win, because he has that whole "I'm Steven freaking Spielberg" thing going for him and Lincoln is the kind of serious, weighty film that's also easy to follow, so the older voting members of the Academy (there are a lot) will probably be big fans.

Runner Up - Ang Lee
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I wish I had a stronger intuition between these two. While Spielberg did a great job recreating the Civil War times, Lee arguably had a harder job in adapting Life of Pi, a book that I didn't think could be made into a movie. I think it all depends how many voters read the book and thought the film was a good cinematic translation. If it's a lot, then Lee will be Best Director.

Best Actor

Daniel Day-Lewis
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This is the closest to a slam dunk as we have this year, but if he won, he'd be a record three-time Best Actor winner, so I'm not sure we can even call this one a 100% sure thing. Still, he was phenomenal in Lincoln and the only reason that film is as good as it is. If you told me that DDL was actually Lincoln reincarnated, I'd just nod and say, "yep, makes sense."

Runner Up - Hugh Jackman
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If it's not DDL, it'll be Hugh. He's beloved for being so nice, he's campaigned a lot, he physically challenged himself for this role (losing a ton of weight then gaining weight), and it's probably his only shot at an Oscar ever.

And seriously, he's so nice. My cousin works in post-production and early in her career worked on X-Men 2. She said she'd never met such a nice actor. So I'd love for him to win, just for being a nice guy.

Best Actress

Emmanuelle Riva
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This is my controversial pick! Sound crazy? Maybe, but the Academy loves to award older actors a kind of "lifetime achievement" Oscar (see: Christopher Plummer in Beginners) and JLaw is young. Like, younger than me (I'm sobbing right now at how talented she is and how much she's done already).

Runner Up - Jennifer Lawrence
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Because she's amazing and I love her. Like, what is she even doing in this interview? I don't know. I just want to see her win Best Actress and walk up on stage and make ridiculous faces for future .gifs like this. Because there are entire tumblrs dedicated to her faces. 

Did you see any of the nominated movies? Who do you want to win Best Picture / Actor / Actress / Director? Honestly, does anyone really care about Director? I don't think so...