Common folk and critics alike pretty much agree that this year’s Academy Awards telecast isn’t going to be a blockbuster: There’s no epic Titanic to root for. No Rocky to get up and cheer about.
The LGBT-themed flicks Beginners and Albert Nobbs are worth getting excited about, but hardly genre-changing breakthroughs.
Sure, maybe we’ll see a few killer dresses or a major fashion disaster or three (’cause Joan Rivers needs something to talk about on Monday, right?).
It’s likely that Oscar host Billy Crystal (Really? Again?) will stage a stellar movie montage to open the show. And we can only pray that Rob Lowe shows up with Snow White. But beyond that, the best we can hope for is that the show comes in under three hours so we can get to bed at a reasonable hour.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Wanna up the ante? Take a drink every time someone mentions Whitney. Granted, she wasn’t best known for her flicks, but we suspect she’ll be a major topic of conversation at the Kodak this year.
At any rate, we sat down with film historian and movie critic Randy Shulman, publisher and editor of Washington, DC’s Metro Weekly. Here are Randy’s picks:
*He’s pretty sure The Artist is a shoo-in for Best Picture, although he’s less than thrilled with the nine (nine?!) nominees this year.
*Randy thinks Woody Allen is an odds-on favorite for the script to Midnight in Paris. And he’s put his money on Martin Scorsese for Hugo.
*He likes Brad Pitt over George Clooney for Best Actor, mostly because Brad is due.
*The great Christopher Plummer will win for Best Supporting Actor for Beginners, in which he played a gay guy, no less.
*Melissa McCarthy for Best Supporting Actress? Not so fast. Does she deserve an Oscar for “…pooping in a sink?” he asks. You saw it. It was hilarious. But Octavia Spencer is taking it home for The Help.
No matter what, you’ve got a 20% chance of being right.
Hear more of Randy predictions, as well as chats with parody queen Sherry Vine and B Magazine publisher Peter Ian Cummings, on this week’s episode of the Queerty/GayCities sponsored Swish Edition talk show.
STREAM THE “SWISH EDITION” RIGHT HERE:
Mark
I’m rooting for Meryl Streep for Best Actress for the fact she hasn’t won anything since 1983 and has the record for the most nominations ever. No excuse to leave her sitting this year: her Margaret Thatcher was a tour-de-force.