Oracle Online

So it comes as no surprise that Helen Mirren (The Queen) and Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland) are both headed to Oscar gold come February 25. Mirren looks especially good for a trophy. Her performance as Queen Elizabeth II has gained her unparalleled praise throughout the decades-long career she’s forged in England. Despite being one of the most decorated actresses working, she has gained only three Oscar nominations and never won, so this will be as much for the astounding performance as it will be for the affable star herself.

Her competitors, Kate Winslet (Little Children), Penelope Cruz (Volver), Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) and Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal), playing a confused soccer mom, a sensual restauranteer, a demonic fashion icon, and the Hannibal Lector of teaching, respectively, could be frontrunners in any other year, but beating Mirren will be near impossible this year.

Though one could make the argument that Streep, Winslet, or Cruz would be more deserving of the trophy, it is in fact Mirren who consumes her character most interestingly; she took an iconic character that every single moviegoer knew, and made her into a humanistic, riveting creation that will further define all portraits of the Queen.

It’s a pity, however, that Mirren won’t be competing against one of the best, most underrated performances of 2006čthat of Naomi Watts in The Painted Veil. Watts’s beautiful, petulant heiress who finds herself in the cholera-soaked fields of China was possibly the best performance of her burgeoning career.

Whitaker, on the other hand, isn’t quite the lock that Mirren is, but there seems to be little doubt that he’ll be winning a trophy on Oscar night. His performance as the ruthless dictator Idi Amin has won nearly every precursor award, but he also has his detractors-namely, those who think that his creation of the dictator was nothing more than another in a long-string of bombastic over-the-top attempted Oscar grabs (much like Jamie Foxx in Ray and Hoffman in Capote).

His competition, though, isn’t all that exciting. The other nominees include Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson), Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness), Peter O’Toole (Venus), and Leonardo DiCaprio (Blood Diamond), who star as a drug-addled teacher, a down-on-his-luck salesman, an impotent lothario, and a diamond smuggler, respectively.

While the two lead acting categories have had the same two favorites all season, the Best Picture race has been one of the most tempestuous races I’ve seen. Featuring Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, The Departed, and The Queen, one could genuinely make the argument that any of the five will win. I suspect, however, that with Martin Scorsese headed to a fairly easy win for Best Director, that The Departed will just barely eke in for the win.

In this batch of films, it clearly deserves it-Scorsese’s cops-and-robbers ballad is another in a long line of fantastic films. It’s a pity, though, that the best film of the year, the only truly landmark masterpiece of the year, Children of Men, isn’t in the running here. Alfonso Cuaron’s Blade Runner for the 21st century was one of the most gut-wrenching, intense, nightmarish films I’ve ever seen, and Oscar will soon regret not including this flick in the race for his top prize.-

So on February 25, sit back, relax, and enjoy a night of a thousand stars, and expect surprises, fashion disasters, and above all, high entertainment.