‘Tough Year To Choose’ :: That’s The Word From Those Who Are Voting For The Oscars This Year

Why? Well…There are really great acting performances both by newcomer actors and by seasoned journeymen; and some refreshingly new ideas in the bigger studio films, and some fresh-idea-turf that is covered in the smaller films.

Even the critics are having a hard time predicting who is gonna win.

So far, two of my personal favorites are showing their stuff.

It may look like ESP, but it’s really wisdom…Which is why I love them.

Pete Hammond. Los Angeles Times…

He’s got a column  at the LA Times:  The Envelope, called Notes On A Season…

Pete doesn’t market on social sites, nor have the best Google-feeding website (…It’s the kind of thing I try to bend his ear and email about, which probably makes me, this art+tech gal,  seem only the more eccentric–but that’s part of what makes Pete so great, his social equanimity…and that’s not all.)

Hammond, out of a large slew of Oscarologists, made the most accurate Golden Globes winner predictions. Out of all of ‘em. And, as I told you, it’s a really tough year to pick award winner. Which does let all the legions of other Oscarologists off the hook, but it also says something about one of the journeymen of Oscarologists, Pete Hammond.

And, yes, he may not be a frequent Twitterer, but Pete Hammond is one of the most sought out, and publicly visible, film experts around. Obviously, it’s for good reason. He knows his stuff.

Here’s an anecdote: When I went to a screening for “Up In The Air”, both Pete Hammond and the director, Jason Reitman, were conversing on the dais. Both talked about their wives, and both defined their wives as people who thought they were “always the smartest ones in the room”. They both said this; and both men said it separately, and used it as lead-ins to share some very smart things that their wives said.

I have met Pete Hammond’s wife, and I can’t claim to know her well-enough to send her name to Menses; but I know her enough to assume that she may be, often, the smartest least in a room. I don’t know Jason Reitman’s, but note : He did claim that night, that many of the ideas and themes on which “Up In The Air” is based, were awareness items his wife enlightened him to.  (About “Up In The Air”–that was the defining fineness of that movie for me: the perspectives on our current state of  romantic relationships, sex, and affairs…)

It really is a new decade, when you have men crediting their brainy wives. Surely, it’s a new decade in Hollywood, when you have men who marry brainy wives.

Tom O’Neil, also of The Envelope, wrote this about Pete Hammond’s Golden Globe predictions:

Among the 20 pro pundits who also forecast the winners of the TV Golden Globes, Pete Hammondwas tops with eight out of 11 races right. As a group, we scored just 92 out of 220 for a success rate of only 41.8%. All of us missed Chloe Sevigny’s win for “Big Love” in the catch-all supporting actress category. Marshall Fine (Star Magazine, Hollywood and Fine) was the only pundit to predict Emmy champ Toni Collette (“United States of Tara”) to win for lead comedy series actress while Pete and Sasha Stone (AwardsDaily) were the only two to see “Dexter” star Michael C. Hall ntaking home lead drama series actor.

Peter Travers Is Another Favorite Of Mine

He writes film reviews for Rolling Stone, and I have been reading him since I was a teenager. I discovered him because I had a subscription to that groovy music mag. I think that Peter Travers was the first film reviewer that I ever read, way back as a young teenager, when I had Rolling Stone Mag delivered to me at our family homestead. His writing, film reviews, impressed me, as a youth.  I still think he has a dependably smart perspective, and overview. I’ve read the work of many reviewers; I always go back to Travers to see what he has to say.  Solid.

Although I don’t know him personally, he is someone that I have been following for years. Years of very fine film writing, that hasn’t lost it’s grip.  At all.  It’s not that I nearly always agree with his take on a film…Well, admittedly, I do, often.   I do think he’s bright.

I don’t know if Peter Travers’s wife thinks she’s the smartest one in the room. I’d wager she’s pretty bright.

It takes a super bright guy to marry a super bright woman, knowing they’d be too damn bored if they didn’t…