T his year the title of “The Malibu Times Movie Guru” goes to Pacific Palisades resident George Carr, who correctly guessed 11 out of 17 categories in The Malibu Times 2002 Academy Awards ballot.
Carr is a retired resident of Pacific Palisades and has lived in Los Angeles since 1960.
“I thought I lost!” Carr said. “After I saw that I missed six of the 17 categories, I thought I lost for sure.”
Carr is an avid moviegoer. Each year he tries to win the title of “Malibu Times Movie Guru.” He won the title previously in 1998.
“I only missed two categories then.”
The movie he liked best out of all the categories was “The Pianist,” Carr said. “I didn’t think it would win because it was so depressing.”
Carr was surprised that Rob Marshall didn’t win for Best Director for “Chicago,” and he was also surprised that Daniel Day-Lewis didn’t win for his role in “Gangs of New York.” “
I thought [Adrien] Brody was very good in “The Pianist,” and I thought since he was so young and not that well-known, he wouldn’t win.”
Carr said he would try to win Movie Guru title next year and every year.
The big winners this year were “Chicago” and “The Pianist.”
“Chicago” won six Oscars-Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, Film Editing Costume, Art Direction and Sound. “The Pianist” won three Oscars for Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. “Frida” walked away with two Oscars-Makeup and Original Score. Probably the biggest surprise of the night was that the much-received “Gangs of New York”” received no honors.
With the exception of the Best Picture and Best Actress category, The Malibu Times ballot entries were very surprising and mixed. Out of 47 ballots, 33 people chose “Chicago” for Best Picture. The Best Actor category varied in readers’ choices; the majority of the ballot entries picked Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson, while only eight people chose winner Adrien Brody. The same went for the Best Director category, which was spilt down the middle between Rob Marshall for “Chicago” and Martin Scorsese for “Gangs of New York.” Only seven people chose winner Roman Polanski.
In the Best Actress category the entries were right on, 24 choosing winner Nicole Kidman and 12 for Renee Zellweger. What seemed to really stump people this year were the screenplay categories. Only two people picked the correct winner of the Adapted Screenplay category, “The Pianist,” and only five people picked the Original Screenplay winner, “Talk to Her.” The majority vote, 26, chose “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” as the winner. Another stumper was the cinematography category. Only six chose “Road to Perdition” for best cinematography while the rest of the numbers were divided up between “Chicago,” “The Hours” and “Far From Heaven.”