I am referring, of course, to Flik, an ant among ants. Flik is innovative while his fellow ants are staid. As with all innovators, Flik brings a bit too much creative destruction to the ant colony. (See Edison’s burning of his parents’ barn, for instance.)

His mechanical harvester could serve to liberate the ants from their drudgery, but instead, causes his exile when it malfunctions and forces the ants in further hock to the grasshoppers.

But Flik, ever the entrepreneur, sees that exile as an opportunity – to find warrior bugs to defend his city – and goes off to the big city to find them. Of course, he doesn’t realize that he, not they, was the hero he was looking for. In a comic misunderstanding that provides the drama, Flik’s hope to find bigger, tougher bugs is met by a bunch of circus bugs, also, down and nearly out.

You see bugs live as Hobbes said man does, “nasty, brutish, and short.” They need a community found on just principles, but those principles are sorely lacking under the ants and their queen. They are in thrall to the grasshoppers. Hopper, the villain, is pretty sanguine about just how that world works, sounding as if he learned it at Mufasa’s knee.

Hopper: It’s a bug-eat-bug world out there, princess. One of those Circle of Life kind of things. Now let me tell you how things are supposed to work: The sun grows the food, the ants pick the food, the grasshoppers eat the food…

As his bumbling sidekick, Molt, reminds Hopper, grasshoppers are eaten by birds. Alas, it seems nothing is left from nature’s order. Refusing to recognize his own weakness – his own place in the circle of life – ultimately proves to be Hopper’s own undoing. Trying to earn his bread off of another bug’s sweat makes him a tyrant and refusal to recognize tyrants is, after all, obedience to God.  

Andrew Stanton, co-writer and avowed Christian, knows all this. (He even seems to have a bit of fun with his own Christianity in this voice-over.)

Flik, who leads the youngest ants against the grasshopper hierarchy, is following God’s commandment and leading his people to a new Israel, founded on just principles. “The meek shall inherit the earth,” indeed.  

The political principles do not end there. It might seem a stretch to see an ant as a Jeffersonian hero, but that’s what Flik is. He recognizes what Jefferson did.

The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Flik imagines a different life for himself, for the colony. He understands, as Hopper does:

“You let one ant stand up to us, and they all might stand up! Those ‘puny light ants’ outnumber us a hundred to one. And if we ever let them figure out that out… There goes our way of life! It’s not about food. It’s about keeping those ants in line.”

Flik is the first to step out of line, and his example proves that he won’t be the last.

“What if everything you needed to survive—health care, food—was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time? What if the result of all that convenience was that all your relationships became indirect—nobody’s reaching out to each other? A lot of people have suggested that I was making a comment on obesity. But that wasn’t it, I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason for them to grow up anymore.”

Wall-E then wasn’t meant to teach about environmentalism, for the trash that builds up isn’t nearly as important as the trashing of relationships. Wall-E depicts humans as bovine, blobs, plugged into television and seated upon hovercrafts, millions of miles away from the toxic earth aboard Big N Large (“BnL”)’s StarLiners. A commercial broadcasts its Faustian appeal. “Too much garbage in your face? There’s plenty of space out in space! BnL StarLiners leaving each day. We’ll clean up the mess while you’re away.”

Onboard, everything from entertainment to childhood education is provided by the mega-corporation, causing some conservatives to wrongly condemn Wall-E for demonizing business. (These conservatives failed to note that the CEO of BnL is also president of the United States, a textbook case of crony capitalism.)

Stanton knows what Tocqueville did: it’s the cultivation of proper habits and virtue that truly makes men free. When we become child-like, we lose our government, becoming wards if not of the state, then of our own instincts. Space may well be the final frontier, but the most important is the timeless journey of the soul’s enrichment through others.

What then can be done to renew relationships that have long been lost? Two machines, Wall-E and EVE suggest that it can be rebuilt, but only through irrational love that destroys even the habits – or is it programming? – we’ve built up. Their improbable love begins when Wall-E, assigned the Sisyphean task of sorting our garbage for seven hundred years, encounters EVE, who nearly tries to kill him with her blaster. Curious, he pursues her, and the audience finds that she is everything Wall-E is not. She’s sleek, clean, and on a mission far more targeted. She must find that the earth is habitable once more.

Their love blossoms until Wall-E shows EVE the plant he has found. EVE takes the plant inside her compartment – and then goes into hibernation mode awaiting her ship’s return. For all Wall-E knows, she is dead. But death doesn’t end the relationship either for Wall-E lugs her around with him. His love is real, even if she’s gone. Machines loving and having souls is a story as old as Frankenstein, but the animators of Wall-E­ make it wholly new.

The name EVE is, of course, homage to Eve, who cast us out of the Garden of Eden after eating of the tree of knowledge, with an important twist: EVE’s mission is to re-root humanity in its knowledge of itself and in love of others. AUTO, the machine that runs everything and that is the real villain is only because we’ve allowed our automatic or selfish desire to disconnect us from what it means to be human.

And so, conservatives should not recoil from the end or see the captain setting foot on earth and promising to teach the children how to farm, as a kind of return to feudalism, but as an embrace of the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation, which makes civilization possible.

Slumdog Millionaire is about to win the Hollywood's Grand Prize

The “Battle Royale” of the night is Mickey Rouke from The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) vs. Sean Penn in Milk (Focus) in the Best Actor category. There have been two ties in major categories in Academy Award history. The first was in 1932 when Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde shared Best Actor with Wallace Beery for The Champ. (March had one more vote, but in that era, any finish within 3 votes was rules a tie.) Then in 1968, Katherine Hepburn for The Lion In Winter and Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl tied for Best Actress. If there was any justice, Rourke and Penn would share the award. In any other year, either of them would be a lock. Forced to make a pick, I’m going with Rourke.

Does Streep's upset of Winslet at the SAG Awards set the stage for Meryl's third Oscar win?

Kate Winslet is on the cover of Time Magazine, and she has picked up a wheelbarrow full of hardware during this awards cycle, but a fair number of voters got their fill of Kate when she pulled off the double-win at the Golden Globes. My upset special is Meryl Streep for Doubt (Miramax). This is her 15th career nomination, and she has not won an Academy Award in 25 years (Sophie’s Choice in 1982). That is too long for the most-revered actress in history to go without getting one of those golden guys. Streep won the SAG Award for Lead Actress, and I think she has a real shot here. (It would be a huge upset.)

Finally if my predix hold up, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount) would win only 2 Oscars – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup – despite 13 nominations. That would be the fewest wins for any movie with 13 or more nominations. In fact, 2 wins would be among the poorest showings ever for a movie with 11 nominations or more.

Tied for the biggest shutout in Oscar history; Benjamin Button could win for Makeup and Visual Effects

FEWEST OSCAR WINS FOR MOVIES WITH 11 NOMINATIONS OR MORE
1. The Color Purple – 0 wins (11 nominations)
2. The Turning Point – 0 wins (11 nominations)
3. Chinatown – 1 win (11 nominations)
4. Johnny Belinda – 1 win (12 nominations)
5. Becket – 1 win (12 nominations)
6. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – 1 win (11 nominations)
7. Pride of the Yankees – 1 win (11 nominations)
8. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 2 wins (13 nominations) – predicted
9. Rebecca – 2 wins (11 nominations)
10. Sergeant York – 2 wins (11 nominations)
11. A Passage To India – 2 wins (11 nominations)
12. Judgement at Nuremberg – 2 wins (11 nominations)

After weeks of obsessive study, relentless debate and intense soul-searching, here are my final Oscar predictions for all 24 categories.

BEST PICTURE
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Milk

BEST ACTOR
My Pick – Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Consensus Pick – Sean Penn, Milk or Rourke
Dark Horse – None

BEST ACTRESS
My Pick – Meryl Streep, Doubt
Consensus Pick – Kate Winslet, The Reader
Dark Horse – Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
My Pick – Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Dark Horse – None

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
My Pick – Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Consensus Pick – Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Dark Horse – Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

BEST DIRECTOR
My Pick – Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Milk screenwriter Justin Lance Black

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
My Pick – Dustin Lance Black, Milk
Consensus Pick – Andrew Stanton, WALL-E
Dark Horse – Martin McDonagh, In Bruges

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
My Pick – Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – David Hare, The Reader

BEST EDITING
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Frost/Nixon

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
My Pick – Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Wally Pfister, The Dark Knight

BEST ART DIRECTION
My Pick – The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Duchess

BEST SOUND MIXING
My Pick – The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – The Dark Knight
Dark Horse – Slumdog Millionaire

BEST SOUND EDITING
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
My Pick – The Duchess
Consensus Pick – The Duchess
Dark Horse – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
My Pick – A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – A. R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Alexandre Desplat, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
My Pick – Waltz with Bashir
Consensus Pick – Waltz with Bashir
Dark Horse – The Class

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
My Pick – Man on Wire
Consensus Pick – Man On Wire
Dark Horse – Trouble the Water

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
My Pick – WALL-E
Consensus Pick – WALL-E
Dark Horse – Kung Fu Panda

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
My Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST MAKEUP
My Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
My Pick – Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Peter Gabriel, Down to Earth from WALL-E

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
My Pick – Toyland (Spielzeugland)
Consensus Pick – Auf der Strecke
Dark Horse – The Pig

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
My Pick – Presto
Consensus Pick – La Maison en Petits Cubes
Dark Horse – This Way Up

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
My Pick – The Conscience of Nhem En
Consensus Pick – The Witness
Dark Horse – The Final Inch

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

BAFTA Winner Mickey Rourke

The two major uncertainties entering Sunday’s ceremony were whether Kate Winslet, twice-nominated for Best Actress, would split her own vote and miss out on her second BAFTA Award and who would prevail in the Sean Penn-Mickey Rourke battle for Best Actor. Aside from that, it seemed like a Slumdog sweep, and that’s exactly how it played out.

BEST PICTURE: Slumdog Millionaire
Presented by Mick Jagger, so good in 1992’s Freejack, also starring Emilio Estevez, Renee Russo and Anthony Hopkins, the Rolling Stones front man was chosen to lead the coronation. (I’m being facetious. Freejack was awful. Jagger just seems like an odd choice.)

BAFTA Winner Danny Boyle flanked by Patrick Stewart (left) and Ian McKellan

BEST ACTOR: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Chalk one up for Rourke. I think that the tide is turning in the Oscar race. Mickey dropped an F-bomb in his acceptance speech, and although censors will need every one of those 7 seconds of delay, I am now leaning to Rourke’s heroic turn as Randy “The Ram” Robinson to win Best Actor at February 22’s Academy Awards. A choice moment from Mickey’s speech, “Thanks to Marsei Tomei for constantly taking her clothes off on-screen…I enjoyed looking at her.” Here’s a link to Mickey’s acceptance speech with all the necessary bleeps.

Penelope Cruz, Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet show off their hardware

BEST ACTRESS: Kate Winslet, The Reader
She was nominated for both Revolutionary Road an The Reader, but just as Oscar voters did, the BAFTA Awards voters preferred the slow burning guilt and shame of her performance in The Reader over her showy Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style theatrics in Rev Road.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
The year’s most memorable performance, and since TDK was snubbed for Best Picture at both the BAFTA Awards and the upcoming Oscars, this is the best way to pay tribute to the all-time second-biggest grossing movie in US history.

Cruz didn't have to contend with Winslet, with both of her nominations in the Best Actress category or Viola Davis (Doubt), a strong contender at the Oscars

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Very well-deserved. She had a tremendous year with both the edgy, verge of crazy Maria Elena from Woody Allen’s comedy and a haunting performance in the very underrated Elegy. With Winslet out of the Supporting Actress race at both the BAFTA Awards and the Oscars, Cruz gets her shot. Keep in mind that Viola Davis, so good in Doubt was not nominated here, but is a live bet in two weeks at the Academy Awards.

BEST DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
The obvious choice. Manchester-born. The career of a true auteur with brilliantly diverse films like Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions and 28 Days Later on his resume.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
After writing The Fully Monty in 1998, this UK-born screenwriter seemingly disappeared until 2008 when he wrote both Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Slumdog. No surprise at all that he wins here, and he seems like a lock on Oscar night with David Hare’s The Reader as a distant challenger.

Original Screenplay winner Martin McDonagh with his In Bruges star Colin Farrell

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Martin McDonagh, In Bruges
Known for his plays The Pillowman and The Beauty Queen of Leenane, he actually won the Oscar for Best Short Live Action Film in 2006 with something called Six Shooter. London-born this is his first full-length feature film and he is both a BAFTA winner and an Academy Award nominee. McDonagh is unlikely to repeat on Oscar night with Dustin Lance Black, already the WGA winner, a strong favorite for Milk.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
A Boyle favorite who previously worked with him on 28 Days Later, Mantle was also DP on 2006’s fantastic The Last King of Scotland. He could be carried to an Oscar win riding the crest of a Slumdog tidal wave, or Wally Pfister could snag the award for his work on The Dark Knight (there could be a reverse backlash at the Academy Awards with voters rallying around TDK because of the Best Picture snub). The tag-team of two-time Oscar winner Chris Menges and eight-time nominee Roger Deakins are also a threat for their work on The Reader.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Probably the right choice here. It’s a 160-minute movie covering decades so getting the look right must have been a daunting task.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Again this is right on. In fact, you could argue that the whole movie is predicated on the visual effects. Seamlessly placing Brad Pitt’s face on another body without the strings showing? If the FX people don’t pull this off, Fincher has no movie.

BEST SOUND: Slumdog Millionaire
On Oscar night, this category will either belong to Slumdog in a sweep or The Dark Knight.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIR: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The obvious choice for the BAFTA Awards and the Oscars.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Michael O’Connor, The Duchess
Big gigantic dresses. That’s what I saw when I watched The Duchess. Generally speaking, that’s what wins in this category.

Composer A.R. Rahman wins the BAFTA and may become the first Indian to win an Academy Award

BEST MUSIC: A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
In my mind, this is the right choice. There has never been a mainstream film score that sounds remotely like what Rahman produced for Slumdog. The score is integral to the feel of the movie. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that it would be the same movie with a conventional score. Rahman is only the third Indian ever nominated for an Oscar, and this soundtrack does represent a fascinating bridge between traditional and modern Indian music and the Western sound we all know.

BEST ANIMATED FILM: WALL-E
Yes, Waltz With Bashir is unique – an animated, foreign language documentary, but WALL-E is a special, special movie, and Andrew Stanton deserves every award that comes along. The Chaplinesque quality of the first act makes it, for my money, one of the best animated movies of the modern era.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: I’ve Loved You So Long
This was easily my favorite foreign language film of 2008. The arcane rules governing Best Foreign Language Film excluse this Phillipe Claudel drama from Oscar contention, but put this in your Netflix cue when it becomes available. Kristen Scott Thomas delivers a haunting portrait of a woman with a secret, and, as it unravels in the hands of her empathetic sister (played by the remarkable Elsa Zylberstein), her burden and suffering are heartbreaking.

BEST BRITISH FILM: Man on Wire
Slumdog was nominated here, but the BAFTA tradition is to recognize a smaller film, excluded from the Best Picture race. I am one of the few people that didn’t fall in love with this James Marsh doc about wire-walker Phillippe Petit. Since the Brits have no Best Documentary Feature category, this was their one chance to recognize Marsh. Man On Wire is the prohibitive Oscar favorite for Best Doc, and I may have to watch it again just to see if I missed something the first time around.

Noel Clarke, the surprise winner of the BAFTA Rising Star Award

ORANGE RISING STAR: Noel Clarke
This award is voted on by the British public, and Clarke is the star of the UK TV hit Doctor Who. Both Michael Cera (Juno, Superbad) and Rebecca Miller (Frost/Nixon, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) lost the fan vote but are likely to have longer and more notable careers than Clarke.

CARL FOREMAN AWARD: Steve McQueen, The Hunger
Tells the story of the last six weeks in the life of hunger striker Bobby Sands. Michael Fassbender, who also lost out on the Orange Rising Star Award to Clarke, portrays Sands, and the movie played for just one week in the US (I’m assuming for Oscar qualification). Hopefully IFC will give this some arthouse runs this year.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.