This year's Oscar nominations are only a few days away, with the announcement coming two weeks earlier than usual this year (this Thursday, January 10). The awards season horse race has been underway for months now, but it's crunch time for Oscar pundits and odds-makers to deliver final predictions in major categories in these final few days leading up to the nominations announcement bright and early at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday. Here are my predictions for likely nominees in Oscar's biggest categories, starting with Best Picture.
BEST PICTURE
In order to land a nomination in the top category, a film must receive at least five percent of #1 votes on Academy members' ballots. Since changing the rules three years ago to widen the field to 10 nominees instead of the previous standard of five, the Academy also added the 5% stipulation in order to ensure that only very beloved films receive nominations for Best Picture, rather than just the top ten vote-getters automatically being nominated. This caveat is a good thing for smaller, passionately appreciated pictures like "The Tree of Life," which was nominated last year thanks to its small but fervent base of support from cinephiles in the Academy. While there was never a chance that Terrence Malick's poetic masterpiece would actually take home the big prize on Oscar night, it's great to see smaller, more challenging fare pull rank with the big boys in Oscar's horse race. Also, the 5% stipulation means that anywhere from five to 10 films can be nominated for Best Picture, but only if all ten pictures receive at least five percent of its votes in the #1 spot. Lets take a look at this year's Best Picture field, starting with the sure-things.
"Lincoln," with its prestigious cast led by Daniel Day-Lewis and directed by Steven Spielberg, has been unanimously adored by critics, not to mention becoming a major box office powerhouse since opening in November. On track to gross north of $160 million domestically, "Lincoln" is the likeliest shoo-in for both a nomination and the Best Picture trophy at this stage of the game.
"Zero Dark Thirty," Kathryn Bigelow & Mark Boal's follow-up to Best Picture-winner "The Hurt Locker," has swept critics prizes and made major eleventh-hour waves in the Oscar race for the film itself, director Bigelow, writer Boal, and lead actress Jessica Chastain. With its topical relevance (it chronicles the Osama bin Laden manhunt) and recent Oscar pedigree (Bigelow and Boal won for directing and writing "The Hurt Locker," in addition to the film taking Best Picture), "ZDL" is a major threat to win.
Ben Affleck has come a long way since "Gigli." The Oscar-winning co-writer of "Good Will Hunting" has turned to directing in recent years, with "Gone Baby Gone" (2007) and "The Town" (2010) earning Affleck the director some much needed kudos and street cred as a serious filmmaker to watch. His latest picture, "Argo," is easily his best yet among a trio of outstanding projects, and its critical plaudits paired with serious box office take (it just topped $110 million domestically) make the film a major Oscar frontrunner. The movie is probably the most entertaining of the lot, with a perfect concoction of political intrigue, historical relevance (it tells the true story of the Iran hostage crisis and the bogus Hollywood production that provided an escape for the threatened foreign service workers hiding out in Tehran) and popcorn-movie thrills that sparked major word of mouth among commercial audiences. "Argo" could very well go the distance, and would be a deserving champion should it win.
"Les Miserables" is a polarizing title but its fans are obsessive. I personally found the movie to be remarkably taxing and pervasively unpleasant, but Anne Hathaway deserves to win Best Supporting Actress and surely will. I'll leave the rant against "Les Mis" for another time, or perhaps never, but it is nevertheless a sure-bet for a Best Picture nomination and may very well win. Ha-rumph!
"Silver Linings Playbook" is David O. Russell's follow-up to "The Fighter," and his latest picture is a low-key, rather conventionally constructed romantic comedy. Featuring a fantastic ensemble that includes Bradley Cooper (finally proving some serious acting chops) as a deluded bipolar prodigal son figure who comes home from eight months in a mental institution to live with parents Robert DeNiro and Jacki Weaver and falls for equally unstable widow Jennifer Lawrence (a sure-thing for Best Actress). The movie has yet to expand from limited art house release (it's set to go wide over MLK weekend) but has nevertheless made $35 million on word-of-mouth momentum. I recently saw it a second time and its strengths are revealed all the more upon repeat viewings. "Silver Linings" is a special movie, and it's nice to see it getting recognition despite its low profile.
"Life of Pi" is Ang Lee's adaptation of Yann Martel's beloved bestseller, and the film version is rapturous and unlike anything I've ever seen. It's surely to rank among the final nominees for Best Picture, though its chance at winning is a longer shot given the year's stiff competition.
Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" is exceptional, and its late-breaking critical support shouldn't deter the slave-revenge Spaghetti western epic from scoring high enough among Academy voters to figure into the final rankings come nomination day.
While the above seven titles are all but guaranteed nominations, the following five are gunning to make it into the top 10 and may or may not score with Best Picture, fingers crossed.
"Beasts of the Southern Wild," the Sundance sensation and summer art house hit that blends magical realism with social commentary on poverty and perspective, is a major contender. Also vying for inclusion among Best Picture nominees is "The Master," my personal favorite film of the year and a critical darling. Paul Thomas Anderson's oblique portrait of the post-war American male psyche is a masterpiece to be sure, but its reception with audiences has been dismal.
Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" and AARP favorite "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" are both strong contenders, with big crossover box office and strong reviews boosting the chances for both Fox Searchlight titles.
Finally, J.A. Bayona's emotionally wrenching, starkly realistic drama "The Impossible," featuring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor as vacationing parents separated by natural disaster during the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, may just strike enough of a chord with Academy voters to propel it upward into the Best Picture stratosphere, while blockbusters "Skyfall" and "The Dark Knight Rises" threaten to shake things up with enough commercial and critical love to define both movies as forces to be reckoned with.
That's twelve titles total gunning for 10 nominations, so we'll see Thursday morning which among them score with Oscar and whether or not a left field favorite or two manage to surprise us all. I'll take a look at acting, directing and writing categories as the week goes on.
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