Monday - Art & Design, Music
Tuesday - Technical Achievements
Wednesday - Short Films, Special Feature Films
Thursday - Writing & Directing, Acting
Friday - Best Picture
Alright, all the warm-up categories are done and we're on to the main event. We've got nine Best Picture nominees and only one of them will be winning on Sunday. Let's see what we've got...
Why It Might Win: Amour dramatically outperformed people's expectations when it came to nominations. With the Academy giving it five nods, including four in major categories, there's no way we can't take Amour seriously. It also happens to be an incredible film, tracking the slow disintegration of a human life in its waning years. Director Michael Haneke has long been making powerful cinema, but his style is decidedly European and he's never gained any traction with mainstream America. If the Academy wants to make a gesture towards the international community, an Amour win would do the trick.
Why It Might Win: The Critics' Choice Awards. The Golden Globes. The Screen Actors Guild Awards. The Producers Guild Awards. The Directors Guild Awards. The British Academy Film Awards. All of these ceremonies have ended in a win for Argo, Ben Affleck's gripping film about the Iran hostage crisis. Even last year's The Artist didn't have this much snowball power behind it, since it lost at the SAG Awards. Yet, without that crucial nomination for Affleck in Best Director, Argo has to do something that hasn't been done since 1989: win Best Picture without having its director nominated. Is the Academy willing to break so far away from the rest of the film industry on this one?
Why It Might Win: Like Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild stunned everyone by raking in some key nominations when the announcement came out. Nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis is a wonderfully fun (and deserving) nomination in Best Actress, but Benh Zeitlin's nod in Best Director shows that the Academy voters are considerable more fond of this movie than we may have previously released. The Oscars have flirted with the independent cinema community over the last few years and maybe Beasts will be the beneficiary of that growing relationship. The chances aren't great, but Beasts has all the pieces (and appropriate nominations) to be a real Best Picture contender.
Why It Might Win: Seriously, though, can you imagine how awesome it would be if Django Unchained took home the big award? A movie full of razor-sharp social commentary and cynicism, filtered through Quentin Tarantino's unique lens of violence and provocation... yeah, totally sounds like a Best Picture winner to me. Joking aside, Django is the latest film that shows Tarantino's continuing growth as a writer, filmmaker and overall artist. One of these days, they're gonna have to give the man something, or else his next revenge epic might feature a pile of dead movie critics after the credits roll.
Why It Might Win: It's big, it's loud, it's full of people crying while cameras get uncomfortably close to their faces! It's Les Mis! Tom Hooper's overcooked adaptation of the absurdly popular stage musical certainly has the pedigree to win piles and piles of awards, yet it has gained little traction with anyone other than actual movie-goes. A vote for Les Mis would be a vote for populism, making the hordes of weepy viewers and fanatical musical theater loyalists very, very happy. Which is a good thing... right? Hmm. Expect Les Mis to do very well in the big montages the Academy throws all over the award show, but not as well in the actual awards.
Why It Might Win: While it doesn't get talked about to the same degree as Argo or Lincoln, Life of Pi is quietly sitting as one of the most acclaimed films of the year. Much of its excellence lies in its technical advancements, which are truly glorious and will surely clean up in the first hour of the show. No acting nomination for the underrated Suraj Sharma hurts it considerably, but Ang Lee is very much a contender in the up-for-grabs Best Director field. In this confused year at the Oscars, Life of Pi stands to potentially swoop in for a surprising win.
Why It Might Win: Lincoln feels like it was genetically engineered to win Oscars. Spielberg. Day-Lews. Field. Jones. Kushner. These are famous names, associated with top-tier excellence in their respective crafts. Sure enough, Lincoln is an overwhelmingly well-crafted movie, with everyone hitting the highs we'd expect from that insane collection of names (and we haven't even delved into the film's incredibly supporting cast). Yet, despite all this pedigree, Lincoln has yet to beat Argo in any of the major award shows. The Oscars are its last and best bet. It's the kind of the film the Academy historically loves, but it's possible the times have changed too much. Sometimes, being merely great isn't enough.
Why It Might Win: A comedy won Best Picture last year, opening the door for more films about actual happy things to win more Academy Awards. Silver Linings Playbook is certainly the most cheerful of the nine nominees and it's packed with surprising, powerful performances. It's one of those acting-and-writing showcases that seem to fall out of favor now and again, but still have a great deal of power when executed correctly. Jennifer Lawrence is the not-so-secret weapon here, but Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro actually deserve their nominations as well. Director David O. Russell has learned how to play Hollywood's game. Could a Best Picture win be his reward for good behavior?
Why It Might Win: If there was any justice in this world, Zero Dark Thirty would at least be in the conversation. Instead, a group of asinine Academy voters have spent the past two months trying to blacklist the movie from the awards entirely. They succeeded in getting Kathryn Bigelow shoved out of a Director nomination and now the film is left scrounging for scraps. It's all such a pity, since the film itself is incredible. The mainstream press seems to have misunderstood the movie entirely, ignoring the questions Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal are asking and instead spewing out a line of political platitudes, trying to distance America from its history with torture. Zero Dark Thirty has been shamed into silence, but that doesn't make it any less of a great film. A victory here would mean so much, not only to me personally but to the cinema industry (and America) as a whole.
My predictions should be obvious, but in case you want things spelled out for you...
Who Will Win: Argo
Who Should Win: Zero Dark Thirty
Argo is the strong favorite, but it comes with some tricky hurdles to jump. The 85th Academy Awards will reveal a lot about the current voting base. It seems as if the group is being pulled in several directions at once, resulting in the confused and messy nominations we saw this year. Hopefully, my predictions will stand. None of us are really sure what the voters are gonna do this year and the only way we can know is by watching the show on Sunday. Do your worst, Academy.
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