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Nothing is certain in any contest, ranging from politics and Tuesday's midterm elections or the upcoming Oscar race. But one can see trends from afar that translate into results more often than not.
This far out last year in the Oscar season, one could sense the "McConnaisance" reaching its peak as Dallas Buyers Club was unveiled to audiences with McConaughey's full weight loss and loud preachy speechifying on full display alongside Jared Leto in an effecting, transformative and political role of his own. Cate Blanchett practically had her Lead Actress Oscar on lockdown from the Summer of strong reviews and strong box office for Blue Jasmine, and a sweep of the major critics awards only made this all the more apparent. The least certain major race on the eve of the Oscars was in Supporting Actress, as a death match of sorts brewed between Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle and Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave, although one could sense and read the larger fundamentals in the narrative rewarding 12 Years a Slave and its new star over a second consecutive win for the young Lawrence.
It's not a conclusion that favors most awards handicappers and prognosticators who want to maintain excitement, suspense, and interesting showdowns every year to maintain some semblance of excitement for Oscar night. But in this day and age with endless precursor prizes, online think pieces written and a lively discussion on various message boards and social networks there are more than enough tea leaves in this day and age to give a clear picture of whose years it could be for a nomination and who makes the most sense as the winner in a given year's atmosphere — which further pushes them ahead of their respective pack.
As opposed to this time last year, when it became pretty clear the race would boil down between 12 Years a Slave and Gravity, we know a little less about how the major non-acting races will come to materialize. There are a number of sights unseen with some unflattering buzz (like Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, Ava DuVernay's Selma, and Angelina Jolie's Unbroken) and a number of other films being unveiled with a more underwhelming critical response than anticipated (Christopher Nolan's Interstellar). A number of major contenders are already known, including Richard Linklater's Boyhood (armed with a miraculous 100 metacritic score, but burdened with a small distributor), and Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game (checking many of the same marks as 2010's The King's Speech including Harvey Weinstein, audience awards from Toronto and Hamptons Film Festival, but lacking it's good reviews). It does seem, however, that there is one actor in each category that seems to have the clearest path to the prize. I will try to make the case for them in descending order of who seems the most likely.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - J.K. Simmons in Whiplash
J.K. Simmons' journey to the Oscars arguably began in 2002, when his pitch-perfect embodiment of J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man film was a very public breakthrough for the long-working character actor. Going on to feature as a dependable scene stealer in a number of successful films, his journey this year began almost a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival where Whiplash swept the major prizes. A decent start, for sure, but not a surefire Oscar sign considering films like last year's Fruitvale Station. But as it kept playing more and more festivals, it curiously captured the fire of audiences from Cannes to Telluride to Toronto to New York just as feverishly as it had enraptured the Sundance crowd. J.K. Simmons in this role is fiery, vaguely antagonistic, but still a dedicated mentor and teacher — all elements that click with voters in this category. On top of his own reputation as a performer, critical admiration and a relatively weak year in this category, this one seems increasingly like a no-brainer.
Edward Norton seems like as safe a bet as any besides Simmons for a nomination for Birdman — but while the meta-aspects of his character reflecting Norton's own problematic reputation in Hollywood might give him the credence to get him his second nomination, it probably reinforces enough ill will to keep him from being a credible choice for the win. Mark Ruffalo also seems like a reasonable guess for Foxcatcher, as well, but he's rarely pointed out as a highlight in the film which rumors suggest won't catch on the most handsomely with the Academy. Beyond those three, it could be anyone's guess for the rest of the nominations. You can see why Simmons is so well primed in this year's race.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
J.K. Simmons for Whiplash
Edward Norton for Birdman
Mark Ruffalo for Foxcatcher
Tom Wilkinson for Selma
Ethan Hawke for Boyhood
Josh Brolin for Inherent Vice
Miyavi for Unbroken
Christoph Waltz for Big Eyes
Tyler Perry for Gone Girl
Robert Duvall for The Judge
Best Actress in a Leading Role - Julianne Moore in Still Alice
Earlier in the year, this category seemed like the thinnest of all. But as the year developed and more contenders were unveiled in the festival season, it seemed like while there were a lack of "conventional" contenders there was no such shortage of fascinating female performances to give due recognition in this category that the Academy might be forced to consider. But it wasn't until Toronto that a narrative emerged that seemed tough to deny. Julianne Moore's trek to the Oscars this year didn't even start with the film she'll likely be nominated for. At Cannes, Julianne Moore surprised critics and handicappers by winning the Best Actress prize for David Cronenberg's scathing, venomous satire of Hollywood called Maps to the Stars (beating, among others, previous winner Marion Cotillard for the Dardennes' Two Days, One Night). Oscar chatter immediately began, even though the Cannes prize in this category is hardly the lucky charm that it's male counterpart has proven to be in recent years. But the film never, realistically, seemed like something the Academy would be willing to recognize. Between the divisive critical response, the brutality of its mockery of the industry, her borderline-supporting screen time and an uncertain qualification for the awards, her Oscar chances for Maps seemed like a bit of wishful thinking. But her fans can hardly be blamed — many people agree that she has deserved to win an Oscar for work like Boogie Nights, Far From Heaven and The Hours.
So once Still Alice was unveiled to rave reviews (for the performances) at Toronto, it seemed like a prime opening in a category with no logical frontrunner. Sony Pictures Classics, while it has a lot on its plate, was lacking a major contender to push for Actress. Once they obtained the rights with a qualifying end-of-year theatrical run, they might just be able to push her narrative with the strength of her completing her major festival Triple Crown this year to an unbeatable narrative. She'd find herself competing with at least three other women who seem well-primed for a nomination — Felicity Jones for The Theory of Everything, Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl, and Reese Witherspoon for Wild. But none of their careers or roles, on paper, seem to match the advantage that Moore has obtained late in the game for her performance as a linguistics expert diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Julianne Moore for Still Alice
Felicity Jones for The Theory of Everything
Reese Witherspoon for Wild
Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl
Shailene Woodley for The Fault In Our Stars
Amy Adams for Big Eyes
Hilary Swank for The Homesman
Emily Blunt for Into the Woods
Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night
Gugu Mbatha-Raw for Belle
Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
In many years, this category is traditionally the one most considered to be a wasteland for easily-conceivable nominations. Not so this year, in which I can imagine up to seven possible contenders in flux between second and seventh place — but one stands out at being firmly ahead of the pack. Not everyone is a devoted fan of her lived in, naturalistic slice-of-life as the mother of the child experiencing boyhood, but to most reviewers she stole the show of the most warmly received film of the decade so far (by far). She's had a respectable, if modest and under appreciated, career, and has finally been given an opportunity for a massive and complex performance rarely afforded to female performers in general.
She faces some daunting names, least of all three-time winner Meryl Streep in Into the Woods. On the one hand, it took her 29 years in between her second and third win (and her last win was just a few years ago), but her first win in this category was just several years before her first lead victory. And though the role offers plenty of juicy promise for an actress of her caliber to bite into, it's heavily steeped in genre just short of camp directed by a filmmaker who hasn't proven to be wholly consistent. Sight unseen, she could go any which way. Other sights unseen include Carmen Ejogo in a possible breakthrough role as Coretta Scott King in Selma to Jessica Chastain for A Most Violent Year (or Interstellar, in addition to lead work in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby and Miss Julie). Emma Stone also has her time to shine in Birdman, after years of seemingly being on the cusp of wider recognition that this performance in this film in this year seems, on the face of it, almost perfectly calibrated for. As far as we know, Kristen Stewart can get in for Still Alice on a similar path to Maggie Gyllenhaal for Jeff Bridges' Oscar vehicle Crazy Heart in 2009.
Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Patricia Arquette for Boyhood
Emma Stone for Birdman
Meryl Streep for Into the Woods
Carmen Ejogo for Selma
Kristen Stewart for Still Alice
Jessica Chastain for A Most Violent Year
Laura Dern for Wild
Marion Bailey for Mr. Turner
Sienna Miller for American Sniper
Rene Russo for Nightcrawler
Best Actor in a Leading Role - Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything
This is the category that's most in flux, and seems the least certain between who will even be nominated let alone who is strong enough to win. On paper, and to many analysts, the current frontrunner is actually arguably Michael Keaton for work that seems like some strange cross between Natalie Portman in Black Swan (winner) and Mickey Rourke The Wrestler (nominee). He has a definite nostalgic appeal and blistering comeback narrative with a director who's delivered consistently in Oscar recognition for his actors (at least for nominations). Benedict Cumberbatch could also ride a wave of love on the strength of his film's distribution resources and audience pleasing reputation. But the man pictured above seems to be building ever increasing steam in a way that, I believe, might just be too difficult to deny.
What, in my opinion, could and probably will catapult Redmayne to the head of the pack is simply the role. Not only does he go through the motions of a debilitating (and now meme) disease until he slowly transforms himself viscerally into the final result of a beloved icon anyone can recognize. Going through the season and Q&As, Redmayne seems to consistently wow and charm the crowd with his own intelligence and friendliness anywhere he goes. The film itself matches The Imitation Game itself in critical reception, but it's Redmayne's performance that draws comparisons to Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot (who, incidentally, was exactly as young as Redmayne is now when he won his Oscar).
But there's a reason he's fourth out of four possible frontrunners in his category, as it can vary wildly in different directions. Already having mapped out the possible route for a Keaton or Cumberbatch win, you can also suggest something akin to Supporting Actress in 2007 happening; Cate Blanchett was the defacto frontrunner having won the Golden Globe playing (basically) Bob Dylan in I'm Not There., which wasn't hurt by how split the rest of the awards were — the BFCA went to Amy Ryan in Gone, Baby Gone, the SAG went to the late great Ruby Dee in American Gangster, and the BAFTA went to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton. The combination of the BAFTA's wide overlap with the Academy voters and Clayton's Best Picture nomination managed to push her over the edge. The sleeping giant in this category, in this respect, might be Timothy Spall for Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner. Having won the Cannes prize, which for the past five years have meant good things at least for the film they win for, the buzz on the film has considerably cooled but outlets from Awards Daily to Indiewire to In Contention to Movie City News all report how quietly well the film is playing to Academy types. On top of the film's subject matter being very British, and the film being a visually luscious passion project from legend Mike Leigh (receiving reviews as good as he's ever had), Timothy Spall could be very well primed to snatch the BAFTA from both Redmayne and Cumberbatch. And if the film gets as far as Picture and Director nods from the Academy, and the rest of the precursors are split between the likes of Cumberbatch, Keaton, Redmayne, and even people like Steve Carell or David Oyelowo, it could prove to be the decisive factor once again.
But, even if there is one contender who appears more likely than the others, the perceived suspense of this category could keep it exciting to Oscar lovers to the very end.
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Foxcatchers, Superheroes, and the British
It might appear as though the Lead Actor category of the Academy is stuffed to the brim every year. There is an embarrassment of riches and opportunities for leading men in this industry compared to their female colleagues, and this year promises to be more cutthroat than ever. What’s striking is how atypical many of the aspiring nominees appear to be.
Keaton faces stiff competition from beloved comedic actor Steve Carell, in what could well be known as one of the darker roles of any actor’s repertoire in Foxcatcher. Beneath pounds of cake makeup Carell portrays twisted multi-millionaire John Eleuthère du Pont, through deadening slit eyes and a disturbing monotone, as he trains Mark Schultz for Olympic glory, only to murder his gold medal-winning brother David Schultz in the process. Don’t worry about spoilers, this is all true and well-reported fact. The film was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival this year, where director Bennett Miller received the Best Director prize from Jane Campion’s jury. Miller, like Alejandro G. Iñárritu, so far has more than a solid track record at getting his films, and particularly the actors in them, nominated at for Oscars. And, in a rather bold strategy, the team at Sony Pictures Classics distributing Foxcatcher is also pushing Channing Tatum alongside Carell for his praised lead role as Mark Schultz. That Hollywood heartthrob Tatum is the lead was never a question to those paying attention to reviews, but Carell could have had a credible position in Supporting Actor (alongside Mark Ruffalo as David Schultz) where he could have been crowned the defacto frontrunner. But he remains a force to be reckoned with in the lead category, as well, though he probably renders Mr. Tatum’s chances as more of an uphill climb.
Neither Carell nor Tatum won the Best Actor award of their festival (neither did Michael Keaton, for that matter); continuing this year’s theme of heretofore underappreciated talents, that distinction went to Timothy Spall for Mr. Turner, and lately it’s been an enviable position for Oscar contenders to be in. Consider the past five winners of the prize:
Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds
Javier Bardem for Biutiful (tied with Elio Germano)
Jean Dujardin for The Artist
Mads Mikkelsen for The Hunt
Bruce Dern for Nebraska
There are some quickly apparent trends Oscar handicappers would notice. For example, the two straight up foreign language performances saw their films nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. One of them, Bardem, was Oscar nominated for said performance, just as the rest of the remaining winners were. The non-foreign language film contenders were all nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, and both Christoph Waltz and Jean Dujardin won their respective categories later that year. Call it a coincidence, call it a trend — whatever it is, it is a thing, and it’s a thing that strikes me as being in line with some of these men. Though it would seem as though Mr. Turner is being responded to coldly in the midst of Fall fest-mania currently occurring, allow me to make the case for the film, in general, and Spall, in particular. The film is by Mike Leigh, recipient of a Best Screenplay nomination for four out of his past five films (even when it was far from a sure thing, like when Happy-Go-Lucky got nominated over the likes of Rachel Getting Married and Vicky Christina Barcelona). The last time he filmed anything noticeably visual by design was Vera Drake, for which he also received a surprising Best Director nomination (the second in his career). Timothy Spall plays British artist J.M.W. Turner, the most celebrated painter to come out of his country, in Mike Leigh’s passion project that he’d been aching to film for years. Timothy Spall himself is an underappreciated veteran film actor who has probably worked with a majority of the BAFTA acting branch (let alone on the Potter films), who comprise of most of that organization’s voter overlap with the Academy. That the noise of Fall festival debuts seems to be drowning out Turner comes as no surprise, but contenders seemingly lost in this ongoing cavalcade of contenders can often return to the conversation either to get a surprise nomination or to triumph. Take, for example, Javier Bardem in Biutiful — the only major Oscar precursor of note he received between his Cannes prize and the Oscar nomination was with the voters at BAFTA (who often rally the Academy to more European sensibilities), at the expense of legends like SAG-nominated Robert Duvall and popular Globe-nominee Ryan Gosling. It was arguably that overlap of BAFTA voters that helped usher Bardem into that year’s lineup, in addition to securing a win for Colin Firth in The King’s Speech (which featured Spall as Winston Churchill). The following year those Riva-voting francophillic BAFTA voters also helped secure Cannes winner Jean Dujardin to Oscar glory (after most assumed it was between George Clooney and Brad Pitt for their festival sensations), in addition to the opportunity of putting one of their own countrymen alongside Dujardin. It was between fresh-faced Michael Fassbender in festival sensation Shame and Gary Oldman in the critically admired but rather cold reimagining of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy. The bookies bet on Fassbender, but they chose the then-never-nominated veteran actor.
To be sure, there is a multitude of fresh-faced alternative countrymen to choose from this year. Amongst these contenders still yet to be unveiled include some in this year’s upcoming female-directed features. Whatever you make of the chances for Angelina Jolie’s sophomore effort Unbroken to crack the race, young Jack O’Connell has already hit two performances out of the proverbial park this year among critics with Starred Up and '71. He’s at least set to shake a bunch of hands on this year’s Breakthrough circuit. And then there’s the possibility that proven talent David Oyelowo sparks awe and admiration for his transformation into Martin Luther King, Jr. in Ava DuVernay’s sophomore project Selma. But there are two major stories coming out of this year’s festivals, and one bubbling under the surface, as far as young British talents are concerned. The two definitive major finds seem to be Emmy-winner Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game, and Tony-winner Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. Cumberbatch, particularly, seems to have the weight of the mighty Harvey Weinstein and all his chips on him and this film, which follows mathematician Alan Turing and his decoding work during the second World War, which helped ensure that we’re not all speaking German today, before committing suicide out of the pressures of being gay. It’s a highly plum role for any young actor to take, even if the filmmakers appear to have softened his gay edges in favor of a “platonic romance” between his and Keira Knightley’s character. While The Theory of Everything might not necessarily be garnering the passion of Imitation, Redmayne’s performance as a young Stephen Hawking descending into ALS (how timely!) has arguably earned more passionate notices than Cumberbatch’s — with many comparisons to Daniel Day-Lewis’ towering Oscar-winning work in My Left Foot. His film could be a Best Picture nominee this year, but on-paper it doesn’t look to be as big of a player as The Imitation Game.
The third up-and-coming British lad I had in mind is surely more of an underdog, but should not be counted out depending on how his film materializes in the season and plays. Andrew Garfield broke out onto the scene in 2010 with a very Jack O’Connell kind of year with films like The Red Riding Trilogy, Never Let Me Go and his massively snubbed work in The Social Network. Since then he’s taken on the role of a franchise superhero (like Keaton!) and has only had the time to be Tony-nominated opposite the late Philip Seymour Hoffman on Broadway and win raves for Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes, before going off to shoot Silence with Martin Scorsese. Appearing bright-eyed and bushy-bearded on the canals of Venice, critics single out him and potential Supporting-contender Michael Shannon on making this film a much more successful attempt at mainstream filmmaking than Bahrani’s last effort (At Any Price). A blistering condemnation of post-recession America, it could play very popularly to audiences’ populist sensibilities and garner a lot of steam. These include a lot of “ifs” and “possiblys,” including the fact that the film does not yet even have distribution, but that’s bound to change by the end of Toronto and all reports indicate it’ll see a theatrical release by the end of the year.
With this many viable candidates for only five slots, hold on to your hats. There are bound to be some surprises.
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I will start handicapping this year's awards season in a series of pieces this week, and this year's races promise to be fascinating. But this far out, let's start with a little refresher on where I see the state of the Academy to be today and how it got there.
It was a cool night in heart of Hollywood on May 16, 1929, the night the very first Academy Awards were held. The event was relatively unsuspenseful as the winners had been announced months prior to being handed out at the shortest ceremony to date, running a brisk fifteen minutes. In a concerted effort to recognize distinct yet equally important elements of filmmaking, there were two congruous awards for year’s top film — “Best Picture, Production” and “Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production.” The big winner of the night was arguably F.W. Murnau’s landmark Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, tying for the most wins of the night (three of its four nominations) including one of the two top prizes (“Unique and Artistic Production”). The other top award for Production was won by the large, profitable studio war picture Wings (in addition to its technical prize for the Best Effects). The following year, the Academy dumped the Unique or Artistic Production prize and retroactively decided the more commercial picture the year before had won the highest honor that could be rewarded. It is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ original sin.
Since then, much has obviously changed. What’s remained consistent to today, however, includes the unspoken tension between the “Unique or Artistic” nominee versus the more populist, moneymaking choice of any given category. Sometimes you’ll see it referred to as the “David vs. Goliath” narrative, usually pushed by the new bevvy of news coverage and bloggage of the Oscar race in any given year. That’s one aspect that’s unique in this age of covering the Academy Awards, and it often serves as a double-edged sword of sorts. On the one hand, it can champion the more inspired underdog choices — like when the critically adored financial flop The Hurt Locker managed to beat the highest grossing film in history, Avatar. On the other hand, championing these underdogs comes with the price of framing the work in sensationalized narratives that obscure the reasons why any given Oscar is rewarded. Kathryn Bigelow made a challenging, well-crafted film about the Iraq War that swept the major critics awards, but the story became that she should win for being a woman whose main competition was her ex-husband.
The triumph of The Hurt Locker is now five wins ago, and five Oscars since the Academy launched its experiment to extend the Best Picture category — presumably to offer more credence to the Wings of the world and less of the Sunrises (observers theorize it was in response to outcry over the Best Picture snub of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight the year prior). To that extent, the experiment worked; more nominees has had the observable consequence of more noise, and it turns out the smaller less-distributed films out there can barely get a word in edgewise. But the reason the expanded Best Picture lineup has hurt the brand of the Academy Awards overall is not because smaller films can’t squeeze into those nominees — there are years you can see a Winter’s Bone make it in, The Tree of Life, Amour — the problem is that if you can’t get into that lineup, you’re hard pressed to get in anywhere else. Venerable entertainment writer Mark Harris coined the term “the Nolan Effect,” an important concept to understanding today’s Oscars: the 44 nominees in the “top eight” non-technical categories in 2014 (Picture, Director, the four acting categories and two writing categories) were spread between 12 movies, with room for just three films that weren’t included in the Best Picture lineup. This was the lowest in three decades, beating the record set the year prior and its 14 nominations. The third lowest was also in the past five years since the larger Best Picture field was introduced. In this new landscape of the Academy Awards, larger studios know now they have more slots to squeeze their films in, investing more money into making it happen and making the noise of a usual Oscar season that much louder. Again, this makes it more difficult for smaller companies to compete with their films, even in categories outside of Best Picture.
There are ten companies that are responsible for the past three years’ worth of Best Picture nominees, and nine of them are from or divisions of what are considered the six major movie studios: Warner Bros. (four BP nominees including one win), Walt Disney (three BP nominees), NBC through Universal and Focus Features (two BP nominees), Sony through both Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics (collectively, six BP nominees), Fox through 20th Century and Fox Searchlight (collectively, five BP nominees including one win), and Paramount Pictures (three BP nominees). The tenth is The Weinstein Company, considered a “mini-major” studio that specializes in Oscars, having produced four Best Picture nominees in the past three years including one winner. Of the 20 films not nominated for Best Picture throughout those years but nominated elsewhere in the top eight categories, 15 came from those same studios (the other five through mini-major Lionsgate and its various divisions). In a modern age of Oscar prognostication, the domination of the major Oscar categories by these studios cannot be understated; and the prediction of any film coming out of smaller companies — like IFC Films, Magnolia, A24, Oscilloscope, Kino Lorber, etc. — should be approached with caution, regardless of how celebrated the work itself is. This already significantly limits the pool of likely Oscar nominees, which is rendered even more predictable by a recent excess of award ceremonies resembling something of an awards industrial complex.
There are now so many groups handing out prizes in the run-up to the Academy Awards themselves that by the time the actual Oscar winners are announced, there is a sense of fatigue and the recipients often seem more than amply rewarded. And, clearly, it doesn’t help that most of these preliminary awards wish to be seen as barometers for who will ultimately find Oscar success, giving these groups the illusion of industry influence. So there are arguably more awards shows at this point than there are even films in the selective pool of big-name film distributors’ making their respective pushes that, naturally, there’s bound to be a good deal of overlap, groupthink, and a feeling of repetition in the long, strange road to the night of the Academy Awards. The odyssey through awards season really begins little after the qualification period of the year in January, when the Sundance Film Festival often will unveil a couple of contenders for the awards that won’t be handed out for another 15 months (it could start earlier though, as The Hurt Locker first premiered at the Venice Film Festival at the end of the Summer in 2008). The speculation sometimes begins immediately, even in the midst of media still handicapping the current year’s race. In the first press conference for Lee Daniels’ Precious at Sundance, actress Mo’Nique was asked about her Oscar speech. She would eventually win a Special Jury Prize for her performance that month; a full year before she would eventually deliver her actual Oscar speech.
Then comes some semblance of respite. There will be more festivals throughout the year — Berlin, SXSW, Cannes, Locarno, Venice, Toronto, New York, AFI, London — in which there will be rumblings, plenty of press and previews of potential awards contenders. By the time of those latter Fall festivals, one starts to see the first formations of awards season coming to shape albeit through phony awards purchased by publicists. They’ll have conspicuously inconspicuous names like the Hollywood Film Awards, or be incorporated into programs of lesser-known festivals scattered throughout Southern California. The first real prizes come from groups of movie critics, whom at this point have an organization handing out awards for every North American metropolitan area. But the three central ones are New York, Los Angeles, and the National Society of Film Critics, with some others of varying note from Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and the National Board of Review. A proper awards show path these days includes a successful dent in the critical circuit, but it’s hard to gauge whether or not a critic group’s resemblance to the Oscars in their choices isn’t more self-fulfilling prophecy than actual influence. This became especially apparent when the community of Oscar bloggers and journalists were blind sighted by The King’s Speech’s Oscar win over The Social Network, which had more or less swept the vast swath of national critics awards.
Soon thereafter are some of the so-called “industry” awards handed out by groups that are really just extensions of critics, but with higher aspirations: The Broadcast Film Critics, who host what’s now misleadingly referred to as the Critics Choice Awards, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a loose confederation of foreign entertainment journalists who put on the Golden Globe Awards. The most valuable function these shows afford is for potential Oscar wannabes to audition for voters, who get to judge how much they like seeing certain people win and how they give their speeches. The Golden Globes, in particular, have the benefit of name recognition for having existed for so long and their boozed up celebrity guests making for occasionally entertaining television (in spite of often corrupt lists of nominees). But, ultimately, neither of these awards show’s voting blocs have any overlap with Academy members, and their qualifications as authorities of cinematic taste are dubious at best. For actual indication of what segments of the Academy are thinking about certain films, one can look to the guild awards. Most of the voters in the Academy — from the top eight categories to the technical branches — belong to unions, many of whom have their own awards in the run-up to the Oscars. Of course, these awards have their limitations of how indicative they can be of the Oscar nominees given that their memberships are, mostly, not Academy voters (but every Academy voter in a given branch is probably in the guild). They’re hardly helpful in predicting winners, given that all branches of the Academy can vote for most of the categories, but one can measure the temperature of branches of varying size to see where general consensus lies (in layman’s terms: the more guild wins/nominations a film has, the better).
The other significant industry award comes from the other side of the pond, when the British Academy of Film and Television Arts hand out their annual BAFTA Awards. Because of a solid wealth of British talent who find work in the American film industry, they have an overlap of about 700 voters (mostly actors) who represent the Academy voting block with the most European sensibility. Though, overall, the BAFTAs don’t align as closely with the Academy as some other awards groups do, they can lend insight into who that common contingent of voters might want to rally behind in a given year. As far as the Academy Awards are concerned, there are several groups of members with their own various agendas, sensibilities, and biases; which is why it might be helpful, at the risk of being reductive, of thinking of potential nominees as “slots” giving voice to specific segments of voters interests’ being advanced. For example, one might suggest that the presence of at least one non-American in the Academy’s acting nominees every year has something to do with the large presence of generally non-American voters in said branch, who often also vote in the BAFTAs. You can look at the 2010 race for Best Actor and see that Javier Bardem in Biutiful is the only nominee not cited by the Broadcast Film Critics, the Hollywood Foreign Press, the national critics groups, or the Screen Actors Guild in all of their awards. The only hint that he would sneak in was his BAFTA nomination, and it would appear as if those voters who also vote in the Academy were able to rally him in over the likes of the legendary Robert Duvall in Get Low or Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine.
But as with the influence of any Academy constituency, it has its limits. In the Best Actor race the following year, BAFTA nominated two hometown boys in Michael Fassbender for Shame and Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Three slots in that year’s Oscar race were solidly occupied by industry titans George Clooney and Brad Pitt, faces of their own Best Picture contenders (The Descendants and Moneyball, respectively), and unknown Jean Dujardin, handsome face of the Best Picture frontrunner (The Artist) and Cannes winner. That left two slots which Fassbender and Oldman could have both theoretically fit into, but they were competing for those slots with SAG nominees like Leonardo DiCaprio for J. Edgar and Démian Bichir for A Better Life. Ultimately, longtime Mexican character actor Bichir had enough goodwill from his Hollywood peers to finally give him his moment in the sun with one of the two remaining slots. So though BAFTA nominated both Michael Fassbender and Gary Oldman, their support could only get one of them in and the latter, the more overdue veteran in the more critically respected film, managed to benefit slightly more from those voters. But even the sincere tastes of different segments of voters could be at the behest of the system of studio domination that generally dominates the group of nominees — Fassbender’s Shame was distributed by Fox Searchlight, who presumably devoted more resources to Best Picture contender The Descendants overall and George Clooney, by extension. This sort of intra-studio competition between vastly different films feeds into the consolidation of fewer films in the top categories, since the films that will get the most nominations possible will be campaigned more aggressively than the film that only has a realistic shot in one or two categories. One can look to the bizarre Best Actress race of 2012, when Sony Pictures Classics were hoping (optimistically) to get two foreign language performances nominated. Marion Cotillard is a previous winner for foreign language work, and was eagerly seeking her first nomination since then as an amputee whale trainer in Jacques Audiard’s French film Rust and Bone. Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film at Cannes, with aspirations to push both her and the film in the Foreign Language Oscar category. Another film they acquired at the fest, Michael Haneke’s French-language Amour, won the top prize at the festival and was so respected that it seemed like a possible push even outside the Foreign Language category — including for one of its two stars, Emmanuelle Riva. Sure enough, Michael Haneke’s home country Austria submitted Amour, giving SPC the opportunity to at least campaign for that, while France opted not to submit Rust and Bone, taking away one of that film’s other major opportunities for a push. Regardless, Marion Cotillard looked like an even safer bet than Riva once the preliminary awards began to be announced (for which she received notices from every major industry group). But as Amour began gaining steam, winning both the LA Film Critics’ and National Society of Film Critics’ top prizes (for Riva as well), Cotillard began to find herself competing with her compatriot with the same distributor who was promoting the other film for nominations in Picture, Director, Actress, Screenplay and Foreign Language, while Cotillard was her film’s only realistic opportunity for a nomination. There are only so many voters willing to go to bat for foreign language performances in the first place, and it was becoming an increasingly uphill battle for Cotillard to maintain the upper hand with that demographic of voters to whom SPC also sought to more broadly support Amour.
And, indeed, Marion Cotillard was on the outside looking in as the Oscar nominees that year were announced. A potential upside one might see in the glut of the awards industrial complex is that it affords the time for Oscar voters to look at what these other groups have essentially been predicting and anointing the best of the year, and vote in a slightly more corrective and inspired way. In addition to the Best Actress nomination for Emmanuelle Riva, SPC’s campaign for Amour was successful in every category it strived for. And joining 85-year-old Riva was 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis for Sundance favorite Beasts of the Southern Wild, which also shocked on nomination morning with nominations for Best Picture, Screenplay, and Director for first-time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin alongside legendary auteur Michael Haneke. If the Academy deserves credit for anything, it should be that it has attempted in recent years to punctuate an occasionally vulgar and exorbitant season of industry self-congratulation with a sense of class and dignity. But not everybody was thrilled with the Academy stepping out of lockstep with the monolithic consensus of the precursors — one of the biggest headlines that morning among casual observers was in outrage at those directing nominees in lieu of Argo director Ben Affleck, who has more name recognition. The Broadcast Film Critics and Hollywood Foreign Press were so caught off guard, as it was revealed the same weekend of the nominations’ announcement that they had rewarded Ben Affleck with their Best Director prize (though possibly out of some combination of Oscar prognosticating and general starstruckness). By then, the maelstrom of sympathy for Affleck had created a perfect narrative of hype and noise to take Argo through a successful ride through the guild awards and ultimately to a Best Picture win on Oscar night (the first to do so sans a Director nod since Bruce Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy in 1990).
But with the Director’s branch of the Academy having deprived the larger voting membership of voting for Ben Affleck in their category, voters were forced to vote for a split between that and Best Picture. Up until then, Picture/Director splits were often predicted on Oscar night but rarely correctly; the Picture/Director split usually occurred in a major upset in one of the two categories. Steven Spielberg won Best Director for Saving Private Ryan in 1999, and was largely expected to take Best Picture as well until Shakespeare in Love managed a coup and won instead (to date, Oscar-campaign-machine Harvey Weinstein’s greatest achievement). In 2003, the Weinstein machine was back in full force with movie-musical Chicago, although, splitting his resources in the Best Director category with Gangs of New York’s Martin Scorsese (at that point, considered overdue to the point of legend), saw both films lose that night to the controversial Roman Polanski for his holocaust film The Pianist. In 2007, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain was seen as a landmark turning point for gay representation in mainstream film. The film and its director won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, the Broadcast Film Critics Award, the Golden Globes, the BAFTA, the Producers Guild Award, the Directors Guild Award, and a few others. But there was still a puritanical disposition against the film by many, especially from the Academy’s older members (the average Oscar voter is considered a 62 year old white male). Ultimately, the film lost out the top prize to race-relations drama Crash. Outside these upsets and exceptions to the rule, it was presumed that Best Picture and Best Director go hand in hand. But that has changed recently, as Ang Lee’s second split Director win for Life of Pi might have been accidental, for lack of Ben Affleck, but was still a landmark moment in an evolved understanding of filmmaking from Oscar voters in a strange new era.
Ang Lee’s second Best Director win was a turning point in a process that brings us back to the year of The Hurt Locker, when Avatar was rewarded with three prizes in recognition of James Cameron’s revolutionary advancement in cinematic technology. The film’s 3D technology and motion capture work forever changed not only visual effects for many films to come, but also the business model for Hollywood now high on the surcharge for 3D and IMAX. It won for Visual Effects, of course, but also won for Best Production Design and Best Cinematography —which confronts and challenges many people’s understanding of what constitutes production design and cinematography. Reason being that the film is comprised of an estimated 2/3s CGI — designed, some might even say animated, in a computer. It’s one thing to consider it in Production Design, considering the sets were still technically designed even if a lot of actual sets seen onscreen weren’t built, but a debate continues to this day as to how much it constitutes as cinematography if you can animate and adjust what’s in the frame (including lighting) in post-production. But the voting membership of the Academy seems to have made its decision, as it was just the first in a string of effects-heavy films that would take that prize. The following year, Inception’s Wally Pfister bested overdue favorite Roger Deakins for the wide-lens landscape photography of True Grit that was assumed, until then, to be the Academy’s bread and butter in that category. The following year, Martin Scorsese’s 3D experiment Hugo beat Emmanuel Lubezki’s work in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. By this point, the argument seemed to be over and a trend had been clearly established before the prize would be inevitably succeeded by Life of Pi and, after that, Emmanuel Lubezki for Gravity. That award was just one notch in all of those films’ belts; Avatar received three Oscars, Inception received four Oscars, Hugo five, Life of Pi received four including Best Director, and Gravity received seven also including Best Director. It’s an upward trend that suggests that most of them might have even been the runner-up to the Best Picture winner that year, and that it’s only a matter of time before films like these will eventually overcome any hesitancy to win the top prize.
Gravity would have appeared to get closest to cracking that glass ceiling, pulling off the Picture/Director split with the ultimate Picture winner still an option in Director. Perhaps most tellingly, it was the first one of these films to get an acting nomination (for Hollywood darling Sandra Bullock) that signaled at least more willingness from the Academy’s largest voting branch than it has been willing to show in the past (largely out of vocalized fears that motion-capture technology is threatening to their craft). Gravity, a commercial sensation, just lost out on the top prize to Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave — by all means, a film considered more “unique and artistic.” All the effects-heavy Best Picture alternates since 2009 have cumulatively grossed over $5 billion worldwide, which the Best Picture winners themselves have barely matched a fifth of. In spite of the historical bedrock the Academy stands on, in which the “true” Best Picture prize was the more commercial film, many of the Academy’s staunchest critics today bemoan the Academy for its stigma against blockbuster successes with popular genre elements. Whether it’s for the consistent snubbing of Christopher Nolan for Best Director or choosing 12 Years a Slave over Gravity, the usual line of argument is that the Academy’s choices are simply out of step with the general moviegoing public. The Academy first expanded the Best Picture field to allow for more varied voices in its top selection, but particularly for the films that would have had a better shot at winning that first Best Picture prize for general production rather than unique or artistic production. As cinematic possibilities continue to expand, and the line between that distinction becomes increasingly blurred to many, it would appear that the Academy is ready to dive into a new era of cinematic understanding, and possibly returning to its roots.
GOLDEN LION: A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE by Roy Andersson
SILVER LION for Best Director to: ANDREJ KONČALOVSKIJ for the film THE POSTMAN’S WHITE NIGHTS (Russia)
GRAND JURY PRIZE to: THE LOOK OF SILENCE by Joshua Oppenheimer (Denmark, Finland, Indonesia, Norway, U.K.)
COPPA VOLPI for Best Actress: Alba Rohrwacher in the film HUNGRY HEARTS by Saverio Costanzo (Italy)
COPPA VOLPI for Best Actor: Adam Driver in the film HUNGRY HEARTS by Saverio Costanzo (Italy)
MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD for Best Young Actor or Actress to: Romain Paul in LE DERNIER COUP DE MARTEAU (France)
AWARD FOR BEST SCREENPLAY to: Rakhshan Banietemad & Farid Mostafavi for the film GHESSEHA (TALES) (Iran)
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE to: SIVAS by Kaan Müjdeci (Turkey, Germany)
ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST FILM to: COURT by Chaitanya Tamhane (India)
ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR to: Naji Abu Nowar for THEEB (Jordan, U.A.E., Qatar, United Kingdom)
SPECIAL ORIZZONTI JURY PRIZE to: BELLUSCONE. UNA STORIA SICILIANA by Franco Maresco (Italy)
SPECIAL ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST ACTOR OR ACTRESS to: Emir Hadžihafizbegović in the film THESE ARE THE RULES by Ognjen Sviličić
ORIZZONTI AWARD FOR BEST SHORT FILM to: MARYAM by Sidi Saleh (Indonesia)
LION OF THE FUTURE – “LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS” VENICE AWARD FOR A DEBUT FILM to: COURT by Chaitanya Tamhane (India)
VENEZIA CLASSICI AWARD FOR BEST RESTORED FILM to: UNA GIORNATA PARTICOLARE by Ettore Scola (1977, Italy, Canada)
VENEZIA CLASSICI AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY ON CINEMA to: ANIMATA RESISTENZA by Francesco Montagner and Alberto Girotto (Italy)
FIPRESCI Award
Best Film of Venezia 71 to The Look of Silenceby Joshua Oppenheimer
Best Film of Orizzonti and International Critics’ Week to Nicije dete by Vuk Ršumovic
SIGNIS Award
to Loin des hommes by David Oelhoffen
Special Mention to 99 Homes by Ramin Bahrani
Leoncino d'Oro Agiscuola per il Cinema Award
Leoncino d'Oro Agiscuola per il Cinema to Birdman by Alejándro G. Iñárritu
Cinema for UNICEF mention to Hungry Hearts by Saverio Costanzo
Francesco Pasinetti Awards
Best film to Anime nere by Francesco Munzi
Best actors to Elio Germano (Il giovane favoloso by Mario Martone) and Alba Rohrwacher (Hungry Hearts by Saverio Costanzo)
Special Award to Saverio Costanzo, director of Hungry Hearts (Venezia 71)
Special Award to Pierfrancesco Favino, actor and producer of Senza nessuna pietà (Orizzonti)
Special Award to I nostri ragazzi by Ivano De Matteo (Giornate degli autori)
Brian Award
to Mita Tova – The Farewell Party by Tal Granit and Sharon Maymon
Queer Lion Award
to Les Nuits d’été by Mario Fanfani
Arca CinemaGiovani Award
Best Film of Venezia 71 to Loin Des Hommes by David Oelhoffen
Best Italian film to: Belluscone. Una storia siciliana by Franco Maresco
CICAE - Cinema d’Arte e d’Essai Award
to Heaven Knows What by Josh and Ben Safdie
FEDIC Award
to Io sto con la sposa by Antonio Augugliaro, Gabriele Del Grande, Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry
Special Mention “Fedic – Il Giornale del Cibo” to Italy in a day by Gabriele Salvatores
Fondazione Mimmo Rotella Award
to Luigi Musini, for the film Anime nere by Francesco Munzi
Future Film Festival Digital Award
to Birdman by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Special Mention to Italy in a day by Gabriele Salvatores
P. Nazareno Taddei Award
toBirdman by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Lanterna Magica (CGS) Award
to Le dernier coup de marteau by Alix Delaporte
Open Award
to director Rä di Martino
Lina Mangiacapre Award
Prize not awarded
Mouse d'Oro Award
Mouse d'oro for the best film of Venezia 71: The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer
Mouse d'argento for the best out of competition film: Olive Kitteridge by Lisa Cholodenko
The Most Innovative Budget
to Italy in a Day by Gabriele Salvatores
Gillo Pontecorvo Award – Arcobaleno Latino
to The show mas go on by Rä di Martino
Interfilm Award for Promoting Interreligious Dialogue
to Loin des hommes by David Oelhoffen
Young Jury Members of the Vittorio Veneto Film Festival
Best film to: 99 Homes by Ramin Bahrani
Special Mention to the work of Fatih Akin (The Cut)
Best actor: Elio Germano (Il giovane favoloso by Mario Martone)
“Civitas Vitae prossima” Award
to Ivan Gergolet for Dancing with Maria
Green Drop Award
to Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Tryapitsyna (The Postman’s White Nights) by Andrej Koncalovskij
Soundtrack Stars Award
Critic’s Choice Award to Alexandre Desplat
Best Soundtrack Award to Birdman by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Schermi di Qualità Award – Carlo Mazzacurati
to Anime nere by Francesco Munzi
RaroVideo – International Critics’ Week Award
to Nicije dete by Vuk Ršumovic
Europa Cinemas Label Award
Best European Movie from the Giornate degli Autori – Venice Days to I nostri ragazzi by Ivano de Matteo
Fedeora Awards
Giornate degli Autori – Venice Days
Best Film: One on One by Kim Ki-duk
Best director of a debut film to Aditya Vikram Sengupta for Asha Jaoar Majhe – Labour of Love
Settimana Internazionale della Critica – Venice International Film Critics Week
Best screenwriter: Vuk Ršumovic for his film Nicije dete – No One’s Child
Best film: Ð?p cánh gi?a không trung – Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere by Nguy?n Hoàng Ði?p
Venezia 71
Award for Best Euro-Mediterranean film: The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer
Human Rights Nights Award
to Io sto con la sposa by Antonio Augugliaro, Gabriele Del Grande, Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry
to The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer
Piccioni Award
to the soundtrack of Il giovane favoloso by Mario Martone; music by Sascha Ring
AssoMusica “Ho visto una Canzone” Award
to the song Just One Day, from the film Italy in a day by Gabriele Salvatores
“Sorriso diverso Venezia 2014” Award
to Io sto con la sposa by Antonio Augugliaro, Gabriele Del Grande, Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry
Golden Lion: Fires on the Plain by Shin'ya Tsukamoto
Silver Lion for Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman
Grand Jury Prize: A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence by Roy Andersson
Best Actor: Elio Germano for Il Giovane Favoloso
Best Actress: Lü Zhong for Red Dawn
Marcello Mastroianni Award: The kids in Sivas
Best Screenplay: 99 Homes by Ramin Bahrani & Amir Nederi
Special Jury Prize: Tales by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
FIPRESCI Prize: The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer
Future Film Festival Digital Award: Good Kill by Andrew Niccol
Television isn't exactly my forte. I like watching some shows, but I can't follow the Emmys like I follow the Oscars (watching every MOVIE is one thing...). But the principle is pretty much the same — each potential nominee represents a different interest group, a segment of an industry or audience of varying sizes that tries to have their interests represented. And said interests tend to be vocal enough online to allow for some semi-informed blind predictions (but obviously, it helps to be familiar with all the contenders).
And, as it so happens, Emmy nominees are based more on buzz than anything else...
Movie/Mini Supporting Actress:
Kathy Bates for American Horror Story: Coven
Jacqueline Bisset for Dancing on the Edge
Ellen Burstyn for Flowers in the Attic
Audra McDonald for The Sound of Music
Julia Roberts for The Normal Heart
Allison Tolman for Fargo
(Just missing out: Janet McTeer for The White Queen)
Movie/Mini Supporting Actor:
Matt Bomer for The Normal Heart
Martin Freeman for Sherlock: His Last Vow
John Goodman for Dancing on the Edge
Frank Langella for Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight
Joe Mantello for The Normal Heart
Jim Parsons for The Normal Heart
(Just missing out: Colin Hanks for Fargo)
Movie/Mini Actor:
Benedict Cumberbatch for Sherlock: His Last Vow
Chiwetel Ejiofor for Dancing on the Edge
Idris Elba for Luther
Martin Freeman for Fargo
Mark Ruffalo for The Normal Heart
Billy Bob Thornton for Fargo
(Just missing out: Christopher Plummer for Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight)
Movie/Mini Actress:
Helena Bonham Carter for Burton and Taylor
Minnie Driver for Return to Zero
Rebecca Ferguson for The White Queen
Jessica Lange for American Horror Story: Coven
Sarah Paulson for American Horror Story: Coven
Cicely Tyson for The Trip to Bountiful
(Just missing out: Whoopi Goldberg for A Day Late and a Dollar Short)
TV Miniseries:
American Horror Story: Coven
Dancing on the Edge
Fargo
Luther
The White Queen
(Just missing out: Treme)
TV Movie:
Clear History
Killing Kennedy
The Normal Heart
Sherlock: His Last Vow
The Trip to Bountiful
(Just missing out: Burton and Taylor)
Drama Guest Actor:
Beau Bridges for Masters of Sex
Dan Bucatinsky for Scandal
Paul Giamatti for Downton Abbey
Nathan Lane for The Good Wife
Robert Morse for Mad Men
Pedro Pascal for Game of Thrones
(Just missing out: Harry Hamlin for Mad Men)
Drama Guest Actress:
Jane Fonda for The Newsroom
Allison Janney for Masters of Sex
Lisa Kudrow for Scandal
Margo Martindale for The Americans
Carrie Preston for The Good Wife
Diana Rigg for Game of Thrones
(Just missing out: Julianne Nicholson for Masters of Sex)
Drama Supporting Actress:
Christine Baranski for The Good Wife
Emilia Clarke for Game of Thrones
Joanne Froggatt for Downton Abbey
Anna Gunn for Breaking Bad
Maggie Smith for Downton Abbey
Bellamy Young for Scandal
(Just missing out: Michelle Monaghan for True Detective)
Drama Supporting Actor:
Josh Charles for The Good Wife
Peter Dinklage for Game of Thrones
Dean Norris for Breaking Bad
Mandy Patinkin for Homeland
Aaron Paul for Breaking Bad
Jon Voight for Ray Donovan
(Just missing out: Jim Carter for Downton Abbey)
Drama Actor:
Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels for The Newsroom
Jon Hamm for Mad Men
Woody Harrelson for True Detective
Matthew McConaughey for True Detective
Kevin Spacey for House of Cards
(Just missing out: Michael Sheen for Masters of Sex)
Drama Actress:
Claire Danes for Homeland
Julianna Margulies for The Good Wife
Tatiana Maslany for Orphan Black
Elisabeth Moss for Mad Men
Kerry Washington for Scandal
Robin Wright for House of Cards
(Just missing out: Keri Russell for The Americans)
Drama Series:
Breaking Bad
Game of Thrones
The Good Wife
House of Cards
Mad Men
True Detective
(Just missing out: Downton Abbey)
Variety Series:
Colbert Report
Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Late Show with David Letterman
Saturday Night Live
Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
(Just missing out: Jimmy Kimmel Live)
Reality Host:
Tom Bergeron for Dancing With the Stars
Anthony Bourdain for The Taste
Cat Deeley for So You Think You Can Dance
Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn for Project Runway
Jeff Probst for Survivor
Betty White for Betty Whites Off Their Rockers
(Just missing out: RuPaul Charles for RuPaul's Drag Race)
Reality Competition Series:
The Amazing Race
Dancing With the Stars
Project Runway
RuPaul's Drag Race
Survivor
The Voice
(Just missing out: Top Chef)
Comedy Guest Actor:
Louis C.K. for Saturday Night Live
Jimmy Fallon for Saturday Night Live
James Earl Jones for The Big Bang Theory
Stephen Merchant for Modern Family
Bob Newhart for The Big Bang Theory
Carl Reiner for Two and a Half Men
(Just missing out: Nathan Lane for Modern Family)
Comedy Guest Actress:
Uzo Aduba for Orange is the New Black
Ellen Burstyn for Louie
Joan Cusack for Shameless
Tina Fey for Saturday Night Live
Melissa McCarthy for Saturday Night Live
Octavia Spencer for Mom
(Just missing out: June Squibb for Girls)
Comedy Supporting Actor:
Andre Braugher for Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Ty Burrell for Modern Family
Adam Driver for Girls
Jesse Tyler Ferguson for Modern Family
Tony Hale for Veep
Timothy Simons for Veep
(Just missing out: Ed O'Neill for Modern Family)
Comedy Supporting Actress:
Mayim Bialik for The Big Bang Theory
Julie Bowen for Modern Family
Anna Chlumsky for Veep
Allison Janney for Mom
Kate Mulgrew for Orange is the New Black
Merritt Wever for Nurse Jackie
(Just missing out: Sofia Vergara for Modern Family)
Comedy Actor:
Don Cheadle for House of Lies
Louis C.K. for Louie
Matt LeBlanc for Episodes
Jim Parsons for The Big Bang Theory
Andy Samberg for Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Robin Williams for The Crazy Ones
(Just missing out: Johnny Galecki for The Big Bang Theory)
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What the Internet is Predicting: An Early Look at Next Year's Oscars
I promise talk of NEXT year's Academy Awards won't be a common occurrence for a while, but it is fun to look around this time of year (that is, April Fools') and see what some of the major contenders are.
I've gathered up predictions from different publications, articles, and blogs from the first few pages of google, mixed with some from yours truly, to get an idea of early consensus this far out in the process.
I only had five predicted lineups for the screenplay categories so they aren't really worth going into in detail, but the (limited) consensus was Foxcatcher/Gone Girl/Inherent Vice/A Most Wanted Man/Unbroken for Adapted, and Birdman/Boyhood/Grand Budapest Hotel/Interstellar/Mr. Turner for Original. Moving on…
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (based on 10 predictions)
Mentioned Longshots: Jeff Bridges for The Giver, Josh Brolin for Inherent Vice, Albert Brooks for A Most Violent Year, Benicio Del Toro for Inherent Vice, Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation, Michael Fassbender for Slow West, James Franco for True Story, James Gandolfini for The Drop, Domnhall Gleeson for Unbroken, Neil Patrick Harris for Gone Girl, Oscar Isaac for Mojave, Nick Nolte for A Walk in the Woods, Jeremy Renner for The Immigrant, Gary Oldman for Child 44, Matthias Schoenaearts for Animal Rescue, Michael Shannon for 99 Homes, Martin Sheen for Trash
Possibilities:
Paul Giamatti for Love & Mercy
Ethan Hawke for Boyhood
Philip Seymour Hoffman for A Most Wanted Man
Edward Norton for Birdman
Channing Tatum for Foxcatcher
Consensus Picks:
5. Johnny Depp for Into the Woods
Though his capital may have waned a bit since his last nomination, it's still hard to argue that Johnny Depp remains one of the biggest movie stars in the world today, and his upcoming role in Rob Marshall's adaptation of the whimsical fairy tale musical Into the Woods can bring him back to the Oscar game for the first time since the last villainous musical role he played (this time, it's The Big Bad Wolf). The success of anyone from this film depends, of course, largely on striking the correct tone but, when successful, there is an appetite for flashy musicals among AMPAS voters. The precedents for this include Academy Award winners Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Hudson, and Anne Hathaway.
4. Christoph Waltz for Big Eyes
Make no mistake, Christoph Waltz is a tremendously gifted actor. Within three years the man has won two Oscars in this category, and he remains the only actor from a Tarantino film to win in the first place. But even without Quentin, he has proven to be a veritable scene stealer in American films like The Green Hornet, Water for Elephants, and Carnage. Working with Tim Burton in Big Eyes, he plays, once more, an antagonistic role that might even be lead. Then again, category-straddling morally dubious character work seems to be his forte.
3. Robert Duvall for The Judge
Courtesy of IMDb: "A successful lawyer returns to his hometown for his mother's funeral only to discover that his estranged father, the town's judge, is suspected of murder." Robert Duvall is that judge, and though the film itself may be a question mark, the legendary allure of Robert Duvall is not. He barely missed out on a lead nod for 2010's Get Low but he already has a statuette and five other nominations under his belt from the past forty years of solid work he's done. That always helps.
2. J.K. Simmons for Whiplash
The toast of the Sundance Film Festival, Whiplash is slated to be the crowd pleasing indie sensation of the year, and much of that is reportedly due to a commanding performance by beloved long-time character actor J.K. Simmons as a strict drum instructor to Miles Teller. Last year's Sundance favorite Fruitvale Station didn't make quite the splash that past hits like Little Miss Sunshine or Beasts of the Southern Wild had, but Simmons already has the narrative that has catapulted actors like Richard Jenkins, John Hawkes, and Demian Bichir to nominations in the past and Alan Arkin to a win. And he seems to have the goods to back it up.
1. Mark Ruffalo for Foxcatcher
We've seen the film, we know the material — and we have been waiting for Foxcatcher since it was supposed to be released last year. Confirmed to be premiering on the Croisette at the Cannes Film Festival, we'll know for sure whether Mark Ruffalo, playing slain Olympian Dave Schultz, can live up to expectations. It'll be in addition to the uber-successful Avengers franchise making Ruffalo more of a name than ever before, a long career of paying his dues in American independent films and after having been nominated for The Kids Are All Right. He's also an Emmy contender for Ryan Murphy's The Normal Heart. As far as we can tell, this far out, things seem to be going his way.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (based on 11 predictions)
Mentioned Longshots: Shohreh Aghdashloo for Rosewater, Patricia Arquette for Boyhood, Christine Baranski for Into the Woods, Laura Dern for 99 Homes, Rosemarie DeWitt for Men, Women & Children, Felicity Jones for Theory of Everything, Keira Knightley for The Imitation Game, Melissa Leo for The Judge, Jena Malone for Inherent Vice, Rooney Mara for Carol, Rachel McAdams for Cameron Crowe Project, Julianne Moore for Maps to the Stars, Sarah Paulson for Carol, Octavia Spencer for Snowpiercer, Imelda Staunton for Pride, Meryl Streep for The Giver, Kristin Scott Thomas for Suite Française, Katherine Waterson for Inherent Vice, Reese Witherspoon for Inherent Vice
Possibilities:
Jessica Chastain for A Most Violent Year
Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl
Emily Blunt for Into the Woods
Jane Fonda for This is Where I Leave You
Amy Ryan for Birdman
Jacki Weaver for Magic in the Moonlight
5. Vanessa Redgrave for Foxcatcher or Annette Bening for The Search
Tied in fifth place, two veteran actresses. Redgrave is an Oscar winner herself, but she hasn't been nominated since 1992 in spite of doing solid work throughout the years since (including Best Picture nominee Atonement and shattering work in 2011's Coriolanus). In Foxcatcher, she'll be playing the mother to Steve Carell's disturbed John du Pont. Annette Bening has been the bridesmaid in each of her past three nominations, so far going without a win, aiming for glory in Michel Hazanvicius' wartime follow-up to his silent-throwback The Artist, which went on to Best Picture glory. Both potentially baity material, both may well crack the list.
4. Anna Kendrick for Into the Woods
Playing Sondheim's twist of Cinderella, Anna Kendrick gets to show off her singing chops that made her a chart-topper last year in Pitch Perfect with the screen presence that got her an Oscar nomination for Up in the Air. Will there be two movies that share the occasional "double nominees" in this category?
2. Meryl Streep for Into the Woods and Octavia Spencer for Get On Up (tied)
Meryl Streep, in a busy year, will be sinking her teeth into the flashy role of the Witch popularized by Bernadette Peters on Broadway. It wasn't a Tony-winning role, but neither was Fantine. Octavia Spencer is once again teaming up with Tate Taylor, who had directed her to an Oscar win for The Help, as James Brown's care taking aunt and brothel-runner. It's early yet, but it's no wonder these are two of the most predicted in this category so far.
1. Viola Davis for Get On Up
Playing James Brown's mother, Viola Davis will be going with full age makeup with another tough-minded female character under Tate Taylor's direction in an effort to win her first, and most would consider overdue, Oscar.
BEST ACTOR (based on 11 predictions)
Mentioned Longshots: Christian Bale for Exodus, Ellar Coltrane for Boyhood, Robert Downey, Jr. for The Judge, Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation, Ralph Fiennes for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Colin Firth for The Railway Man, Brendan Gleeson for Cavalry, Robert Redford for A Walk in the Woods, Jeremy Renner for Kill the Messenger, Adam Sandler for The Cobbler, Christoph Waltz for Big Eyes
Possibilities:
Philip Seymour Hoffman for A Most Wanted Man
Jack O'Connell for Unbroken
Antonio Banderas for The 33
Jeff Bridges for The Giver
Oscar Isaac for A Most Violent Year
Brad Pitt for Fury
5. The BAFTA Slot (Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game or Timothy Spall for Mr. Turner)
Not to say that Brits only vote for their own kind, but there is a significant constituency of overlapping BAFTA and AMPAS voters in the acting branch, which is why you tend to find at least one performance each year by a foreigner — Chiwetel Ejiofor last year, Daniel Day-Lewis the year before, Gary Oldman before that, Colin Firth the two years before that. It's a pretty constant thing. This year, young up-and-coming Benedict Cumberbatch, with his Downton Abbey-sounding name and alien face, is playing a young Alan Turing, a gay mathematician who helped win the second World War before facing tragic ignorance. We saw the combination of historical bait with social resonance last year with Matthew McConaughey…but then there's also Timothy Spall, a more seasoned actor playing painter J.M.W. Turner in Mike Leigh's biopic. Mike Leigh has previously directed Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Imelda Staunton to Oscar nominations. And, last time the BAFTA slot came down between a young up-and-comer (Fassbender) and the more experienced veteran (Gary Oldman), they went with the latter.
4. Michael Keaton for Birdman
One part The Wrestler, another part The Dark Knight, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu is directing a tale of a washed up former superhero-actor (played by washed up former superhero-actor Michael Keaton) attempting to reclaim his past glory. A comeback for Mr. Keaton has been a long time coming, now, and the material sounds particularly resonant and interesting in the age of tentpole superhero franchises being more popular than ever.
3. Chadwick Boseman for Get On Up
Scoff at the schmaltz all you want (not every movie has to be There Will Be Blood), Chadwick Boseman is a talented young actor getting another opportunity of a lifetime in Tate Taylor's biopic of James Brown, just a year after impressing audiences as Jackie Robinson in 42. After seeing the kind of success Taylor was able to bring to The Help, which was a surprise #1 box office hit for more than a month in the Summer of 2011, expectations are high for Boseman to be the breakthrough find of the year.
2. Joaquin Phoenix for Inherent Vice
After looking like he was gonna get squeezed out of a nomination for The Master, partly due to the film's coldness and another to his erratic behavior, Phoenix still made it in with his two co-stars and followed it up with the starring role of last year's Original Screenplay winner Her. The man seems to be on a role, and his latest collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson looks more like American Hustle than testosterone Persona, which, as far as the Oscar game goes, is a good thing.
1. Steve Carell for Foxcatcher
With a Virginia Woolf-esque nose, the direction of someone 2-for-2 in getting his leading actors nominated, and a deeply disturbing character against-type after doing good work on film and TV for the better part of a decade now, Steve Carell's performance in Foxcatcher looks to have the potential to mesmerize audiences and voters alike. It was a bummer to hear it got bumped from last year's awards season, but with a Cannes premiere and another awards campaign planned, it looks like hopes are still high for this one.
BEST ACTRESS (based on 12 predictions)
Mentioned Longshots: Annette Bening for The Search, Cate Blanchett for Carol, Emily Blunt for Into the Woods, Jessica Chastain for Miss Julie, Marion Cotillard for MacBeth, Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night, Jennifer Garner for Men, Women & Children, Nicole Kidman for The Railway Man, Mila Kunis for Jupiter Ascending, Jennifer Lawrence for Serena, Rooney Mara for Carol, Melissa McCarthy for Tammy, Natalie Portman for Jane Got a Gun, Emma Stone for Magic in the Moonlight, Tilda Swinton for Only Lovers Left Alive, Quvenzhané Wallis for Annie, Naomi Watts for While We're Young
Possibilities:
Jessica Chastain for A Most Violent Year
Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl
Nicole Kidman for Grace of Monaco
Berenice Bejo for The Search
Carey Mulligan for Suffragette
Hilary Swank for The Homesman
#5 if Meryl is Supporting: Juliette Binoche for Clouds of Sils Maria
5. Reese Witherspoon for Wild
Jean-Marc Vallée broke through on the American film scene by getting Dallas Buyers Club a much better than anyone expected six nominations, and three wins (same amount as the Best Picture winner). He's following that up immediately with the story of Cheryl Strayed, who hiked 1,100 miles to cope with the loss of her parents at a young age and a divorce-inducing heroin addiction. You can't say it doesn't sound baity for the Oscar-winning actress, who has a couple of movies this year to get her career back on track.
4. Meryl Streep for Into the Woods
Supporting schmupporting. As Meryl herself says, "if you're not a supporting actor, then you're not an actor." The Witch is arguably a big role, but being that it's borderline I guess it's foolish not to predict her in one of the categories. She's expected to be nominated whenever she does a movie, and she still got nominated last year even when she wasn't expected to.
3. Jessica Chastain for The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby
The toast of last year's Toronto Film Festival, the original two-part tale of the dissolution of a relationship is just one of a couple of potential nominations for Ms. Chastain, as you can see from the lists. Between Miss Julie (maybe too arthousey), Interstellar (maybe too blockbustery), and A Most Violent Year (maybe a bit violent) — if 2011 was her breakout year, 2014 might just be the year she becomes a full-fledged starlet, and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby might just be her Help.
2. Michelle Williams for Suite Française
Playing a young French villager during the early years of German occupation in France, this wartime romance could get Michelle Williams nomination number four, an impressive feat 33 year old who could also contend for a Tony this year as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. She strikes the ultra-rare combination of superstar glamor and artsy bonafides who seems to be on a collision course with Oscar any year now.
1. Amy Adams for Big Eyes
After four supporting nominations in seven years, Amy Adams finally was able to break into the lead category this past year for American Hustle, proving in some weird logic to people who cover Oscar races that she's somehow more taken seriously now than before. Now she has a big role to herself, playing artist Margaret Keane in Tim Burton's Big Eyes, and with nomination number six this role is either setting her up to be on the levels of Glenn Close and Deborah Kerr, Kate Winslet, or just complete disappointment. So far she's out front in most predictions by a wide margin.
BEST DIRECTOR (based on 11 predictions)
Mentioned Longshots: David Ayer for Fury, Tommy Lee Jones for The Homesman, Mike Leigh for Mr. Turner, Phillip Noyce for The Giver, Bill Pohlad for Love & Mercy
Possibilities:
Christopher Nolan for Interstellar
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Birdman
Angelina Jolie for Unbroken
Jason Reitman for Men, Women & Children
Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel
Michael Cuestra for Kill the Messenger
5. Lone Director Slot - Tim Burton for Big Eyes, J.C. Chandor for A Most Violent Year or Stephen Daldry for Trash
I dub this three-way tie the "lone director" tie, being that none of these movies (spoiler alert) cracked the top 10 in Best Picture predictions. Tim Burton's tried to curry favor with the Academy several times before, but it inevitably ends in disappointment. Still, this seems like his most subdued and credible work in a number of years. J.C Chandor's been doing strong, ambitious directorial work since his 2011 breakthrough with Margin Call and last year's one-man show All Is Lost. This year, he's chronicling New York City in the 70s with Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain and Albert Brooks, and there will, presumably, be blood. And then there's Stephen Daldry, who has either been nominated for Best Director or has had his film nominated for Best Picture for each of his four works (Billy Elliot, The Hours, The Reader, and even Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close). Working with children again with a hint of social commentary, Trash could be lucky number five.
4. Richard Linklater for Boyhood
Unveiled at the Sundance Film Festival to uproarious praise and winning his second Best Director prize at the Berlin Film Festival, Boyhood seems like an obvious directorial achievement capturing the life of a child over the course of 13 real years. A work of meticulous patience and passion, it looks to have the ambition ofThe Tree of Life (also nominated in this category) with Linklater's more grounded and accessible style, the man is one of the most important voices of American independent cinema today and he has yet to break out of the writing categories.
3. Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher
Nabbing this nomination for his debut feature Capote and probably not far off in his follow-up Moneyball, Miller seems like a reliable voice and expectations are very high for what seems like his most challenging material yet.
2. David Fincher for Gone Girl
It took a while for the Academy to warm up to David Fincher, and it still seems to be in the process of doing so after passing him by for his nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and (especially) The Social Network. He probably wasn't far off for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, either. Gone Girl looks like him in his prime — procedural thrillers, with plenty of pulp to boot. This will probably be one of the most talked about movies of the Fall season, whether it's good or not.
1. Paul Thomas Anderson for Inherent Vice
He has the fervor of Nolan's fanboys with more critical/artistic credibility, but it's hard to say whether or not Inherent Vice will catch on to voters in the way that There Will Be Blood did or only appeal to the acting branch a la The Master. Still, he's a significant enough voice that when he has a movie, people flock to see it, and cinephillic frat boys will claim it's one of the best movies ever made.
BEST PICTURE (based on 25 predictions)
Mentioned Longshots: The 33 (Patricia Riggen), 99 Homes (Ramin Bahrani), Begin Again (John Carney), Belle (Amma Asante), Carol (Todd Haynes), Child 44 (Daniel Espinosa), Devil's Knot (Atom Egoyan), Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn), Grace of Monaco (Olivier Dahan), The Hobbit: There and Back Again (Peter Jackson), Home (Tim Johnson), Joe (David Gordon Green), Jupiter Ascending (Wachowskis), Kill the Messenger (Michael Cuesta), Love & Mercy (Bill Pohlad), Men Women & Children (Jason Reitman), Million Dollar Arm (Craig Gillespie), Miss Julie (Liv Ullman), A Most Wanted Man (Anton Corbijn), Noah (Darren Aronofsky), The Railway Man (Jonathan Teplitzky), Rosewater (Jon Stewart), Serena (Susanne Bier), Snowpiercer (Joon-ho Bong), Suffragette (Sarah Gavron), Whiplash (Damien Chazelle), While We're Young (Noah Baumbach), Wild (Jean-Marc Vallée)
Possibilities:
Big Eyes (Tim Burton)
A Most Violent Year (J.C. Chandor)
Fury (David Ayers)
Exodus (Ridley Scott)
Trash (Stephen Daldry)
The Search (Michel Hazanavicius)
Birdman (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
The Giver (Phillip Noyce)
The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones)
Jersey Boys (Clint Eastood)
Magic in the Moonlight (Woody Allen)
Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)
10. Get On Up (Tate Taylor)
The favorable comparison is to Taylor's previous film, The Help. The less favorable comparison is last year's (Lee Daniels') The Butler. It depends largely on how the rest of the year plays out, but it helps that Taylor seems to have the potential and material to know how to please his audiences, and he doesn't need high critical marks to claim a stake in this race.
9. The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum)
With the combination of social importance and historical intrigue, the best comparison here might be to Dallas Buyers Club. A less flattering comparison from that same year would be The Fifth Estate, which also had Benedict Cumberbatch in an interesting leading role by a capable artist which wound up being a box office catastrophe. But, if it works, the story of Alan Turing has the potential to be emotionally devastating.
8. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
This will likely be one of the big cinematic "events" remembered out of 2014. The Academy's track record with that is mixed, but it's been better than usual as of late with the expanded field.
7. Unbroken (Angelina Jolie)
Coming off a Humanitarian Oscar win and tons of great press for her personal courage, Angelina Jolie is directing an unbelievable-but-true story of Olympian Louis Zamperini, a prisoner of war by Japan in World War II, written by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film looks to have some impressive technicals, and promising actors like Jack O'Connell, Domnhall Gleeson and Alex Russell at the center of it. Jolie doesn't yet have a great directorial reputation, and the Coens' scripts have been directed before miserably, but it's a tale Hollywood is eagerly awaiting as a potential frontrunner.
6. Into the Woods (Rob Marshall)
Steadily declining from Chicago to Memoirs of a Geisha to Nine, the best thing to do with material this ripe is to trust Rob Marshall here with cautious optimism. He's not afraid to to tackle big material with big, loyal fan bases, and one has to imagine he's grown from his mistakes as an artist. But even moderately-successful musical adaptations can see a lot of success with the Academy.
5. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
It's early yet, but Anderson's latest has been unveiled and critical consensus says it's his best yet (after his former best-yet Moonrise Kingdom from two years ago), lighting the speciality box office ablaze and filled to the brim with enough madcap to make for promising repeat viewings throughout the year to keep it fresh in voters' heads.
4. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
It really is a bit of a waiting game to see where Anderson will land here — it's hard to see it failing with critics, but amidst the critical swooning it wasn't hard to see that The Master probably wouldn't connect to audiences or voters in quite the same way. On the other hand, There Will Be Blood was probably the runner-up to fellow-masterpiece No Country For Old Men. And after embracing wiggy 70s set pieces like Argo and American Hustle, this COULD be the one to beat.
3. Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)
The Academy denies it firmly but the snub of The Dark Knight here must have at least rushed the process to expand the Best Picture field (to decidedly mixed results). The Dark Knight Rises didn't get a single nomination, but Inception walked away with four Oscars and nominations for Picture and Screenplay. And that was early in the trend of giving the tech-heavy films their due, which seems to be peaking with Gravity winning 7 Oscars and presumably within reach of beating 12 Years a Slave. This will probably be that tech-heavy film, and it could go all the way.
2. Foxcatcher (Bennett Miller)
Can't really add much more to what I've already said; expectation has only increased since its release delay, and all of its hopeful competitors know that it's one to be reckoned with.
1. Gone Girl (David Fincher)
I'm not sure that most people think this will win, but the consensus seems to be that it'll at least feature, probably prominently, in the lineup, with David Fincher being more overdue than anyone in this lineup for Oscar glory.
The Assassin by Hou Hsiao-Hsien (6-time competitor, 1993 Jury Prize winner for The Puppetmaster)
Birdman by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (2-time competitor, 2000 Critics Week Grand Prize winner for Amores Perros, 2006 Best Director winner for Babel)
Clouds of Sils Maria by Olivier Assayas (3-time competitor)
Coming Home by Zhang Yimou (3-time competitor, 1994 Grand Prize winner for To Live, Technical Prize winner for Shanghai Triad)
The Cut but Fatih Akin (1-time competitor, 2007 Best Screenplay winner for The Edge of Heaven)
Everything Will Be Fine by Wim Wenders (9-time competitor, 1976 FIPRESCI Prize winner for Kings of the Road, 1984 Palme D'Or winner for Paris, Texas, 1987 Best Director winner for Wings of Desire, 1993 Grand Prize winner for Faraway, So Close!)
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Vinterberg (2-time competitor, 1998 Jury Prize winner for Festen).
Foxcatcher by Bennett Miller (Cannes virgin)
Goodbye to Language by Jean-Luc Godard (6-time competitor)
The Homesman by Tommy Lee Jones (1-time competitor, 2005 Best Actor winner for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada)
Jimmy’s Hall by Ken Loach (11-time competitor, 1979 Parallel Section FIPRESCI Prize winner for Black Jack, 1990 Jury Prize winner for Hidden Agenda, 1993 Jury Prize winner for Raining Stones, 1995 FIPRESCI Prize winner for Land and Freedom, 2006 Palme D'Or winner for The Wind That Shakes the Barley, 2012 Jury Prize winner for The Angel's Share)
Kuime by Takashi Miike (2-time competitor)
Leviafan by Andrey Zvyagintsev (1-time competitor, 2011 Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner for Elena)
Maps to the Stars by David Cronenberg (4-time competitor, 1996 Jury Special Prize winner for Crash)
Mr. Turner by Mike Leigh (4-time competitor, 1993 Best Director winner for Naked, 1996 Palme D'Or winner for Secrets & Lies)
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting On Existence by Roy Andersson (1-time competitor, 2000 Jury Prize winner for Songs from the Second Floor)
The Price of Glory by Xavier Beauvois (2-time competitor, 1995 Jury Prize winner for Don't Forget You're Going to Die, 2010 Grand Prize winner for Of Gods and Men)
The Search by Michel Hazanavicius (1-time competitor)
Still the Water by Naomi Kawase (3-time competitor, 1997 Camera D'Or winner for Suzaku, 2007 Grand Prize winner for The Mourning Forest)
Two Days, One Night by les Dardennes (5-time competitors, 1999 Palme D'Or winners for Rosetta, 2005 Palme D'Or winners for The Child, 2008 Best Screenplay winners for The Silence of Lorna, 2011 Grand Prize winners for The Boy With a Bike)
Two Nights by Denis Arcand (2-time competitor, 1986 FIPRESCI Prize for The Decline of the American Empire, 1989 Jury Prize winner for Jesus of Montreal, 2003 Best Screenplay winner for The Barbarian Invasions)
Winter Sleep by Nuri Blige Ceylon (4-time competitor, 2003 Grand Prize winner for Distant, 2006 FIPRESCI Prize winner for Climates, 2008 Best Director winner for Three Monkeys, 2011 Grand Prize winner for Once Upon a Time in Anatolia).
Complete with Vegas odds and breakdowns to help you with your office Oscar pool! All the below-the-line categories are under the more interesting ones, but those are what can make you win!
Best Picture:
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street
Essentially, it's between two films. American Hustle is the only possible alternative, but it would be a fairly massive upset considering it hasn't won any significant prizes against the top two. If you didn't know already, the two films are 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. In an age of internet fanaticism, you might see the two sides as violently clashing ideological forces when, on the actual ground, it's a more innocent conundrum of which one they love more.
Most handicapping comes to the conclusion that, though Gravity poses a threat, it's 12 Years a Slave's to lose — and the long slog of awards season has borne that as the dominant narrative: 12 Years a Slave has won the top film prize at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, and the BAFTA Awards (that's when the Brits chime in), even though Gravity-helmer Alfonso Cuaron won the Best Director prize at all the same ceremonies. The logic boils down to it being the more "important" film, thus being more entitled for the more important prize. But Oscar voters don't think about these broader narratives as much as one would think — ballot to ballot, it's much more about heart. When voters rank the films from 1-9, the voters representing Oscars' more technical branches may well be able to overpower the larger acting branch's support for Slave (which will probably be more divided with quadruple-acting nominated Hustle).
Vegas Odds: 12 Years a Slave
Upset Potential: Gravity
Prediction: Gravity
Best Director:
Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Alexander Payne, Nebraska
David O. Russell, American Hustle
Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street
Subscribers to the theory of "Direction as Authorship" (popularly known as "Auteur Theory") in cinema are sometimes confused as to why this is even a category and why it would split — how could the Best Director be different from the Best Film? And they have a point, considering the vast majority of time the two do go hand-in-hand (last year was a famous exception wherein the Best Picture director wasn’t even nominated here). But this was an odd year and conventional wisdom has been predicting another split in these two categories this year, using this category as almost a consolation prize to Gravity’s technical achievement. And Alfonso Cuaron has seemed to have a stranglehold on this prize throughout the season, winning (among other things) the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, the Golden Globe, the Critics’ Choice Award, the BAFTA, and the crucial Director’s Guild Award prize for his showy work.
Still, I’ve been wary of predicting splits in these two categories considering they almost never go as planned (lest someone get Affleck-ed, and even then Ang Lee beat the bookies’ favorite in Spielberg): When Saving Private Ryan was bested by Shakespeare in Love fifteen years ago, despite Spielberg’s triumph in Director, that was considered a pretty significant upset. Same when Crash beat Brokeback Mountain, though Ang Lee won his first Best Director statuette that year. Splits were being predicted accurately in 2000 and 2002, but the splits didn’t go as predicted (Steven Soderbergh beat Ang Lee and Roman Polanski beat Martin Scorsese). Lest we forget David Fincher losing to Tom Hooper. Needless to say, I remain skeptical, but I find it more likely that Gravity would just pick up both of the top prizes then have it split in another way.
Vegas Odds: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Upset Potential: Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Prediction: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Best Actress:
Amy Adams, American Hustle
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock, Gravity
Judi Dench, Philomena
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County
The observation of the Academy being more influenced by politics than artistic merit is, to an extent, true (but trite). Adams, Bullock, and Dench are all carrying (or being carried by) a Best Picture nominee while Meryl Streep has broken her own record for the most acting nominations five times in the past decade. Arthouse enthusiasts were rooting for French ingenue Adele Exarchopoulos for Cannes-sensation Blue Is the Warmest Color, while American indie champions kept their fingers crossed for Brie Larson in Short Term 12. Sadly, they never stood a chance. Occasionally, however, the Academy seems to do its job, and someone comes along who is good enough to transcend the political limitations to dominate their category in a dead cert. Not that Cate Blanchett has been ignored by Oscar until now, but the only reason she is going to win with certainty is that she is as good in her film as she is. And that is a good thing, no matter the politics.
Vegas Odds: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Upset Potential: No.
Prediction: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Best Actor:
Christian Bale, American Hustle
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
It’s an inordinately strong year for this category, even for its usual strength. And many of these actors have the narrative, and the performance, to back up a case to win (except Christian Bale). Bruce Dern receives his first nomination since 1978 for shining in the kind of starring role he’s usually been denied throughout his long career. Leonardo DiCaprio arguably has the single biggest performance in the category, as the face of the most talked about film of the past few months, and the man himself is a meme for the overdue actor. Chiwetel Ejiofor gets the starring role in the Best Picture frontrunner and takes the audience on a harrowing journey into the horrors of American slavery. Any one of these actors can typically win in most years, but it is the age of the McConaugh-ssance and we’re just living in it. Matthew McConaughey has been slowly building up street cred over the past few years in bold independent roles to shed his punchline reputation as the romcom king and the man is at his peak; he’s carrying what’s expected to be the biggest film of 2014, is headlining pure Emmy bait every week on HBO, and brough Dallas Buyers Club from oblivion to six nominations and potentially three wins (as many as most are predicting for 12 Years a Slave). And he ticks off all the boxes: extreme weight loss, political resonance, shouty monologues, crying, dying, laughing, etc. Any of the other men (except Christian Bale) can potentially upset next Sunday, but it’s easier to just go ahead and accept the frontrunner when all of his potential rivals split amongst each other.
Vegas Odds: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Upset Potential: Anyone (except Christian Bale)
Prediction: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Supporting Actress:
Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
June Squibb, Nebraska
When a film has three acting nominations, it’s usually safe to say that it’ll win at least one of them. Let alone when a film nets the rare distinction of a nomination in each of the four acting categories. That one is American Hustle, the other is frontrunner 12 Years a Slave. And though Lupita Nyong’o takes everyone’s breath away on every red carpet she steps upon and speaks with a charming eloquence whenever she speaks (a golden formula for a great winning moment), Jennifer Lawrence steals her film and has gotten a number of prestigious prizes (including the New York Film Critics award, the Golden Globe and the BAFTA — the same prizes Meryl Streep had when she beat Viola Davis). Personally, I thought this was all settled when Lupita Nyong’o won the SAG Award and proved how disappointing it would be if Jennifer Lawrence won her second consecutive Oscar instead. Furthermore, there’s an eagerness to give 12 Years a Slave more significant wins to either back up its Best Picture prize or have it leave with a couple of major prizes as consolation. Alas, this one can be marked a toss-up.
Vegas Odds: Split between Lupita and J-Law
Upset Potential: June Squibb, Nebraska
Prediction: Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Best Supporting Actor:
Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Jared Leto has won, among other things, the New York Film Critics award, the Los Angeles Film Critics award, the Critics’ Choice Award, and the Golden Globe. Curiously, Dallas Buyers Club was shut out at the BAFTAs overall where Barkhad Abdi was able to take it from Michael Fassbender — but his film’s underwhelming performance with the American Academy (including the omission of co-captain Hanks) suggests more distance with BAFTA this year than any indication of an upset brewing.
Vegas Odds: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Upset Potential: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Prediction: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Before Midnight
Captain Phillips
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street
Ever since 12 Years a Slave was first unveiled to be what it was, the screenplay category seemed to be the safest bet of a major prize. John Ridley lost the BAFTA prize to hometown boy Steve Coogan for Philomena so I wouldn’t call it a “lock,” but it’s hard to imagine the Best Picture frontrunner not taking this prize, at least.
Vegas Odds: 12 Years a Slave
Upset Potential: BAFTA winner Philomena or WGA winner Captain Phillips
Prediction: 12 Years a Slave
Best Original Screenplay:
American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Dallas Buyers Club
Her
Nebraska
It’s not entirely crazy to predict a shutout for American Hustle this year as it faces particularly stiff competition for all its 10 nominations, and the Screenplay category, which seems to be the easiest place to give it a win, is no different. Indeed, Spike Jonze has bested his buddy David O. Russell for the screenplay prize at the Golden Globes, the Critic’s Choice Awards, and the Writer’s Guild Awards for fellow Picture-nominee Her, and all Russell and co-writer Singer has won among industry prizes was at BAFTA when his competition was conspicuously absent. Still, though, I imagine it will be tough for some voters to resist the impulse of throwing Hustle a bone here (and those are about the only two potential outcomes, unless Nebraska has more support than any of us realized).
Vegas Odds: Her
Upset Potential: American Hustle
Prediction: American Hustle
Best Animated Film:
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Ernest & Celestine
Frozen
The Wind Rises
The Lego Movie might have been able to best Frozen in the final hour had it been released about a month earlier, but it wasn’t so it won’t.
Vegas Odds: Frozen
Upset Potential: The Wind Rises, but don’t count on it.
Prediction: Frozen
Best Documentary Feature:
The Act of Killing
Cutie and the Boxer
Dirty Wars
The Square
20 Feet From Stardom
With voting open to the entire Academy for the first time, it’s hard to know which way they’ll go. On the surface it appears to be a three-way race between critics’ favorite Act of Killing, Netflix doc The Square, and show-business doc 20 Feet From Stardom. The Act of Killing has the most press and name recognition, but I’m skeptical that the average Academy voter who tries to watch it will like it’s unconventional methods and extremely grim topic. Every documentary but 20 Feet From Stardom is streaming on Netflix, but Netflix itself is heavily promoting The Square which has the subject matter and relevancy to resonate. But similarly to how they went with the showbiz option last year in Searching for Sugar Man, I think 20 Feet From Stardom could be the orange in a cart of apples to eek out the win.
Vegas Odds: The Act of Killing
Upset Potential: The Square or 20 Feet From Stardom
Prediction: 20 Feet From Stardom
Best Foreign Language Film:
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
The Hunt (Denmark)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
Omar (Palestine)
Like with documentary, voting is open to all Academy members this year and I’m unfortunately doubtful that most have watched all of the nominated films (otherwise this would be a pretty easy pick for The Broken Circle Breakdown). The Great Beauty has been anointed the frontrunner after triumphs at the Golden Globes and BAFTA, so that will be one movie voters will watch — but I don’t think they’ll like it, and instead revert to the familiar The Hunt (even if there’s an “old news” feel to it).
Vegas Odds: The Great Beauty
Upset Potential: The Hunt
Prediction: The Hunt
----------
Cinematography:
The Grandmaster
Gravity
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
Prisoners
Since 2009, the winners in this category have been Avatar, Inception, Hugo, and Life of Pi. The Academy has come together and decided to embrace digital and 3D photography, and Gravity is arguably the most impressive of them all.
Vegas Odds: Gravity
Upset Potential: ...
Prediction: Gravity
Production Design:
American Hustle
Gravity
The Great Gatsby
Her
12 Years a Slave
The flash and effects in The Great Gatsby could win this by default, though it’s up against four Best Picture nominees that voters might be more willing to reward when Gatsby’s already a Costume-favorite.
Vegas Odds: The Great Gatsby
Upset Potential: 12 Years a Slave, Gravity
Prediction: 12 Years a Slave
Costume Design:
American Hustle
The Grandmaster
The Great Gatsby
The Invisible Woman
12 Years a Slave
A movie like The Great Gatsby is usually sooner a default winner in this category than for Production Design, although the clothes are pretty scenery-chewing in American Hustle as well.
Vegas Odds: The Great Gatsby
Upset Potential: American Hustle
Prediction: The Great Gatsby
Film Editing:
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
12 Years a Slave
While this category has a reputation for simply rubber-stamping the Best Picture frontrunner, it seems that in recent years the Academy has made an active effort to recognize the specific craft of editing (though, functionally, it turns this award into “most editing”). It’s possible that Gravity goes along with a ride through the craft categories by default block-voting, I think ACE champion Captain Phillips can get its reward here.
Vegas Odds: Gravity
Upset Potential: Captain Phillips
Prediction: Captain Phillips
Visual Effects:
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
The Lone Ranger
Star Trek Into Darkness
Voters who choose any of the other films are basically just doing it out of spite.
Vegas Odds: Gravity
Upset Potential: If you get this wrong, you're not even trying.
Prediction: Gravity
Original Score:
The Book Thief
Gravity
Her
Philomena
Saving Mr. Banks
When voters in this category can’t recall a particularly lovely tune out of any of these nominees (in the vein of Up or The Artist), they’ll aim for the most music (Life of Pi). But if they ever get the chance to look hip in the music categories (Eminem, Three Six Mafia, Trent Reznor), they try to take it.
Vegas Odds: Gravity
Upset Potential: The other Best Picture nominees
Prediction: Her
Original Song:
"Alone Yet Not Alone" - Alone Yet Not Alone
"Happy" - Despicable Me 2
"Let It Go" - Frozen
"The Moon Song" - Her
"Ordinary Love" - Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Per iTunes charts: “Happy” is the #1 song in the country right now, while Frozen is the #1 album. U2 has been campaigning, including singing their nominated song atop Rockefeller Center for Jimmy Fallon’s first Tonight Show. The nominees have that pesky “Alone Yet Not Alone” competition rid of, who will get their votes?
Vegas Odds: "Let It Go"
Upset Potential: Pharrell or U2
Prediction: "Happy"
Hair & Makeup:
Dallas Buyers Club
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
The Lone Ranger
The Hair & Makeup branch denied a lot of voters their chance to give American Hustle its requisite award here, so instead they have either the $250 budget in Dallas Buyers Club to reward or a Jackass movie (it would look really bad if they rewarded the redface of The Lone Ranger).
Vegas Odds: Dallas Buyers Club
Upset Potential: Um, Jackass?
Prediction: Dallas Buyers Club
Sound Editing:
All Is Lost
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor
Vegas Odds: Gravity
Upset Potential: Captain Phillips
Prediction: Gravity
Sound Mixing:
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Inside Llewyn Davis
Lone Survivor
Most people don’t know the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. A lot of those people are in the Academy. But it matters little (unless you work in Sound), as voters are moderately sure that they think Gravity is the best in both.
Vegas Odds: Gravity
Upset Potential: Inside Llewyn Davis
Prediction: Gravity
Animated Short:
Feral
Get a Horse!
Mr. Hublot
Possessions
Room on the Broom
With voting opened up, the short categories could well fall into the more populist line than it used to be — but even then, Get a Horse! would be a strong contender.
Vegas Odds: Get a Horse!
Upset Potential: Mr. Hublot
Prediction: Get a Horse!
Documentary, Short Subject:
Cavedigger
Facing Fear
Karama Has No Walls
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall
The “lady” in question in The Lady in Number 6 — a holocaust survivor with a tremendously uplifting story — passed away this week at the ripe age of 110, in the midst of Oscar voting. Her film was pretty much a lock here, anyways.
Vegas Odds: The Lady in Number 6
Upset Potential: Facing Fear
Prediction: The Lady in Number 6
Live Action Short:
Do I Have To Take Care of Everything?
Helium
Just Before Losing Everything
That Wasn't Me
The Voorman Problem
The Voorman Problem is considered a frontrunner due to the name recognition of its actors, but as long as people at least give the other films a quick go-through then I think the social relevance of That Wasn’t Me will be easy to vote for. The sentimentality of Helium and passion in Just Before Losing Everything could make them threats, as well.
Pros: Made bank, has strong reviews, strong technical support, is considered an industry landmark, tied with the most nominations, and has BOTH the PGA and DGA wins (which, historically, is hard to beat). Already set to win quite a few Oscars.
Cons: A one-woman show suggests weak actor support, and the lack of a screenplay nomination feeds concerns of its perception as a less substantial option. A thriller set in space could be divisive enough to fall to Slave in the preferential process (along with a sense that its technical wins will be its reward).
12 Years a Slave - 38%
Pros: Slated to sweep BAFTA, tied for PGA, won the top Golden Globe, and still lays claim to being the most "important" film of the lineup. Has the perception of being the "right" choice.
Cons: Has consistent underwhelmed in the awards season — winning only among smaller regional groups of critics, winning one Globe, not a favorite for Director or Actor as it should as a frontrunner, doesn't have the box office it ought to, doesn't have as many tech nominations as was expected, and only won the PGA in a tie. And voters don't like being guilted into choosing something.
American Hustle - 18%
Pros: Tied with the most nominations, with particularly strong support with the bellwether group of actors. Has robust box office, the SAG Ensemble win, three Golden Globes (including Best Musical/Comedy) and an Eddie win (handed out by the Editor's guild — although in another Comedy-segregated category).
Cons: Lost the PGA (in a tie), lost the WGA (which it was expected to win), lost the DGA (it hardly factored in), and a dangerous sense that it peaked around nominations-time (which was already a month ago).
The Wolf of Wall Street - 1%
Pros: It's the most talked about film of the last three months and has huge public hype around it.
Cons: Its reviews are are a tier below the top three, and its tone is questionably abrasive.
Pros: She's well-respected, hasn't won a lead prize before (and she should have), and, frankly, she's really fucking good.
Cons: Little to none — renewed controversy regarding her director is old news to most voters.
Judi Dench - 2%
Pros: She's a pro in a Best Picture nominee who is Cate the Great's most likely challenger if she shows strength at BAFTA.
Cons: She probably won't.
Sandra Bullock - 1%
Pros: She anchors her Best Picture frontrunner, which could sweep, with little to no help from her co-stars best Buzz Lightyear-impression, and her proven star power has helped make it the box office smash it is.
Cons: She's a recent winner, and not as good as Blanchett is.
Amy Adams/Meryl Streep - 0%
Pros: They're well-liked, and their default inclusions here (at the cost of many deserving alternatives) prove it.
Cons: Amy Adams' time will come, maybe next year, but not this year against this competition for this role. Meryl just won.
Lead Actor:
Matthew McConaughey - 80%
Pros: He has the most screen time of his competitors, his film well over performed in general support, he's at the peak of his so-called "McCon-naissance." He has Emmy bait on TV every week, his upcoming work with Christopher Nolan will probably be the biggest film of 2014. His performance is well-reviewed, and checks off the most boxes of proven Academy success: Startling weight loss, political resonance, shouty monologues, he's funny, of gay-interest but not too gay, he cries, he dies, and he has the most screen time of any of his competitors. Oh, and he's won everything he basically needed to so far.
Cons: Of the four acting frontrunners, his speeches have been the least successful. Also, among the four frontrunners, he has the strongest competition. And the film he's in is already expected to take two other prizes, of which a third might be a bit overkill compared to how many some of the other films can win. He missed the BAFTA nod, which seems a bit crucial for this category of this calibre of competition. Also, he'll probably have more chances at this.
Leonardo DiCaprio - 9%
Pros: His film is only recently gaining its steam, becoming a hot topic of sorts an an audience favorite. He's a proven box office star, has more nominations than anyone else in this category, and his meme of being overdue is practically tattooed on his forehead. It seems as though the public wants him to win, and he does provide his Best Picture-nominated film its only realistic shot to win anything. Though considerably less "baity" than his co-star McConaughey, it's arguably the single BIGGEST performance in this category. And he's been campaigning his butt off, which has resulted in a win everywhere he's been nominated (that is, the Globe and Critic's Choice). BAFTA could be a game-changer for him.
Cons: Hasn't gotten the chance to compete with his fellow nominees in places like SAG, and he's not the favorite to win the BAFTA. And his film is very divisive, particularly among the older and more conservative Academy voters. By all means, it would be an upset.
Chiwetel Ejiofor - 7%
Pros: He's the favorite to win the BAFTA sans-McConaughey, he's the face and anchor of a very possible Best Picture-winner in a physically demanding endurance test of the role of Solomon Northup. It's the most dramatic performance and film of his competitors.
Cons: If he hasn't won in any of the major precursors yet, it's hard to see him beating someone like McConaughey, here. A BAFTA win for him would have to be spun into a golden moment, considering the perception that he's the favorite to win by default (unfair though that perception is).
Bruce Dern - 4%
Pros: By far the oldest and most clearly overdue actor of the group, could win by being the orange in a batch of apples. His film has nominations for Picture, Director, and Screenplay and isn't expected to be a realistic win anywhere else.
Cons: Lost the Golden Globe to DiCaprio, and lost the SAG to McConaughey. Those were his best shots to show himself as a contender.
Christian Bale - 0%
Pros: He doesn't have to worry about making a speech.
Cons: It's not gonna happen.
Supporting Actress:
Lupita Nyong'o - 86%
Pros: She's an instant-star, cementing her chances to win by winning every red carpet appearance and showing herself to be a much more attractive winning moment and speech-giver when presented the chance over her nearest competitor. She also presents one of the better opportunities to give her highly respected film a major win, and is crucial in its path to a hopeful Best Picture win.
Cons: Not much, she just doesn't have this thing entirely sewn up.
Jennifer Lawrence - 10%
Pros: Arguably the biggest movie star on the planet right now, the face and anchor of 2013's biggest film (Catching Fire), and easily this film's best chance at winning one of its four acting nominations (being that it's rare for a film nominated in all four acting categories to leave empty-handed). She could possibly take the BAFTA from Lupita.
Cons: If she hadn't won last year, she'd probably be winning this. At this point, however, she's sadly wading on the edges of over-exposure and would simply make for a less satisfying moment if she won.
June Squibb - 3%
Pros: She's the oldest nominee among all the nominated performances, in an adorably foul-mouthed grandmotherly role in a film that has a lot of fans, here.
Cons: She plays a bit of a caricature, and has a less compelling narrative for her than her co-star. Like him, SAG might have been her best chance at putting a dent in this race.
Julia Roberts - 1%
Pros: It's her comeback role, and she is arguably a co-lead.
Cons: She hasn't really been campaigning, and her film didn't really make a splash. A microscopic chance for an upset.
Sally Hawkins - 0%
Pros: She was the most pleasant surprise of this year's acting nominations!
Cons: That rare show of pleasantry will have to extend itself as her consolation prize.
Supporting Actor:
Jared Leto - 91%
Pros: He has the most transformative role, a great performance, political relevance, and weak competition.
Cons: Like his co-star, he missed BAFTA. But that's less of a hurdle in the supporting categories.
Michael Fassbender - 5%
Pros: He's a frontrunner for BAFTA in absence of Leto, with a deliciously villainous role in a Best Picture contender.
Cons: It's not a twirly-mustached villain that they like to go for in this category, and, frankly, the failure of his phallicentric campaign for Shame and his general disinterest in campaigning this year in light of that snub left a lot of bad taste in voters' mouths.
Barkhad Abdi - 2%
Pros: Has the potential for a BAFTA upset (after winning with the London Film Critics), and a place to reward his generally liked film (the winner of the WGA and the Eddie). He has a great breakthrough narrative.
Cons: The lack of a Director and Actor nomination for his film shows general weakness in the Academy.
Bradley Cooper - 2%
Pros: Hey, you never know.
Cons: It's a longshot.
Jonah Hill - 0%
Pros: He campaigned harder than anyone and made it!
Cons: Yeah, but no.
Director:
Alfonso Cuaron - 60%
Pros: He's won every significant Director prize imaginable — DGA, Golden Globe, Critic's Choice, etc. He's well-respected in many circles, and has excelled in English and Spanish films alike. He's also a generally amiable personality. Potentially the first Mexican winner of this prize. And his film is considered a directorial showcase above all.
Cons: This prize is generally voted upon in tandem with Picture, rather than for any specific director themselves — Gravity's vulnerability for the top prize is what makes him most vulnerable, here.
Steve McQueen - 28%
Pros: His film is the perceived frontrunner, which historically means he'd be a strong contender for this prize almost by default. Would be a groundbreaking political choice.
Cons: He's been largely overshadowed by the technical achievement in Gravity, even where his film has won.
David O. Russell - 12%
Pros: At his career peak, pushing "overdue" territory, popular with actors, and his film is a formidable contender.
Cons: His film will probably have to be a stronger contender than we think for him to go along for that ride this year, and the other two competitors would have to underperform rather severely.
Martin Scorsese/Alexander Payne - 0%
Pros: They managed to take the slots of some very impressive colleagues.
Cons: They can't compete with the rest of their nominated brethren.
Adapted Screenplay:
12 Years a Slave - 96%
Philomena - 2%
Captain Phillips/The Wolf of Wall Street - 1%
Before Midnight - 0%
Original Screenplay:
Her - 50%
American Hustle - 43%
Nebraska - 6%
Blue Jasmine - 1%
Dallas Buyers Club - 0%
Animated Feature:
Frozen - 94%
The Wind Rises - 4%
Despicable Me 2 - 2%
The Croods/Ernest & Celestine - 0%
Documentary Feature:
The Square - 41%
20 Feet From Stardom - 35%
The Act of Killing - 21%
Dirty Wars - 3%
Cutie and the Boxer - 0%
Foreign Language Film:
The Hunt - 42%
The Great Beauty - 35%
The Broken Circle Breakdown - 18%
Omar - 6%
The Missing Picture - 0%
Cinematography:
Gravity - 99%
Nebraska - 1%
The Grandmaster/Inside Llewyn Davis/Prisoners - 0%
Visual Effects:
Gravity - 100%
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug/Iron Man 3/The Lone Ranger/Star Trek Into Darkness - 0%
Film Editing:
Gravity - 44%
Captain Phillips - 30%
American Hustle - 14%
12 Years a Slave - 12%
Dallas Buyers Club - 0%
Original Score:
Gravity - 50%
Her - 34%
Philomena - 19%
The Book Thief - 4%
Saving Mr. Banks - 3%
Original Song:
"Let It Go," Frozen - 70%
"Happy," Despicable Me 2 - 13%
"Ordinary Love," Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom - 11%
"The Moon Song," Her - 6%
Production Design:
The Great Gatsby - 38%
Gravity - 28%
12 Years a Slave - 20%
Her - 9%
American Hustle - 5%
Costume Design:
The Great Gatsby - 68%
American Hustle - 16%
12 Years a Slave - 14%
The Invisible Woman - 2%
The Grandmaster - 0%
Hair & Makeup:
Dallas Buyers Club - 91%
Jackass: Bad Grandpa - 9%
Lone Survivor - 0%
Sound Editing:
Gravity - 98%
Captain Phillips/Lone Survivor - 1%
All Is Lost/The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - 0%
Sound Mixing:
Gravity - 97%
Inside Llewyn Davis - 2%
Captain Phillips - 1%
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug/Lone Survivor - 0%
Short Film, Animated:
Get a Horse! - 54%
Mr. Hublot - 32%
Room on the Broom - 9%
Feral - 4%
Possessions - 1%
Best Short Film, Live Action:
Helium - 34%
The Voorman Problem - 30%
That Wasn't Me - 26%
Do I Have To Take Care of Everything?/Just Before Losing Everything - 5%
Best Documentary, Short Subject:
The Lady in Number 6 - 87%
Facing Fear - 6%
Karama Has No Walls - 4%
Cavedigger - 2%
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall - 1%
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Best Actor in a Leading Role: What happened, why, and what's next
June, 2013: Tom Hanks is up for his first Tony Award. He has two films coming down the pike later, one about the real-life pirate hostage Captain Richard Phillips in the upcoming Paul Greengrass film and playing none other than Walt Disney himself in Saving Mr. Banks. This huggable, earnest, two-time Oscar winning 90s superstar seems slated for a comeback in a big way.
Cut to January, 2014: Saving Mr. Banks hauls a respectable box office intake, Captain Phillips is a Best Picture nominee, but poor Tony-losing "Tam Honks" is nowhere to be seen on any Oscar shortlist. What happened?
One might be eager overstate the quality of American cinema in 2013, but they cannot overstate the strength of its awards competition. After a rather quiet three quarters of the release calendar, abundant in major bombs and smaller Sundance gems, all the big prestige studios showed their Oscar cards and planted their flags between the Venice, Telluride, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, and London film festivals. Gravity and 12 Years a Slave quickly became the big film stories of the year, with unprecedented 96 and 97 metacritic scores, respectively. And while Gravity satisfied IMAX audiences everywhere, 12 Years a Slave became anointed as this year's film of true gravitas. They dominated the awards conversation between arguments of sweeps and splits, but with two potentially significant ponies yet to be unveiled — David O. Russell's American Hustle and Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street.
Sony unveiled Captain Phillips at the opening night of the New York Film Festival to respectable reviews (93% on rottentomatoes) with particular praise towards its central star performance from Tom Hanks and star-making performance from gaunt Barkhad Abdi. The bracing finale, in particular, was cited as some of the best work in Tom Hanks' career. He appears to be in alongside Chiwetel Ejiofer for his film-carrying performance in frontrunner 12 Years a Slave, legend of yesteryear Robert Redford for his one-man show in Cannes praised All Is Lost, Matthew McConaughey for the performance in Dallas Buyers Club Hollywood remembers him looking sickly thin for during the last awards cycle, and potentially veteran character actor Bruce Dern in Alexander Payne's Nebraska (for which Steven Spielberg's Cannes jury rewarded him Best Actor over Michael Douglas' future Emmy/Golden Globe/SAG winning performance as Liberace). At the time, they seemed hard to argue with while the likes of Michael B. Jordan for Fruitvale Station and Forest Whitaker for Lee Daniels' The Butler looked in longingly from the outside, and Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio were still sights unseen leading the Russell and Scorsese pictures.
American Hustle is slated to come in a year fresh from David O. Russell's Best Director nomination for Silver Linings Playbook which earned a rare acting nomination from each and every category (eventually garnering a win for his new muse, current "It girl" Jennifer Lawrence). Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese is reportedly scrambling to cut The Wolf of Wall Street down into at least three digestible hours, adding to a mythology long surrounding the film of supposedly pushing NC-17 material and potentially not even being released into the next year (a la Sony Pictures Classic's Foxcatcher starring Steve Carrell). Both managed to be ready by the end of the year and they came with guns a blazin' — American Hustle received strong reviews from critics and managed to beat both 12 Years a Slave and Gravity to the first major Best Picture prize of the year bestowed upon by the New York Film Critics Circle (which often seems to make more a statement to vote against something rather than for it), with Robert Redford picking up their Actor prize just as it seems his film is failing to resonate to audiences (and doing little to nothing to promote himself). Jennifer Lawrence picks up the group's Best Supporting Actress prize, and seems to be the first safe bet for an acting nomination for her film.
The Wolf of Wall Street proves more divisive among critics, however, dubious of its moral intentions and gluttonous displays of excess. Despite an Adapted Screenplay mention by the National Board of Review and a slew of runner-up mentions from the Boston Society of Film Critics, the film receives little awards mention of note from critics. The film receives a middling CinemaScore grade among Christmastime audiences, only manages two Golden Globe nominations (a token slot in their separate Comedy/Musical category and a nod to HFPA-favorite Leonardo DiCaprio) and gets shut out by the Screen Actors Guild. American Hustle, on the other hand, dominates both groups with 7 Globe nods for Comedy/Musical (one for each of its principle actors, Screenplay, Director, and Best Motion Picture) and a Best Ensemble nomination from SAG to go with Lawrence's supporting nomination. Then the Broadcast Film Critics speak up for the Critics Choice Awards: American Hustle ties with 12 Years a Slave for thirteen nominations (for Hustle, with help from another Comedy distinction) ahead of Gravity's ten. Christian Bale joins the five Actor frontrunners, and Bradley Cooper increasingly carves a space for himself in the Supporting Actor lineup. The Wolf of Wall Street nets six nominations, with a nod to DiCaprio for Comedy. But the film itself continues to maintain steam at the box office, is a hot topic of social media conversation, and becomes the highest rated film of 2013 by IMDb voters and online fans who claim the criticisms are misunderstood and misjudged.
The conversation starts in whispers, but quickly grows in decibels: is our Best Actor lineup really as inflexible as it appears? Even the most ardent insistence on Robert Redford begins to sail away (sorry) as he does no campaigning, and most voters find his screener arduous to sit through. Quicker than anyone imagined, the former frontrunner and NY winner becomes a longshot for the nomination. Conventional wisdom suggests that Leonardo DiCaprio is next in line, with his film gaining steam, as Amy Adams increasingly looks slated to knock Meryl Streep off her perch in Best Actress (bringing Hustle's realistic acting nomination count to three). She'd be joining a group of also-rans to a towering Cate Blanchett (foregone conclusion to win for Blue Jasmine) with Sandra Bullock (representing the ensemble of Gravity), Judi Dench (Philomena) and Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks). Thompson seemed to start off strong with an NBR win, but she and Streep face a similar issue in that her movie doesn't appear to be catching on. Of course, Saving Mr. Banks isn't out of the question in categories like Picture, Screenplay, or a couple of techs — it's certainly better than director John Lee Hancock's previous film which led Sandra Bullock to her Oscar — but the film's campaign, her aside (some find her grating but her animated banter is mostly found refreshing), seems to comically blow it every step of the way. Tom Hanks, playing a beloved figure with an emotional monologue at the end, is nowhere to be seen in anyone's Supporting Actor lists. The film makes money but not as much as was previously expected. They waited until one of the last film festivals to unveil it, leaving themselves to play catch-up in the conversation, and most crucially they submitted the generally pleasant film to the Golden Globes as a Drama rather than Musical/Comedy, whence they would have had less competition and for which Emma Thompson may well have been a frontrunner to win the Actress prize over Adams or Streep.
BAFTA is the final award of the major precursors to chime in; the Best Film nominees: 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Gravity, Philomena. Martin Scorsese joins David O. Russell in the Best Director lineup, just as he did at the DGA alongside Slave's Steve McQueen, Gravity's Alfonso Cuaron, and Captain Phillips' Paul Greengrass. Amy Adams pushes out Meryl Streep from the Actress lineup, and, more crucially, Christan Bale joins the Actor lineup with Leonardo DiCaprio over both Robert Redford and, presumed frontrunner at this point, Matthew McConaughey for his work in Dallas Buyers Club (totally shut out, including for Supporting frontrunner Jared Leto). Suddenly, it's a real possibility that American Hustle pulls off the same feat O. Russell managed with Silver Linings just a year before — a nomination in each and every acting category. Bruce Dern, Chiwetel Ejiofer, and Tom Hanks are the three in this category to hit every major precursor. It used to be a pretty solid rule that if you get mentioned at the SAG, Golden Globes, Broadcast Film Critics and BAFTA that you were a lock for an Oscar nomination. That used to be true. In fairness, this standard can only be applied starting in 1999 when the BAFTA moved their ceremony to precede the Academy Awards, but the first person since then to get all four major mentions without hearing their name called on Oscar nominations morning was the ever precedent-setting Tilda Swinton for We Need To Talk About Kevin. Chalk it up to being too good for them. The year after, we saw Marion Cotillard repeating the same feat for Rust & Bone (this was just a matter of simple math — she was competing for a slot with another legendary French actress in a film by the same distributor which gave them more to work with). This year there were no less than three people snubbed after all four mentions: Daniel Brühl in Rush, Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks, and Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips.
Every category is different. One thing that is clear is that the actors branch loves David O. Russell, and they loved American Hustle. The extent of that love showed in every single category, and the fact that Tom Hanks, specifically, missed doesn't mean much more than the category being ultra-competitive this year and the momentum for American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street shifting and cresting in such a way that it produced nominations for their actors whether they were expected or not (Christian Bale and Jonah Hill being two of the clearest examples). They liked Captain Phillips but it does seem like an old story at this point, even if they still appreciated it (the film still netted noms for Picture, Supporting Actor, and Screenplay). But the phenomenon in general can also be thought of along the lines of what Mark Harris recently coined "the Nolan effect," wherein the Academy expanded the Best Picture lineup beyond five slots (since then it's been between nine and ten nominees every year) and each subsequent year the nominations in the other major categories began to reflect fewer and fewer films overall. A startling twelve films were represented in any major category this year, nine of them being Best Picture nominees (the only films receiving major nominations without appearing in Best Picture were August: Osage County, Before Midnight and Blue Jasmine). Perhaps it's not exactly fair that Emma Thompson shouldn't get a nomination should she deserve it just because the film she's in doesn't deserve more recognition. But that may just be the new way to play this game.
***
So we go forward — Bale, Dern, DiCaprio, Ejiofer and McConaughey are officially the nominees. At the start of the races, many presumed Ejiofer to be the early frontrunner — and though he hasn't won any major awards for his performance, he has amassed the most regional critics awards of all of them. He's also slated to win the BAFTA — but more on that later. Up until now, the table has been run by Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club, the little indie flick that could and did keep surprising on nominations morning after expected nods for McConaughey and Leto with citations in Screenplay, Editing (considered a Best Picture bellwether, and besting Wolf of Wall Street), and Hair & Makeup (less of a bellwether, but still squeezed in over the wiggy American Hustle). In the midst of his McCon-naissance, which itself is a comeback narrative to die for in a race like this, he also has Emmy-bait on television every week in True Detective and is starring in what is expected to be the box office hit of the year (Christopher Nolan's Interstellar). The performance itself ticks off so many boxes — historical, political, character arc, drastic weight loss, gay interest, shouty speeches, crying, dying, funny — he's firing on nearly every cylinder and I left the theater wondering why he wasn't more of a frontrunner (similar to how I reacted to The Iron Lady while Viola Davis was expected to win two years ago). And, so far, he has the Golden Globe, SAG, and Critic's Choice Award under his belt. "Alright alriiiiight."
But even though he seems to have everything going for him, my guess is that this is the most flexible acting category we have left. Cate Blanchett is a runaway train for her tremendous performance in Blue Jasmine — if there were only one acting category handed out per year, lead or supporting, actor or actress, she'd have this one. Jared Leto's BAFTA snub seems most comparable to Melissa Leo's a few years ago for David O. Russel's (there he is again) The Fighter. There's just no one else in that category that seems flashy or big enough or, frankly, good enough to catch up to him (and no one has, yet). If Jennifer Lawrence is the only person who can stop Lupita Nyong'o's momentum, only further being fueled by stealing every red carpet she walks upon and gives golden speeches about her Kenyan family being unfamiliar with Brad Pitt but wishing her the best, I find it hard to believe that someone who just won last year would do it. In spite of American Hustle's four acting nominations, and six nominations elsewhere, it almost seems to be a balloon that inflated and popped way too quickly. Voters seem to be asking that "what were we thinking" question farther in advance than I've ever seen them ask themselves, and Lawrence is starting to skirt the edges of overexposure. After her ridiculed Golden Globe gown, the pushback against the cast's behavior in a press conference after their SAG Ensemble victory, and a PGA tie between the two first frontrunners everyone anointed, Gravity and 12 Years a Slave, that seemed to push Hustle out of the Best Picture conversation altogether (lest a DGA shocker tonight resets this etch-a-sketch), it's very possible at the pace with which this momentum has been receding that Hustle can go home without any Oscars at all.
And, no, I don't think Christian Bale has a chance. The nomination will be thought of in time as respectably as Bale himself is considered, though it's in the classic mode of a filler bandwagon nomination. Bruce Dern managed to survive this season unscathed, with his film even getting nominations for categories like Best Director and Best Cinematography that demonstrate real, and broad, strength. His were chances I myself had championed for a long time given his stature and narrative and film, but it's a very understated performance that hasn't been winning where it needs to. The SAG seemed to be do or die to him, and he seemed to die at the hands of Matthew McConaughey. But this was almost salt in the wound after the crushing blow losing the Golden Globe to Leonardo DiCaprio. It seems as if the nomination is as far as his story could take him.
That brings us to the real wildcard in the race, and that is Leonardo DiCaprio. As we've seen, momentum moves at what seems like a glacial pace in the present, but it can move fast and furiously enough for us not to notice until it's too late. And this is an unusual season in how much time is afforded for change — the announcement of nominations and the second round of voting is separated by an entire month, with Academy voters not receiving their final ballots until February 14th — the same weekend as the BAFTA Awards. The last time we saw a timeline like this was in 2002, when lead frontrunners Russell Crowe and Sissy Spacek were ultimately dethroned one way or another by Denzel Washington and Halle Berry. Which suggests that BAFTA's choices this year will be more important than ever — less because of voter overlap (though there is a fair amount) than because of its potential as a game changing moment. What wins, how they win, and what narrative it sets in the midst of the 11-day voting period that will decide March 2nd's winners. It could be as pivotal as an award like the DGA in respect to Picture and Director, where it could well be just as tight between 12 Years a Slave and Gravity as it is here (conventional wisdom favors Slave from hometown boy McQueen, but Gravity is also nominated for Best British Film).
There are a number of crucial differences between BAFTA and the Academy this year to take into account. For one thing, Dallas Buyers Club has six less nominations here than it does at the Oscars (that is, to say, zero). Like the Academy, American Hustle has four acting nominations and 12 Years a Slave has three. Also like the Academy, they can be as susceptible to buzz, momentum, and narrative as anyone else. Conventional thinking suggests Ejiofor and Fassbender both have easy paths in their respective categories without the Dallas Buyers competition, with the Lupita/Lawrence fight remaining in Supporting Actress. Unlike the Academy, BAFTA last year decided to give Best Actress to Amour's Emmanuelle Riva over Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook (instead giving David O. Russell the screenplay prize for that film), and their only realistic chance to give American Hustle an acting prize. Could this be where the game changer is? Potentially, but it's hard to imagine upon watching the film that Nyong'o would be the odd nominee left out for that film, and that category ends up being that film's best chance at an acting prize at the Oscars (where it has the edge over Hustle as a Best Picture frontrunner). And with the grace, poise, and class that Nyong'o has demonstrated this season, it seems hard to imagine that Lawrence (though a verifiable movie star across the pond, as well) would be able to stop that train.
Perhaps it's really Fassbender who's vulnerable to Bradley Cooper? It's plausible, but Fassbender's stature and reputation is much stronger in the UK than it is here. Does that mean 12 Years a Slave walks away with three acting BAFTAs? It's definitely possible. But it's also a real opportunity for Leonardo DiCaprio to make his killer move:
Among his significant nominations, he is as of yet undefeated.
The film is three hours of him in pure lunacy, with a particular physical height in one scene that remains mind boggling in its sheer execution long after seeing the film.
The film itself isn't in BAFTA's top five, but its nominations for Director, Actor, Screenplay, and Editing (where it missed at the Oscars) shows real strength.
Unless Dern pulls a coup here, DiCaprio is Ejiofor's only viable alternative (and Slave might already have two acting wins).
DiCaprio doesn't have to remind anyone that he's overdue for a win — it's a meme that defines him to voters.
The momentum for Wolf and for DiCaprio, in particular, hasn't been too much too quick like American Hustle. It's been playing the long game slowly yet surely, disappointing in nominations at first but eventually racking up what it needs, over performing, and DiCaprio's won awards like the Globe over surefire nominees when he wasn't one himself.
The only real challenge is defeating Ejiofor, who gives a formidable performance in his own right, but I believe DiCaprio has enough on his side that it can be done in a way that I don't see the challengers to Fassbender or Nyong'o having. And his winning would do a lot more to shake the race than Ejiofor, given that he's expected to be the winner by default anyways.
Ejiofer's performance, in the opinion of this modest writer, is better than either DiCaprio's or McConaughey's, and the man is eloquent enough that he certainly can spin a win here into a game changing moment. But, understand, McConaughey won't be an easy guy to take down. But I think the BAFTA snub does make him vulnerable enough that it is possible, and this course of events seems to me to be the most possible and conceivable way for that to happen. I'm more ready to discredit Jared Leto's BAFTA snub partly because he's so ahead in his category, but also because a BAFTA snub in supporting has never been an insurmountable obstacle. But, even though the categories are equally prestigious, the Lead Actor category just happens to be a bigger one. And, in a year like this, the competition is tight.
Here are the recent winners of BAFTA's Leading Actor prize (* indicate subsequent Oscar win):
2012: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln*
2011: Jean Dujardin, The Artist*
2010: Colin Firth, The King's Speech*
2009: Colin Firth, A Single Man
2008: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
2007: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood*
2006: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland*
2005: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote*
2004: Jamie Foxx, Ray*
2003: Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
2002: Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
2001: Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind
I go back that far because that is the last time the Oscar winner in this category wasn't even nominated at BAFTA. Coincidentally, that's also the only time since the BAFTA became an official Oscar precursor that that's happened. Also coincidentally, that was the last time there was this much time between nominations being announced from winners being voted on (and the year Russell Crowe kinda went apeshit at BAFTA and lost after winning SAG, BFCA and the Globe). And this isn't even a case like Training Day where it wasn't eligible for BAFTA — Dallas Buyers Club doesn't release in the UK until later in the year but all you have to do is submit yourself and do a Q&A, which they did, and they just flat out rejected the film. On top of all that, Dallas Buyers Club is probably heading into Oscar night with two safe wins in its pocket — Jared Leto and Hair & Makeup. As they like to demonstrate year after year, the Academy will try to spread love and wins wherever possible. Though Matthew McConaughey has beamed on every stage he gets the chance to, his speeches have the tendency to get a little loopy (see: SAGs), and he's never technically gone one on one with DiCaprio (whose also gotten the chance to give speeches, which have been surprisingly classy and professional).
All I'm saying is that this situation is uncharted territory, and it's without much precedent. This season has been marked consistently by people thinking they know what's happening, only to be miserably disproven. These things always look easier to predict than they are. Just ask Tom Hanks.
