Oscar Predictions: Those Nagging, Up in the Air Categories
Preparing for those final predictions
I will be posting my final Oscar predictions tomorrow. Right now I am sorting through the guild winners from the past ten years, looking for patterns, suggestions, anything that would help me sort things out.
Then there's the gut instinct. The memories of previous years where I went against the grain, picked a winner I knew would be perceived as a surprise. Going into the show you have confidence in such a loner prediction. "I'll show them, I knew this all along." Then, once that category comes up the buzzer goes off in your head. "Doh!" You already know you picked the wrong one. After all, this is the Academy we're talking about. Not a group of tastemakers, but a group that's rather set in their ways. They like what they like. Forward thinking has never been their MO.
And so the battle seems to have come down to The Social Network versus The King's Speech for Best Picture. Any knowledge of the Academy's voting habits at this point tells us The King's Speech is a lock at this point. But that is only half the battle. Academy wisdom works against us elsewhere.
We'll begin with Best Director. Many are saying David Fincher is due, but how do you argue against 63 years of Directors Guild history in which only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has the winner not gone on to win Best Director at the Oscars. Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) won this year and I have a feeling putting Fincher on your ballot will give you those "Doh!" gut feelings I was just talking about.
Even more confusing when looking at Best Picture and Best Director you look at Best Film Editing, an award often tied with the two others as they have shown considerable similarities over the last few years. However, these last few years have been something of an irregularity. Sure, six of the last eight films to win Best Editing also went on to win Best Picture, but add a few years onto that stat and you end up with only 20 of the last Best Editing winners to go on to win the Best Picture over the last 40 years. 75% over the short term is one thing, but 50% over the long term is a bit more telling. This year The Social Network won with the American Cinema Editors, I will be sticking with that for my Oscar prediction, but it won't change my Best Picture prediction.
I'm also trying to sort out a few below the line predictions, such as the sound categories where I currently have Inception winning both Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Only three times in the last ten years has one film won both awards (The Hurt Locker, The Bourne Ultimatum and King Kong). Over the weekend the Cinema Audio Society voted True Grit the best sound mixing of the year and then the Motion Picture Sound Editors voted Inception for editing. A safe bet is probably to split the vote, but I think I'm going to stick with Inception for both. After all, the last ten years haven't proven too accurate for either the MPSE or CAS with four-out-of-ten and three-out-of-ten of their respective winners going on to win the Oscar.
In the acting categories there has been a lot of chatter recently surrounding the female categories, primarily due to the case of Melissa Leo (The Fighter) taking out her own For Your Consideration advertising, a move many are speculating may have been a bad move for the Best Supporting Actress front-runner, potentially opening the door for The King's Speech's Helena Bonham Carter to add to the front-runner's overall tally. At the same time, there continues to be a small amount of support for a potential Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) win, and that would be a surprise win I'm sure not many would complain about.
There has also been talk of an Annette Bening (The Kids are All Right) upset over Natalie Portman (Black Swan). This isn't exactly new chatter, I've been discussing this for some time, even having gone to Bening as my front-runner prior to the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It was Portman's win there and her continued winning in the precursors that had me switch back and I'm not changing again.
Beyond that, I think it comes down to how much confidence you have in The King's Speech being a true juggernaut. If you think it will dominate do you give it Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing and Original Score wins? Do you think it's going to be a rather evenly matched year with Speech taking majors such as Picture and Director and several contenders picking up awards elsewhere? Or, do you predict the unpredictable, a massive The Social Network shocker where it takes Picture, Director, Editing and even a few unexpected below-the-line nods?
Speak up in the comments and prepare your predictions. Tomorrow I'll reveal mine and then over the last few days of the week I'll be posting polls for you to vote on your predictions before this Sunday's 83rd Annual Academy Awards where myself and Laremy will be bringing you a tandem live-blog, hopefully blowing your mind in the process. Stay tuned!
If you need a refresher on what films have been nominated you can click here and for a list of my predictions at this very moment you can click here but I suspect one or two of them will be changing in the next 24 hours. I'm primarily waiting on that Costume Directors Guild winner later tonight to give me a little assistance.
Finally, before you go, enjoy this:
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that video is painfully unfunny.
regarding the oscars i just dont know, i think fincher wins, kings speech, carter, and im hoping for a big rush upset over bale
I'd love nothing more than to see The Social Network shock everyone and win, but it isn't going to happen. So I agree that it comes down to whether it's going to be a more spread around type of year, or whether The King's Speech's coattails will carry it to eight or more wins, as I think was the case with Slumdog two years ago. That will be the issue in predicting categories like film editing and score. I'd seriously been debating picking Fincher to win Best Director, and I won't finalize my predictions until Sunday when I fill out my ballot for the pool at the Oscar party I'm going to, but I think you've convinced me to stick with Hooper. Right now I have The Social Network for editing and The King's Speech for score. I've been debating switching score to The Social Network, but I'll probably leave it and switch editing back to The King's Speech instead. And I've had The King's Speech winning art direction and costumes for a while now and I'm not gonna change those. I'd rather go in predicting a King's Speech lovefest and be wrong than think The Social Network can at least win some below-the-line categories and then be disappointed. And I hope Carter doesn't win supporting actress; she was good but her role was barely consequential and that would just be another opportunity for them to drool all over this film that I don't think is anywhere near the best of the year. I'm also sticking with Portman for Best Actress but wouldn't be one bit surprised if Benning won.
I still don't think a win for The Social Network would be a complete shock but I still have no strong desire to see it win because I still haven't seen it. I could even see a Best Director/Best Picture split in some fashion between the two on the night.
(I can't really explain why it's of so little appeal to me – it just is somehow. Maybe that would alter once I see it and it's somewhere on my rental list at some point).
I don't see the Best Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor Awards changing, but would love to see Steinfeld take Best Supporting Actress over the other nominees. Not really getting my hopes up, but still…….
A domination by The Social Network a shocker? Brad, it's the frontrunner. Betting on The King's Speech is the actual risky pick. Not that I don't think it can happen, it definitely has its chances, but there's no doubt that The Social Network is definitely the frontrunner.
Are you still in early January? I love The Social Network to death and if it ultimately won Picture and Director, that would make me happy like nothing did in months. But it's no frontrunner. Not after PGA, DGA and SAG losses. Despite everything I have enough confidence to believe that Fincher has more of a chance to win Director than Hooper, but if the latter won it wouldn't surprise me in the least. There are two awards in which TSN is the clear frontrunner and they are Adapted Screenplay and Editing. That's it.
Why do you think Kings Speech will win?? C'mon now..I've talked to those who have seen it and they weren't thatr impressed-good film don't get me wrong, but they didn't think it should win versus other films like Black swan or The Fighter which to those I've talked to may be the upset winner this year considering that Bale is in contention as well as Leo and Adams contending for supporting actress roles. Colin firth is more than likely to win Best actor of course but to carry the film to the finish line would require Rush to win as well…My bet is on Black Swan,not only because Portman has a really good chance at winning this time but Aronofsky is quite popular in hollywood right now..Like Boyle,he's his own director and doesn't succumb to producer's issues when making his films..Black Swan is a great film,and will probably go down as his best complete work…The only other director and film that I can see win would be David Orussell and his film The Fighter..He's also a hollywood fave and has put out decent consistent quality work in the past..Like Bigelow last year, he's been consistently in the biz for the last 20 years so in a way he's overdue,and with the amount of nominations his film has garnered, its quite possible it could be this years CRASH…
Also remember who's in charge of the Academy too,Tom Hanks..He's not a big fan English films unless of course it has to do with war or American History..The King's Speech is none of that sooo…
It's gonna be a very interesting night precisely because of how all the awards are going to be split between all movies. There's one scenario in which you could have The King's Speech sweeping it: not just Picture, Actor and Original Screenplay (aka those in which it's the clear frontrunner), but also Director, Supporting Actor and Actress, Score and Editing, with the latter three being the awards the movie hasn't won almost anywhere else. Meanwhile, all the other films get one or two Oscars at best: TSN gets Adapted Screenplay, True Grit gets Cinematography, Inception gets the technical awards (that'd be three – VFX and Sound awards), Black Swan gets Actress, 127 Hours gets Song, and so on. Basically, Slumdog sweep all over again.
Or you could have the scenario in which everyone gets the fair share. More possible because two years ago, Slumdog was the only film of the major nominees that was universally beloved; this year, TSN, Black Swan and The Fighter are much closer to King's Speech than anything was to Slumdog. So, let's say Speech wins Picture, Screenplay and Actor; The Social Network wins Director, Adapted Screenplay and Editing; The Fighter wins Supporting awards; Inception wins Score in addition to technical awards; Black Swan, 127 Hours and True Grit still get an award each, but at the top of the pack you get a much fairer split.
One problem with this scenario is that those who are deemed Best Picture very rarely only win two other awards. Last time was Crash. Perfectly possible this year, when there's so much competition, but still unlikely. Realistically, Speech has to win one more award at the very least; the likeliest is, of course, Director. Meanwhile The Social Network can get Score from Inception and hardly anyone will complain, and the movie would still win respectable 3 Oscars. Of course, for Speech, Score isn't out of the realm of possibility, but Desplat's work went completely unnoticed until the BAFTAs and no one in their right mind can honestly say the score made the movie or was as important to it as acting and writing. Then there are supporting Actor and Actress awards. Three possible scenarios: Speech wins both, but then The Fighter goes home empty-handed. Highly unlikely. Or: The Fighter wins S. Actor, while Carter steals Actress from under Leo's nose. Possible, but like Desplat, Carter was never even in the Top 3 contenders. Third possible scenario: Bale wins Actor, while Hailee Steinfeld upsets with an Actress win, and Speech has to find additional awards somewhere else. Sure as hell possible. The final, fourth scenario is the one I'm sure a good deal of people hope for: Speech wins Actor and Original Screenplay and then gets the hell out of the room while Scott Rudin and Fincher triumph. Why not? TSN is still firmly in second place for the Picture win, and the race is as tight as ever. With Speech not winning the main prize, there's no figuring out what else should it win for its BP win to be justified. Meanwhile TSN wins 4 or 5 Oscars (Score is a toss-up) without having to win anything it hasn't been predicted to win (like Best Actor or something), all the others get what they deserve and have been predicted by many analysts to win, and everybody goes home happy except for Harvey Weinstein. No less possible than any other scenario.
Then you have positive and negative surprises/upsets which this year there are bound to be. Outside the Supporting Actors, Editing and Score awards, there are plenty possible: Annette Bening for Best Actress, Wally Pfister for Cinematography, Toy Story 3 or Tangled for Best Song, all could absolutely happen. Categories like Foreign Language Film, Make-Up or Costime Design – pure toss-up right there. And finally, after all that incredible jungle of awards, you get to the main prize… which could be a lock for Speech, an upset for TSN or a 50/50 toss-up for both. Whatever it is isn't gonna be decided until the very last moment, it could easily be any of the three.
All that and we haven't even touched anything concerning Banksy and the Best Documentary category.
At the moment and without more consideration my perdictions would be: (and yes there's also my high hopes involved cos I think King's Speech was ok but not in my top five films of the year , maybe not even top ten, I still have few of them to see)
Picture: The Social Network
Director: Fincher
Actor: Firth
Actress: Portman
Supporting Actor: Bale
Supporting Actress: Steinfeld (Adams and Leo split after Leo losing votes for her campaign.)
Original Screenplay: Inception (they just have to give something to Nolan… I probably should write King's Speech here.)
Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network
Animated: Toy Story 3
Foreign: In A Better World
Documentary: Inside Job
Cinematography: Inception
Editing: The Social Network
Art Direction: Inception
Costume: True Grit (just because I really liked them in that one but again I should say King's Speech…)
Makeup: The Wolfman
Score: Inception
Song: (lamefest) Tangled
Sound Mixing: Inception
Sound Edting: Inception
Visual Effects: Inception
And I got no clue when it comes to short versions.
So, it looks like I'm predicting The Social Network to win four and Inception being the biggest winner with six statues. Probably won't happen but it's not that far reach…