Granted,I made a few predictions early on,but with more award show giveaways and growing buzz built around certain nominees,adjustments had to made.
Mind you,these are just my best guesses so,don't look to me for a sure fire way to school your local Oscar pool. However, based on my years of Academy Award watching and keeping my ear to the glittery ground, these latest picks are pretty well educated ones:
AND BEST PICTURE IS.... At first,I was convinced that Lincoln would get the top honors in this category but now,not so sure. While the celebrated bio-pic will be getting a few of those golden statues as their parting gift for the night,massive media love for this film has shifted somewhat.Lincoln is still seen as an excellent movie,however Argo has been basking in the awards show circuit spotlight these past few weeks. A good chunk of the reason for that is director/leading man Ben Affleck not being nominated in either Best Actor or(more importantly to some)Best Director categories.
It also helps that some nominees such as Les Miserables ,Amour and Zero Dark Thirty will most likely be honored in other sections of the show. That,plus the added bonus of Argo not only being based on a true story far enough in the past to have some true perspective on it's subject but having Hollywood help save the day,is what should get this low key thriller a huge leg up on the competition:
THE BEST ACTRESS/SUPPORTING ACTOR SHOWDOWN: While there's no doubt about who will win Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress this year(Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway should have their acceptance speeches well honed by now), clear favorites for their respective opposite side of the street nominees have been hard to come by.
In the case of Supporting Actor,all of the nominees are previous winners and since this category has often been used to make it up to a fella for past losses,that makes things tricky indeed. My best bet would be for Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook,as a reward for not doing another throwaway part in a comedy or thriller the way he's been doing for a long time now.
As to the ladies of the Best Actress section,I see it as a race between Jennifer Lawrence(Silver Linings Playbook) and Jessica Chastain(Zero Dark Thirty). Both of them have won awards for their roles and have great momentum behind them. However,I think that Chastain may edge out Lawrence for the win.
Yes,Zero Dark Thirty does have a few issues with it's political content but it's more of a dramatic part for Chastain than Lawrence's is in SLP(which is more of a dramedy with romantic overtones). An additional plus for Chastain is that ZDT director Kathryn Bigelow was also not up for Best Director,which many saw as an oversight and may want to make up to her for with this win:
CLASH OF THE ANIMATED TITANS: The nominees for Best Animated Feature are pretty good this year,with stop motion features like Frankenweenie
and Pirates! Band of Misfits included. The big contenders,however,are Wreck-It Ralph and Brave,both having Disney ties.
As much as WIR will appeal to gamers and fans of Toy Story,Brave's girl power themes may hold a stronger sway over the Academy voters. While the likes of The Hunger Games gets overlooked by the Academy,those yearning to vote for a bow and arrow slinging heroine have a ready outlet in this film's fiery redheaded princess:
In other categories,Best Song will go to Skyfall (especially since Adele will be there to perform it live),Best Director for Steven Spielberg(they'll want to give more than one award to Lincoln)and Life of Pi should garner a nice number of technical awards.
No doubt,there will be a few surprises to balance out the predictable winners and the show will run into overtime at some point(possibly due to the number of lame jokes about taking so long to finish). Regardless of that,this year's Oscars should be a fun film celebration for all to enjoy. Hopefully,the acceptance speeches will have more to offer than the standard platitudes that stars practice to pitch perfect form. Go for broke,people and give us a few good quotes to talk about:
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