My Award nominations: Picture

*(In hopes of catching one or two more foreign films imminently, I am holding off on that category for just a few more days, but I won't wait any longer to declare my fav five of the year.)

And so we finally reach the big daddy of them all. I've already waxed philosophical at length on how 'connected' I felt to the best films of the year, but the time has come to be a little less general and a little more specific. Without further ado, I present my five candidates for Best Picture of 2013 (plus my five runner-ups, so for all intents and purposes consider this my Top Ten article):

My Award nominations: Documentary

As it is every year, I caught up with a lot of Documentaries after the Oscar nominations were announced, so these can also serve as capsule reviews for the ones I never had the time to write up properly.

WGA winners!

While the Annies drag on, I have more than enough time to mention that the Writers Guild of America have awarded Her, Captain Phillips, and Stories We Tell in their feature film categories. This is an odd scenario in that I can see none of these winners repeating on Oscar night.

My Award nominations: Director

So many good films this year that I could fill this category entirely with directors of films that aren't even in my top five! But of course, since I always have a hard time divorcing a film from its direction, there is always significant overlap. But I won't tell you just yet which of these five Best Directors will go on to have their films shortlisted for my top award!

NY Critcs surprise with American Hustle

Even in a year as strong as this one, the New York Film Critics Circle managed to make a Best Picture selection that has many pundits baffled: David O. Russell's American Hustle, whose reviews from recent press screenings have been mixed. Obviously, we won't be in a position to assess the NYFCC's decision in until we get to see the film itself in a little less than a month, but it certainly wasn't what many people expected to see triumph here. It also won for Screenplay and Supporting Actress Jennifer Lawrence.

Picking up big acting wins were Robert Redford of All Is Lost (a movie that continues to piss me off in its coy reluctance to open wide), and Cate Blanchett of Blue Jasmine (this just might be the first of a long list of awards leading up to an eventual Oscar win). Dallas Buyers Club's Jared Leto nabbed Supporting Actor while Steve McQueen took Best Director for 12 Years a Slave.

One final note, I'm super thrilled to see Sarah Polley claim the prize for Best Non-Fiction Film for her brilliant Stories We Tell, and hope it translates into an Oscar nod.

Full list of winners below:

Review - Stories We Tell

(I feel a little embarrassed getting around to this film a full year after it debuted at TIFF and has already had it's Canadian release, but better late than never. Here's to Can-con that's actually good!)

'The purpose of art is to get at absolute truth.' This paraphrased belief is conveyed by Harry Gulkin, one of a dozen or so storytellers we meet in Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, and it is at once a wise but misguided philosophy. Yes, art strives to present the truths about our world and the human beings that inhabit it, but is there such a thing as a truth that is “absolute”? In this extraordinary documentary, Sarah's own personal history is probed through intimate interviews with her family and other witnesses. The “truth” is revealed to be far from absolute. It is ethereal, fluid, and subject to the biases of those recalling it; Such is the very nature of storytelling.

Polley starts her story before she was even born, with recollections of her late mother, Diane, from the people who knew her best. By all accounts she was a beloved and infectious spirit. An actress at heart, she put her stage career on the back burner in order to raise her children with her husband Michael, who narrates much of the film from a voluminous personal letter he wrote to Sarah. As the multiple perspectives on Diane and Michael trickle in from Sarah's father, siblings, and family friends, an amorphous whole starts to take shape about Diane and the secrets she kept.

One Category at a Time: Best Original Screenplay

The field looks pretty adaptation-heavy this year, but I spy a few interesting original films with great promise.

The one which will garner many a cinephile's attention this spring is Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, at long last seeing a theatrical release after years on the shelf. If it impresses enough people to earn a Best Picture berth, as I've predicted, a writing nomination for Malick will likely follow.

But beyond that, I'm not finding a whole lot of original stories this year that immediately scream "Oscar bait". Maybe if independent drama Like Crazy catches on in an appreciable way, it could lead writers Drake Doremus and Ben York Jones to a nomination, but its chances are really no less bankable than any other small-scale dramedies and romances.

An example of one such small-scale dramedy is Jodie Foster's The Beaver, written by Kyle Killen and starring the infamous Mel Gibson. The premise is an intriguing one about an unbalanced man who communicates with the world by way of a beaver-resembling hand puppet. Sounds like there's lots of potential for comedy and interesting character development.

A writer/director combo who managed to successfully woo Oscar before is Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman (Juno), who will try to do so again with Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron as a woman still smitten with a now-married man. Or perhaps another previous Oscar nominee, Sarah Polley (Away From Her), can return to the big dance for Take This Waltz, with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen.

Predicted five:
The Tree of Life
Like Crazy
Young Adult
The Beaver
Take This Waltz

Also consider: Beginners, The Conspirator, Contagion, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Midnight in Paris, Super 8, The Whistleblower