Sunday Top Ten: Pet peeves and highlights of the 2013-14 Oscar season

The big show is coming up on being only a week old, but it feels like ages ago, so I think it's high time for me to finally put the season to bed. 2014 is now here, with its own slate of hotly anticipated Oscar hopefuls in the pipeline, and it's time to get to work on scoping out those, but not before capping off the awards derby that was with my annual list of highs and lows.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 1: The results

I ended the year with the same numbers I did last year: 19 out of 24 categories correct. That may be just slightly below the average being scored by most pundits this year (who are mostly 20 or higher), but I'm satisfied with it. Let's take a look at just a few of the winners (and losers, but we'll try not to be too mean about it!) after the cut:

My Award winners for 2013!

Terrific year for film. Some of the movies that only won a single category are so good they could have swept in a weaker year. Anyway, click below to find out who took homes my prestigious honours!

My Award nominees for 2013 year in film

Here there are, all in one place for your perusal. Leading the way with nine nominations apiece are 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. At a distant second is Before Midnight with six, followed by Short Term 12, Her, and Inside Llewyn Davis each with five. Winners go up tomorrow.

Best Picture

12 Years a Slave -- S. McQueen, B. Pitt, D. Gardner, B. Pohlad, A. Katagas, J. Kleiner, A. Milchan

Before Midnight -- R. Linklater, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Sara Woodhatch

Gravity -- Alfonso Cuaron, David Heyman

Short Term 12 -- Maren Olson, Ron Najer, Joshua Astrachan, Asher Goldstein

Stories We Tell -- Anita Lee

One Category at a Time: Best Picture

It's that time of year: This is the point of the season at which we are practically begging for the Oscars to finally be over and done with, as the preordained winner of the Best Picture Oscar waits impatiently (but none too nervously) to hear its title called after more than three long months of rigorous campaigning and precursor award victories. At least, that's what usually happens at this point of the season. This year, however, is unlike any I've observed before. The standard three-month march towards inevitability has been replaced by a three-month build of suspense, as this Best Picture derby has boiled down to a true crap shoot, and one at which multiple contenders (not just the two presumed frontrunners) have a plausible chance of winning.

It all started with the critics. While the highest profile groups went their own way -- New York anointing American Hustle and L.A. ending in an unprecedented tie between Her and Gravity -- it was ultimately 12 Years a Slave that settled in as the favourite with regional critics groups across America. The Golden Globes, though not hugely influential in their own right, shook things up by proving that the harrowing slavery drama could win the top prize on prestige alone, even if not genuinely loved enough to claim any categorized prizes. SAG gave a boost to mainstream option American Hustle, causing reasonable suspicion that it could be the one to beat, but then came the TSN turning point of the season: The Producers Guild of America, heretofore the unblemished harbinger of Oscar, split the decision between Gravity and 12 Years a Slave... with a preferential ballot to boot! (And I thought the LAFCA tie was a shocker!)

Last minute question marks and wishlist

Ballots have been in for two days now, and there's nothing left to do but wait for the final results to be unveiled on Sunday night. Most pundits have settled on their predictions after weeks of deliberation, but for me, these dwindling days are often when my initially settled predictions suddenly become unsettled! There are some huge question marks that'll have me waffling on this category or that from now until their envelopes are opened. Here are some lingering uncertainties I have heading into the big show, accompanied by a small wishlist that would be oh so satisfying to see happen:

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):

One Category at a Time: Supporting Actress

Of the four acting categories, this is definitely the one that feels like it's in the most flux. The four televised precursor awards having been split between two actresses; one who has made a fresh splash on the scene with a staggering dramatic performance accompanied by charming speeches on the red carpet and at the award podium, and another coming off a recent Oscar win and reveling in a flashy comedic turn. Let's take a look at them (oh, and the other three) after the cut.

Connecting with the Movies of 2013

How does one begin to relate the white-knuckle space adventure of a thrill ride like Gravity to the soberly grounded realism of a docudrama like Captain Phillips? How is the intimate conversation piece Before Midnight at all similar to the sprawling historical tragedy 12 Years a Slave? What do any of these films have in common with each other – or any of the dozens of other applicable films released in the past 12 months – besides the fact that they are among the finest motion pictures of 2013? It's a question I find myself asking not only this year (which is being touted as one of the best for American cinema in a critic's age), but every year, as my mind mulls over the thematic patterns that connect the cream of the annual movie crop.

In 2009, 'escapism' was the pervasive theme connecting such disparate stories as Up in the Air, Avatar, The Hurt Locker, An Education, and Precious, among others; In 2011, 'nostalgia' and 'inspiration' connected many of the year's most celebrated titles, including The Artist, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, and many more; And for me, 2013's greatest films were connected by... well, 'connection'. Indeed, and as generic as it sounds, it's hard for me to recall a year in which so many memorable screen characters seem to triumph or fail as direct result of the connections they forge (or don't forge) between themselves and their fellow human beings.

Gravity and 12 Years a Slave take final guild honours

The last two guilds to hand out hardware this season (the Cinema Audio Society and the Costume Designers Guild) did so last night, making winners out of leading Best Picture contenders Gravity and 12 Years a Slave.

One Category at a Time: Film Editing

As I mentioned about a week ago in my ACE Eddies recap, this is one of those categories on which the jury is out. The BAFTAs failed to clarify the issue, and traditional logic tells us that we should predict one of the ACE winners to take the Oscar as well (only three times in the last 23 years did the Oscar go to a film that did not win the Eddie), but it would be foolish to ignore the potential sweep that could make an Oscar winner out of an Eddie loser.

One Category at a Time: Actor

What a tight year it's been for leading actors. We all knew that with such a glut of competition, someone was gonna be unpleasantly stiffed on nomination morning, but few of us probably anticipated that two of the season's top contenders (Robert Redford and Tom Hanks) would end up on the outside looking in. Since then, a clear frontrunner was established who it would be unwise not to predict. However, with an extended waiting period between nominations and voting, not to mention a strange BAFTA snub, there's still a lot of wiggle room. But first, the foremost candidate:

One Category at a Time: Production Design

The Academy has thrown me for a loop in this category more often than any other craft category in recent years. When I predicted the weathered frontier recreations of There Will Be Blood they went with the stylized gothic environs of Sweeney Todd. When I predicted the refined set decoration of The King's Speech they went with the gaudy excess of Alice in Wonderland. So last year, I thought I'd get wise by predicting the lavish stylings of Anna Karenina to rule the day, and what do they do? They give it to the immaculate minutia of Lincoln! Suffice it to say I don't know how that win ever happened (not that it was in any way unworthy), but I'm willing to assume that it's more the exception than the rule. Typically, excess is what wins out in this category, even if it's against Best Picture nominated films.

BAFTA winners do little to clarify Oscar race

With the Winter Olympics pushing the Oscar voting window back a couple of weeks, all eyes this were on the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTAs) to indicate any late-breaking momentum for this contender or that during this crucial final phase of the season. However, it seems that the Brits are about as indecisive as American awards groups have been this year, as they too ended up splitting their decision between the leading runners in the race.

In eerily similar fashion to the way the Golden Globes went down, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave managed to claim the Best Film prize at the BAFTAs, but only after it had been nearly shut out all night long. Losing categories in which it is believed to be the Oscar favourite (Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay) must have been cause for excruciating nervousness, but then it reared its head at the last minute with a victory for lead actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (in the absence of Oscar frontrunner Matthew McConaughey) and ultimately Best Picture.

But Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity led the total trophy haul with six, including Best British Film. Ironically, many would argue that the actual Best Film winner 12 Years a Slave is more British than the Mexican director's U.S.-financed space adventure. Keeping its own Oscar fires stoked with three wins was David O. Russell's American Hustle.

Check out the winners below for more commentary on individual categories, and how the winners here might affect the Oscar outcome.

One Category at a Time: Costume Design

The costume designers in the Academy got to veer off into their own branch this year, having previously been lumped in with the production designers until now. However, there doesn't appear to be a noticeable discrepancy in their voting patterns, as a certain degree of overlap clearly still exists between the two categories (three common films between them, which is not unusual).

My Award nominations: Costume Design

Some of the Costume Design work this year reached levels of iconography that's hard for even one film to achieve in any year, and not even all of those films made my top five! The threads were just so perfect in so many films. Alas, only five can be nominated, and you can read the ones I chose below.

My Award nominations: Actor

What a year for this category. I easily could shuffle out all five of my own Best Actor nominees for the five that just missed and the lineup would still be incredible.

One Category at a Time: Director

The Best Picture race is a dead heat this year, which is such a rare occurrence in this age of the preferential ballot (which famously failed to determine the PGA's preference), that for the first time in the years I've been following the Oscars, we have to consider the Best Director race apart and separate from the Best Picture race. Now I hear you exclaim, "But, Awards Prognosticator!... We had to do that last year when Argo won Best Picture and Ang Lee won Best Director!" This is true. But last year was an odd exception wherein the DGA vote came so late, that it was unable to influence the Academy's directors branch into even nominating the Best Picture winner for Best Director. This year, however, there is little doubt that whichever film wins Best Picture will be one of the contenders for Best Director as well, but we still have to analyze that contest separately from Best Picture due to the closeness of the race. We can't afford the luxury of simply assuming that whatever wins the top prize naturally wins for its director too. It may well be the case at the end of the day, but we can't assume that as we have in years past. This time, there's more nuance than that.

Firstly, the frontrunner...

One Category at a Time: Supporting Actor

Plenty of variety for Oscar voters to choose from in this category, which didn't deviate too far from my own preferences. The only actor who could claim to be snubbed is Daniel Bruhl, who was excellent in Rush. I must admit I'm saddened by it. I thought he was good enough to be nominated back in 2005 for the wonderful German comedy Goodbye, Lenin, and a nomination looked like it was in the cards this time, especially after being up for the Golden Globe, Critics Choice, and SAG Award. That said, there is a certain justice to this cruelty, as a nomination for him here would've been blatant category fraud, so let's be happy we skirted that controversy.

Anyway, of the actual nominees, a clear frontrunner has asserted himself:

One Category at a Time: Adapted Screenplay

Best Adapted Screenplay was the only category I guessed 100% correctly for nominations this year, but given the how thin the field of contenders was, that's hardly worth bragging about. That being said, I think the final five are a perfectly respectable lineup; Naturally I would think that, having myself nominated all of them for my awards for writing. Still, it would have been nice to see the writing branch look outside the box at contenders like Short Term 12, The Spectacular Now, or Blue is the Warmest Color (The latter two of which I haven't seen yet, but have heard good things).

Anyway, on to the actual nominees, from whom the eventual winner looks to be fairly obvious.