One Category at a Time: Picture

For this annual post I traditionally take a rigidly statistical approach to narrowing down the Best Picture nominees. I simply look for the contenders with the three key nominations of Director, Editing, and Screenplay, and consider them the only ones truly in the running. But in a year as off-kilter as this one, it has become apparent that my usual approach is not adequate.

One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

Best Original Screenplay is just another in a long line of categories this year that really has me scratching my head. With the absence of any film that has a remote chance of winning Best Picture, the doors are pretty much wide open. Sure, we can sort of (but not completely) eliminate the two contenders without a nomination in the top category, but among the three that do, it's very much anyone's game.

Pencils down

The polls are closed. All that's left to do is for the eggheads at Price Waterhouse Coopers to tally the votes and deliver the envelopes to the Dolby Theatre. But with so little time until the winners are unveiled, there are still so many questions left to mull over.

Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Sugar Man win WGA

Argo continued its domination of the guild circuit with a victory tonight at the Writers Guild of America Awards. It seems more and more that Argo was always destined to be this year's Best Picture champ, even without a Best Director nod. It can probably add Best Adapted Screenplay to what might be a relatively modest trophy haul next Sunday night.

Another expected win came for Searching for Sugar Man in the Documentary category, continuing its unmolested march to the Oscar. I'm so over this movie. I hate to say this of a film that I liked, but it's definitely the most overrated film of the year.

The only smidgen of intrigue around the WGA Awards was which film they would choose for Best Original Screenplay. It ended up going to Zero Dark Thirty, the only Best Picture nominee cited by the WGA in this category, so it wasn't much of a surprise. This Oscar category has me pulling my hair out. Amour, Django Unchained, or Zero Dark Thirty? A reasonable case can be made for any of them.

One Category at a Time: Sound Editing

Not sure how Best Sound Editing will go this year (or any year, to be honest). While the Academy usually gives both Sound awards to the same film out of sheer ignorance and apathy, it's certainly looking like this is going to be one of those rare split years. With Les Miserables primed and ready to collect a well deserved win for Sound Mixing (not a sure thing, mind you), voters will have to exercise some critical thinking for once and decide which of five films that aren't Les Mis had the best sound editing.

Sifting through the Brits' tea leaves...

The British love their tea, wot? And the British Academy of Film and Television Arts have left all sorts of tea leaves for awards pundits to analyze from today's BAFTA Movie Awards. Even though BAFTA never matches up exactly with AMPAS, we might do well to heed their winners more closely this year, as they could bear more significance in the Oscar race than ever before.

Why is BAFTA significant? It's not so much the membership overlap between them and AMPAS (although that factor is appreciable), but a procedural change the organization made to mirror the Academy's voting practices. In the past, the entire BAFTA membership was invited to determine all the nominees, while only the specific chapters (or branches) could determine the final winners in their associated categories. This often lead to some baffling snubs (Tree of Life's Cinematography snub, anyone?) and peculiar winners (remember In Bruges winning Original Screenplay?).

My Award nominations: Sound Editing

Great work out there from the sound designers this year. I tell ya, some decisions were tough to make in narrowing it down to five for my Best Sound Editing nominees.

One Category at a Time: Supporting Actor

This might take the cake as the year's most unpredictable category. Composed entirely of past winners, there are no narratives of “overdue actor still waiting for first Oscar” to be had. And with a pair of co-lead performances masquerading as supporting amongst true supporting players in popular Best Picture nominees, it leaves the contest as wide open as we've seen in years.

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

With only 24 days until the Oscars, it's time to run down the categories and make some official predictions. I'll start off with some of the categories I consider fairly settled, and among them is Best Cinematography.

My Awards nominations: Costume Design

My nominees for Costume Design after the cut:

My Award nominations: Supporting Actor

No clear frontrunner for me in this category this year. I'm not yet sure which of these five Supporting Actors I'll choose as the year's best:

Motion Picture Sound Editors nominate

The final guild to announce its nominees is the MPSE, and leading the way with three nods apiece are Best Sound Editing Oscar nominees Argo, Life of Pi, and Skyfall, joined by The Hobbit. Django Unchained has two, while the fifth Oscar nominee, Zero Dark Thirty (whose sound design is excellent), was shut out completely. Guess they didn't see it in time?

This category is tricky for me every year, but this year in particular because the supposed Sound Mixing frontrunner, Les Mis, is not up for Sound Editing. Who takes it then? I'm thinking Life of Pi, but then wouldn't it take Sound Mixing away from Les Mis as well? Or will we see our first split in these categories since Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight shared them in 2009?

Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects and Foley in a Feature Film

Argo

The Avengers

The Dark Knight Rises

Django Unchained

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Life of Pi

Prometheus

Skyfall

Disappointing that Zero Dark Thirty is not here. At any rate, the guild love for Argo suggests that it is indeed still a force to be reckoned with at the Oscars, Director nod or no Director nod. I'd say Django Unchained is the best of this lot, but I'm guessing it'll go to Life of Pi.

My Award nominations: Cinematography

This is perennially my favourite category, and as it is every year, there was an abundance of excellent work to choose from. The Academy and I match up 3/5 this year. Find out which three they are, and what other two films I included as having the Best Cinematography of 2012 after the cut (complete with my fav shot from each nominee):

Review - Django Unchained

In Quentin Tarantino's latest revenge fantasy Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx plays the titular slave who is freed from bondage by the eccentric Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to become his partner in bounty hunting. As much as Django likes his new job of “killing white folks for money”, his bigger yen is to rescue his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from the plantation where she serves the childlike but intangibly dangerous Calvin Candi (Leonardo DiCaprio).

While a great deal of Django Unchained is very enjoyable, it is self-indulgent to a fault. I understand that criticizing a Tarantino film for being indulgent is like criticizing the sky for being blue, but the excesses of this movie really makes you feel the length of it. At 165 minutes, it's a picture as badly in need of a trim as our unshackled, unshaven ex-slave is at the beginning of it.

Golden Globe nominees

Busy week for precursor nominations. First the Critics Choice Awards, then the Screen Actors Guild, and now this morning we have the slate from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. With all three groups, Lincoln leads in the nomination tally (though it's tied with Silver Linings Playbook and Les Miz for SAG).

For all the annual allegations about the Globes' "star-f***ing" tendencies, no one can ever accuse them of being a group without an identity. With all the critics likely to line up behind the same names over and over, it's refreshing to see some nominations spring up here that we're not likely to see repeated again this season. They're the first group to support Django Unchained in a big way, handing it five nominations after it was shut out by SAG. And I highly doubt we'll see Salmon Fishing in the Yemen mentioned by any more awards bodies this year.

Full list of motion picture nominees with accompanying commentaries after the cut.

Best Motion Picture - Drama
"Argo"
"Django Unchained"
"Life of Pi"
"Lincoln"
"Zero Dark Thirty"

Django is the surprise here. This is a much needed boost for its flagging Oscar prospects.

Best Motion Picture - Comedy Or Musical
"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"
"Les Miserables"
"Moonrise Kingdom"
"Silver Linings Playbook"
"Salmon Fishing in the Yemen"
I would have anticipated all of these but for Salmon Fishing. It played TIFF last year, so I'm surprised it got remembered.

One Category at a Time: Best Picture (part 1)

With the 2012 Oscar season now a happily distant memory, it's time to look ahead to what films might find themselves in Oscar's company eleven months from now. While it's always next to impossible to pinpoint the unassuming charmers (like The Artist) that can be molded into awards juggernauts from this far out, deciding which high-profile studio projects might tickle the Academy's fancy is easy enough, if not necessarily accurate. Here are the first five of ten such Oscar lures which I'm sure many pundits will be watching with close interest throughout the year:

The last time Joe Wright made a lavish period epic (2007's Atonement), it wound up with seven nominations including Best Picture despite a chilly critical reception. Anna Karenina ticks many of the Academy's boxes on paper, and presents an opportunity for broad support from the guilds. Sight unseen, it's as safe a bet as any.