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

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.

My Award nominations: Adapted Score

Surprise! I'm adding a category to my list of superlatives this year.

But first, a confession: Even though many voices on the Oscar-web (with sharper ears then mine) have long called for the Academy to reinstate this defunct category, I can honestly understand why they haven't. I myself would struggle to find enough applicable soundtracks in one year that add so much to their films as to merit awards attention. This year, however, was something of a banner year for this oft overlooked microcosm of film music, and so I figure I may as well recognize the best of them.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, the Academy kept renaming and finagling with this category, but they usually only nominated three at a time, so here are my top three Adapted Scores of the year:

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: Sound Mixing

This is another one of those categories that seems fairly transparent from afar. I suspect one film to be unanimously predicted by pundits, and then to win, naturally. But even though it looks to be an open and shut case, the other nominees sport excellent sound work, and very much deserve the recognition that their nominations imply.

The sound branch nominated four of the same titles that were cited by the Cinema Audio Society, with only Iron Man 3 failing to translate that CAS nod into an Oscar nod. That is all very usual. Also very usual is the high degree of overlap between this category and Best Sound Editing. Only one of the Sound Mixing nominees did not receive an accompanying nomination in its brother category, and that's the one we'll start with...

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

There are just 22 business days left until the Oscars, and yet it still feels like they're an eternity away. Part of that may have to do with the fact that the Winter Olympics (the only arena in which my home country can even come close to claiming world-power status, so I'll be watching them intently) has pushed the awards ceremony, and consequently the voting period, back a week.

That's an awful long wait, during which an awful lot can happen to affect the race. Gravity stands as the frontrunner at this moment, but we may have plenty of reason to believe otherwise by the time Oscar night is upon us. Heck: we have plenty of reason to believe otherwise right now! But I'll get to that category in due course. Obviously, I tend to start these prediction columns with the categories that are easiest to call, and one of the easiest calls this year is Best Cinematography.

My Award nominations: Original Screenplay

The adaptations may have been a bit sparsely populated this year, but the Original Screenplay race was dense with quality. Check out my five finalists after the cut.

Delayed knee-jerk reactions to Oscar nominees

Had a busy day so I never had the time to write a proper reaction piece to this morning's Oscar nomination announcement, but after sifting through the tea leaves a bit, I've gleaned some notes that I feel are worth mentioning/praising/bitching about.

My Award nominations: Cinematography

I'm kicking off this year's award nominees with my favourite of all categories, Best Cinematography. There was a lot of great work to pick from this year, and inevitably I had to leave some excellent work off my final five (some that will probably be Oscar recognized anyway).

Check out my top five below, accompanied by my favourite shot from each.

Art Directors Guild nominees

The parade of guild announcements marches on with Art Directors Guild. Will we find all of the Oscar nominees in the fifteen films honoured by the ADG? Not necessarily. Five of the last 25 Oscar nominees in this category were ones passed over by the guild, so it's not lights out yet for Oz the Great and Powerful or The Invisible Woman, although there's certainly enough good work this year to keep them off the final ballot.

The nominees and my commentaries after the cut:

Writers Guild nominations

Hot on the heals of yesterday's PGA announcement, the WGA has chimed in with their selections for the year's best screenplays... at least those that were eligible. It rankles every year that a number of the most highly touted films of the year are not qualified for the guild's honour, and this year's list of ineligibilities include likely Oscar nominees 12 Years a Slave and Philomena, among others.

Full list of nominees (and comments) after the cut.

Producers Guild nominees

The Producers Guild of America is one of the key guilds in terms of predicting eventual Oscar winners because they use the same preferential balloting system as the Academy. When it comes to nominations, however, there are some noteworthy differences:

For one, the PGA fills all ten slots available, whereas the Academy can fill anywhere between five and ten. Recent years seem to suggest that a full lineup of ten Best Picture nominees is mathematically unlikely. I think it safe to assume that at least one of these PGA nominees is falling out.

Also worth mentioning is that while PGA voters get to list their ten favourites on their ballots, Oscar voters only get to list their top five, meaning lower tier consensus titles face an uphill struggle against the passion votes. This is where a movie like Inside Llewyn Davis (not nominated by the PGA) can triumph with the Academy.

Review - Inside Llewyn Davis

If I had wings like Noah's dove,

I'd fly up the river to the one I love,

Oh fare thee well, my honey, fare thee well.

There's a timeless quality to folk music that allows it to resonate for generations because its poetry finds new life with every re-imagining. “Fare Thee Well” (quoted above and throughout this review) can be traced back to 1908 Texas, but has been interpreted and reinterpreted by artists ranging from Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan to Jeff Buckley, and now the Coen brothers in their brilliant new film Inside Llewyn Davis. It's just one of several traditional folk songs masterfully curated and re-purposed by the gifted ear of T-Bone Burnett to breathe truth and illumination into this transfixing character study of a sour musician (Oscar Isaac) trying vainly to get his career and life on track.

Early Oscar predictions - Part 1

Spring is in the air. As the warmer weather thaws me out of post-Oscar hibernation, it's time to start looking ahead to next winter in search of potential awards projects that just might tickle the Academy's fancy. I was going to hold of on this ludicrous practice until after the Cannes Film Festival wrapped up, but it's not like that would make my crystal ball any less foggy, so may as well get it over with.

Last year's early predictions turned out to be a typically imprecise 44/96, but believe it or not, that's actually the best I've ever done! Can I improve?

This is the first of five early predictions pieces I'll be posting this month. I'm starting out this week with Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Actress. Next Monday I'll finish off the major categories.