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: 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...

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 - 12 Years a Slave

Two men labor on sweltering a Louisiana afternoon, planing wood and hammering nails into an small unfinished building. To their own eyes, they are equal; sharing conversation and stories of their lives. But equal they are not; one a free white man working for wage, the other a black man in bondage, working simply because it is what he was sold to do. “Your story is amazing,” the free man says to the slave. “And in no good way.” That really is the most essential way to describe the incredible true story of Solomon Northrup, who was kidnapped from his home and family to be sold into slavery. Based on Northrup's 1853 memoir, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave stares unblinking into arguably the darkest chapter of the United States' history, making a case for itself as the definitive American horror story.

In 1814, still 59 years before the Emancipation Proclamation, Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) lives as an upstanding citizen in Saratoga, NY – an atypically progressive community for its time. A gifted violinist by trade and a decent man by nature, he is free and proud to walk the streets with his family, wearing his finest clothes, frequenting the finest shops, sheltered from common bigotry by his respected status. But this dream existence proves to be just that: a dream – one from which he awakens in shackles, alone and confused in a cold, dark cell. Daring to insist to his captors that he is free man and justice shall be done, he is flogged, menaced, and stripped of his identity along with his bloodied shirt. He is Solomon Northrup no more. He is a “Georgia runaway” by the name of Platt, or so he must pretend if he wishes to survive his waking nightmare.