It feels good to know it will only be a matter of weeks before I will have seen all the major Oscar contenders as my prediction charts are starting to be less about buzz and the opinion of others and I can finally add my own personal opinion into each. Of course, I still have films such as Invictus, Nine and Avatar yet to see, but by the end of day on December 10 that will no longer be the case for those three.
I will also have seen Brothers, Broken Embraces and The Princess and the Frog by that time as well.
Unfortunately, Crazy Heart and The Last Station are ducking me as I haven’t heard a word about either film here in Seattle, but hope to soon.
As for what I have seen, I finally saw Up In the Air just last night as well as The Young Victoria, Me and Orson Welles and A Single Man recently. All four had an effect on me and all four are worth seeing. But let’s dig into the Oscar prospects.
In the Best Picture category there weren’t any major changes as Precious remains my front-runner, but at the bottom of the stack A Single Man moved into the top ten while the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man was edged out. My top ten still contains unseen films such as Invictus and Nine, while Crazy Heart makes its debut at #13.
The Best Actress category didn’t see much movement other than Helen Mirren moving into the fourth slot for The Last Station edging Saorise Ronan out of the top five. Of course, this is just buzz movement at this time as I still haven’t seen either The Last Station or The Lovely Bones so things could change very quickly. Emily Blunt also makes her debut in the category for The Young Victoria at the #8 slot.
The biggest move in the Supporting Actress category is Julianne Moore for a fantastic performance in A Single Man as she pulls out an English accent with professional ease playing a 48-year-old desperate divorcée.
On a side note, if you are interested in discussing this year’s Best Cinematography enter the conversation right over here. And finally, next Tuesday, December 1 will feature the 25th Film Independent Spirit Award Nominations Press Conference at 8:00am PST at the Sofitel hotel in Los Angeles. Stay tuned for that.
For a complete look at my prediction charts I have included the links to each category directly below. On top of that, The Envelope at the Los Angeles Times has finally presented the first batch of aggregate predictions of which I am a part of. Their Buzzmeter appears to be having some issues, but there is a post right here that contains the most recent predictions as well as a list of the 19 other pundits contributing to the prediction charts.
You can check out all my latest Oscar Predictions by visiting The Contenders or clicking on any one of the following links to get started. Each opens in a new window so just close the window to return to this post.
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