With eleven days to go until the big night things continue to get clearer and clearer. Recent BAFTA, WGA and ACE wins for The Hurt Locker continue to paint a perfect scenario for the film’s run to a Best Picture win and director Kathryn Bigelow is virtually assured to become the first female Best Director winner. So while adding five films to the list of nominees in the Best Picture category may have beefed up the race, it didn’t make for much confusion.
Sure, the possibility of an upset still looms with the the talk of preferential voting likely to skew the results, especially for those Oscar voters that only vote for one film as opposed to ranking all ten — a possibility that leaves the door open for their vote not counting at all should their pick not be the pick of the majority. Harvey Weinstein has a point when he says the actors are the largest branch of the Academy and they already voted Inglourious Basterds the best ensemble film at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Of course, this isn’t to say every actor voted for Basterds and with Avatar not even in the running at the SAGs, actors didn’t even get a chance to vote for it had they wanted to. After all, the SAGs are merely a look at the actors, not the film as a whole.
That isn’t to say all of the awards from critics circles, associations and guilds leading up to the Oscars don’t mean anything. In fact, for folks like you and I, who love the awards season — and crave the possibility of predicting every category correctly — these are the exact things we must look at when deciding which film we choose. As such, I have decided to put together a more inclusive look at the overture of awards handed out before the big show in a feature I will henceforth refer to as “The Oscar Overture”.
“The Oscar Overture” will be a big part of next year’s Contenders section, replacing the large and admittedly sloppy Critics Top Ten Lists section I have right now.
Of the 18 guilds, groups and associations listed below we are still waiting on results from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and the Cinema Audio Society (CAS), both of which will be announcing their winners this Saturday. That said, here is a look at the opening installment of “The Oscar Overture”:
Of course, with so many categories it can be hard to make heads or tails of it all. The Hurt Locker is listed as the winner in 11 of the 18 categories. Does that mean it is the clear cut Oscar Best Picture winner? I am saying it does, but you could also look back only a few years to when Brokeback Mountain won both the DGA and PGA awards but lost at the SAGs to Crash. Such a scenario could add to the Basterds argument considering that is the same path Inglourious Basterds and The Hurt Locker are on.
Like Crash beating Brokeback in 2006, could Basterds pull a similar upset in 2010? It could, but I wouldn’t say it’s likely.
As for other categories, earlier this week I reviewed the five animated shorts and included my predictions for those, which I have added to the complete list below.
I have also started thinking more and more about the sound, cinematography and art direction categories. Last week I had this feeling The Hurt Locker was sure to get either sound mixing or editing and even went with Sherlock Holmes in the Art Direction category. On second thought, these picks are all overlooking the best parts of Avatar, a film that now looks like it won’t be walking home with Best Picture, but I have a feeling may end up sweeping the technical awards or coming close to doing so. Of course, once the ASC and CAS weigh in I may be changing my tune once again.
Following the BAFTAs, I know there are some camps hoping Carey Mulligan can sneak in and win Best Actress as Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock fight over the same votes. One person that won’t be voting for either Streep or Bullock is Quentin Tarantino, telling People, “[Carey] is fantastic. I haven’t done my voting yet and I haven’t decided between her and Gabby [Gabourey Sidibe]. It is actually one of the tougher ones and I don’t think I’ll be able to choose until I’m there ready to write it.” I don’t see either Mulligan or Sidibe pulling off the upset, although both are preferred winners to Bullock or Streep in my book.
With all that said, here is my current breakdown for all the categories:
- Best Picture: The Hurt Locker (chart)
- Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker (chart)
- Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart (chart)
- Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side (chart)
- Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds (chart)
- Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, Precious (chart)
- Best Animated Feature Film: Up
- Best Art Direction: Avatar
- Best Cinematography: Avatar
- Best Costumes: The Young Victoria
- Best Documentary (feature): The Cove
- Best Film Editing: Avatar
- Best Foreign Language Film: The Secret in Their Eyes
- Best Makeup: Star Trek
- Best Music (Original Score): Up
- Best Music (Original Song): “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart
- Best Sound Editing: Avatar
- Best Sound Mixing: Avatar
- Best Visual Effects: Avatar
- Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Up In the Air
- Best Writing (Original Screenplay): The Hurt Locker
- Best Short Film (Live-Action): The Door
- Best Short Film (Animated): A Matter of Loaf and Death
Looking above, if you are wondering why I replaced The White Ribbon with The Secret in Their Eyes it is simply based on the word of mouth I am hearing. I have not seen the film and most likely won’t until much later unless someone fires off a screener in my direction soon. In fact I haven’t seen The Milk of Sorrow or Ajami either, but have been lucky enough to watch The White Ribbon twice and just saw A Prophet two nights ago for the third time. However, I feel many Academy members will get bored or frustrated with The White Ribbon and will feel like A Prophet is too much of a genre film for their tastes. So as a result I am going simply based on the opinion of others… which never feels like a winning prospect, but sometimes you gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
The other categories seem rather self-explanatory or I have already explained my reasoning. Based on everything above my winner counts look like this:
- Avatar – 6 Oscars
- The Hurt Locker – 3 Oscars
- Crazy Heart – 2 Oscars
- Up – 2 Oscars
- The Blind Side – 1 Oscar
- The Cove – 1 Oscar
- El Secreto De Sus Ojos – 1 Oscar
- Inglourious Basterds – 1 Oscar
- Precious – 1 Oscar
- Star Trek – 1 Oscar
- Up in the Air – 1 Oscar
- The Young Victoria – 1 Oscar
With that out of the way, click over to the next page for a bit of fun with Oscar numbers you may not tradiontionally think of.
