With the announcement of the 2013 Toronto Film Festival lineup (see it The Secret Life of Walter Mitty it’s time to do a little rearranging of my Oscar predictions as I have touched up all of the top categories including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Actress and Adapted and Original Screenplay. Yes, there was a lot to take a look at.
Beginning with Best Picture, you’re going to see a running theme in these predictions as David O. Russell‘s American Hustle is moving up the ranks in more than one category. I’ve moved the ’70s set feature into the #1 slot for Best Picture, shifting Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street down a notch (full chart here).
Going from The Fighter, to Silver Linings Playbook and now American Hustle it just may be Russell’s time as I’ve also moved him to the #1 slot in my Best Director predictions as well as kept Eric Singer‘s screenplay in the #1 spot in the Original Screenplay predictions.
On virtually all of the boards the major cause of movement had to do with films expected to make a showing at either the Toronto or Venice Film Festivals only to end up skipping both. First is Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, which I thought had a great shot in several categories, but seeing how it doesn’t even have a release date yet it’s hard to predict it for much of anything with it also skipping the Fall festival circuit.
I’ve also had to shuffle the boards where Diana and Grace of Monaco were concerned as the Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman-led features don’t appear to be making their way to any festivals and Diana doesn’t even have a release date. As such, Watts is out of my top five after starting the prediction process earlier this year at #1 on my Best Actress charts. Kidman remains a solid contender considering she’s backed by The Weinstein Co., but at this point a Best Actress nod is the best I’m imagining for that film.
Speaking of festival bumps and bruises, the addition of The Railway Man and Devil’s Knot to the Toronto lineup gives some hope and both Parkland and A Most Wanted Man have recently landed domestic distributors, which means they may find a way to work themselves into the conversation yet.
The hardest predictions to make at the moment are in the Supporting and Screenplay categories as simply not enough has stood out just yet and not enough has been seen. Bruce Dern (Nebraska) leads my Supporting Actor charts and Amy Adams (American Hustle) tops my Supporting Actress charts, but neither are a firm bet at this moment in time.
In the Screenplay categories I’ve already mentioned Eric Singer’s American Hustle screenplay tops my Original charts while I’m sticking with Terence Winter‘s The Wolf of Wall Street screenplay in Adapted.
I offer up further explanation for each individual category on their respective pages, which you can access right here or by using the linked list below.
