The Oscars in any given year are a celebration of the year’s best in cinema. Last year wasn’t a great year for Hollywood and it’s reflected in the nominations. There’s better talent outside the nominations than there is in it for any number of reasons. No one is genuinely excited this year, it seems, as this year’s Academy Awards is this weekend and there isn’t the huge buzz that has accompanied the Oscars on a fairly regular enough basis.
From a host (Ellen DeGeneres) that is good but doesn’t really excite too many people to a ton of nominees that do the same, the 2014 Academy Awards presentation feels perfunctory. It’s an awful like the second half of the Super Bowl this year; yeah we wanted to think that Peyton Manning would rally the troops and make it a game, much like we hope the Oscars will somehow feel more important once the ceremony starts, but we all know it’s probably going to be a waste of time.
The commercials will arguably be better than the show itself and the only thing I can reasonably excited about is that maybe Jennifer Lawrence wins again this year, if only for another wacky moment on the podium.
Now, as always, it’s time to play predictions for the Oscars this year. As always I’ve narrowed the field down, eliminating the technical awards and the ones that are never discussed in meaningful
Best Picture
The nominees: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street
The Pick: 12 Years a Slave
The Reason: it’s the best of those assembled and has the “Oscar winner” type of feel to it. No one will ever want to watch it more than once, of course, but it has its place. It’s basically this year’s version of Crash; we can declare it great, et al, but no one’s going to be in a rush to see this multiple times.
Best Director
The nominees: Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity, Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave, Alexander Payne for Nebraska, David O. Russell for American Hustle, Martin Scorsese for The Wolf of Wall Street
The Pick: Cuaron
The Reason: Cuaron has won every notable award going into this and the odds are profoundly against him not winning an Oscar. All the tea leaf awards that usually spell “Best Director” are in play for him.
Best Actor
The nominees: Christian Bale in American Hustle, Bruce Dern in Nebraska, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave, Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club
The Pick: McConaughey
The Reason: This has been the year of McConaughey, as he’s established himself as more than a great pair of abs, and is finally banking on the potential to be the next Paul Newman that he showed oh so long ago in Dazed and Confused. He’s been better elsewhere but this sort of feels like the right part at the right time for a win. The only other serious candidate is Ejiofor, who was spectacular in Slave, but with Dallas Buyer’s Club most likely getting shut out on top this feels like it’d be a good consolation prize for him.
Best Actress
The nominees: Amy Adams in American Hustle, Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine, Judi Dench in Philomena, Sandra Bullock in Gravity, Meryl Streep in August: Osage County
The Pick: Adams
The Reason: Adams is the only actress who hasn’t won before and the Academy doesn’t tend to reward the same person more than twice. It’s why Streep won’t get a record 4th or Blanchett a third. Dench would be the other candidate here but Adams has the sort of narrative that voters tend to like. With American Hustle also most likely being shut out elsewhere this feels like a proper consolation prize for it.
Best Supporting Actor
The nominees: Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips, Bradley Cooper in American Hustle, Michael Fassbender in 12 Years a Slave, Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street, Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club
The Pick: Fassbender
The Reason: People want to recognize both DBC and Slave as best film for a lot of reasons but can’t. Thus they’ll split a ton of awards that could go either way. Fassbender seems like a reasonable pick here, especially after being overlooked entirely for Shame a year ago.
Best Supporting Actress
The nominees: Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine, Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle, Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years a Slave, Julia Roberts in August: Osage County, June Squibb in Nebraska
The Pick: Squibb
The Reason: Best supporting actress is always the wild card category for any Oscar pool because it’s yielded the most ecclectic winners of any category. Thus if an upset is going to happen it’ll most likely be here. Squibb stole Nebraska and could steal an Oscar here.
Best Original Screenplay
The nominees: American Hustle, ‘Blue Jasmine, Dallas Buyers Club, Her, Nebraska
The Pick: Her
The Reason: The Academy will want to reward Her more than any other film because it was so daring but won’t in any of the normal categories for obvious reasons. Giving out a screenplay Oscar is usually the token “you made a great film but you aren’t getting anything meaningful here” award for many films.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The nominees: Before Midnight, Captain Phillips, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street
The Pick: Before Midnight
The Reason: The Academy didn’t honor the Delpy/Hawke romantic drama in any category that matters despite it being a near constant on any critic list that matters. It was definitively one of the best films of the year and yet didn’t get nominated for anything of note, much like the prior two films in the series. I think it gets a win here for the same reason Her will win one for screenplay.
Best Animated Feature
The nominees: The Croods, Despicable Me 2, Ernest and Celestine, Frozen, The Wind Rises
The Pick: Frozen
The Reason: No Pixar film this year? I don’t believe that. There has to be a mistake somewhere, right?
(Googles Pixar, finds that Monsters University came and went without a nomination for Pixar for the first time in a long time).
Frozen has all the pedigree to win and is the most recent; The Wind Rises would be appropriate as a cap to Miyazaki but I don’t think it’ll win.
Best Documentary
The nominees: The Act of Killing, Cutie and the Boxer, Dirty Wars, The Square, 20 Feet from Stardom
The Pick: 20 Feet From Stardom
The Reason: Oscar loves navel gazing types of documentaries and a peek at the people behind entertainers, in this case back up singers, is right up the alley. Considering the insanely awful ways documentaries get nominated in the modern era of the Academy this is more of a glorified booby prize than anything else.
Best Foreign Language Film
The nominees: The Broken Circle Breakdown, The Great Beauty, The Hunt, The Missing Picture, Omar
The Pick: Omar
The Reason: No foreign film has really captured the imagination this year like in years past and thus the one from Palestine sort of feels like an Oscar winner.
Best Original Song
The nominees: “Happy” from Despicable Me 2, “Let it go” from Frozen, “The Moon Song” from Her, “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom
The Pick: “Ordinary Love”
The Reason: The Mandela film is going to get something, I think, despite it not getting any other substantial award. The song from Frozen makes sense in this slot, as well.
