All right, considering the fairly low traffic on the screenplays and
the exponentially higher traffic on the acting predictions, you may not be as
attuned to the side categories of the Oscars, but we’ll get back to politics
and film reviews this weekend (I’m planning a posting extravaganza on Saturday,
so look alive and keep hitting refresh!).
In the meantime, though, let’s continue where we left off.
Cinematography
The trick to doing well this early on in the tech category predicting
process is to gain a solid balance between Best Picture nominees (which are
frequently over-nominated) and Academy favorites (each category has the people
they over-nominate). And of
course, when both collide, you have a surefire nominee. That appears to be the case with Best
Picture frontrunner Gravity which is
shot by one of my favorite cinematographers ever, Emmanuel Lubezki. Lubezki has five Oscar nominations and
has the great fortune of working with Terrence Malick and Alfonso Cuaron (I’ll
wait for you to stop turning green with envy), so this is a guarantee.
Bruno Delbonnel’s Inside Llewyn
Davis is the only other merging of an Academy favorite (a three-time
nominee, all for films that didn’t necessarily appear like surefire things at
the time) and a Best Picture contender.
I suspect he’ll also be included.
Because this category is generally susceptible to Best Picture nominees, I guess we’re in for first-timer Sean Bobbitt’s 12 Years a Slave and one-time nominee Barry Ackryod’s Captain Phillips.
The final nomination, though, could go a heap of directions. If it manages a resurgence, Anthony Dod
Mantle’s Rush could be here (he’s
gotten in before). Stuart Dryburgh
has also made it before, though a couple of decades ago, but tech categories
have a long memory and The Secret Life of
Walter Mitty looks visually stunning from the previews.
The Academy occasionally gets a major crush on an effects-laden film, so
Paciific Rim, Oz the Great and Powerful, and
The Hobbit (filmed by Oscar Winner
Andrew Lesnie) are all threats.
However, I’m going to assume that they go with one of the most honored
men in the category ever to not win a trophy: Roger Deakins. Deakins is always a threat here, and has four nominations in the past six
years. His work in Prisoners is great, and I think the category
may be filled with enough newcomers for them to want to reach out for a
frequent nominee for comfort.
Predicted Nominees: 12 Years a
Slave, Captain Phillips, Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, Prisoners
Probably in Sixth Place: The
Secret Life of Walter Mitty (visual effects + some prestige + box office =
a solid haul for the tech categories, and I’ve got a feeling here)
Oddly No One is Talking About: Harris Savides died tragically recently
from cancer and never got a nomination-could AMPAS be guilt-tripped into giving
him a shot with The Bling Ring?
If I Had to Predict a Winner: Gravity-the
combination of a well-snubbed cinematographer and a major motion picture make
this one of the surer winners of this set.
Costume
First off, it’s always important to double check if Sandy Powell or
Colleen Atwood have a film this year, as that is usually a dead giveaway. Atwood doesn’t have any (though she’s
probably already prepping for an Into the
Woods nomination), but Powell is behind The
Wolf of Wall Street, and provided that it gets released, I state she makes
it due to her uncanny ability to get nominated almost every time she tries.
Another frequent nominee in this category, and one who hasn’t been
nominated in decades, is Patricia Norris, who is mounting a comeback of sorts
with the period epic 12 Years a Slave. Considering the dearth of
period films to pick from here (that’s this category’s favorite thing), her
nomination is assured, and she’s a top contender for the win. Ditto Catherine Martin, who tackles the
Roaring 20’s with The Great Gatsby (Martin
does in fact have a Costuming Oscar, for the record).
That gets us to three, but the last two are much rougher to go
through. The Costume guild likes
fantasy films and period films (even extraordinary contemporary work gets
ignored). And yet, there’s not a
lot of standout work here for those categories. With Fantasy, Oz the
Great and Powerful makes the most sense (unless they decide to go with The Hobbit crew randomly)-Gary Jones has
multiple actresses to dress and has an Oscar nomination already for cover. Otherwise Man of Steel, Thor, and The
Secret Life of Walter Mitty don’t have a lot to distinguish themselves.
There are other major films in the race, but they’re all from costume
designers the Academy hasn’t gravitated toward: Saving Mr. Banks, American Hustle, or Dallas Buyers Club are all fairly contemporary, but period enough
to get in if the films are fairly big.
Ruth E. Carter is the only person who has a “modern contemporary”
picture (The Butler) that has
previously been nominated, so that’s worth noting here. Amongst the bunch, pundits are most
keen on American Hustle, so that will
get my alternate spot (though Oz and The Butler both have a good chunk of
argument going for them).
So I’m going to stick with two other more “classically period” films to
round out the category: The Book Thief and
The Invisible Woman. This category especially doesn’t need a
big hit or a big splash to hit with Oscar, and both of these are from
Oscar-nominated costume designers (Anna B. Sheppard and Michael O’Connor,
respectively) who will fill out the extra slots with corsets and WWII
uniforms. This is not a “makes the
most sense” guess, but I think both will get in somewhere, so I’ll go with them
for now.
Predicted Nominees: 12 Years a
Slave, The Book Thief, The Great Gatsby, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf of Wall
Street
Probably in Sixth: American
Hustle (they usually find room for one first-timer)
Oddly No One is Talking About: The
Book Thief, honestly-why is a WWII epic from an Oscar-nominated costume
designer not in contention for more awards? The source material is acclaimed-is there a lot of bad
industry buzz on this one?
If I Had to Predict a Winner: Norris has never won, is the
most-nominated without a win in her category, and is helming a period piece
Best Picture frontrunner. That
seems like a solid bet to me.
Film Editing
More than any other category, this category is largely reliant on the
Best Picture race to determine contenders, and less on the actual editors
themselves. Therefore, it makes
sense to throw the four Best Picture frontrunners right in with the mix: Captain Phillips, American Hustle, Gravity, and
12 Years a Slave.
For the fifth slot we could go with another Best Picture nominee (Thelma
Schoonmaker is one of the few “name” editors and probably deserves an Olympic
medal if she can finish The Wolf of Wall
Street in time). Rush has a lot of editing draws (car
races!), so if it manages to score elsewhere it could also be a threat
here. And of course there’s
Roderick Jaynes, everyone’s favorite pseudonym (it’s really the Coen Brothers)
who could get in for Inside Llewyn Davis. At this point, I’ll say industry
respect for Thelma gets her in, but any of the major Best Picture contenders could
go in that slot and you’d be feeling pretty smart.
Predicted Nominees: 12 Years a
Slave, American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Gravity, The Wolf of Wall Street
Probably in Sixth: Rush
Oddly No One is Talking About: Considering its sudden rise, could Out of the Furnace score somewhere?
If I Had to Predict a Winner: Gravity-Cuaron
gets a trophy then, and everyone is still talking about that unbelievable
opening sequence.
Production Design
The quick question for me is The
Hobbit-Dan Hennah has been nominated for four trips to Middle Earth, and
while everything is a trend until it isn’t, I would be foolish to go against
him, even though, like the Star Wars prequels,
I feel like this is going to start to putter with the Oscars.
Adam Stockhausen is the opposite-he regularly gets snubbed by the
Oscars, but it’s going to be difficult to deny him a spot for the Southern
decay that he brings to 12 Years a Slave-period
Best Picture nominees rarely miss out on nominations here, regardless of the
designer’s Academy track record.
I’ll also throw in that Catherine Martin (she does both this and costume
work) is probably returning for The Great
Gatsby in a repeat of her Moulin
Rouge! double nomination over a decade ago.
The final two slots could go with a Best Picture frontrunner (Gravity, American Hustle, Inside Llewyn Davis), but I’m just not seeing any of them yet (maybe Gravity if
they go overboard, though it’s pretty minimalist work). I do think they’ll select Michael
Corenblith’s Saving Mr. Banks, with
its opulent and iconic sets to work with.
For the final slot, I’m going to go out on a limb and go with another
previous nominee-Robert Stromberg.
Stromberg won back-to-back Oscars for Avatar and Alice in
Wonderland, but he’ll have to settle for a barely there nomination for Oz: The Great and Powerful, which is
just large and garish enough to get selected here.
Predicted Nominees: 12 Years a
Slave, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, Oz: the Great and Powerful, Saving Mr.
Banks
Probably in Sixth: Gravity…just
because when Oscar likes something, they really
like something
Oddly No One is Talking About: It’s a different verse, same as the
first: the World War II epic The Book
Thief seems perfect for this…
If I Had to Predict a Winner: It’s been a while since a period film was
the Best Picture frontrunner, so I’m going to go big here-12 Years again.
Visual Effects
Look alive people-this is always the most popular OVP category, so I’m
guessing you’ll like this. First,
let’s get the obvious out of the way-Gravity
is winning this in the biggest of ways. It might be the surest winner of the night, in the vein that
Avatar and Life of Pi was a surefire combo of VFX and Best Picture
nominee. The rest of the four
nominees are just fighting for the chance to lose.
But it’s still an honor to be nominated, or so they say. I suspect one of the losers will be The Hobbit, which used to own this
category (three years in a row), and will have to settle for a nomination. Anything after that, though, is
guessing what kind of mood Oscar is in.
If he wants comic book films, he’ll have Man of Steel and Iron Man 3 (this
category has gone for all three of the other installments of this series). If he wants something a little bit off
the beaten trail, he’s got The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty or Ender’s Game. And if he wants a film that was huge
that no one can remember (there’s always one in this category), you’ve got a
tossup between Pacific Rim and Oz: the Great and Powerful. The nominations are almost certainly
going to be three of these six films, but which?
To sort out my logic, I think that Pacific
Rim is too big to completely miss (despite its sore box office returns), so
it makes it. Iron Man 3 is the most successful film of the year, which almost
always means a nomination (in the past 25 years, only Spider-Man 3 missed completely on Oscar night and still won the Box
Office crown), so I will go with it.
Secret Life if it scores with
critics could make it here, but I’m going to once again go off the beaten path
and pick Oz the Great and Powerful. Man
of Steel makes more sense, but Oz has
that Snow White and the Huntsman vibe
going for it, and the Oscars seem somewhat done with superheroes (witness The Avengers low haul and the stunning
drought for The Dark Knight Rises last
year).
Predicted Nominees: Gravity, The
Hobbit, Iron Man 3, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Pacific Rim
Probably in Sixth: Man of Steel
Oddly No One is Talking About: Elysium
may have been terrible, but it’s a big and showy terrible, which sometimes
resonates here.
If I had to Predict a Winner: Gravity
Makeup and Hairstyling
Trying to make sense of this category is impossible. Seriously-any film could randomly get
in here. Even with the bakeoff you
can’t figure it out. But I will
once again attempt the impossible.
Rick Baker has no contenders (though he has Maleficent next year, so that’s an eighth Oscar to start counting on), but The Hobbit should be able to get in
considering it has such luck in the past (if it ain’t broke…). Rush
has burn makeup, which is usually a plus in this category, and the film has
to make it onto my actual five for a tech category sometime.
The last nominee could go a few ways-the old age makeup in The Butler is something that Oscar will
gravitate toward (they love seeing iconic faces get morphed). 12
Years a Slave could get a bit of a halo effect from that Best Picture
nomination (in which case it might well win). And there’s of course my favorite film to insert here, Oz: the Great and Powerful, which
definitely has fun with its beautiful actresses, making them ugly. Ehh…I’ll go with 12 Years just so I have a film to predict for a win.
Predicted Nominees: 12 Years a
Slave, The Hobbit, Rush
Probably in Fourth: The Butler
Oddly No One is Talking About: This category has nominated TERRIBLE movies in the past-The Lone Ranger has makeup…
If I Had to Predict a Winner: 12
Years a Slave
We’ll finish up the final predictions tomorrow-in the meantime, what
are you agreeing/disagreeing with here?
What are your wild-and-crazy predictions? Share in the comments!
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