And here we are. After multiple Oscar predictions posts over the last couple of months and final predictions for Best Director, Actor and Actress, and Supporting Actor and Actress through the week, we arrive at the biggest category of all… Best Picture.
Unlike all other races which are set at five nominees, the selections for Best Picture can be anywhere between five and ten films. This, of course, makes it tougher to predict but I gotta do what I gotta do.
Last year was the first time for the 5 through 10 format and 9 pictures were nominated. I am predicting that nine movies once again will make the cut.
In my mind, there are five shoo-in nominees: Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Ben Affleck’s Argo, Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. If any one of these movies miss the cut, I’d be very surprised. Sitting at #6 as a near shoo-in is Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.
Then it gets complicated. Really complicated.
Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is an enormous question mark. It’s tough to determine whether or not the Academy will honor it, with some of the controversy involved with it. Django is one of the best reviewed films of the year and it’s on its way to becoming Tarantino’s highest grosser ever. I have gone back and forth on whether I believe it gets in. At the end of the day, I’m predicting its nomination with the caveat that its exclusion will not surprise me all that much.
The French drama Amour was very well reviewed and has picked up some critic organizations awards. This one could also go either way. So could Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson’s comedy released last summer that seems to be gaining a lot of steam lately. The indie favorite Beasts of the Southern Wild has a lot of fans, too. So does The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a British pic that did well at the box office. The tsunami drama The Impossible garnered solid reviews, as did Robert Zemeckis’s alcoholism drama Flight with Denzel Washington. There’s another French film, The Intouchables, which has gained traction out of nowhere all of a sudden.
Another picture that seems to gaining traction: a little flick called Skyfall. The 007 adventure could make history by being the first Bond movie to receive a Best Picture nomination. It is a very real possibility and its inclusion would not shock me.
Lastly, we come to Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. When it was released in early fall, it was immediately considered a near shoo-in for a Best Picture nod. Then it started falling off the radar in a major way. Two factors contributed to this: while lots of critics adored it, others were ambivalent and audiences didn’t respond well. Also, a lot of the movies released after The Master made good on their Oscar potential – Lincoln, Argo, Les Mis, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook. This has caused most Oscar prognosticators to leave The Master off the list, including me when I made my last round of predictions. So consider this my dark horse pick: I’m going against the conventional wisdom and putting it back in because I think those who love this movie really loved it. That might be enough to put it back in the mix.
I mentioned a number of films because I wanted to give you the names of all titles that I believe could possibly get in. Of course, not all of them can.
The Oscar nominations are out tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM Eastern time. After a lot of blogging and thinking, I will predict the nine movies that will be nominated for Best Picture tomorrow will be…
FINAL PREDICTIONS: BEST PICTURE
Amour
Argo
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
The Master
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty
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