Forecasting Oscar’s Decisions: Initial 2013 Picks
Cannes Film Festival has came and gone, and with that the road-map to the awards season becomes a little more clear, but remains very hazy to say the least. So comes the time for me to finally make some Oscar predictions for next year. Last year I was able to make predictions within a fortnight of the previous awards ceremony, and managed to do quite well. I nailed four of the Best Picture nominees, and wasn’t too far off on the rest of them. The only two big “whiffs” were One Day and The Artist, the latter of which hadn’t yet played at Cannes and almost no one knew about. As for One Day, well, everybody is allowed to look foolish every now and then.
At Cannes, the most well received films tended to be of the foreign language variety, which don’t get much consideration when it comes to the Best Picture category. Screenplay and acting nominations are a possibility if they are lucky, but Letters from Iwo Jima was the last foreign language film to be nominated for Best Picture, and even that was directed by Clint Eastwood. I could see Rust and Bone potentially breaking through, as well as maybe The Grandmasters considering the people involved. As for the performances, Nicole Kidman, Mads Mikkelsen, and Marion Cotillard all received high praise, with Mikkelsen taking home the award for best actor. The best actress award was split between the two leads of Christian Mungui’s Beyond the Hills, but I highly doubt either of them will receive much attention next winter.
The number of big name titles playing at Cannes this year was larger than usual, although most of the American films didn’t really establish themselves as contenders to be dealt with. Killing Them Softly and Lawless both played well, but didn’t blow anybody out of the water. Lee Daniel’s The Paperboy was highly anticipated, but was destroyed by critics in attendance despite giving high praise to Nicole Kidman’s performance. Moonrise Kingdom opened up the Festival to a warm reception, but I would argue that Anderson’s quirky style likely will never result in a Best Picture nomination, even though a screenplay or performance nominations are still strong possibilities. Holy Motors and Beasts of the Southern Wild were the real hot names at the Festival. The former is way too wild and exotic to ever get the Academy’s attention, while the latter was a Sundance hit that might be limited when it comes to playing in theaters.
Presentations at Cannes for The Master, Silver Linings Playbook, and Django Unchained were all well received and have heightened expectations. The Wachowski’s Cloud Atlas was screened for a select few, and despite the movie being played at just under three hours, most people were blown away by what they saw. Along with Cannes, in the past few weeks there have been a couple movies that have been moved to 2013, most notably Inside Llewyn Davis and Gravity, and they won’t be the last.
While there are plenty of other major players out there, I find there to be three major wild cards for this awards season. First, this summer’s The Dark Knight Rises will open up to what will surely be universal praise. It’s predecessor was one of the reasons why the Academy switched to ten Best Picture nominees, I just doubt that critics will welcome this one as openly. I love Tom Hardy as much as the next guy, but Heath Ledger was the real reason why that movie reached the levels it did, and it’s hard to ask for that same performance from anybody else. Another wild card is The Great Gatsby, an adaptation of a beloved novel. Baz Luhrman is as up and down as they come, and the recent trailer didn’t move me one way or the other. Either he hits it out of the park and it’s the favorite for a number of awards, or it’s a huge swing and miss that even the Golden Globes laughs at. And lastly, the first chapter of The Hobbit opens this winter. Jackson’s prequels to Lord of the Rings has a lot of different variables that will affect how well its received. There’s the higher film rate that people will have to adjust to, revisiting a world that we’ve already walked through three times, and the film isn’t going to have a true conclusion and story arc because it’s only half of a movie. That last part didn’t stop the first two movies from being heavily nominated, however.
I’ve listed which movies I believe will receive a nomination, and around 15 more contenders that I believe have a legitimate shot at an award. All names will be in alphabetical order, and I’m only predicting nominations and not winners.
What movies do you believe are contenders for the Oscars next year? Any movies out there that could surprise us by the end of the year?
The 2013 Predictions After the Jump>>>
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19 Comments
Unless a trailer is coming, I doubt To the Wonder will be nominated for Best Picture. Besides, it’s anyone guess when Terrence Malick’s next film will come out.
It’s already received an ‘R’ rating, so Malick should be done cutting the film, which is usually the reason why it takes his films so long to be released. The movie has UK, Canada, and other distribution rights already claimed, and is just looking for an American distributor at this point to get things going.
I don’t even know why they’re bothering to hold a ceremony. We all know A Thousand Words will win it all.
Haha. I literally looked it up on IMDB thinking “Damn, looks like I forgot a pretty big title”, only to realize that movie has already came out. Well played sir, well played.
It’s all in the name. It just sounds prestigious, doesn’t it?
That’s a good report. I haven’t been keeping up with Cannes as much as last year. Did you actually get to attend? It’s a dream of mine, but I’m just a po’ boy from the south who happens to like movies. When comes to Oscars, is “Beasts of the Southern Wild” even eligible? I know it’s beloved, but it’s foreign right? Therefore not eligible by the Academy’s silly rules.
As for “The Dark Knight Rises”, it’s for more likely to get some nominations if Tom Hardy overdoses and dies.
I did not attend Cannes, but hopefully we get that honor within a few years.
As for Bests of the Southern Wild, it is American. And foreign movies aren’t ineligible for best picture, it’s just a rarity that it happens.
Okay, you are right about Beasts of The Southern Wild. I stand corrected. Technically, you are right about the Oscar issue also, but it’s a complicated matter. Apparently, to be considered for a Best Picture nominee a foreign film must have opened in the US before nominees are selected. To be considered for a Best Foreign film, you have to submit the film from its country of origin.
So most foreign filmmakers submit under the Foreign category as they stand a much higher chance of winning. It is possible to submit for both as long as both requirements are met. They need to clean up those rules a bit I think. “The Artist” got in on a technicality. It’s a foreign film, but was silent. Because the dialogue could so easily be submitted with english text it got by. And deserved it I might add.
P.S. when you do go to Cannes….take me with you? =(
Any movie is eligible for Best Picture as long as it plays in certain New York or Los Angeles theaters before the New Year.
The rules aren’t that hard for foreign films to get nominated, it’s just a matter of the voters actually voting for them.
And you have to remember, it’s about foreign LANGUAGE films. Slumdog Millionaire was a British film, and was in plain English. So while technically “foreign”, it was not eligible for the foreign LANGUAGE nomination. So while The Artist might’ve been French, it didn’t have any French language to qualify it for the foreign language category. And like I said, practically any film is eligible as long as it meets the theater requirements, foreign or not.
Well I’m sure it’s harder for a foreign film to find US distribution than a domestic film.
Even if the rules don’t make it harder, it certainly encourages foreign films to be submitted to the foreign category because the pool of competition is less.
The Artist and Slumdog aren’t exactly the same case. The Artist was full of mostly french actors whose native language was French. The director was also French. Slumdog was clearly made for English-speaking audiences. The original version of “The Artist” was in French. It was remade with English dialogue screens for Oscar consideration. If it weren’t for the Oscars they could have just used subtitles on those screens.
To further my point, in the history of the Academy Awards, only 5 foreign language films have ever been nominated for a best picture award.
Oh, I agree that the number of foreign language films being nominated is quite disappointing, but that is mostly due to voting tendencies and availability of those movies to the voters.
And eight films have been nominated. Still a number that should be much larger, however.
I was going by this article. http://www.emanuellevy.com/oscar/oscar-history-foreign-language-films-as-best-picture-nominees-1/
I misread. It says, “since the establishment of the foreign-language category” there have been 5. Either way it doesn’t matter. I think it’s a combination of the voters and the rules.
I’m stilly REALLY pissed off that Melancholia didn’t get a nomination. To an extent, it discredited the other nominees.
For the categories that mostly interest me (Best Picture & Director) I think this will probably be PT Anderson’s year with The Master, other contenders: Michael Haneke with Amour, Andrew Dominik with Killing Them Softly.
I think The Master has the best chance out of those three. I like Dominik’s work, but I question whether the Academy will ever give him the full recognition he deserves.
A great list of contenders here! I always love this time of year when everything still seems possible, before we’ve moved into the “done deal” stage of the race. Well done!
Thanks! I will say that I did use your lists for a bit of referencing.
Yeah, I was shocked not to see The Master (and its children) amongst your top contenders for the major awards. Was it not received well-enough at Cannes? We all know PTA can do no wrong, right?
And c’mon – you don’t think DDL is a lock for a Best Actor nom (if not win)?
I don’t think the full version of The Master was played at Cannes, and if it was, it was to a select few. Good things came out of it, though.
Master was one of the first two or three left off the list. Oscar likes his screenplays well enough (three times), but it took DDL to push him over the top. I think Phoenix is in for a nomination, if not a win, but I had to make cuts somewhere. Everybody and their mom is projecting The Master, and sometimes you just have to go against the grain.
Almost the same scenario with DDL. I didn’t leave out either one simply to be different, but at this time last year, Leo was a “lock” for “J. Edgar”. If Spielberg gets the movie nominated simply because it’s Spielberg (like War Horse), his odds increase. Something about this movie gives me great hesitation, though. I included it for Picture and Nomination because I think the Academy will ultimately go that way, no matter how good the movie is. The acting categories usually work a little different, unless your name is Meryl Streep.
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