So it’s that time of year again. The Academy Awards. Whatever you think of the awards show, whether you think the awards actually carry any weight or whether the whole thing is just a masturbatory exercise in self-importance, it’s still kind of fun to make predictions and argue who you think deserves to win. That’s what I’m here to do today. So without further ado, here are my picks for the winners of the 85th Academy Awards.
Best Film Editing:
- Argo – William Goldenberg
- Life of Pi – Tim Squyres
- Lincoln – Michael Kahn
- Silver Linings Playbook – Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers
- Zero Dark Thirty – Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg
I’m not completely confident in this pick, as it could go pretty easily to either Argo or Life of Pi, but I think Zero Dark Thirty has a good shot here. It’s a film that spans the course of almost a decade and captures the crazy, insane, frustrating hunt for Osama bin Laden as well as the final operation to capture him in a way that keeps you gripped and invested the whole time. It covers a lot of ground without feeling burdensome and that’s definitely an impressive accomplishment.
Who should win: Cloud Atlas
Seriously, it’s insane that Cloud Atlas didn’t get a nomination here. I know it was a really polarizing movie and I completely understand why a lot of people didn’t like it, but what they accomplished in terms of editing is nothing short of astounding. The way they cross-cut between six different stories occurring in completely different times and places was incredible and was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in a film in a long time.
Best Visual Effects:
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, and R. Christopher White
- Life of Pi – Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan de Boer, and Donald R. Elliott
- Marvel’s The Avengers – Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams, and Dan Sudick
- Prometheus – Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley, and Martin Hill
- Snow White and the Huntsman – Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould, and Michael Dawson
This one is Life of Pi. No question about it. Life of Pi was a movie that existed almost purely for the sake of visual effects and playing around with 3D while forgetting almost completely about telling a compelling narrative. In another year The Hobbit or The Avengers may have won, but this year it’s Life of Pi.
Who should win: Life of Pi
Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
- Hitchcock – Howard Berger, Peter Montagna, and Martin Samuel
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater, and Tami Lane
- Les Misérables – Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell
Anthony Hopkins in a fat suit could win this one, but I think The Hobbit will take this one as a consolation for losing visual effects.
Who should win: The Hobbit
Best Costume Design:
- Anna Karenina – Jacqueline Durran
- Les Misérables – Paco Delgado
- Lincoln – Joanna Johnston
- Mirror Mirror – Eiko Ishioka
- Snow White and the Huntsman – Colleen Atwood
Best Costume Design almost always goes to a period film, and this year most of the nominees are period. I’m saying that Les Mis gets this one simply because it has the most period costumes.
Who should win: Les Mis
As much as I want to say The Avengers here, most of that costume design was done in earlier movies. Les Mis had some good costumes so I’m fine with that one winning.
Best Production Design:
- Anna Karenina – Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Dan Hennah, Ra Vincent, and Simon Bright
- Les Misérables – Eve Stewart and Anna Lynch-Robinson
- Life of Pi – David Gropman and Anna Pinnock
- Lincoln – Rick Carter and Jim Erickson
This is another tricky one because any of these could pretty easily win it, but I’m going to say Les Mis on a gut instinct.
Who should win: Lincoln
All of these films had good production design, but I think Lincoln is the standout here. The film wraps you up completely in the setting of Civil War America and feels very real the entire time. Les Mis had good production design but the awful cinematography hid it from the audience most of the time.
Best Cinematography:
- Anna Karenina – Seamus McGarvey
- Django Unchained – Robert Richardson
- Life of Pi – Claudio Miranda
- Lincoln – Janusz Kamiński
- Skyfall – Roger Deakins
I really want to be wrong with this one, but I think it’ll go to Life of Pi for much the same reason that Hugo won last year, namely it’s a movie that does something meaningful with 3D rather than tacking it on for the sake of earning a few extra dollars per ticket. Don’t get me wrong, it was a pretty movie, but its prettiness was more centered around the visual effects than it was the actual cinematography.
Who should win: Skyfall
Good god was Skyfall a gorgeous film! Roger Deakins is a living legend and the cinematography he brought to the latest Bond film was jaw dropping. You could take just about any still frame from the film and blow it up to poster size and hang it on wall. That scene in Shanghai was astounding. I fear he’ll get trumped by the 3D work on Life of Pi, but I think Deakins deserves the Oscar far more than anyone in this category.
Best Sound Editing:
- Argo – Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn
- Django Unchained – Wylie Stateman
- Life of Pi – Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton
- Skyfall – Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers
- Zero Dark Thirty – Paul N. J. Ottosson
This one’s really just a shot in the dark. Argo, Skyfall, and Zero Dark Thirty all have a pretty good shot at winning this one, but for whatever reason my gut says Zero Dark Thirty, so that’s what I’m going with.
Who should win: Zero Dark Thirty
Best Sound Mixing:
- Argo – John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, and Jose Antonio Garcia
- Les Misérables – Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, and Simon Hayes
- Life of Pi – Ron Bartlett, D. M. Hemphill, and Drew Kunin
- Lincoln – Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, and Ronald Judkins
- Skyfall – Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell, and Stuart Wilson
The short hand for remembering the difference between sound mixing and sound editing is that editing is sound created in post-production and mixing is sound created on the set. With that in mind I think Les Mis will win this one thanks to the decision to record all the songs live on set rather than dubbing over in post as is generally the standard.
Who should win: Argo
Les Mis was a noble experiment, but I felt the results were somewhat mixed. Some of the songs sounded spectacular with the live performance, but others were a bit spotty. Argo, on the other hand had some incredible sound mixing, and they frequently used moments of chaotic sound to raise tension and keep the audience invested.
Best Original Score:
- Anna Karenina – Dario Marianelli
- Argo – Alexandre Desplat
- Life of Pi – Mychael Danna
- Lincoln – John Williams
- Skyfall – Thomas Newman
As someone who is typically really into film scores there weren’t many this year that compelled me to purchase. Of these five I’m probably most fond of Skyfall because I think Thomas Newman is a great composer and the music of James Bond is pretty classic. However, I think Life of Pi will get this one. Of the five on this list it has probably the most unique score and it complements well with the fantastical visuals of the movie.
Who should win: Life of Pi
Best Original Song:
- “Before My Time” from Chasing Ice – J. Ralph
- “Everybody Needs a Best Friend” from Ted – Walter Murphy and Seth MacFarlane
- “Pi’s Lullaby” from Life of Pi – Mychael Danna and Bombay Jayashri
- “Skyfall” from Skyfall – Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth
- “Suddenly” from Les Misérables – Claude-Michel Schönberg, Herbert Kretzmer, and Alain Boublil
Adele wins this one. This is hardly a question. Everyone (relatively speaking) loves Adele and this song is a huge hit. It wins.
Who should win: Skyfall
Best Live Action Short Film:
- Asad – Bryan Buckley and Mino Jarjoura
- Buzkashi Boys – Sam French and Ariel Nasr
- Curfew – Shawn Christensen
- Death of a Shadow (Dood Van Een Schaduw) – Tom Van Avermaet and Ellen De Waele
- Henry – Yan England
I have not seen any of these short films, but word through the grape vine says Curfew will win, so I’ll defer my judgement here to people more informed than I am.
Who should win: No opinion
Best Animated Short Film:
- Adam and Dog – Minkyu Lee
- Fresh Guacamole – PES
- Head over Heels – Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly
- The Longest Daycare – David Silverman
- Paperman – John Kahrs
On the other hand, I have seen all of these short films. Both Head over Heels and Adam and Dog have an outside chance of winning, and both are very good shorts, but I think that Paperman has this one in the bag. Paperman is jaw dropping and is bound to be a watershed moment in the art of animation; it also manages to tell a really compelling and heartfelt story in addition to the technical accomplishment. If this doesn’t win, Academy voters are insane.
Who should win: Paperman
Best Documentary – Feature:
- 5 Broken Cameras – Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
- The Gatekeepers – Dror Moreh, Philippa Kowarsky, and Estelle Fialon
- How to Survive a Plague – David France and Howard Gertler
- The Invisible War – Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering
- Searching for Sugar Man – Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn
Again, this is another category where I have not seen any of the nominees. Conventional wisdom says Searching for Sugar Man so I’ll trust them.
Who should win: No opinion
Best Documentary – Short Subject:
- Inocente – Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine
- Kings Point – Sari Gilman and Jedd Wider
- Mondays at Racine – Cynthia Wade and Robin Honan
- Open Heart – Kief Davidson and Cori Shepherd Stern
- Redemption – Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill
Same deal here as with Documentary features.
Who should win: No opinion
Best Animated Feature:
- Brave – Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman
- Frankenweenie – Tim Burton
- ParaNorman – Sam Fell and Chris Butler
- The Pirates! Band of Misfits – Peter Lord
- Wreck-It Ralph – Rich Moore
There’s no legitimate reason for either Frankenweenie or The Pirates! to be on this list and Brave received too much of a luke-warm reception to be a serious contender. That narrows the list down to ParaNorman and Wreck-It Ralph. Wreck-It Ralph has so far received more love and attention than ParaNorman has so I think Ralph is a pretty safe pick.
Who should win: ParaNorman
God, I love this movie. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Wreck-It Ralph quite a lot, and I’ll be more than happy when it wins the Oscar (it’s also kind of a shame that Walt Disney Animation Studios has never won Best Animated Picture), but I think ParaNorman is the better film. Everything in the film just works, from the gorgeous stop motion animation, to the great characters, and a perfect blend of scary and humorous storytelling. LAIKA did a fantastic job, and I think they really deserve the win for this.
Best Foreign Language Film:
- Amour (Austria)
- Kon-Tiki (Norway)
- No (Chile)
- A Royal Affair (Denmark)
- War Witch (Canada)
I’ve only seen one of these films, but it also happens to be the one that’s guaranteed to win. Amour is the only film on this list that is also nominated for Best Picture. This is a no brainer.
Who should win: No opinion
Best Writing – Original Screenplay:
- Amour – Michael Haneke
- Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino
- Flight – John Gatins
- Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
- Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal
My intent was to try to read all the nominated screenplays before the Academy Awards, but I only ended up having time to get through a handful of them. Therefore I can’t really comment on how good each screenplay is, but rather have to make guesses based on the writers and on the films themselves. For Original Screenplay, I’d really like to see Tarantino win his first Oscar, but I think he rubs too many Academy voters the wrong way. With that in mind I think Zero Dark Thirty stands a pretty good chance here. Moonrise Kingdom was probably too quirky, if Flight was anything like the movie it was probably too boring. Amour might stand a chance, but my gut says Zero Dark Thirty.
Who should win: No opinion
Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay:
- Argo – Chris Terrio from The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez & The Great Escape by Joshuah Bearman
- Beasts of the Southern Wild – Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin from Juicy and Delicious by Lucy Alibar
- Life of Pi – David Magee from Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Lincoln – Tony Kushner from Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell from The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Again, I only read a couple of these screenplays so I can’t say which one is definitively the best, but I think this is where Silver Linings Playbook will get a bone thrown to it. A lot of people are picking Argo for this, but having actually read that one I’m not sure if it’ll win. It was a fine screenplay, but far from the best I’ve ever read, and even of the few nominees that I’ve read it wasn’t the best.
Who should win: No opinion
Best Supporting Actor:
- Alan Arkin – Argo as Lester Siegel
- Robert De Niro – Silver Linings Playbook as Pat Solitano Sr.
- Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Master as Lancaster Dodd
- Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln as Thaddeus Stevens
- Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained as Dr. King Schultz
This is a tough one. Just about any of these could win (except Philip Seymour Hoffman because The Master made too many people mad when they couldn’t understand it) but my gut says Tommy Lee Jones on this one. Robert De Niro doing his best Robert De Niro impression could win due to all the love Silver Linings has gotten, and Alan Arkin might stand a shot as well, but in the end I think it’ll go to Jones for his performance that combines humor with historical gravitas.
Who should win: Samuel L. Jackson – Django Unchained as Stephen
This is another case where the Academy’s nominations have a glaring omission. Samuel L. Jackson was downright terrifying as Stephen in Django Unchained. Sam Jackson has a well known schtick that everybody loves, and his roles often don’t diverge from that too much, but here he puts it all on the table with a performance that practically says, “Yeah, that’s right. I can ACT motherfucker!” Christoph Waltz was also good in the film, but I think his role in Inglourious Basterds was more memorable. Of all the great performances in Django this one stood out the most to me, and it’s an incredible shame that he didn’t get the nomination.
Best Supporting Actress:
- Amy Adams – The Master as Peggy Dodd
- Sally Field – Lincoln as Mary Todd Lincoln
- Anne Hathaway – Les Misérables as Fantine
- Helen Hunt – The Sessions as Cheryl Cohen-Greene
- Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook as Dolores Solitano
There’s several really great performances on this list, but in the end four of them might as well be named “Not Anne Hathaway.” Hathaway was only in Les Mis for a grand total of a half hour, but in that time she managed to shine far brighter than anything else in the film. Her song was one of the most powerful moments of the year, which is extremely impressive considering that the rest of the film surrounding it was kind of a poorly directed mess.
Who should win: Anne Hathaway
Best Actor:
- Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook as Pat Solitano Jr.
- Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln as Abraham Lincoln
- Hugh Jackman – Les Misérables as Jean Valjean
- Joaquin Phoenix – The Master as Freddie Quell
- Denzel Washington – Flight as William “Whip” Whitaker
Again, there’s a lot of great performances in this category, but there’s one real standout and that’s Daniel Day-Lewis’ Abraham Lincoln. Day-Lewis absolutely embodied the character of our 16th President in a way that didn’t feel like a performance, but a window back through time. We’ve had a popular portrayal of how Lincoln sounded and acted for the better part of 100 years or more and Daniel Day-Lewis managed to completely erase that, truly creating a stunning representation of perhaps our nation’s greatest President.
Who should win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Actress:
- Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty as Maya
- Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook as Tiffany Maxwell
- Emmanuelle Riva – Amour as Anne Laurent
- Quvenzhané Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild as Hushpuppy
- Naomi Watts – The Impossible as Maria Bennett
I think this will be the big surprise of the night. A lot of people are expecting Jennifer Lawrence to have this one in the bag, but I think Emmanuelle Riva will win the award. Both were very good performances, but Riva had a more dramatic and tragic transformation over the course of the film and the Academy loves that kind of stuff.
Who should win: Quvenzhané Wallis
Jessica Chastain also had an incredible performance, but what Quvenzhané Wallis was able to do at the age of five in Beasts of the Southern Wild floored me. Five years old and she’s already out-acting the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Naomi Watts! And make no mistake, this isn’t just a case of a precocious little kid running around and the editor pulling out the best stuff from countless takes, you can absolutely tell that she knows what she’s doing and has a real craft to her performance. Beasts of the Southern Wild was not one of my favorite movies of the year, but Wallis’ performance is astounding.
Best Director:
- Michael Haneke – Amour
- Ang Lee – Life of Pi
- David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook
- Steven Spielberg – Lincoln
- Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild
I’m going to have to say Ang Lee with this one simply because Life of Pi has the second most nominations behind Lincoln and the Academy has a time honored tradition of snubbing Spielberg for the Best Director Oscar. Failing Ang Lee, I think David O. Russell could potentially get it.
Who should win: Steven Spielberg
Spielberg is one of the most important, influential, and flat-out best directors of all time, and Lincoln was, I feel, one of his strongest films. He told the story of the last few months of Abraham Lincoln’s life beautifully and expertly wrapped it around an extremely timely narrative. Spielberg falls in the category of extremely influential directors who were consistently snubbed by the Academy, and he already has two more Oscars than Tarantino, Hitchcock, and Kubrick so I don’t think he’ll be getting another despite the fact that he absolutely deserves it.
Best Picture:
- Amour – Margaret Menegoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, and Michael Katz
- Argo – Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck, and George Clooney
- Beasts of the Southern Wild – Dan Janvey, Josh Penn, and Michael Gottwald
- Django Unchained – Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin, and Pilar Savone
- Les Misérables – Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, and Cameron Mackintosh
- Life of Pi – Gil Netter, Ang Lee, and David Womark
- Lincoln – Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy
- Silver Linings Playbook – Donna Gigliotti, Bruce Cohen, and Jonathan Gordon
- Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow, and Megan Ellison
A few months ago I would have said without hesitation that Lincoln was a shoe-in for this award, but now that time has passed and Argo has almost unilaterally swept the top awards in just about every other industry ceremony, I’m going to have to side with conventional wisdom and pick it to win. The Best Picture race essentially comes down to Argo vs. Lincoln vs. Silver Linings, and I think Argo will take the Oscar.
Who should win: Lincoln
Of the films on this list Django Unchained is my personal favorite, and it’s the one I would have voted for were I an Academy voter, however, I think Lincoln is the most deserving of the win. More than probably any other film on this list Lincoln is an all-timer. This is a film that people 10, 20, 30 years from now will still be watching and will still be regarded as a classic. Argo was a really great film, and I won’t be upset by it winning, but I just don’t think it’s destined to be a classic in the same way Lincoln is. That being said Argo is a thousand times more deserving of Best Picture than Silver Linings Playbook is, and if that one wins I’m going to throw the biggest of fits.
David Daut 