Post by StevePulaski on Feb 12, 2014 18:08:20 GMT -5
Sorry for the delay in releasing my picks; just wanted to be able to take the nominations separately and consider them each on my own time to come to a reasonable conclusion.
NOTE: These are predictions, not preferences.
Best Picture:
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street
It comes down to American Hustle, Gravity, and 12 Years a Slave for this category, but really, American Hustle is the upset. It will be a battle of technology vs. storyline dominance in terms of what will win Best Picture this year. I go with 12 Years a Slave and will be kind of livid if Gravity wins.
Best Actor in a Leading Role:
Christian Bale (American Hustle)
Bruce Dern (Nebraska)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
2014 was a stacked year for male performances, so much so that other highly praised talent such as Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis), Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips), Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station), Forrest Whitaker (Lee Daniels' The Butler), and Robert Redford (All is Lost) all went without a nomination. Even narrowing it down to five, this is still a tough pick. I'd grant DiCaprio with his first Oscar win because portraying Jordan Belfort had to be an exhausting experience and he himself, as a performer, was required to do so much in the film on a grandscale that he deserves the nomination the most in terms of sinking into a role and doing so much with it.
However, McConaughey will likely walk away with the win, even after I heavily leaned towards the thought that Ejiofor would win. McConaughey has reinvented himself into an A-list actor, taking on challenging roles with many layers to them - he deserves this win.
Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Amy Adams (American Hustle)
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
Judi Dench (Philomena)
Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)
I called Blanchett's nomination back in June after watching Blue Jasmine. I will swear worse than a doomed sailor (anyone get my reference to another Academy Award-nominated film there?) if she won't win.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
I was ecstatic to see Barkhad Abdi get a nomination for a convincing and often frightening performance as a Somalian pirate in Captain Phillips - one that was a sympathetic performance too. However, Leto gave easily one of the most daring performance of his career thus far and of the four nominated. Yet it's still scary to note how little people have remarked about Michael Fassbender here.
Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)
Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)
June Squibb (Nebraska)
Despite Squibb's brazenness and Roberts' tour-de-force, Lupita Nyong'o is a near-lock to win with the only close follower being Jennifer Lawrence.
Best Director:
American Hustle (David O. Russell)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
Alfonso Cuarón wins here, don't go against me (though it should be Steve McQueen).
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke)
Captain Phillips (Billy Ray)
Philomena (Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope)
12 Years a Slave (John Ridley)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Terence Winter)
Can't we give it to both 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street?
Best Original Screenplay:
American Hustle (Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell)
Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
Dallas Buyers Club (Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack)
Her (Spike Jonze)
Nebraska (Bob Nelson)
I'd pick Her but the Academy didn't doll out ten nominations to American Hustle for no reason.
Best Animated Feature:
The Croods (Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco, Kristine Belson)
Despicable Me 2 (Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin, Chris Meledandri)
Ernest & Celestine (Benjamin Renner, Didier Brunner)
Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Peter Del Vecho)
The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki)
Best Cinematography:
The Grandmaster (Philippe Le Sourd)
Gravity (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Bruno Delbonnel)
Nebraska (Phedon Papamichael)
Prisoners (Roger A. Deakins)
Unfortunately, Prisoners amazing cinematography by photography-master Roger A. Deakins will likely be overlooked by Gravity's incredible technical work, only furthering my feeling that there should be a separate category for digital cinematography vs. natural/real-world cinematography.
Best Costume Design:
American Hustle (Michael Wilkinson)
The Grandmaster (William Chang Suk Ping)
The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin)
The Invisible Woman (Michael O'Connor)
12 Years a Slave (Patricia Norris)
I could very well change this to 12 Years a Slave, but I feel the older-chic is an eye-catcher for many Academy wins in this category.
Best Documentary Feature:
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Signe Byrge Sørensen)
Cutie and the Boxer (Zachary Heinzerling, Lydia Dean Pilcher)
Dirty Wars (Richard Rowley, Jeremy Scahill)
The Square (Jehane Noujaim, Karim Amer)
20 Feet from Stardom (Nominees to be determined)
Best Documentary Short:
CaveDigger (Jeffrey Karoff)
Facing Fear (Jason Cohen)
Karama Has No Walls (Sara Ishaq)
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life (Malcolm Clarke, Nicholas Reed)
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall (Edgar Barens)
Total crapshoot, per usual (may change after I hopefully find a way to see these shorts).
Best Film Editing:
American Hustle (Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers, Alan Baumgarten)
Captain Phillips (Christopher Rouse)
Dallas Buyers Club (John Mac McMurphy, Martin Pensa)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger)
12 Years a Slave (Joe Walker)
Best Foreign Language Film:
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
The Hunt (Denmark)
The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
Omar (Palestine)
Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Dallas Buyers Club (Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews)
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Stephen Prouty)
The Lone Ranger (Joel Harlow, Gloria Pasqua-Casny)
Talk about three films you'd never use in the same sentence. The Lone Ranger really had some terrific makeup effects, although specifically on one character, Tonto. One could also make the argument for The Iron Lady doing the same thing and that one turned out to win, although I don't see The Lone Ranger with the same fate. Bad Grandpa, while having superb makeup considering it needed to fool the public being pranked by Johnny Knoxville's asinine sight gags, is lucky to have itself a nomination, but the winner here, I think, will be Dallas Buyers Club for its subtleties in depicting how the AIDS virus will eat away at a person's body.
Best Original Score:
The Book Thief (John Williams)
Gravity (Steven Price)
Her (William Butler, Owen Pallett)
Philomena (Alexandre Desplat)
Saving Mr. Banks (Thomas Newman)
Her would be my preference, but Gravity's score was beautifully germane to its storytelling and technology.
Best Original Song:
"Alone Yet Not Alone" (Alone Yet Not Alone) (Disqualified)
"Happy" (Despicable Me 2)
"Let It Go" (Frozen)
"The Moon Song" (Her)
"Ordinary Love" (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)
Best Production Design:
American Hustle (Judy Becker, Heather Loeffler)
Gravity (Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin, Joanne Woollard)
The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin, Beverley Dunn)
Her (K.K. Barrett, Gene Serdena)
12 Years a Slave (Adam Stockhausen, Alice Baker)
I can't get over the beautifully bombastic nature of the lavish sets Martin and Dunn created for The Great Gatsby nor could I forget the way director Baz Luhrmann beautifully incorporated them all in the frame, showing everything they had to offer.
Best Animated Short Film:
Feral (Daniel Sousa, Dan Golden)
Get a Horse! (Lauren MacMullan, Dorothy McKim)
Mr. Hublot (Laurent Witz, Alexandre Espigares)
Possessions (Shuhei Morita)
Room on the Broom (Max Lang, Jan Lachauer)
Disney.
Best Live Action Short Film:
Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn't Me) (Esteban Crespo)
Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything) (Xavier Legrand, Alexandre Gavras)
Helium (Anders Walter, Kim Magnusson)
Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?) (Selma Vilhunen, Kirsikka Saari)
The Voorman Problem (Mark Gill, Baldwin Li)
Best Sound Editing:
All Is Lost (Steve Boeddeker, Richard Hymns)
Captain Phillips (Oliver Tarney)
Gravity (Glenn Freemantle)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Brent Burge, Chris Ward)
Lone Survivor (Wylie Stateman)
Best Sound Mixing:
Captain Phillips (Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor, Mike Prestwood Smith, Chris Munro)
Gravity (Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead, Chris Munro)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick, Tony Johnson)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff, Peter F. Kurland)
Lone Survivor (Andy Koyama, Beau Borders, David Brownlow)
What's a ballot without a couple gambles? I think (and hope) the Academy will award Captain Phillips with both sound awards given the way sound, movement, and noise incorporated in giving the film suspense (although I am still a bit upset that Rush didn't even snag nominations in either sound fields for reasons I can't even begin to comprehend).
Best Visual Effects:
Gravity (Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk, Neil Corbould)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, Eric Reynolds)
Iron Man 3 (Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash, Dan Sudick)
The Lone Ranger (Tim Alexander, Gary Brozenich, Edson Williams, John Frazier)
Star Trek Into Darkness (Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Ben Grossmann, Burt Dalton)
I've almost never been more certain about a win in my life.
NOTE: These are predictions, not preferences.
Best Picture:
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street
It comes down to American Hustle, Gravity, and 12 Years a Slave for this category, but really, American Hustle is the upset. It will be a battle of technology vs. storyline dominance in terms of what will win Best Picture this year. I go with 12 Years a Slave and will be kind of livid if Gravity wins.
Best Actor in a Leading Role:
Christian Bale (American Hustle)
Bruce Dern (Nebraska)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
2014 was a stacked year for male performances, so much so that other highly praised talent such as Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis), Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips), Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station), Forrest Whitaker (Lee Daniels' The Butler), and Robert Redford (All is Lost) all went without a nomination. Even narrowing it down to five, this is still a tough pick. I'd grant DiCaprio with his first Oscar win because portraying Jordan Belfort had to be an exhausting experience and he himself, as a performer, was required to do so much in the film on a grandscale that he deserves the nomination the most in terms of sinking into a role and doing so much with it.
However, McConaughey will likely walk away with the win, even after I heavily leaned towards the thought that Ejiofor would win. McConaughey has reinvented himself into an A-list actor, taking on challenging roles with many layers to them - he deserves this win.
Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Amy Adams (American Hustle)
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
Judi Dench (Philomena)
Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)
I called Blanchett's nomination back in June after watching Blue Jasmine. I will swear worse than a doomed sailor (anyone get my reference to another Academy Award-nominated film there?) if she won't win.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
I was ecstatic to see Barkhad Abdi get a nomination for a convincing and often frightening performance as a Somalian pirate in Captain Phillips - one that was a sympathetic performance too. However, Leto gave easily one of the most daring performance of his career thus far and of the four nominated. Yet it's still scary to note how little people have remarked about Michael Fassbender here.
Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)
Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)
June Squibb (Nebraska)
Despite Squibb's brazenness and Roberts' tour-de-force, Lupita Nyong'o is a near-lock to win with the only close follower being Jennifer Lawrence.
Best Director:
American Hustle (David O. Russell)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
Alfonso Cuarón wins here, don't go against me (though it should be Steve McQueen).
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke)
Captain Phillips (Billy Ray)
Philomena (Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope)
12 Years a Slave (John Ridley)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Terence Winter)
Can't we give it to both 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street?
Best Original Screenplay:
American Hustle (Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell)
Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
Dallas Buyers Club (Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack)
Her (Spike Jonze)
Nebraska (Bob Nelson)
I'd pick Her but the Academy didn't doll out ten nominations to American Hustle for no reason.
Best Animated Feature:
The Croods (Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco, Kristine Belson)
Despicable Me 2 (Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin, Chris Meledandri)
Ernest & Celestine (Benjamin Renner, Didier Brunner)
Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Peter Del Vecho)
The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki)
Best Cinematography:
The Grandmaster (Philippe Le Sourd)
Gravity (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Bruno Delbonnel)
Nebraska (Phedon Papamichael)
Prisoners (Roger A. Deakins)
Unfortunately, Prisoners amazing cinematography by photography-master Roger A. Deakins will likely be overlooked by Gravity's incredible technical work, only furthering my feeling that there should be a separate category for digital cinematography vs. natural/real-world cinematography.
Best Costume Design:
American Hustle (Michael Wilkinson)
The Grandmaster (William Chang Suk Ping)
The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin)
The Invisible Woman (Michael O'Connor)
12 Years a Slave (Patricia Norris)
I could very well change this to 12 Years a Slave, but I feel the older-chic is an eye-catcher for many Academy wins in this category.
Best Documentary Feature:
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Signe Byrge Sørensen)
Cutie and the Boxer (Zachary Heinzerling, Lydia Dean Pilcher)
Dirty Wars (Richard Rowley, Jeremy Scahill)
The Square (Jehane Noujaim, Karim Amer)
20 Feet from Stardom (Nominees to be determined)
Best Documentary Short:
CaveDigger (Jeffrey Karoff)
Facing Fear (Jason Cohen)
Karama Has No Walls (Sara Ishaq)
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life (Malcolm Clarke, Nicholas Reed)
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall (Edgar Barens)
Total crapshoot, per usual (may change after I hopefully find a way to see these shorts).
Best Film Editing:
American Hustle (Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers, Alan Baumgarten)
Captain Phillips (Christopher Rouse)
Dallas Buyers Club (John Mac McMurphy, Martin Pensa)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger)
12 Years a Slave (Joe Walker)
Best Foreign Language Film:
The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
The Hunt (Denmark)
The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
Omar (Palestine)
Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Dallas Buyers Club (Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews)
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Stephen Prouty)
The Lone Ranger (Joel Harlow, Gloria Pasqua-Casny)
Talk about three films you'd never use in the same sentence. The Lone Ranger really had some terrific makeup effects, although specifically on one character, Tonto. One could also make the argument for The Iron Lady doing the same thing and that one turned out to win, although I don't see The Lone Ranger with the same fate. Bad Grandpa, while having superb makeup considering it needed to fool the public being pranked by Johnny Knoxville's asinine sight gags, is lucky to have itself a nomination, but the winner here, I think, will be Dallas Buyers Club for its subtleties in depicting how the AIDS virus will eat away at a person's body.
Best Original Score:
The Book Thief (John Williams)
Gravity (Steven Price)
Her (William Butler, Owen Pallett)
Philomena (Alexandre Desplat)
Saving Mr. Banks (Thomas Newman)
Her would be my preference, but Gravity's score was beautifully germane to its storytelling and technology.
Best Original Song:
"Happy" (Despicable Me 2)
"Let It Go" (Frozen)
"The Moon Song" (Her)
"Ordinary Love" (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)
Best Production Design:
American Hustle (Judy Becker, Heather Loeffler)
Gravity (Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin, Joanne Woollard)
The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin, Beverley Dunn)
Her (K.K. Barrett, Gene Serdena)
12 Years a Slave (Adam Stockhausen, Alice Baker)
I can't get over the beautifully bombastic nature of the lavish sets Martin and Dunn created for The Great Gatsby nor could I forget the way director Baz Luhrmann beautifully incorporated them all in the frame, showing everything they had to offer.
Best Animated Short Film:
Feral (Daniel Sousa, Dan Golden)
Get a Horse! (Lauren MacMullan, Dorothy McKim)
Mr. Hublot (Laurent Witz, Alexandre Espigares)
Possessions (Shuhei Morita)
Room on the Broom (Max Lang, Jan Lachauer)
Disney.
Best Live Action Short Film:
Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn't Me) (Esteban Crespo)
Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything) (Xavier Legrand, Alexandre Gavras)
Helium (Anders Walter, Kim Magnusson)
Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?) (Selma Vilhunen, Kirsikka Saari)
The Voorman Problem (Mark Gill, Baldwin Li)
Best Sound Editing:
All Is Lost (Steve Boeddeker, Richard Hymns)
Captain Phillips (Oliver Tarney)
Gravity (Glenn Freemantle)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Brent Burge, Chris Ward)
Lone Survivor (Wylie Stateman)
Best Sound Mixing:
Captain Phillips (Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor, Mike Prestwood Smith, Chris Munro)
Gravity (Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead, Chris Munro)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick, Tony Johnson)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff, Peter F. Kurland)
Lone Survivor (Andy Koyama, Beau Borders, David Brownlow)
What's a ballot without a couple gambles? I think (and hope) the Academy will award Captain Phillips with both sound awards given the way sound, movement, and noise incorporated in giving the film suspense (although I am still a bit upset that Rush didn't even snag nominations in either sound fields for reasons I can't even begin to comprehend).
Best Visual Effects:
Gravity (Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk, Neil Corbould)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, Eric Reynolds)
Iron Man 3 (Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash, Dan Sudick)
The Lone Ranger (Tim Alexander, Gary Brozenich, Edson Williams, John Frazier)
Star Trek Into Darkness (Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Ben Grossmann, Burt Dalton)
I've almost never been more certain about a win in my life.