OSCAR NOMINEE PREDICTIONS, 2011 (OR 2012? I CAN NEVER KEEP TRACK OF HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO PUT IT)

Updated 1/18 in light of Best Foreign Film bake-off list

One week from today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the nominees for its 84th annual awards. I try not to admit it in public too often, but being a huge Oscar junkie, it's hard not to want to try my hand at predicting the bastards, though I also take the cheater's route of waiting till most of the work is done to figure out what's what, with the only challenge being in all the "fifth slot" nominees.

I was extremely good at this game last year, nailing a personal-best 82/105 overall and 39/45 in the Big Eight - Picture, Director, Acting, Screenplay. Keep those stats in mind if you have any office pools you're looking to win, though also keep in mind that I have done spectacularly poorly every other time I've done this in public.


Best Picture
*The Artist
*The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
*Hugo
*Midnight in Paris
Moneyball

Because of the new rules, there can be any number of noms between 5 and 10. If there are more, my additional predictions in order of probability:
War Horse
The Tree of Life
The ides of March

First off, there are the easy ones, which I ticked with a * up there. I very nearly put The Help in their company, but I maintain the hope that it's just too damn andoyne even for AMPAS. Moneyball is one of those films that everybody seems to really like, and while the new rules don't seem to have much room for "like, not love" pictures, it seems better to make those prediction tweaks next year, when we know how the new system plays out. Girl seems wildly not-Academy, but it has been tearing up the Guild circuit, and that's not the sort of thing you argue against lightly.

In my also-ran tier: War Horse has been emphatically not tearing up the Guilds, and that is a huge tell for a Spielberg film, but the subject matter is way too quintessentially Oscary to dismiss it outright. TOL has intensely passionate followers; I can't bring myself to believe that there are quite enough of them. And Ides, a pleasant enough gloss on a much better play with fuzzy characterisations and visual language to match, has that whole "Clooney is everybody's favorite" thing going on.


Best Director
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Alexander Payne The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Or maybe:
Steven Spielberg, War Horse

A reprint of the DGA, with the substitution of Malick for Fincher; all season, I've been nursing the feeling that Tree of Life is a classic "Lone Director Nod" kind of movie (artsy; a director hugely beloved by other directors), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is so not in the Academy's wheelhouse that, while I can squint enough to see it getting into a vaguely defined top 10-or-less, I truly can't imagine it hitting the top 5.


Best Actor
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artists
Michael Fassbender, Shame
Brad Pitt, Moneyball
Michael Shannon, Take Shelter
Or maybe:
Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar

A pretty conservative set, other than Shannon; but he is the kind of actor that other actors like, and he got a previous Oscar nomination from the clear blue sky three years ago. Anyway, I'm just not feeling DiCaprio, whose performance didn't really land with anybody, and who has had difficulty getting traction with the Academy in previous years; and as much as I would love to see Gary Oldman make it in, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has been shut out pretty hard all season


Best Actress
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn
Or maybe:
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

The only questions that seem worth considering are: is Mara's rising star momentum in a showy role in a film that people apparently really love sufficient to take out one of the two older actresses in hard-to-like vehicles? And if yes, is it indie darling Swinton in a tremendously nasty film, or workhorse Close impressing nobody at all in a labor of love that nobody likes? And those questions could be answered in any number of ways, up to and including, "Fuck it, go with Charlize". Consider this my official, but unsettled, take.


Best Supporting Actor
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Albert Brooks, Drive
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Or maybe:
Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

As is often the case in categories where we all have known the eventual winner for what feels like months (Plummer, if you've been living without electricity since August), everything after that is tangled up and weird. I'm completely unconvinced of my own prediction, and I can't quite figure out why - maybe just because the phrase "Oscar nominee Jonah Hill" makes me want to stab out my eyes. Patton Oswalt in Young Adult (which I'd believe more if the movie seemed to have any support at all) and Ben Kingsley in Hugo (not an actor's movie) are just as likely as anybody outside of Plummer and Branagh, and maybe Brooks. Praying for a surprise here.


Best Supporting Actress
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Octavia Spencer, The Help
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
Or maybe:
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Back to steadier ground. It's McCarthy vs. McTeer, with Vanessa Redgrave poised to be a gratifying but at this point inordinately unlikely surprise. I am inclined to favor the movie people have actually seen and enjoyed, but I will note that Close getting nominated in Actress makes McTeer a certainty, while the opposite is not true.


Best Adapted Screenplay
The Descendants, by Nat Faxon, Alexander Payne & Jim Rash
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steven Zaillian
Hugo, by John Logan
Moneyball, by Stan Chervin and Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by Bridget O'Connor & Peter Straughan
Or maybe:
The Help, by Tate Taylor

Predicting 101: it's safest to stay in the Best Picture race in the writing categories. With the caveat, regarding The Help, that the writing categories are famous for avoiding the really overt mistakes of Best Picture, year in and year out. And TTSS is such a writerly movie, irrespective of any judgments about its quality


Best Original Screenplay
The Artist, by Michel Hazanavicius
Bridesmaids, by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig
Midnight in Paris, by Woody Allen
Win Win, by Thomas McCarthy & Joe Tibani
Young Adult, by Diablo Cody
Or maybe:
50/50, by Will Reiser

Same rule, with fewer BP candidates to choose from. My gut tells me that Bridesmaids is safe by virtue of being a popular comedy, while Win Win, 50/50, Young Adult, Margin Call, maybe Beginners, and just barely The Tree of Life are all jostling around in an indie film hell, where something has to end up there, and the rest is kind of throwing a dart at a list.


Best Cinematography
The Artist (Guillaume Schiffman)
Hugo (Robert Richardson)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Jeff Cronenweth)
The Tree of Life (Emmanuel Lubezki)
War Horse (Janusz Kaminski)
Or maybe:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Hoyte Van Hoytema)

4 of 5 is a fair bet for ASC nominations translating to Oscar, and TTSS seems far and away the weakest. Despite the overall chilliness to War Horse that appears to be happening, the Academy somewhat tends to skew somewhat prettier than the ASC in those years where they disagree.


Best Editing
The Artist (Anne-Sophie Bion)
The Descendants (Kevin Tent)
Hugo (Thelma Schoonmaker)
Moneyball (Christopher Tellefsen)
War Horse (Michael Kahn)
Or maybe:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Kirk Baxter & Angus Wall)

I've been harboring a suspicion that lazy BP-focused nominating gets The Descendants in the top 5, and yesterday's ACE nominations pretty much sealed it for me. Michael Kahn is an editing god, and I feel this is one of the beleaguered War Horse's best chances to find any kind of footing; if I am right, he takes the record for most nominations in this category at 8, breaking the three-way tie that now holds.


Best Art Direction
The Artist (Laurence Bennett)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (Stuart Craig; Stephenie McMillan)
Hugo (Dante Ferretti; Dorthée Baussan, Francesca Lo Schiavo)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Maria Djurkovic)
War Horse (Rick Carter; Lee Sandales)
Or maybe:
Jane Eyre (Will Hughes-Jones; Tina Jones)

The first three are obvious, TTSS is considerably less so, and it all goes to hell after that. I will confess that my unassailable logic is that I'm also predicting War Horse for Best Cinematography, and the two categories frequently stick together.


Best Costume Design
Anonymous (Lisy Christl)
The Artist (Mark Bridges)
Hugo (Sandy Powell)
Jane Eyre (Michael O'Connor)
W.E. (Arianne Phillips)
Or maybe:
Immortals (Eiko Ishioka)

A category famous for paying very little attention to the quality of the movie at large if the costumes are to their tastes, which is why I feel comfortable with Anonymous and W.E.; The Artist and Hugo are just good sense. I very nearly threw Immortals in there over W.E., but I can't shake the sense that the whole industry would prefer to forget that movie ever happened.


Best Makeup
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
The Iron Lady
Or maybe:
Hugo

Categories with shortlists are always a touch easier, even one this notoriously inconsistent. The one thing we can be sure of: The Iron Lady wins. Past that, I am seduced by Guy Lodge's logic that if something as off-the-radar as Gainsbourg can make the shortlist, it can probably be nominated too, but too much cleverness in predicting can always bite you on the ass. As for Harry Potter 7.2: it has to get in somewhere besides Art Direction, doesn't it?


Best Score
The Adventures of Tintin (John Williams)
The Artist (Ludovic Bource)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Alexandre Desplat)
Hugo (Howard Shore)
War Horse (John Williams)
Or maybe:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)

The double John Williams bid is probably riskier than I think it is, but he's surely getting one of them, and I couldn't pick. Desplat is my most perverse prediction anywhere, but this is a category noted for its love affairs with specific composers, and he's not apt to get in for anything else; weird films sneak in here at least once every couple of years.


Best Song
From Captain America: The First Avenger: "Star-Spangled Man"
From The Muppets: “Life's a Happy Song”
From The Muppets: “Pictures in My Head”
Or maybe:
From The Help: "The Living Proof"
And/or:
From Hugo: "Coeur Volant"

The only category other than Best Picture with a variable number of nominees, which makes it very hard to get a real bead on what's happening. "Star-Spangled Man" and "Pictures in My Head" are the closest there are to locks; I don't really know what to think after that. They've gotten better lately at not including end-credits songs unless they are big hits or by famous artists or they're feeling sweep-ish. But who the fuck knows. I'm not sure why this category is still here.


Best Sound Mixing
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Rango
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
War Horse
Or maybe:
Super 8

Who knows. There's usually an animated film, and I think that Rango has more behind it than Tintin. There's usually a war film, and War Horse is the most prominent one this year. Big action movies do the rest: the biggest one of the summer, the most critically-acclaimed of the summer, and the big December surprise that took everybody's breath away just before ballotting started.


Best Sound Editing
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Super 8
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
War Horse
Or maybe:
Rango

A lot of the same logic applies. 3/5 or 4/5 are the best bets for overlap in the sound categories; I assume you saw what I did with my six top guesses, and I apologise for being totally boring.


Best Visual Effects
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Hugo
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Or maybe:
The Tree of Life

Out of a 10-film shortlist already announced. Somehow, I feel like the classy arthouse work in TOL, led by the legendary Douglas Trumbull, should be in there, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it would knock out.


Best Animated Feature
Arthur Christmas
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango
Winnie the Pooh
Or maybe:
Rio

Frankly, I'm sort of angry at this category. I truly do believe that even with as hard as it will be to fill five spots, the animators' branch is going to "punish" Pixar for Cars 2, but with underperforming films to the left, shitty kiddie fare of the sort that that hasn't made the cutoff in years to the right, and the much-hated motion capture in the middle, I truly don't know what I think is apt to replace it. Might be a great chance for one of the tiny foreign movies with no US distribution yet, as happened to The Secret of Kells two years ago.


Best Foreign Language Film
Footnote (Israel)
In Darkness (Poland)
Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)
Pina (Germany)
A Separation (Iran)
Or maybe:
Warriors of the Rainbow (Taiwan)

I didn't do as bad guessing at the films to survive the reduction to nine finalists as I expected to. Anyway, it's never tremendously easy to figure out what's going on here, though I do think Pina for all its international acclaim, is the shakiest. In Darkness and A Separation can pretty confidently be considered locks at this point.


Best Documentary
Bill Cunningham New York
Hell and Back Again
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Project Nim
We Were Here
Or maybe:
Undefeated

I am flying pretty much blind. I do not think, though, that the characteristically boring documentary branch is going to see fit to include the visually and formally bracing Pina, which pushes the word "documentary" about as far as it will go.

Best Documentary Short Subject
"The Barber of Birmingham"
"In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution"
"Incident in New Baghdad"
"The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom"
"Witness"
Or maybe:
"Saving Face"

Here's where we start to just get silly. There's an 8-film finalist list, which is a godsend to the predictor. In order, the ones I went with are a film about an octogenerian remembering the civil rights movement, a message picture about one of the biggest international stories in 2011, an Iraq message picture, a culturally-specific study of nature, and a conservation message picture. Please note that 24 hours ago, I'd heard of none of these films.


Best Live-Action Short Subject
"I Could Be Your Grandmother"
"Love at First Sight"
"Pentecost"
"The Road Home"
"Time Freak"
Or maybe:
"Sailcloth"

"Love at First Sight" and "Sailcloth" both star John Hurt, which is how I know that one - but only one - will get in. Other than that it's pretty much guessing from the 10-film shortlist, and I have generally favored coming-of-age stories and the sole French picture.


Best Animated Short Subject
"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore"
"La Luna"
"Magic Piano"
"A Morning Stroll"
"Wild Life"
Or maybe:
"Dimanche"

More guessing - I have seen one of the ten finalists, the neo-Sylvester and Tweety short "I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat", and I will confidently say that it won't be in the top five. Otherwise, this is mostly guesswork based on the animation styles as revealed by stills. Scientific! "La Luna" is the new Pixar short, and thus the closest to a lock we have here.