This is getting exciting — not so much the Oscar race; but the recent spate of news about the Academy Awards telecast on Feb. 24. Things are shaping up for a evening that may be less cringe-worthy than usual and that could improve on last year’s slight ratings boost. You’ve got Adele to perform Skyfall" you’ve got the 50th anniversary James Bond tribute, and now comes confirmation that Barbra Streisand will perform for the first time in 36 years. (Just please, God, not with Seth MacFarlane.) Plus, the “In Memorium” segment should feature some especially beloved character actors (Andy Griffith, Ben Gazzara, Ernest Borgnine and Jack Klugman).
With less than a month to go, it’s Oscar Unchained from here on out. Let’s go to the Gold Linings Playbook.
Best Picture
No one is talking about the Academy Awards at all,” groused Showbiz 411’s Roger Friedman last week. That changed with Argo’s truly game-changing wins last weekend at the Producers and Screen Actors Guilds award ceremonies. “Momentum helps in an Oscar race, and right now, Argo's got it,” notes New York magazine’s Kyle Buchanan. “If Argo does take home Best Picture, it will still feel like a surprise because there's so much Oscar history stacked against it. As Ben Affleck has no doubt memorized by now, the last film to win Best Picture without a corresponding Best Director nomination was Driving Miss Daisy.”
Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone offers more Oscar lore that might steady Team Lincoln: It has been 61 years since a film with 12 nominations and the biggest box office lost to a film with less of both. “The last time it happened,” she notes, “was when An American in Paris beat A Streetcar Named Desire. In addition, Marshall Flores, on behalf of AD, crunched the numbers and found that the film with the most nominations has won Best Picture 57 times in the 85 years that the Academy has been giving out Oscars.
Here’s an interesting Argo scenario posited by Gold Derby’s Zack Laws: “In every other category in which it contends, our experts are predicting another nominee to win. So you have to stop and wonder: can Argo be the first film since 1935 to win Best Picture without winning anything else? “
Several pundits questioning whether the Argo buzz is more than just wishful thinking have pointed to the fate of Apollo 13 as a cautionary tale. Like Argo, Apollo 13 took home PGA and SAG honors (not to mention a DGA Award for Ron Howard), but it lost Best Picture to Braveheart. Pundits, we have a problem, counters Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil:
“Braveheart pulled off a sneaky win because Oscar-watchers weren't paying attention to what was showing up in academy members' mailboxes. Braveheart was the first major Oscar contender ever to send out screeners to voters. Nowadays, of course, all contenders send screeners. Academy members received more than 50 this year. So it's an equal playing field that way….Yes, Lincoln can still win. I'm not discounting that. But it doesn't have the same secret ambush advantage that Braveheart had.
1. Argo
2. Lincoln
5. Life of Pi
6. Beasts of the Southern Wild
8. Amour
Best Director
America has spoken: Steven Spielberg should win the Academy Award for Best Director, according to a new Reuters poll. And while Lincoln has taken some serious shots in the last two weeks, Spielberg could recapture some of his momentum with a DGA win this weekend. Except that pundits now are predicting that Ben Affleck is the DGA frontrunner in the wake of Argo’s PGA and SAG Awards wins. But this being one of the most unpredictable Oscar seasons in years, Affleck isn’t nominated for an Oscar, so don’t lose faith, America.
1.Steven Spielberg (Lincoln)
2. David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)
3. Ang Lee (Life of Pi)
4. Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
5. Michael Haneke (Amour)
Best Actor
Academy members will take note and long remember Daniel Day-Lewis’ gracious and eloquent SAG Awards acceptance speech that no doubt spoke volumes to any undecided voters. "My wonderful colleagues, every single cast member gave their characters the kiss of life. Have no doubt that this is an ensemble award… It was an actor that murdered Abraham Lincoln, and therefore somehow it’s only fitting that every now and then an actor tries to bring him back to life again.” Day-Lewis is on track to become the first to achieve the hat trick of three Oscars for Best Actor. He is certainly the unanimous choice among all 25 Gold Derby pundits. The other candidates? When it comes to Academy Award consideration, as in comedy, timing is everything. So the release of the critically eviscerated Movie 43 couldn’t come at a worse time for Hugh Jackman, who is featured in one sketch as a man with his testicles dangling from his neck. “Congratulations,” hailed The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon, “you have your own Norbit.”
1. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
2. Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables)
3. Denzel Washington (Flight)
4 .Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)
5. Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
Best Actress
As with Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence’s acceptance speeches are improving with each win. Recovering from her “I beat Meryl” faux pas at the Golden Globes, Lawrence charmed an audience of her peers at the SAG Awards. “I want to thank MTV,” she began, and hastily added, “I’ll explain that.” “Her heartfelt speech,” observed Deadline Hollywood’s Pete Hammond, “gives her a definite boost.” As did the Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty screener gap, Hammond added: “Sony did not send screeners or make iTunes downloads available for Jessica Chastain…The Weinstein Company did send screeners, movie cash, iTunes downloads, and anything else they could to SAG’s entire 100,000 members.
Which is not to take anything away from Lawrence’s performance, according to New York magazine’s Kyle Buchanan, who considers her the complete package: “Lawrence has the category’s most well-rounded role and the industry’s most full-fledged support. She’s a social charmer and newly-minted box office star that Hollywood hopes to coronate with an Academy Award. In Contention’s Guy Lodge agrees, but with one caveat:
“Jennifer Lawrence has everything going for her…It’s tempting to call this race already, but the 22 year-old star didn’t have to face 85 year-old Emmanuelle Rica at the SAGs or the Globes. And the latter’s performance is just too formidable to count out, particularly with a lot of voters checking out their Amour screeners in the wake of its five-nomination coup.”
1. Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
2. Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)
3. Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)
4. Naomi Watts (The Impossible)
5. Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
Best Supporting Actor
Oscar night’s tightest race now appears to be tilting irrevocably Tommy Lee Jones’ way in the wake of his SAG Awards win. Recent history is on his side: the SAG supporting actor winner has gone on to win the Academy Award in each of the last five years. “Jones is blessed with one knockout scene after another, as well as Lincoln's strongest, twistiest, most affecting character arc,” Kyle Buchanan writes. “We expect him to win.” A Lincoln juggernaut, which is becoming less likely as the Oscar campaign season winds down, would have made him an absolute lock. Then again, like Meryl Streep, who won last year for The Iron Lady after a 29-year dry spell, Robert De Niro long overdue. He last won a Best Actor Academy Award in 1981 for Raging Bull.
1. Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)
2. Robert DeNiro (Silver Linings Playbook)
3. Alan Arkin (Argo)
4. Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
5. Phillip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)
Best Supporting Actress
Like her Best Actress counterpart, Anne Hathaway improved immeasurably on the blunt object that was her Golden Globes acceptance speech at the SAG Awards. She seems poised to deliver a doozy on Oscar night. She was looser and funnier and did the requisite sincere sucking up to the Academy’s largest voting bloc: “I got my SAG card when I was 14. It felt like the beginning of the world. I have loved every single minute of my life as an actor.” (Even Valentine’s Day?). If there is any hope for Sally Field, it is the contagion that is what Kevin Fallon calls the “Hathahaters.” Blog snark is probably pretty much harmless, but a clever and spot-on new video parody of Anne’s “I Dreamed a Dream” showstopper has gone viral. But Hathaway can probably rest easy. Fallon quotes Fandango’s Dave Karger as saying that, polarizing as she Hathaway may be, she is so commandingly the frontrunner that “I don’t know what she’d have to do to screw up her chances.”
1. Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)
2. Sally Field (Lincoln)
3. Helen Hunt (The Sessions)
4. Amy Adams (The Master)
5. Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook)
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