Oscar predictions 2014

Here are my predictions for twelve of the main categories at next month’s US Academy Awards.

Please note: These are not my favourite films (I have not seen most of them) nor are the ones I think most deserve to win necessarily. I am just making an educated guess at what will win.

Please note as well, that my track record on this is poor. Last year only a third of my predictions were correct! 

Best picture:

Oscar loves worthy films like this…

12 Years a Slave *

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Dallas Buyers Club

Gravity

Her

Nebraska

Philomena

The Wolf of Wall Street

Best director

Assuming I got the Best Film right, this is a reasonably safe bet. The Best Picture’s director also wins 90% of the time (although this didn’t happen for Argo director Ben Affleck last year).

Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity

Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave *

Alexander Payne, Nebraska

David O Russell, American Hustle

Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

Best actor

Could conceivably also be Bale or McConaughey.

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

Best actress

A consolation prize for Hustle? Might go to Bullock otherwise. Cate Blanchett was the favourite until the Woody Allen controversy. I’ve no idea why Naomie Harris didn’t get an Oscar for Long Walk To Freedom. She richly deserved one.

Amy Adams, American Hustle *

Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

Sandra Bullock, Gravity

Judi Dench, Philomena

Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

Best supporting actor

A brilliant performance. Fassbender deserves to win.

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

Best supporting actress

I’ve no idea really!

Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine

Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle

Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave

Julia Roberts, August: Osage County

June Squibb, Nebraska *

Best animated feature

The Croods

Despicable Me 2

Ernest and Celestine

Frozen *

The Wind Rises

Best adapted screenplay

Taking a risk here as the best film usually gets a screenplay Oscar two out of three times. But that isn’t the same as every time is it?

Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke – Before Midnight

Billy Ray – Captain Phillips

Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope – Philomena

John Ridley – 12 Years a Slave

Terence Winter – The Wolf of Wall Street *

Best original screenplay
It won’t be Woody Allen anyway…

Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell – American Hustle

Woody Allen – Blue Jasmine

Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack – Dallas Buyers Club

Spike Jonze – Her

Bob Nelson – Nebraska *

Best foreign language film.

The Great Beauty (Italy)

The Hunt (Denmark)

The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium) *

The Missing Picture (Cambodia)

Omar (Palestine)

Best original song

Let It Go – Frozen *

Ordinary Love -: Long Walk to Freedom

Alone Yet Not Alone – Alone Yet Not Alone

Happy – Despicable Me 2

The Moon Song – Her

Best documentary

No idea! Although this is one of the few categories I got right last year.

The Act of Killing*

Cutie and the Boxer

Dirty Wars

The Square

20 Feet from Stardom

Is Gravity a science fiction film?

I was surprised by some of the online reaction to my recent blog entry, “Could Gravity be the first science fiction film to win the Best Picture Oscar?” It wasn’t so much that people disagreed whether it would win or not. Indeed, I am not actually really expecting it to win myself (12 Years A Slaver currently looks like a safer bet). I was more surprised that some disagreed that Gravity was even a science fiction film in the first place.

This seems odd and my initial thought was that respondents were exhibiting the odd sort of snobbery which often bedevils the genre. Even Canadian author Margaret Atwood has in the past denied that her futuristic novel Onyx and Crake is science fiction, even though, it quite obviously is.
Definitions of science fiction do vary quite dramatically, however, so let’s think about this:

Gravity centres on a major accident in space. In this, it resembles Ron Howard’s film, Apollo 13. But Apollo 13 is clearly not science fiction as it is based on real events. The same goes for the film of Tom Wolfe’s astronaut-themed, The Right Stuff. The fact that both are also set in the past does not matter. Science fiction can be set in the past. Consider the early scenes of The Time Machine or even the Star Wars films which are all set “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” But these two films (unlike Star Wars or The Time Machine) are not sci-fi anyway as they are based on real events. They are all ‘sci’ and no ‘fi’.

In the loosest sense, then Gravity is constructed around a fictional science-themed scenario. It is not clear whether it is set in the future or the present, although I would presume, the future. However, it also features astronauts dying in space. This has never actually happened, thankfully. A total of seventeen people died in the Apollo 7 fire in 1967 and Challenger and Columbia explosions but none of these were actually in space. It seems likely that had any secret Cold War Soviet space missions ended in fatalities, we would also know about them by now.

This pushes Gravity further into the realm of sci-fi. One respondent cited the fact that the film is “all too plausible” as evidence against it being science fiction. This is silly. Much of the best sci-fi, such as the recent film Contagion, depicting a devastating apocalyptic plague, is very plausible.

One thing my blog totally failed to anticipate, however, was that another science fiction film Spike Jonze’s Her, would also get nominated for Best Picture.

Good luck to them both.

Could Gravity be the first science fiction film to win the Best Picture Oscar?

Today sees the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominations. But with all the questions raised by this year’s unusually strong field of contenders (12 Years A Slave, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street and Philomena amongst them), one question remains more tantalising than any other: could  Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity becomes the first science fiction film to secure the coveted Best Picture Oscar?

It would certainly be a first. For while sci-fi films have been the recipient of countless technical and science fiction awards, the genre despite (or perhaps because of) the big box office it has generated, has generally been viewed with lofty disdain by the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences throughout its eighty five year history.

Even the advent of higher quality sci-fi at the end of the Sixties changed little. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes (both 1968) went unrecognised in the Best Picture category. The latter was even based on a novel by Pierre Boulle, the French author who had previously penned the source material for the multi-Oscar winning Bridge on the River Kwai. But it was all to no avail. Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange was nominated in 1971, although its science fiction content was generally overshadowed by controversy over its violence.

Then, in 1977, a new hope. Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture. True, it was beaten for the main prize by Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (a fairly unusual case of a comedy winning. This has only happened three times since). But with sci-fi entering a new period of high quality in the next decade (Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner and James Cameron’s Aliens and Terminators), did this mean the genre would finally receive its due?

Alas, no. the Eighties was also a period in which the Academy went out of its way to award worthy films (Amadeus,  Out of Africa, Driving Miss Daisy) rather than those that were necessarily entertaining. Sigourney Weaver got a nomination for Aliens. But nothing from the genre has won since.

What has changed? Well, for one thing, 2004 saw the final part of the Lord of the Rings saga, The Return of the King carry off the Best Picture statuette. No, that is not a science fiction film and yes, Daniel Radcliffe is right to complain none of the Harry Potter films were ever nominated in the big categories for anything. But it feels like a start.

Then, in 2010, James Cameron’s blue creatured 3D space epic Avatar came tantalisingly close to Best Picture glory, only for gritty (and, frankly, overrated) Iraq drama The Hurt Locker to seize the crown.

Also, we seem to be enjoying another era of high quality sci-fi courtesy of The Huger Games films, Ender’s Game and Elysium.

And finally, Gravity has received a wealth of critical acclaim rarely bestowed on a film of the science fiction genre. Even Alien and Blade Runner never received such praise at the time of their release.

Whether Gravity ends up carrying off the greatest prize at the awards ceremony in March, or not, it has certainly struck a blow for this critically unsung genre. We shall have to wait and see.