Academy Awards nominees, 2013
I can’t believe it’s that time of the year again! Here are my thoughts on this year’s Oscar nominees (last year’s post is here).
Best Picture
Amour
Argo
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life Of Pi
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty
Beasts Of The Southern Wild
Silver Linings Playbook
9 nominees this year and it sure is a very fine selection of very good films. Michael Haneke’s Amour is a somewhat surprising inclusion, proving that the momentum built in Cannes hasn’t disappeared -it certainly underlines the relevance of the biggest film festivals for award season. Another proof of that is the fact that Beasts Of The Southern Wild, a Sundance favourite, is included in the list and clinched nominations in the major categories. This year’s heavyweight dramas include Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, which have been frontrunners as soon as they were in the works. Clearly both the presence of a great director and actor (Spielberg and Day-Lewis; Bigelow and Chastain) on such serious subject matters was bound to draw attention from critics and academies alike. My personal favourite in the list is Argo, but without a Best Director nomination, I’m afraid the chance of seeing it win Best Film is pretty close to zero. Silver Linings Playbook, this year’s “little movie that could”, is a very strong contender because it is the only film with nominations in all the major categories (and those include the acting categories, which is really rare). So I have a feeling that the Academy really really loved it, and it’s a Weinstein Company film, so you never know. It might pull an upset, although it would be literally upsetting to see a dramatic comedy win over more important films such as Lincoln, but that’s just my opinion. Life of Pi is also very clearly popular with the Academy, as it has nominations in the major categories as well, but my guess is that it will sweep the technical categories and not much else. Django Unchained and Les Misérables are the somewhat ‘wild card’ entries (I say wild card but really, if there was a film this year tailor-made for the Oscars, it really is Les Misérables). If there were only five Best Film nominees, I have an inkling they wouldn’t have been included at all.
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