Matt vs. the Academy

This year's Academy Awards ceremony is now less than 24 hours away, so my giddy excitement is a-brewing. While working on my predictions, I went back and forth on a number of categories, eventually contradicting some of what I wrote in the last few posts. The fact that the Best Picture winner is not at all clear (it's a tight race between Argo and Lincoln) is brilliantly exciting, especially for all those office Oscar pools, whose winners may well be decided on the last category of the night. Here are my humble predictions . From the 85th Academy Awards to the 15th, here's my take on the next Best Picture nominee from 1942... The Magnificent Ambersons Director : Orson Welles Screenplay : Orson Welles (based on the novel by Booth Tarkington) Starring : Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Richard Bennett Academy Awards : 4 nominations 0 wins The wealthy Amberson family is the talk of a small...

I'd like to write at least one more post before the Oscars ceremony on Sunday, but if the past is anything to go by, I'd better write about the Best Director and Best Picture races now, just in case. As I've mentioned previously, based on precursor awards alone, it would not be unreasonable to predict Argo and Ben Affleck to take out the Oscar double. The film and its director have cleaned up at the major awards (Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Critics Choice, and both the Producers and Directors Guilds). However, there's one fatal flaw in that prediction - Affleck wasn't nominated for a Best Director Oscar. So that award is now up for grabs. Michael Haneke and Benh Zeitlin, helmers of Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild, respectively, seem unlikely winners. Likewise, David O. Russell hasn't been talked about much in this category so his work on Silver Linings Playbook will most probably go unrewarded here. That leaves Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee, both previous Osca...

A few days ago, I offered my thoughts on the supporting performance categories at this year's Academy Awards. Today, let's look at the two leading actor categories. The Best Actor award is Daniel Day-Lewis' to lose. His performance in Lincoln has swept just about every industry and critic's award so far this season. An Oscar win this year would not only earn him a rare third acting Oscar (only five others have achieved that feat) but it would also mean he had won thrice in the leading role category, placing him second only to Katherine Hepburn, whose four awards were all for Best Actress. Hugh Jackman is perhaps his closest rival for the award, but it doesn't look good for Wolverine. Best Actress is more competitive, essentially a toss-up between Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty and Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook. Both won Golden Globes for their performances, but Lawrence won the SAG award. (Unexpectedly, Emmanuelle Riva won the BAFTA, but I...

Ben Affleck's frustration over being denied a Best Director Oscar nomination is once again alleviated (or enhanced, depending on your perspective) after his win at the BAFTAs yesterday. His film Argo also took out the Best Film, so the conundrum I discussed in my last post continues... Anyway, as this year's Academy Awards ceremony rapidly approaches, let's take a deeper look at some of the races, starting with the Supporting categories. The Supporting Actress Oscar has all but been engraved with Anne Hathaway's name on it. She has won almost all of the precursor awards for her role in Les Miserables and is a clear favourite. Lincoln's Sally Field is perhaps the only possible upset but I don't put her chances very high at all. Supporting Actor is a bit more complicated. At one time, I had my money on Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master, who had taken a whole bunch of the critics' prizes. But Django Unchained's Christoph Waltz won the critic's ...

For the first time in a long time, I actually have some spare time, which increases the chances of more movies being reviewed for this blog. Time will tell... It also allowed me to cram in a bunch of the current awards season's movies before I missed the deadline to vote in the SAG awards. Still a few more Oscar contenders to see, but I've caught up a little bit. The most fascinating aspect of this awards season is Argo's domination of the major awards so far. Since its director, Ben Affleck, was left off the Academy's Best Director shortlist, that seemed to close the door on the film winning Best Picture, yet it has won the main gongs at the Critic's Choice, Golden Globe and Producer's Guild ceremonies. Plus, it won the SAG's Ensemble award and Affleck himself took out the Director's Guild's top prize. Quite the conundrum. More on this year's Oscars in the next couple of weeks, but for now, on to the next review, which is another nomin...