Orlando Lens
Here are five tips-slash-tricks when filling our your Oscar® picks to give you the edge, whether its at Red Carpet, Bright Lights at Enzian Theatre on Sunday February 24, 2013, or your own personal Oscar® pool.
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By Nicholas Ware
Orlando Lens bonus! Got your Oscar® ballot all filled out and feel confident you'll be going 24 for 24 this year? The true Oscar® fan aims to rule the pool, dominate when she prognosticates, and predict with extreme prejudice.
Here are five tips-slash-tricks when filling our your Oscar® picks to give you the edge, whether its at Red Carpet, Bright Lights at Enzian Theatre on Sunday February 24, 2013, or your own personal Oscar® pool.
- Best Picture nearly always goes to a film also nominated for directing and writing... except maybe not this year. This rule would normally knock both Argo (early favorite), Django Unchained (populist underdog), and Zero Dark Thirty (torturific) out of the running, as none gained a directing nod, as well as Les Misérables, which failed to qualify in both directing and writing. That would make Best Picture into a two-horse race between Lincoln and the gaining-ground-as-it-blossomed-into-a-commercial-hit Silver Linings Playbook. Beasts of the Southern Wild is too avant-garde, Amour is too Euro-bleak, and Life of Pi just doesn't seem to have much major-awards support. However, the last few weeks have seen an enormous swell for Argo despite director Ben Affleck's snub, so the pattern looks poised to break.
- There is often a surprise in Supporting Actor or Actress. This year the surprise is more likely to be in Supporting Actor, as Anne Hathaway is a near-mortal lock to be rewarded for gurglin' some semi-melodic snot-rockets in Les Misérables, which will likely be the only premiere award with which Les Mis walks away. Supporting Actor is a crazy category this year, as all five nominees are former Oscar® winners. Somehow, my gut says Alan Arkin takes the statue with a semi-upset as the wave of support for Argo grows, but calling a surprise makes it not-a-surprise.
- Writing is where Oscar® rewards less mainstream material. This bodes well for Beasts of the Southern Wild (though it deserves to win for directing, as the script is far less integral than the way the film was shot and the performances coaxed out of the largely-amateur cast) as well as Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola's Moonrise Kingdom script, which is beautifully written. Also, despite Django Unchained's Tarantino-record financial success, it is assuredly "less mainstream" for the very white, very old Academy. QT could pick up his second career statue here (though it wouldn't be my pick).
- Live-action short, documentary short, and maybe even feature documentary are a crap shoot. Animated short will probably be the charming Paperman, which paired with Wreck-It Ralph in theaters. However, if you have some leftover juju from your last trip to a New Orleans mambo, use it on these categories. Searching for Sugar Man should probably win from those films nominated in documentary feature, but I have no faith in that pick. The Queen of Versailles's absence from the list of nominees is staggering, as that might have been the best film of any length, genre, or verisimilitude that I saw in 2012. Dead lizard in the tank! That's the whole movie right there! Dead lizard in the tank! Loved it!
- I believe there to be some mortal locks other than Anne Hathaway. Amour (which is currently playing at the Enzian and will absolutely emotionally devastate you, as all Michael Haneke films do), as the only foreign-language film also nominated for Best Picture, will lose Best Picture and win Best Foreign-Language Film. While it's usually smart to go Pixar in Best Animated Feature, I cannot see Brave beating the far-superior and far-smarter Wreck-It Ralph. I will be shocked if costume designer Jacqueline Durran doesn't finally win a trophy on her third nomination for the visually sumptuous Anna Karenina. And Life of Pi will absolutely take the trophy for score, deservedly.
- Bonus: a promise. If worthless-to-the-world-of-
comedy host Seth MacFarlane wins an Oscar® for his utterly awful song from his utterly awful movie Ted, I will eat my old Teddy Ruxpin while it plays a third-generation cassette dub of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.
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