There is an entire Internet subculture devoted to predicting the Oscars. It has its own Vegas odds-makers, like sporting events, and several different blogs devoted to handicapping the ceremony. Hard and fast rules don't work, and even renowned statistician Nate Silver wasn't as good at predicting who got little gold men as he was at predicting how the 2012 election would unfold.
No matter. If you followed my advice last year, you went with a consensus arrived at after several years of obsessive following of pre-Oscar indicators, gut instinct, and a resolution to not take it so seriously. You also got 18 out of 24 categories correct, which is more than enough to win the pool at most offices or Oscar party pools.
This year should be no different if you follow my foolproof guide to the Oscars. These are the winners wrought by the awards season narrative, and I'll be absolutely sure of each one — until a few of them are wrong on Sunday.
Argo has made a late season push to the front of the pack for Best Picture. Hollywood loves itself, so a movie about making movies (sort of) could swoop in and prevent the solid, but straightforward Lincoln from Mitt-Romney-ing its way to victory.
Argo should pick up Editing and Adapted Screenplay awards as well, while Lincoln consoles itself with wins for Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones performances, and Steven Spielberg's direction. In the other major categories, Jennifer Lawrence wins Best Actress by a nose for Silver Linings Playbook, while Anne Hathaway wins Best Supporting Actress in a landslide (pretty much just for singing the Susan Boyle song from Les Mis, which will also win Sound Mixing for its innovative live-singing production). In a wide-open race, Django Unchained stands poised to take Original Screenplay.
Life of Pi should take a bunch of technical awards for looking pretty — mark it down in cinematography, art direction, visual effects and throw in Best Score as a bonus. Skyfall will become only the third Bond movie to win an Oscar, taking home both Sound Effects Editing and Best Original Song for Adele's titular ballad. Anna Karennina easily wins Best Costumes, and The Hobbit wins makeup for dusting off the hobbit-feet.
That leaves Wreck-It Ralph winning Best Animated Feature, Amour (a Best Picture nominee) easily winning Best Foreign Language Film, Searching For Sugar Man taking Best Documentary, and finally the unpredictable short films. Getting one short film right is a good day: at least Paperman (a partially hand-drawn industry favorite) is a lock for Animated Short. I have gone with Curfew in Live Action Short (it has a cute little kid), and Mondays at Racine (it's about cancer) in Documentary Short.
Without further ado, here's my comprehensive guide to the Academy Awards. Best of luck! And if I'm way off, I promise all of your money back.
Picture: Argo Director: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables Original Screenplay: Django Unchained Adapted Screenplay:Argo Editing:Argo Cinematography:Life of Pi Score:Life of Pi Song: "Skyfall" by Adele from Skyfall Art Direction:Life of Pi Costumes:Anna Karennina Sound Mixing:Les Miserables Sound Effects Editing:Skyfall Makeup: The Hobbit Visual Effects: Life of Pi Foreign:Amour Animated Feature:Wreck-It Ralph Doc Feature:Searching for Sugar Man Doc Short:Mondays at Racine Animated Short: Paperman Live Short: Curfew
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables, for Best Supporting Actress.
The war between Israel and Hamas that has been going on since October 2023 has had far-reaching effects, especially for the people in the region. While there are many perspectives on the political and military conflict, a new film presents the resulting humanitarian crisis from a specific point of view: that of Palestinian filmmakers inside Gaza.
From Ground Zero: Stories from Gazais an anthology of 22 separate short films, each 3-6 minutes long, from Palestinian directors living in Gaza during the war. The film has been short-listed for an Oscar for Best International Feature.
Some of the shorts feel like documentaries, others feel like created stories, but all show the brutal impacts — both physical and psychological — inside Palestine during the war. Almost all of the films have their subjects navigating the rubble of bombed-out buildings, and many of them depict the vast tent cities that have popped up to house the displaced citizens, while war drones buzz overhead.
The stories of the shorts vary from simple to relatively complex. Multiple films feature an individual person describing his or her daily life, although the filmmakers use different techniques to embellish the relatively basic idea. Some pack in a lot of narrative into a small amount of time; one titled “School Day,” which shows a young boy preparing himself for a version of school, has a gut punch of an ending.
The most memorable segment is “Soft Skin,” in which a woman helps a group of children compose stop motion animations using characters created from construction paper. It contains a haunting detail of kids showing that their mothers have written their names on their arms to be able to identify them if they become victims of a bombing. The animated sequences depicting such a scenario are both beautiful and tragic at the same time.
The films are about evenly split between those that focus solely on adults and those that use children. Naturally, those that do feature kids have heightened emotions. But that innocence cuts both ways, as some of the films show the kids still finding a way to have fun, a small measure of joy in otherwise joyless surroundings.
In fact, despite all of the devastation, some hope remains among a handful of filmmakers. One depicts a comedian continuing to perform so that he can bring some laughter to people’s days. Another has a director actively seeking out stories about happy things, which she finds in a group of people who play music together. One lyric from a song they sing — “It’s certain the happy days will return” — indicates that they refuse to let the war take away their expectation that life will be normal again someday.
All of the films combine for a crucial, if excruciating, account of this period of time in the war-torn region. As a viewer, you don’t want there to be more stories, but you also can’t look away as each of the filmmakers lay out intensely personal narratives. If nothing else, it gives people with little other means a chance to have their voices be exposed to the world at large.
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From Ground Zero: Stories of Gaza is playing February 21-23 the at Austin Film Society Cinema.