With the Academy Awards scheduled for Sunday night, here’s my predictions for the non-acting awards. I likely have seen very few of these movies, so I will mostly be going on gut feel and word of mouth.
Best Original Screenplay
Amour, Michael Hanake
Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino
Flight, John Gatins
Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal
I haven’t seen any of these films. Personally, I would like to see Quentin Tarantino win, but I don’t see that as a possibility given the n-word backlash he saw after the movie came out. Zero Dark Thirty has the upper hand, I think.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Argo, Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin,
Life of Pi, David Magee
Lincoln, Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell
Silver Linings Playbook and Argo are the two films here that I really want to see, with Lincoln coming in a distant third. I’m not sure if SLP will do as well in the “big” categories as people are expecting, but I think it will pick up some hardware here.
Best Animated Feature
Brave
Frankenweenie
ParaNorman
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Wreck-It Ralph
Again, I haven’t seen any of these and I’m likely not going to. That said, Wreck-It Ralph looks to be the most fun out of these entries. Not to imply at all the Academy puts any consideration to fun.
Best Cinematography
Anna Karenina, Seamus McGarvey
Django Unchained, Robert Richardson
Life of Pi, Claudio Miranda
Lincoln, Janusz Kaminski
Skyfall, Roger Deakins
My feeling is that this comes down to either Django Unchained or Skyfall, and I think James Bond loses this battle.
Best Costume Design
Anna Karenina, Jacqueline Durran
Les Misérables, Paco Delgado
Lincoln, Joanna Johnston
Mirror Mirror, Eiko Ishioka
Snow White and the Huntsman, Colleen Atwood
I’ve actually seen 2 of these films. My thought is that it will come down to Lincoln or Les Misérables, and who doesn’t like a musical?