2012 Oscars: Final Predictions

The past few years I've had an approximate success rate of 75% predicting these things - usually about 18 categories correct. I'm not sure I'll do that well this year given the how weird some of these races are, so I'm going to be a bit bolder in some of my picks than usual and hopefully it'll pay off. Probably not. We'll see.
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Best Picture: Argo

Best Director: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln - I know some are jumping towards Ang Lee for Life of Pi but I think industry respect will keep Spielberg ahead.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour - I correctly predicted Marion Cotillard for the French upset back in 2007, I think it will happen again tonight.

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln - My head says it will be Waltz, and my gut feels De Niro for the upset, but since I'm probably gonna get this wrong no matter what, I'm following my heart and predicting Jones

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables - even though I'm hoping somehow support fell off during the last weeks of voting and Field can upset, I know better than to predict it.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Tony Kushner, Lincoln - Again, I think industry respect and the fact that this actually deserves to win over Argo will have kept it on enough ballots. I will not be at all surprised to see Chris Terrio win for Argo, but I'm calling Kushner.

Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Editing: Argo

Best Cinematography: Life of Pi

Best Production Design: Anna Karenina - This is another where people have started to shift towards Pi, but I think it's still Anna Karenina's to lose, and Lincoln's next in line, not Pi.  I could of course be very wrong.  God help us if Les Miserables wins.

Best Costume Design: Anna Karenina

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. My head says Les Miserables will probably get this, but I'm going with my gut and the track record of big prosthetic-based stuff winning here.

Best Sound Mixing: Les Miserables. My gut says Skyfall or Pi, but here I'm going with my head.

Best Sound Editing: Life of Pi. I think. Maybe.

Best Visual Effects: Life of Pi

Best Original Score: Life of Pi

Best Original Song: "Skyfall" from Skyfall

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour, but I will not be at all surprised by an upset.

Best Animated Feature: Wreck-It Ralph

Best Animated Short: Paperman

Best Documentary Feature: Searching for Sugarman, but again, The Gatekeepers won't shock me.

Best Documentary Short: Inocente - if not this, then Open Heart

Best Live Action Short: Buzkashi Boys - if not this, then Curfew

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So those are my predictions.

If you're counting, I'm calling Beasts of the Southern Wild AND Silver Linings Playbook AND Zero Dark Thirty to go home empty-handed.

Les Mis to go the Dreamgirls route with Sound Mixing and Supporting Actress.

Argo to get only Picture and Editing.

Lincoln and Life of Pi to tie for most wins at 4 apiece.

I'll be happy if I get 16 right. I'm not confident I'll get more, as there are about 10 categories here I'm predicting based on a guess or wishful thinking.

I'll probably be live-tweeting @sl8rlawrence if you'd like to follow along.

2012 Oscars: Cinematography

This is a strong year for this category, featuring strong work in strong films, and including a few long overlooked nominees. The nominees range from flashy 3D CGI work to subtle, tableau-crafting compositions, with some retro homage and bold colorful action sequences thrown in for fun. Almost any of these nominees could win and deserve it, but a few stand above the rest.

Nominees

Anna Karenina - Seamus McGarvey

Django Unchained - Robert Richardson

Life of Pi - Claudio Miranda

Lincoln - Janusz Kaminski

Skyfall - Richard Deakins

5. Anna Karenina

Basically, the camerawork here was just capturing all the movement of the sets and actors. Which is no small feat, to be fair, and the theatrical lighting is impressive. I saw one article, though, that suggests the long take of Anna and Vronsky dancing almost deserves this award by itself... except it was really a triumph of staging and choreography more than cinematography, and was really just ripping off (or perhaps intentionally referencing) the scene from West Side Story where Tony and Maria meet for the first time. 

4. Django Unchained

Richardson is always remarkable, but in Django, all of the B-movie flourishes and fast zooms distracted more than enhanced. And although there was certainly gorgeous scenery shots and a great Western feel, the work here seemed more serviceable than really interesting.

3. Skyfall

Roger Deakins isn't a big budget action movie cinematographer. But then, Skyfall isn't your typical action movie. Even the basic action scenes like motorcycle chases were framed somehow more elegantly than they had any right to be. And the lighting schemes in the Macau casino, the fight in the skyscraper, and obviously all the fire and nighytime photography at the climax... well, it's all breathtakingly beautiful work that elevates this Bond flick to visual poetry. That said, having the best cinematography in an action film of the year doesn't necessarily mean it's the best cinematography of any film of the year, there...

2. Lincoln

It's almost not even noticeable how hard Kaminski was working here. It's very tempting and almost very easy nowadays to give way to epic crane shots, fast hand-held work, and strikingly wide lens angles or shallow depths of field. But Kaminski restrains so much here. He locks his camera down or if he moves it, it does so so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. He allows his composition and Spielberg's blocking to dictate his camera. And these are the conscious decisions of a master - don't forget this is the guy who helped popularize the docu-drama shaky-cam with Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, so he can do all of that too, but that's not what Lincoln calls for. This is a film that calls for a claustrophobically shot cabinet meeting, with cigar smoke in the air and a shuttered windows letting only the necessary light seep in. Or white-washed windows with sunlight flooding the halls of Congress, keeping the outside world both invisible and impossibly bright. There is so much going on here, if you blink you might miss it. I very nearly wish this would win, if it weren't for...

1. Life of Pi

I'm still not sure what to do with the relationship between heavy visual effects use and the cinematography.  How much credit should Miranda get for images which were likely constructed in a computer? I'm not entirely sure, but neither can I deny the fact that the images captured here were utterly transcendent. And there was plenty of principal photography on the water and of course on sets during the opening scenes of Pi's childhood, so it's not exactly Pixar we're talking about. And does adding a digital sunset, for instance, really compromise the work of the cinematographer any more than the heavy color correction that almost certainly went to Skyfall compromises Deakins'? The sinking of the Tsimtsum was a triumph of visual effects, yes, but also of cinematography. And nighttime on the floating island? Well sure the meerkats were digital, but the lighting on Pi during his night in the trees was haunting. I'm going to continue a philosophical debate in my head for a while about the relationship between CGI and the Cinematographer, but this year at least, I can't deny the partnership was a necessary symbiotic one when it comes to the most visually stunning work this year. You can't have one without the other here, so I say give them both Oscars.

I couldn't find a decent standalone clip on youtube, so just go watch the trailers.

Should win: Life of Pi (or Lincoln)
Will win: Life of Pi (or possibly maybe Skyfall)
Should have been nominated: The Master, Cloud Atlas

2012 Oscars: Song and Score

As usual this year has some easy picks, and as usual there are some out-of-left field picks, and as usual many of the more popular songs were left by the wayside.

How all of the original music from Django Unchained got ignore, I'll never know or understand. But at least with Skyfall we get a nominee that was a commercial pop success for the first time in several years.

And sorry, but I was just too lazy to embed or link to any of these songs. Do it yourself, I'm not your mother.

Best Song Nominees
"Before My Time" - Chasing Ice
"Everybody Needs A Best Friend" - Ted
"Pi's Lullaby" - Life of Pi
"Skyfall" - Skyfall
"Suddenly" - Les Miserables

5. "Suddenly"

Aside from the fact that the song wasn't necessary to the film, and aside from the fact that this is clearly just another stage musical that adds an original song likely for the sole purpose of garnering this very Oscar nomination, this song just isn't very good. It wasn't memorable, it wasn't necessary, and it wasn't exactly Hugh Jackman's finest moment in the film. It shouldn't be here.

4. "Everybody Needs A Best Friend"

It's a fun enough song, and Norah Jones is always nice to listen to, but this song doesn't really do anything new or different or unique compared to the songs Randy Newman has already won Oscars for, except perhaps with a more tongue-in-cheek approach to the lyrics.

3. "Before My Time"

This is the one film I wasn't able to see, but for this category that isn't always necessary. Simply put, it's a really lovely song, a sort of lament, that seems to go well thematically with a documentary about glacial melting.

2. "Skyfall"

I know this is probably going to win, and that's okay. It's nice to see a song so closely associated with a film become to popular - that used to be a regular occurrence up until around the beginning of last decade. And look, Adele is great and everyone would love to see her win another award, but let's face it: the song is built on pre-existing musical motifs and occasionally nonsensical lyrics. It's a pleasant thing to listen to, and I like it a lot, but objectively it's not exactly a great song.

1. "Pi's Lullaby"

I never would have thought to nominate this song, and it's probably only here because it got swept in with some greater love for the movie it's from and a desire to show some diversity with an ethnic sound rather than the merits of the song itself. But you know what? It's a really cool song. It's seamless integrated into the film's score at times, and the lyrics are actually really insightful when you think about what the movie is really about:

"are you the peacock or the plumage of the peacock?are you the cuckoo or the cry of the cuckoo?are you the moon or the light of the moon?are you the eyelashes, or the dream?are you the flower or the nectar?are you the fruit or the sweetness?"
It really is a lullaby of sorts, and the questions it asks drive straight to the heart of the movie - what are we dealing with? The truth? Or something that is a shadow of the truth? Reality, or our sensation and perception of reality? 
Should win: "Pi's Lullaby"Will win: "Skyfall"Should have been nominated: "Who Were We" from Holy Motors, "Who Did That to You" from Django Unchained, or almost any other original song from that movie. Also one of the songs from Brave would have been nice to see here. Possibly "Song of the Lonely Mountain" from The Hobbit.
Best Score NomineesAnna Karenina - Dario MarianelliArgo - Alexandre DesplatLife of Pi - Mychael DannaLincoln - John WilliamsSkyfall - Thomas Newman
5. Anna Karenina
Dario Marinelli tries to recreate the magic of his Atonement score with a few more intergrated sound effects into the music (rubber stamps and actors playing instruments, etc.) but aside from a few cues, the score here never really does anything that interesting. It works for the film, sure, and it has some nice Russian-inspired instrumentation and themes, but it's more serviceable than anything else.
4. Argo
When I saw this nomination, I scratched my head trying to even remember the music from Argo. Then I went and listened to the score and found it fairly interesting, noticed some truly beautiful musical moments, and thought that it was something new and different from Desplat's other work. Unfortunately, it's not that new from music that other composers have already written for other film set in and around the Middle East - most of the time it just seems like cookie-cutter Arabian-sounding thriller fare.
3. Skyfall
Thomas Newman is one of my favorite composers and it's a crime that he's gone 0-10 at the Oscars so far in his career. But while he definitely elevates action film music Skyfall to a new level with his signature sounds - unique chord progressions, that crystal clear oboe - at the end of the day, much of it remains typical and let's not forget that he still obligingly draws heavily on the James Bond theme and sound that already exists in everyone's mind. That's not a criticism, mind you - it should be somewhat typical because we go into a Bond movie expecting some degree of familiarity. But it's hardly the best work of the year.
2. Life of Pi
Beautiful work here, and nearly ceaselessly playing during the film. The music really helps tell the story. It is delicate and fascinating. My main problem is that eventually it all sort of sounds repetitive and similar. It would be a completely deserving winner, don't get me wrong, it just doesn't consistently get to me on a gut level. At time it is transcendant, but falls short too often for me to pick it. 
1. Lincoln
I almost didn't even notice the music when I first saw Lincoln. John Williams shows great restraint, frequently letting the music work underneath the images and dialogue, slowly, subtly, but necessary and present nonetheless, almost never drawing attention to itself. The folksy fiddle tunes are wonderful comic relief and do wonders for the scenes in which they are used, the few "themes" are not over used, nor especially catchy - and that's a good thing. The music stays with you, but it doesn't get stuck in your head. And near the end of "The Peterson House and Finale" - essentially a suite summarizing the whole score - I still get chills when the music swells and reminds me of the triumph the movie celebrates (the passage of the 13th Amendment), as well as the triumph the movie is. Some have complained the score sounds like a little too typically John Williams, not exactly his most innovative stuff.  And sure, it's not as radical as his scores for Prisoner of Azkaban, Memoirs of a Geisha, or Tintin, but classic John Williams is still better than 95% of the scores out there. 
Should win: LincolnWill win: Life of PiShould have been nominated: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Cloud Atlas