86th Oscar Supporting Actor Updates (2013-2014 Awards Season) (11/27/2013)

Oscar loves to reward villains in the supporting actor race, and they’ve got one of the cruelest possible in Michael Fassbender’s rendition of real-life slave owner Edwin Epps. Fassbender has plenty of competition from Jared Leto, Tom Hanks and a host of possibilities seen and unseen, but his biggest competition may come from the overwhelming critical success of his own movie. There have only been a handful of times that Oscar has rewarded the same film with both Lead Actor and Supporting Actor wins (the most recent example was a decade ago with Mystic River), and the near certain wins that 12 Years A Slave will be picking up in other places could mean that supporting actor is an easy place for voters to spread the wealth to another film, especially if Fassbender refuses to hit the campaign trail. Still, I think he’s the best bet until the precursors point us clearly in another direction.

1. Michael Fassbender in 12 Years A Slave (Predicted Winner)

2. Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club

3. Tom Hanks in Saving Mr. Banks

4. Bradley Cooper in American Hustle

5. Jonah Hill in The Wolf Of Wall Street

Alternates:

6. Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips

7. Daniel Bruhl in Rush

8. James Gandolfini in Enough Said

9. Harrison Ford in 42

10. Will Forte in Nebraska

11. John Goodman in Inside Llewyn Davis

12. Matthew McConaughey in Mud

13. Jake Gyllenhaal in Prisoners

14. David Oyelowo in Lee Daniels’ The Butler

15. George Clooney in Gravity

16. Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond The Pines

17. Geoffrey Rush in The Book Thief

18 Dane DeHaan in Kill Your Darlings

19. Sam Rockwell in The Way Way Back

20. James Franco in Spring Breakers

21. Josh Brolin in Labor Day

22. Jeremy Renner in American Hustle

23. Steve Coogan in Philomena

24. Chris Cooper in August: Osage County

25. Bradley Cooper in The Place Beyond The Pines

26. Ben Foster in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

27. Casey Affleck in Out Of The Furnace

28. Matthew McConaughey in The Wolf Of Wall Street

29. Paul Dano in Prisoners

30. Woody Harrelson in Out Of The Furnace

31. Keith Stanfield in Short Term 12

32. Tahar Rahim in The Past

33. Javier Bardem in The Counselor

34. Joel Edgerton in The Great Gatsby

35. Paul Dano in 12 Years A Slave

36. Bobby Cannavale in Blue Jasmine

37. Tony Danza in Don Jon

38. Andrew Dice Clay in Blue Jasmine

39. Tobey Maguire in The Great Gatsby

40. Sharlto Copley in Elysium

41. Benedict Cumberbatch in August: Osage County

42. Colin Farrell in Saving Mr. Banks

43. Ben Foster in Lone Survivor

44. Brad Pitt in The Counselor

45. Cuba Gooding Jr. in Lee Daniels’ The Butler

46. Brad Pitt in 12 Years A Slave

47. Ewan McGregor in August: Osage County

48. Michael C. Hall in Kill Your Darlings

49. Tommy Lee Jones in Emperor

50. Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger

As always, check the Tracker Pages in the upper right hand corner of this blog for the most updated predictions in all categories!

See Supporting Actor predictions for other years HERE.

Or check out the Lead Actor, Lead Actress and Supporting Actress predictions.

See predictions for other categories at the 86th Oscars HERE.

Switch to another year:  87th,  88th,  89th  

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86th Oscar Animated Feature Updates (2013-2014 Awards Season) (11/19/2013)

The Animated Feature race is always fascinating to me, not least of which because half of the submission list comes from international entries. Personally, I think that every category should be that way, since there are, after all, a whole world worth of actors, directors, costume designers and all out there.

This year the top competition comes from Disney’s yet to be released Frozen and Hayao Miyazaki’s final work The Wind Rises, with Pixar’s Monsters University feeling like a close third. I’ll be closely following Frozen’s reception and box office when it opens during the U.S.’s Thanksgiving weekend, but for now I’m thinking that the sentimental vote will propel Miyazaki’s swan song to the win.

1. Hayao Miyazaki for The Wind Rises (Predicted Winner)

2. Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee for Frozen

3. Dan Scanlon for Monsters University

4. Stephanie Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner for Ernest & Celestine

5. Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders for The Croods

Alternates:

6. Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud for Despicable Me 2

7. Hiroyuki Okiura for A Letter To Momo

8. Chris Wedge for Epic

9. Fernando Cortizo for The Apostle

10. Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn for Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2

11. Luiz Bolognesi for Rio 2069: A Story Of Love And Fury

12. Nancy Florence Savard for The Legend Of Sarila

13. David Soren for Turbo

14. Sang-ho Yeon for The Fake

15. Jimmy Hayward for Free Birds

16. Anthony Silverston for Khumba

17. Klay Hall for Planes

18. Yukihiro Miyamoto and Akiyuki Shinbo for Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Part 3: Rebellion

19. Raja Gosnell for The Smurfs 2

As always, check the Tracker Pages in the upper right hand corner of this blog for the most updated predictions in all categories!    

See Animated Feature predictions for other years HERE.

If you’re really into animation, check out the Animated Shorts also.

See predictions for other categories at the 86th Oscars HERE.

Switch to another year:  87th,  88th,  89th  

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86th Oscar Adapted Screenplay Updates (2013-2014 Awards Season) (11/17/2013)

One of the things that Oscar watchers have to explain to the general public each year is that the Adapted Screenplay race includes not only adaptations from books, television and older movies, but also any sequel whose characters are based on an earlier work, and even some films that are very loosely based on a news or magazine article. This year, however, several studios seem to be attempting to change that trend, by campaigning their movies in the original screenplay category instead.

In most cases this isn’t going to matter anyway: The films that are challenging their presumptive categorization made my long list but don’t show up in my top five in either this category or my previously published Original Screenplay predictions. But it does make me wonder what the writers -- and their studios -- are up to. Might they be paving the way toward a new delineation of the categories and a future rules change? Or are they simply trying to position themselves so that the films will be noticed in other places (or at other award shows)?

1. John Ridley for Twelve Years A Slave (Predicted Winner)

2. Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke for Before Midnight

3. Terence Winter for The Wolf Of Wall Street

4. Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope for Philomena

5. Billy Ray for Captain Phillips

Alternates:

6. Tracy Letts for August: Osage County

7. Abdellatif Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix for Blue Is The Warmest Color

8. Jason Reitman for Labor Day

9. Destin Cretton for Short Term 12

10. Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber for The Spectacular Now

11. Danny Strong for Lee Daniels’ The Butler (if voters don’t accept the “original” campaign)

12. Michael Petroni for The Book Thief

13. Peter Berg for Lone Survivor

14. Steve Conrad for The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

15. Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce for The Great Gatsby

16. Carl Joos and Felix Van Groeningen for The Broken Circle Breakdown

17. Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck and Shane Morris for Frozen (if voters don’t accept the “original” campaign)

18. William Nicholson for Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom

19. Hayao Miyazaki for The Wind Rises

20. Joss Whedon for Much Ado About Nothing

21. Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro for The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

22. Robert L. Baird, Daniel Gerson and Dan Scanlon for Monsters University (if voters don’t accept the “original” campaign)

23. Mark Protosevich for Oldboy

24. Daniel Pennac for Ernest & Celestine

25. Abi Morgan for The Invisible Woman

26. Kasi Lemmons for Black Nativity

27. Francois Ozon for In The House

28. Gilles Bourdos and Jerome Tonnerre for Renoir

29. Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof for Star Trek Into Darkness

30. Josh Singer for The Fifth Estate

31. Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

32. Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster for The Motel Life

33. David Nicholls for Great Expectations

34. Lem Dobbs for The Company You Keep

35. Tony Briggs and Keith Thompson for The Sapphires

36. Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire for Oz: The Great And Powerful

37. Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, Damon Lindelof and J. Michael Straczynski for World War Z

38. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg for This Is The End

39. Tom Bradby for Shadow Dancer

40. David Gordon Green for Prince Avalanche

41. Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio for The Lone Ranger

42. William Wheeler, Mohsin Hamid and Ami Boghani for The Reluctant Fundamentalist

43. Carroll Cartwright and Nancy Doyne for What Maisie Knew

44. Morgan Land and Ariel Vromen for The Iceman

45. David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan for Man Of Steel

46. Chris Morgan, Hossein Amini and Walter Hamada for 47 Ronin

47. Drew Pearce and Shane Black for Iron Man 3

48. Malcolm D. Lee for The Best Man Holiday

49. Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt for Oblivion

50. Gavin Hood for Ender’s Game

As always, check the Tracker Pages in the upper right hand corner of this blog for the most updated predictions in all categories!    

See Adapted Screenplay predictions for other years HERE.

Or check out the Original Screenplay predictions.

See predictions for other categories at the 86th Oscars HERE.

Switch to another year:  87th,  88th,  89th  

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