Working as fast as I can through the first wave of Oscar charts. I realize 'fast as I can' this year is snail-paced but you have to agree that this year has been a slow-starter anyway. Not that things haven't started now. Cannes is in full swing and in addition to the awards speculation for the Palme D'Or, Cannes prompts film sales, too, and thus distributor shuffling. Stephen Frears Philomena (currently in post) was picked up by the Weinstein Company and given that they had a full slate already -- especially for Best Actress since they're also representing Streep & Kidman in August and Grace -- it must have been more than Judi Dench that prompted the high priced sale. I've added it to the previously completed charts because it's just one of those projects that felt right to me when I first heard about it. Isn't it about time for Stephen Frears to get his mojo back? I've added that new contender to the prediction charts.
But for now, let's talk about the visual and aural categories. What follows is not my predictions but just a few thoughts to kick off a conversation. You can see predictions on the charts here (for visuals) and here (for sound)
Cinematography
It may finally be Emmanuel Lubezki's year. The truly great cinematographer has always been overshadowed by non-discriminatory love for competing films in his nominated years -- in fact he's one of the very rare frequent below the title nominees that does not require any degree of Best Picture heat to be in the conversation. In fact only 20% of his nominations come from Best Picture nominated films. So you know they really love his work and it's not just coattails from the movies. This year he has the now-important advantage (sigh) of working with a ton of visual effects with his frequent collaborator Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity. For reasons that are still unclear to me Oscar voters now view Cinematography as an extension of the Visual Effects category; in the last four years the winners of both categories have been the exact same film. This is a terrible trend since cinematography is an art that's been producing myriad breathtaking works long before anybody had ever heard of CGI. Still... if this is what it takes to finally get Lubezki the Oscar... [more]
I also wonder if this branch will start recognizing some of the younger breed of DPs who are doing incredible work but are having trouble breaking through to mainstream honors like Oscar. I speak of: Greig Fraser (horribly unnominated last year despite great work in multiple films) who is lensing the mental illness true story Foxcatcher this year; Bradford Young who has already won raves for the indie western Aint Them Bodies Saints; Sean Bobbitt who does such incredible work with Steve McQueen and is behind the camera on Twelve Years a Slave; and Adriano Goldman who came up with director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre, Jane Eyre) and got the August: Osage County gig.
Costume Design (already discussed)
Production Design
This is the old Art Direction category which is now renamed to reflect the person who actually got the Art Director's nomination anyway - her boss the Production Designer. Some obvious likely competitors here include Catherine Martin for The Great Gatsby, Dan Hennah for the fifth entry in Peter Jacksons's Middle Earth franchise (he's been nominated for all the previous editions), three-time winner Dante Ferretti who is doing Seventh Son and, finally, anyone at all who is working on a period piece. Sight unseen I'd love to finally see some recognition for Adam Stockhausen who does such meticulous precious work for Wes Anderson and who is now designing 12 Years a Slave and if superheroes weren't exhausting me I'd be rooting for Man of Steel's Alex McDowell who weirdly has not yet been nominated despite a great looking filmography. The busiest of production designers this year seems to be Jess Gonchor, whose sole previous nomination was for True Grit. This year he has three disparate films for Oscar to choose from: The Lone Ranger, Foxcatcher, and Inside Llewyn Davis.
One film I'm really curious about for this category is Kasi Lemmon's Black Nativity. The production designer Kristi Zea is quite versatile -- consider that her two nominations come from a contemporary comedy As Good as It Gets and a period drama Revolutionary Road but her most famous work is surely for a horror flick Silence of the Lambs -- and if Nativity's musical and dream sequences are special instead of just slightly decorative or barely heightened, maybe this could be a surprise Oscar contender in this category?
Will "Black Nativity" be special? Fans of "Eve's Bayou" will be thrilled if it is
Song
Any guesses? I always love input on this elusive (some would pronounce that "useless") category. It's notoriously difficult to get a grasp on this field even after the lengthy eligibility lists hit. But it's even harder before that. We know that Gatsby could compete and that the Disney fairy tale Frozen will have songs but the only other music heavy films we're aware of coming down the pike are Black Nativity and Inside Llewyn Davis but will any of their musical numbers qualify as originals?
Score
Due to the piecemeal nature of filmmaking, scores and editing are generally the last pieces to come together so at this point in the year many of the films have unknown composers (and are probably still using temp tracks) which make predictions difficult early on since the music branch is very cliquish and frequently rewards the same people. So the only sure thing looks like Alexandre Desplat forMonuments Men since he still hasn't won and is always in the running. Speaking of "still hasn't won"... what about Thomas Newman (11 nominations now) for Disney history in Saving Mr Banks. Elsewhere Hans Zimmer is very very busy (as usual) with four major films coming but he has a weird relationship to Oscar campaigning so who knows.
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The Acting categories are next!