2 Days Til Oscar. Final Oscar Predictions

This article originally appeared in my column at Towleroad and is reprinted here (albeit slightly altered for the TFE crowd) with their permission

Gravity will win how many Oscars? The most at any rate.

Oscar Weekend is upon us! Those damn Olympics forced it into March so it already feels like its running late and pushing back the local news broadcast yet further into the AM hours. And it hasn't even started yet! But soon Ellen Degeneres will be dancing down the aisles and we'll be on our way. [Before we get there make sure to like TFE on facebook so you don't forget about us during the spring/summer. We hit it all year round!]

I've been an Oscar blogger for over ten years (yikes) and usually predicting the winners in the high profile categories is easy; it's about getting out of your own way since it's easy to overthink it and create scenarios which aren't likely to happen. This year is more volatile than usual, though, with Gravity, 12 Years a Slave, and American Hustle all displaying strength after strength during "precursor season" but meeting plenty of resistance, too, on their awards path. Anything might happen in Best Picture, which is not something you can usually say going into the big night. It'll be a groundbreaking night almost any way it turns out with a first in Best Director (first Hispanic winner or first black winner) and a first in Picture (first sci-fi winner or first film that's totally about black people) 

Oscar never presents the categories in the exact same order from year to year, but let's take these in the order the envelopes opened last year just as an outline on which to hang our predictions after the jump... 

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Reading the Signs in the Stars for Best Original Song

Glenn here looking to the stars (and elsewhere) for hints on this year's higher profile than usual Original Song category. Ever since the fall out over Alone Yet Not Alone, Oscar's original song category has become far more competitive than I had originally imagined. I think we all figured "Let It Go" from Frozen would take it in a walk, no? But as more and more people come out of the woodwork in support of the other nominees, I'm wondering if that's quite the case anymore so I figure the best way to sort it out is to use arbitrary means of deduction.

What snow, Billboard charts, science, and Amy Poehler backrubs say about the race after the jump...

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My Link Will Go On

Baz Bamigboye talks to an acting coach about the lead acting nominations
Washington Post Nick Davis dispels five Oscar myths
Buzzfeed Jennifer Lawrence and the types of Cool Girls
In Contention on the first Oscars concert. Sounds like it needs to become a tradition!
New York Theater on that West Side Story screening with Rita Moreno last week (I so wish all these things weren't happening DURING Oscar season. I have no time. Sad face.)  

BDCWire You know the McConaissance has gone over big when Matthew McConaughey starts winning comparisons to Brando and de Niro
VF live blogs the 1993 Oscars - twenty years ago looked suspiciously like now with Leonardo, an AIDS drama and more...
MNPP a review of Enemy which has been intermittently flashing into my brain since Toronto
Carpetbagger on the pundit confusion and predictions for the big night
Salon a reminder: Jennifer Lawrence doesn't want a second Oscar right now
We Recycle Movies charts some Oscar stats involving Best Picture and the original vs adapted situation 

Fun Interactives
Slate is really killing it this year and I'm not saying that because they did such a great job with my acceptance speech piece. This "name that screenplay" quiz is super weird/hard/gripping... I didn't do as well as I was expecting (I did get Braveheart, Crash, Schindler's List and Chicago on their first word clues but the rest were much harder for me)  but it was exciting to play. They've also got a tool where you can adjust percentages of what will win Best Picture based solely on math of which "lower" categories mean the most to a Best Picture win. It's worth noting that before you even begin they have Gravity as the projected winner with 37.5% to 12 Years' 35.1% and American Hustle's 27.4% so that's their baseline.  The percentages adjust as you click on winners. But usually Gravity comes out on top. (sigh) 

Today's Must See
People magazine did a little photoshop wonder pairing the nominees (and Tom Hanks?) with their younger selves with conversations. It's super cute/cheesy but somehow kind of wistful at the same time - neat trick.

Are you afraid of me? That's all right – I'm afraid of me, too." 

"Is it a crime to look at Lange?"

Jessica Lange is now the face of Marc Jacobs Beauty line at 64, photographed by David Sims below. (Take that previously daring Lancôme with Isabella Rossellini as their international spokesface until she was in her dotage at 44). 

What a second act Jess's career! After a very long rough stretch (approximately 1996-2008 which saw the likes of Hush and Bonneville and a couple of barely released movies) she's really on top of it all again... except the movies. What can we trace the revival back to? Many of you would shout "Grey Gardens!" from 2009, but I think the secret might be her honorary place in David O. Russell's I ♥ Huckabees with its Jessica Lange photo fetish.

Is it a crime? Is it a crime to look at Lange?!

Question: If she made Titus (1999) or Big Fish (2003) now, and gave the exact same performance she gave then, post career resurgence, do you think she'd get a Supporting Actress nod? With Oscar, timing is often everything. 

A sampler platter of Best Animated Short Oscar winners

Tim here. With the Oscars just a couple of days away, I assume we’re all much too keyed up with anticipation to want to think about anything else. I am, certainly. But to live up to my mission as the resident animation guy at the Film Experience, I thought I might offer up a quick break in the action without heading too far afield from the Oscars. To wit, I’d like to offer up a quick sampling of some of my personal favorite winners of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film from across the 81 years that the prize has been given out. With a twist: seeking to keep clear of the major studio dominance of that category for much of its early life (and, as last year’s Paperman and probably this year’s Get a Horse! demonstrate, its later life as well), I’ve tried to pick only films which are at least at little bit more obscure than others. Enjoy!

Squeaky children, sex-starved triangles, and Polish apartment dwellers below the jump

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