Oscars

This time last year, everyone knew either Avatar or The Hurt Locker would win Best Picture. This year’s race has been a little less clear-cut. Several studios have waited to the bitter end to release their Best Picture candidates. One notable example is The Weinstein Company’s Blue Valentine, which they sneakily released in limited locations around New York and Los Angeles to secure contention for the award. And now that the category is back to 10 nominees, it can be anyone’s race.

Disney has also been vocal in pushing it’s billion dollar animated feature, Toy Story 3, to not only contend in the category, but win out. Warner Bros has a few films it could promote including Inception, Hereafter, and The Town. They’ll probably put most of their publicity chips behind Inception since it was the most profitable and (in my opinion) best film out of the three. Paramount Pictures’ True Grit (made by the Cohen Brothers) has also been receiving a lot of Oscar buzz for Best Picture, even though the film’s not out for another two weeks.

My predictions for the 10 Best Picture nominees are: The Social Network, Inception, True Grit, Blue Valentine, Toy Story 3, The Town, Hereafter, The Kids Are Alright, 127 Hours, and Black Swan. The current frontrunners for Best Actor are James Franco for 127 Hours (Franco will be hosting the awards this year along with Anne Hathaway) and Jeff Bridges for True Grit (this would be the first ever back-to-back Best Actor win since Bridges won last year for his role in Crazy Heart). Ryan Gosling’s also said to be in the mix after his phenomenal portrayal of a broken husband in Blue Valentine. The Best Actress race is a little more up in the air. Natalie Portman has received a lot of acclaim for her role in Black Swan, but Michelle Williams has also gotten much praise opposite Gosling for her part in Blue Valentine.  We don’t know much so far, but we do know it should be a close race. It’ll all come down to which studio puts the best publicity campaign together for its films and actors.