Oscar predictions: how did I go?

About two weeks ago I posted my predictions on who would win the Oscars today, so I figured it was only fair to see how many of the 24 nominations I got right. So here we go:

Best Picture:
What won? 12 Years a Slave.
What did I say would win? 12 Years a Slave.

Best Director:
Who won? Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.
Who did I say would win? Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.

Best Actor:
Who won? Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club.
Who did I say would win? Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club.

Best Actress:
Who won? Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine.
Who did I say would win? Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine.

Best Supporting Actor:
Who won? Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer's Club.
Who did I say would win? Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips.

Best Supporting Actress:
Who won? Lupita N'Ongo, 12 Years a Slave.
Who did I say would win? Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine.

Oscar predictions for 2014

I'm a big fan of the Academy Awards, and usually try to watch it each year - although it gets harder now that they only broadcast the unedited ceremony in Australia during the day, and I have a job. I don't think the Oscars in any way represent the authoritive voice on the best films, performances, scripts, etc, of any given year, but I do think they represent the changing political and personal landscape of Hollywood and the American film industry. Here are my predictions for what's going to win next month.

Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave.
Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity.
Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer's Club.
Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine.
Best Supporting Actor: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips.
Best Supporting Actress: Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine.

Wong Kar Wai's Oscar Woes

What is it that Wong Kar Wai has to do, precisely, to score an Academy Award nomination? His martial arts film The Grandmaster was Hong Kong's official selection for the Best Foreign Picture category, and indeed it was one of the nine short-listed films. When the nominations were announced earlier this morning, however, it was conspicuously absent. Wong has never been nominated, not for Best Director, not for Best Foreign Picture.

Part of the problem is the labyrinthine manner in which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) runs the Best Foreign Picture category. Each country's nominated film authority is tasked with selecting one feature to represent their nation, and the film has to have been released theatrically in its home country not in the immediate past calendar year - as is the case with the main Oscar categories - but between the start of October two years previously and the end of September in the immediate past calendar year. Once each country has submitted its film, a special AMPAS committee reviews them and selects a short-list. AMPAS members who attend special film screenings can then nominate from that short-list and subsequently vote for the winner. You're not allowed to watch the films on screener DVDs - you have to attend an official AMPAS theatrical screening to be qualified to vote.

Golden Statue Playbook: Best Director

Best Director has always struck me as a weird award, because there's also an Oscar for Best Picture. Regularly different films will win each award. In 2006, Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain, while Crash was Best Picture. Three years earlier Roman Polanski won Best Director for The Pianist, while Chicago was Best Picture. There's also that weird phenomenon where a film will be nominated for Best Picture but not Best Director: as if the Academy likes the movie, but thinks it directs itself. Since the Best Picture category was expanded to allow for up to 10 nominees this has become a bigger problem that ever: this year Argo, Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty and Les Miserables all directed themselves, apparently.

John Ford is the most awarded director in Academy history, with four Oscars. Frank Capra and William Wyler each won three times. William Wyler is also the most nominated director, with 12 nominations in total. On the other hand, pity poor Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, King Vidor and Clarence Brown: all four of them received five nominations over the course of their career, and didn't win once.

• Amour - Michael Haneke
• Beasts of the Southern Wild - Benh Zeitlin
• Life of Pi - Ang Lee
• Lincoln - Steven Spielberg
• Silver Linings Playbook - David O. Russell

Golden Statue Playbook: Best Supporting Actor

It's interesting this year: all five nominees for Best Supporting Actor have already won at least one Oscar each. As a result, the standard "it's due" argument that leads a lot of veteran performers to win this category doesn't seem to apply.

Past precedents in this category: Walter Brennan is the most awarded supporting actor, with three wins. The most nominated supporting actor is a four-way tie between Brennan, Claude Rains, Jack Nicholson and Arthur Kennedy, with four nominations each.

This year's nominees are:

• Alan Arkin - Argo
• Robert De Niro - Silver Linings Playbook
• Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Master
• Tommy Lee Jones - Lincoln
• Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

Golden Statue Playbook: Best Supporting Actress

The Best Supporting Actress Academy Award is one that comes with a reputation for ruining the careers of actresses who won it. It would be easy to pretend this was true: did Brenda Fricker, Mercedes Ruehl or Marisa Tomei go anywhere after their wins? (Well, actually yes.)

Instead it's an award that is relatively easier to win for obscure or up-and-coming actresses, since for whatever reason Academy voters are more likely to extend acclaim for a category that seems less prestigious than Best Actress. The five nominees this year are:

• Amy Adams - The Master
• Sally Field - Lincoln
• Anne Hathaway - Les Miserables
• Helen Hunt - The Sessions
• Jackie Weaver - Silver Linings Playbook

Two actresses have won Best Supporting Actress twice: Shelley Winters and Dianne Weist.

Golden Statue Playbook: Best Actress

The second Oscar category I've decided to have a look at is, sensibly enough, Best Actress. A few notable things immediately leap out here. Emmanuelle Riva, at 85 years old, is the oldest nominee in this category ever. Quvenzhané Wallis, at nine years old, is the youngest ever. The remaining three nominees - Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence and Naomi Watts - have all been nominated for an Oscar before. Perhaps this year is their year? Well, one of their years. Obviously unless it's an unprecedented three-way draw only one them is going to win it.

Some background for this category: the most awarded actress in Oscar history remains Katherine Hepburn with four wins. The most nominated actress is, unsurprisingly, Meryl Streep, whose received 14 nominations over the course of her career.

• Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty
• Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook
• Emmanuelle Riva - Amour
• Quvenzhané Wallis - Beasts of Southern Wild
• Naomi Watts - The Impossible

Golden Statue Playbook: Best Actor

I have a long-running love affair with the Oscars. I love the ceremony, with its ridiculous dresses and  unbelievably inflated sense of pomp and importance. I particularly like that they are essentially an annual barometer for Hollywood. They're not and have never really been an accurate measure of what's good. What they do accurately represent, however, is how the industry - particularly its actors, who form the majority of the Academy's voting members - is thinking.
This year's awards are particularly interesting because for most of the races it's actually quite difficult to decide which nominee is most likely to win. Many years the awards are pretty much a foregone conclusion. This is not one of those years. (Full nominations available here.)

In a self-indulgent move - because let's face it, all my posts are pretty self-indulgent - I've decided to have a look at some of the categories this year and try and guess who's going to win. First up is Best Actor.

• Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook
• Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln
• Hugh Jackman - Les Miserables
• Joaquin Phoenix - The Master
• Denzel Washington - Flight