Oscar Predictions: 2013

Argo Wow, I have been totally slacking on postings lately but there is nothing better than Oscar season to change that. I love me some movies and even though I forget who wins 20 minutes after the awards are over, I love me some Oscars. However, something weird is happening this award season – I basically don’t have any fucking clue who is nominated for anything and have barely seen all of the nominated films. Why is that? How did this happen? Is it the movie quality? Is it the Internet taking me away from movies? Are award shows just irrelevant now?

I can’t think too much about it. I need to just dive into my predications.

I give you: 2013 Oscar awards predictions (even though I haven’t seen all of the films but don’t really need too).

BEST PICTURE

Amour Argo Beasts of the Southern Wild Django Unchained Les Miserables Life of Pi Lincoln Silver Linings Playbook Zero Dark Thirty

Winner: Argo. Argo has too much momentum. Affleck is going to win a best actor award some day… then best director… then we’re all going to look back on Affleck’s career and he’s going to down in history as having the most unique IMDB page ever.

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

Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis. Never bet against DDL.

Side note: I watched Flight the other day and Denzel killed it.

BEST ACTRESS Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook Emmanuelle Riva, Amour Naomi Watts, The Impossible Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Winner: Jessica Chastain – because… um… I haven’t seen 4 out of the 5 movies in here. This is a strange category, someone either very obvious or someone unexpected always wins. I wonder if there could be a crazy Jennifer Lawrence win.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Alan Arkin, Argo Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Winner: Waltz!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Amy Adams, The Master Sally Field, Lincoln Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables Helen Hunt, The Sessions Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook

Winner: Anne Hathaway. Remember when she hosted the Oscars that one year?

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

Winner: Steven “I’m such a badass” Spielberg. Come on. It’s SS.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty John Gatins, Flight Michael Haneke, Amour Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Winner: I think Tarantino is going to win this thing but if John Gatins wins for Flight I won’t be mad. Did I mention that Flight was insane.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild Tony Kushner, Lincoln David Magee, Life of Pi David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook Chris Terrio, Argo

Winner: Tony Kushner. Because it’s a Spielberg film!

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM Brave Frankenweenie ParaNorman The Pirates! Band of Misfits Wreck-It Ralph

Winner: Sad to say I haven’t seen any of these in their entirety. So this is how we’re going to do this? Any Pixar films on here? Yes? Oh, Brave. Okay, Brave wins.

Affleck = Badass

I like irrational bragging rights. Not the bragging rights where you win a legit game and you’re champion for a season, but rather the bragging rights where you make a prediction or statement and it turns out to be true, and the only people who know it’s true are you and whomever else you said it too. I feel that I’m the champion of a lot of irrational bragging rights. At this current moment in time I’m cashing in on a statement I made years ago in a possible intoxicated moment, a statement that I doubled down on.

I was in a deep movie conversation with my buddy and the topic was Ben Affleck. I told him that Affleck was a badass to which he disagreed with the fury of a man who may have just been told Brett Favre was traded to the Vikings. The badass comment then started an ongoing thread that resulted in many conversations and even this blog post.

The truth is, even as of a few years ago I couldn’t have seen where Affleck was going with his career. Who could? At this moment in time thousands of people are writing about Argo and wondering how this guy went from low in the Hollywood rankings, to one of the most bankable individuals around. But I don’t want to get into that, because there is no reason to drift into wonderland to think about how a talented individual did something.

Buuuut….

For the sake of irrational bragging rights I’m going to stretch this out and be a little smugger and say these final things about Affleck:

Extract is underrated and he had a great performance.

Hollywoodland was the turning point for him.

He should direct the next Jack Ryan film and have a cameo in it to be the first actor director to ever be in a film of the character he once played, then he’d be more of a badass than Jack Ryan… did that make sense.

I’m looking forward to Argo, and if I didn’t mention it above – I called it. I knew Affleck was a badass*. F you Ottford. *Irrationally bragging.