Most commentators agree on predictions for the top awards at tomorrow night’s 2011 Academy Awards presentations. According to them, the Oscar goes to:
– Best Picture: The King’s Speech (with The Social Network in second);
– Best Director: David Fincher for The Social Network, with Tom Hooper a close second for The King’s Speech;
– Best Actress: Natalie Portman from Black Swan (with Annette Bening from The Kids Are All Right in second);
– Best Actor: Colin Firth from The King’s Speech (with Jesse Eisenberg from The Social Network a distant second);
– Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo for The Fighter, with Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit a close second.
– Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale for The Fighter, with Geoffrey Rush for The King’s Speech a close second.
Anything outside these picks will be a big surprise, but surprises are always possible. The contested areas with close two-horse races are Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor Categories.
For a random sampling of predictions and other Oscar news around the Internet:
– For the three contested slots of Director/Supporting Actress/Supporting Actor, Roger Ebert opts for the non-Fighter leaders and is in the Hooper/Steinfeld/Rush category. While agreeing with the consensus on the other picks, he notes that if he were voting for Best Picture, he would opt for The Social Network even as he predicts The King’s Speech to win.
– Roger Ebert’s former TV co-host Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times goes a different route, opting for the Fincher/Leo/Bale combination. Also, he is one of the few who are still predicting The Social Network as the Best Picture, although he hedges his bets by saying it might be safer to go with The King’s Speech.
– Melenia Ryzik at The New York Times liked The Fighter and is in the Fincher/Leo/Bale category. Moviephone also liked The Fighter‘s supporting nominees and is in the Fincher/Leo/Bale category, as is Rick’s Predictions at Awards Wiz.
– Peter Hartlaub at the San Francisco Chronicle agrees, going with Fincher/Leo/Bale, although he thinks The Social Network will upset The King’s Speech.
– Gregory Ellwood at the HitFlix Blog bravely predicts a Fighter split with the Supporting Acting awards going to Steinfeld and Bale.
– Jeff Johnson over at Popdose also mixes it up a little bit, going with a Hooper/Leo/Bale combination, and The Best Picture Project agrees.
– Five critics at The Guardian UK differ among themselves, but with most saying the contested three categories will go to Fincher, Bale and . . . the country’s own Helena Bonham Carter for Best Supporting Actress (The King’s Speech)! Three of the five also pick The Social Network as Best Picture.
– For another take on the Ocars, Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street makes his predictions (Best Actor: “Colin Filth”).
– Cinematical has some interesting Oscar statistics. Did you know that the movie with the highest number of Oscars while winning 100% of nominated categories was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) with 11 wins out of 11 nominations?
– For a trip down memory lane, Salon has a slide show of past Oscar Moments Everyone Should See.
Among other big categories, the sure things seem to be Toy Story 3 for Best Animated Feature and The Social Network for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Best Documentary category seems to be a battle between Exit Through the Gift Shop and Inside Job. See Chimesfreedom’s previous post on an industry’s campaign against another Best Documentary nominee, Gasland.
Conclusion on the Big Awards? It is always tricky to predict the winners because you are not selecting the “Best” but who you think others will say is the “Best.” So Chimesfreedom will leave the predictions to others (but see related posts below for thoughts on some of the contenders). From our random sampling, it will be a big surprise if The King’s Speech does not get Best Picture or if Natalie Portman does not get Best Actress or if Colin Firth does not get Best Actor. The difference in the close races will depend on whether or not the voters completely loved The King’s Speech and how much they liked The Fighter, as The Fighter lovers are going for Fincher/Leo/Bale while The King’s Speech lovers opt for Hopper/Steinfeld/Rush.
But if predictions were always right, we would not need the awards show. So our prediction is simply that somewhere along the line, there will be a surprise or two.
(Related Posts)
What are your thoughts on the predictions? Who do you think will win? Who should win? Leave a comment.
The closest prediction is that I’ll end up falling asleep before the end. . . meanwhile, I think Colin Firth is a shoe-in (is that how you spell that?) for Best Actor but the movie overall I didn’t think would be a Best Picture (though maybe it is). And while I enjoyed the Social Network and appreciated some of the writing, I don’t know why it’s even nominated for Best Picture at all. So we’ll see how the night goes.
We were upstate for a couple of days and apparently there is some drama over local-celeb Melissa Leo advertising to get votes for Best Supporting.
Best Picture – The King’s Speech
Best Director – The Coen Brothers, True Grit
Best Actor – Colin Firth
Best Actress – Natalie Portman
Best Supporting Actor – Geoffrey Rush
Best Supporting Actress – Hailee Steinfeld though I would like to see Helena Bonham Carter get her due.
Original Screenplay – Inception
Adapted Screenplay – The Social Network. No great choices.
Best Animated Feature – Toy Story 3. But Tangled, not nominated, was the best of the year.
Best Documentary – Exit Through the Gift Shop. Could be anything.
Animated Short – Night and Day
Live Short – Na Wewe
Visual Effects – Inception. Again, not a lot to choose from.
Sound Editing – Tron, otherwise there was truly no point to the film.
mh, I’m not an expert on the Melissa Leo issue, but from what I’ve heard it does not seem such a big issue, under either story whether she did it on her own because of ageism or because the studio wanted her to do it. It does not seem so out-of-line with the normal campaigning that goes on. Even though I won’t be disappointed if Hailee Steinfeld wins the category, I hope nobody voted against Leo because of the campaign. The sad thing, though, is no matter who wins now, everyone will wonder about the effects of the ads and the controversy. So if Steinfeld wins, some may discount the deserving win by claiming she only won because of the controversy.
Bill, I like your choices. If the Coen Brothers win the director award it will certainly be a big surprise, but I agree with you that they have been unfairly overlooked in much of the award discussion. True Grit is an excellent movie that perhaps will be watched more in the future than other movies on the list. But I wonder if the movie has been overlooked at awards time because it is seen as a remake?