Everyone wants to prognosticate the Oscars. They are months away. We still have not seen several movies, and some we won’t see for a while. Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and Tom Hooper’s “Les Miserables” are big, big question marks. No one knows what will come with Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.” But based on what we’ve seen, and what’s being shown this week at the New York Film Festival, here’s how things stack up. To be continued, with many twists and turns to come…
BEST PICTURE:
Argo, The Master, Silver Linings Playbook, Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Life of Pi, The Paperboy, and Cloud Atlas are all in the mix to different degrees. Lincoln, Les Miserables, and Django Unchained are out there, somewhere. Zero Dark Thirty and The Promised Land also have promise. Flight, and two movies with similar titles–Quartet, and A Late Quartet, have possibilities. Hitchcock, with Anthony Hopkins, remains a mystery still.
BEST ACTOR:
Ben Affleck (Argo), Joaquin Phoenix (The Master), Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings), Tom Hanks (Cloud Atlas), Tommy Lee Jones (Hope Springs), Richard Gere (Arbitrage), Omar Sy (The Intouchables), Bill Murray (Hyde Park on Hudson), John Hawkes (The Sessions), Brad Pitt (Killing Them Softly) are all strong as is Jean-Louis Trintignant, a long shot from Amour. Daniel Day Lewis, Denzel Washington, Hugh Jackman, and Russell Crowe are wild cards.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Roberto Benigni (outstanding in Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love), Scoot McNairy (Killing Them Softly–watch him), Alan Arkin, Jim Broadbent (brilliant in Cloud Atlas), Matthew McConnaughey (The Paperboy), Jeremy Irvine, lead the list. A lot depends on who does what in Django.
BEST ACTRESS:
Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings), Halle Berry (Cloud Atlas), Kiera Knightley (Anna Karenina), Meryl Streep (Hope Springs), Viola Davis (Won’t Back Down), Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone), Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha), Emmanelle Riva from Amour are names to be considered. I loved Jane Fonda in Peace, Love and Understanding–she’ll get a comedy nomination from the Golden Globes, certainly.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Anne Hathaway (Dark Knight Rises? Les Miz?), Jackie Weaver, Susan Sarandon, Mickey Sumner (Frances Ha), Laura Linney (The Details), Winona Ryder (The Iceman). Unknown: Sally Field is a strong possibility from Lincoln, Kerry Washington from Django.
BEST DIRECTOR:
Ben Affleck, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, and then–who knows? Steven Spielberg, Tom Hooper, Kathryn Bigelow? The Wachowskis? Woody Allen? (Come on, the singing in the shower stuff was hilarious).
