The nominations for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards are announced early tomorrow morning, and seeing as I don't have to be up early tomorrow morning, expect me to report on those around noon. There's bound to be more than a few surprises, omissions, and upsets, but I can't say I'm really planning for those. I'm predicting what I think has the greatest chance at being nominated, so it's probably easiest to start at the top, because the nominations are pretty much locked in for Best Picture. Black Swan, Inception, The Fighter, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, and True Grit are all sturdy bets in terms of nominations. It's that tenth spot you have to worry about, and anything other than The Town or Winter's Bone would be a surprise. I'm betting on the latter, leaving Ben Affleck out in the cold.The easiest category to predict is animated feature, seeing as there will only be three nominees. Toy Story 3 will make it in without a doubt, and How to Train Your Dragon still has some heat going towards a nomination. That leaves the final slot up to The Illusionist and Tangled, and I'd expect Sylvain Chomet's silent traditionally animated film to make the cut. Tangled seems just a bit too modern and new age for the Academy, and I expect them to go for something a bit more authentic. I'd really like for Megamind to be nominated, but the horrible choice of songs in the film kind of alienates those chances. As for Foreign Language Film, do you honestly expect me to make an informed decision on this one? I haven't seen any of these films, so
that's truly impossible. Therefore, I'm just going to make a wild guess and say that Incendies, In A Better World, Dogtooth, Biutiful and Life, Above All will be nominated. It's going to be really funny if those all end up being nominated. The documentary race is especially competitive this year, and yet I still haven't seen most of the films that have been shortlisted. It's pretty straightforward that Waiting for "Superman" and Inside Job will make it in, although I realize that any prediction I make in this case will be slightly off. I'm going to take a guess that the Academy reacted to Exit Through the Gift Shop the same way I did. I hardly believe it to be close to the best film of the year, despite how true it may be, so I'm going to say that Gasland, Restrepo, and The Tillman Story fill out my list. I'm keeping Waste Land in the back of my mind as an alternate, but I'm not counting on it.
The race for Best Director is a little more clear cut, because it was obvious this year which films had a powerful vision. Technically speaking, Tom Hooper shouldn't even be nominated for this, because he barely had any presence in The King's Speech. The ones that should be locks are David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Danny Boyle, and Christopher Nolan. David O' Russell could be an alternate, but everything in The Fighter lacks that uniqueness that is required to make it in this category. I'm pulling for Aronofsky to come out on top with the win for
Black Swan, but there's quite some unlikelihood of that actually happening. The last two races are for the screenplay categories, and though that seems like a less climactic end than Best Picture, this year's nominations for that category aren't all that climactic. In the Original Screenplay race, the two films fighting for the win are Inception and The King's Speech, so they are both reasonable locks. Black Swan may have less to go with in terms of dialogue, but the ideas presented in the screenplay are spectacular enough to merit a nod. The Kids Are All Right should make it in for the authentic and fun dialogue, as well as the sprightly and unconventional narrative. I'd like to say that Another Year should fill out this category, but that film has been disappearing at an alarming rate. The next film after that would be The Fighter, so I'm sticking to my guns in hope that Mike Leigh's British drama makes the cut. As for Adapted Screenplay, it's pretty impossible for any other film to beat out Aaron Sorkin's flawless screenplay for The Social Network, but those slots nonetheless need to be filled. Toy Story 3, True Grit, and Winter's Bone are all practically locks for the category, which leaves that much maligned fifth slot. Even though most expect 127 Hours to come through with that nomination, I expect Rabbit Hole to surprisingly end up making the cut, or at least I'm hoping it does. We'll just have to wait until tomorrow to see if I'm right.
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