MovieManifesto

The Manifesto was overdue for a good night. After hitting on a paltry two-thirds of my predictions each of the past two years (14-for-21), I hit on all but two categories at the 2013 Academy Awards, finishing 19-for-21 for a success rate of 90%. Now, did I do that well because the awards were thoroughly predictable, or because I’m a prognosticating genius? I’ll let you decide.

As for the show itself, you know what? It could have been worse. I’m not a huge Ellen DeGeneres fan, but after last year’s Seth MacFarlane fiasco (for the record, I liked him), the Academy needed to bring in someone safe and inoffensive. By those guidelines, DeGeneres did her job. Her opening monologue was generally funny, and her overall demeanor was enthusiastic, playful, and non-threatening. The majority of her jokes landed, and the ones that didn’t were earnest and warmhearted rather than mean-spirited. Her act wore a tad thin as the show went on (and on and on)—particularly the pizza bit, which was strained to begin with and gradually turned into a complete train wreck as it continued—but that’s more indicative of the defunct nature of the hosting gig in general than any specific failure on DeGeneres’ part. Read More

I wrote earlier that, as obsessively as I analyze the Oscars, I tend not to care who actually wins. This year, that’s true with the exception of two categories: Best Original Screenplay and—much to my amazement—Best Original Song. If my preferred nominee fails to scoop the statuette in those areas, you’ll likely hear my wail of anguish all the way from suburban Denver. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to a competitive, unpredictable night.

Below you’ll find my predictions in each of the 21 feature categories (as always, I’m declining to predict the three shorts). The predictions are organized by level of confidence, so for the first four, I advise you to pick something else in your pool. Read More

And here we go. In my estimation, this is the most intriguing Best Picture race since at least 2005 (when Crash stunned Brokeback Mountain), and probably the most openly competitive since 2004 (when Million Dollar Baby held off The Aviator). Even more intriguing, if the night pans out the way I expect (admittedly, it usually doesn’t), the winner should remain a mystery right up until the actual announcement. Here’s to some actual suspense at the Oscars.

NOMINEES
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street Read More

It’s curious that, in a year that features the most compelling Best Picture race in nearly a decade, this category is virtually sewn up. So it goes in a strange, exciting year at the Oscars.

NOMINEES
Alfonso Cuarón—Gravity
Steve McQueen—12 Years a Slave
Alexander Payne—Nebraska
David O. Russell—American Hustle
Martin Scorsese—The Wolf of Wall Street Read More

During my senior year of high school, my friends and I played Madden together after school. It was more fun than it sounds, if just as dorky. We adopted the Cleveland Browns as our franchise, only we created versions of ourselves and placed those avatars into the game, resulting in a freakishly talented roster that routinely rolled over teams by 50-plus points. (My particular avatar was a wide receiver in the Ed McCaffrey mold who won the MVP after racking up roughly 200 catches for 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns.) The Browns hadn’t been this relevant since the halcyon days of Jim Brown and Milt Plum. It reached the point where we even used Madden‘s ingenious feature that allowed you to compete against teams from the past, slaughtering juggernauts like Bill Walsh’s West-Coast 49ers and Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain. We were the Dream Team of Madden folklore.

What does all of this have to do with this year’s Best Actor race? Well, the competition this year is so loaded that the category is basically the Oscars’ version of my old unstoppable, self-created team from Madden. Four of the five nominees deliver downright superlative performances (the fifth isn’t half-bad), while at least a half-dozen contenders who failed to crack the ballot are just as deserving. If you plugged 2013’s Best Actor field into the Academy equivalent of Madden and let it face off against Oscar categories of yesteryear, this year’s quintet would jump out to a 35-0 first quarter lead before the computer “accidentally” reset the game due to unexplained system failure. If there’s ever a category that could hope to justify the indefensible switch from “And the winner is” to “And the Oscar goes to”, it’s this one. Read More