Projections for Sunday's Oscar ceremony

After months of speculation, the Oscars will finally be awarded on Sunday. So before you print out your Oscar ballot and mark your choices, take a look at Screener's picks and talking points for the leading categories..

Best Supporting Actress
Anne Hathaway for Les
Misérables. There is zero chance of an upset here.

Best Actress
My vote is for Jessica Chastain. This is the best chance for Zero Dark Thirty to get recognition.
Kathryn Bigelow didn't get a directing nomination, and Mark Boal will face competition from Django Unchained and Amour in the Original Screenplay category. That being said, those that favor Silver Linings Playbook may want to reward star Jennifer Lawrence in this prominent category. If voters split on that category, Emmanuelle Riva may win for Amour. The movie on aging was a favorite with the older demographic that belongs to the Academy. Riva is already the oldest nominee in the category, ever, and if she won she would be the oldest winner. If there's one thing the Academy loves, it's firsts.

Best Picture (and Best Director)
What will win: I'm betting on Argo. Ben Affleck won the Directors Guild Award, which traditionally predicts the Oscar winner for Best Picture and Best Director. The catch is that Affleck didn't even receive a nomination for Best Director at the Oscars, and Best Director and Best Picture almost always go together. My predicted split: Argo for Best Picture and Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. Argo is also the lead in the Adapted Screenplay category, though, again, it's a tough race, and both Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook have people batting in their corner.

Best Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln. Chastain was pretty much a lone wolf in Zero Dark Thirty, but Day-Lewis had lots of help from Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones, who were also nominated for their performances. But that doesn't change the fact that Day-Lewis' performance is critical to the success of Lincoln. Great actor, great part = Oscar.

Best Supporting Actor
Some are leaning towards Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master in this category. Although I can't vouch for that performance (one of the few I missed), it has gravitas, which is something the Academy tends to like. Robert De Niro's performance as a bookie father (who cries!) in Silver Linings Playbook is also a frontrunner. Personally, I think Tommy Lee Jones' chuckle-inducing performance as Thaddeus Stevens has been woefully unheralded among the press. He provided some much-needed comic relief in a sometimes dour historical account. Seeing this social liberal compromise in order to pass the amendment was an emotional and intellectual highlight of Lincoln, and Jones is my underdog favorite.

With tight races among great films, this should make for one of the most exciting ceremonies in recent memory. There will also likely be more viewers watching. This year, seven out of the nine nominees for Best Picture have earned over $100 million, which has helped build interest compared to years dominated by micro-indies. And did we mention that Seth MacFarlane is hosting?

 

Could Farsite Forecast be to the Oscars what FiveThirtyEight was to politics?

At the Golden Globes on Sunday, nearly every movie was a winner, throwing many predictions for the Oscars askew. This year is tough for prognosticators, but one group, FarsiteForecast.com, claims its statistical model has an edge in predicting who will win the Academy Awards. In the vein of FiveThirtyEight, the blog run by Nate Silver that has proven to incredibly accurate in its predictions about political elections, Farsite applies predective modeling, or data science, to the Oscar race.

While Lincoln has been picked by many bloggers as most likely to win Best Picture at the Oscars, for example, it didn't win either of the Golden Globes' top honors, which went to Argo and Les
Miserables. Shouldn't that great showing raise the odds that one of these films
will win? According to FarsiteForecast.com, which is using data science
to track the Oscar race, the answer is no. The site is currently giving Argo just a 2.3% change of winning and Les Miserables a 1.6% chance of winning. Farsite predicts the race is between Lincoln (38.4% chance of winning) and Silver Linings Playbook (30.8% chance of winning).Since 1989's Driving Miss Daisy, no movie has won the Oscar for Best Film without also being nominated for Best Director. Since neither Argo or Les Miserables received that nomination, the odds are against them.

Other areas where Farsite Forecast predicts a toss-up, I see a clear winner. For Best Actor, they're giving Bradley Cooper and Daniel Day-Lewis nearly equal odds of winning. Personally, I think Day-Lewis underwent a more impressive transformation, but I also think Oscar voters wil want to
reward a "serious" actor of his stature in a film that was most commended for its acting. Cooper is fresh off his roles in The Hangover series.

Cooper is fresh off
his roles in The Hangover series. In his most
critically-acclaimed role yet, could he be the latest Hollywood star to make the
often transition from action and comedy star to Oscar winner? Right now,
he's 7% less likely to win than Day-Lewis, and I think that gap will
widen.

 

When it comes to the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, Farsite Forecast has one race in a lock already. Anne Hathaway has an 84.4% chance of winning the Oscar. For Hathaway, it's time to start creating space on the mantle for her statuette. During the Globes, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain both won Best Actress, in their respective comedy/drama categories. Lawrence has the edge in the Oscar race, with a 53.3% probability compared to Chastain's 34.6%.

Farsite Forecast's predictions currently match closely with bloggers' top contenders in each race. The model will continue to evolve as we get closer to the race and important guild awards are doled out. Will Farsite Forecast live up to the accuracy of similar models, like FiveThirtyEight's incredible track record at predicting political wins?

Nine Best Picture nominees and a few surprises in Oscar nominations

This year's Oscar nominations are out. Along with the expected films, performers, and crew nominations, there are a decent amount of snubs and a few surprise inclusions.

The most nominated film was the box-office disappointment Hugo. Director Martin Scorsese's feature received great critical reviews, but it's earned just $55 million compared to competing family pick Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked's $124 million. I wonder if the nominations will convince adults, with our without children, to catch it while it's still in theatres.

Even with nine films nominated for Best Picture, there was still one snub: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The David Fincher-directed picture landed four technical nods (including well-deserved ones for cinematography and editing), but only one in a "major" category. Rooney Mara received a nomination for Best Actress, no doubt in part because of the extreme changes she underwent to her physical appearance. I think Fincher is like Hitchcock--one of those directors whose genius always goes unrecognized by the Academy because of his chosen genre and subject matter.

A surprise inclusion in the Best Actor category was Demián Bichir in the little-seen A Better Life. Oscar voters love socially conscious films, and I'm sure this Los Angeles-set tale of underclass hardship hit close to home. Undoubtedly, many of the well-heeled Academy voters have probably employed a landscaper like him at one time, so the story has special resonance.

I'm also enthused that Melissa McCarthy was recognized in the Best Supporting Actress category for Bridesmaids. She was so much fun and also underwent quite a physical transformation. In fact, most of the female acting nominees looked quite unlike themselves in their performances. Glenn Close played a man in Albert Nobbs, and Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams both had to convincingly play a famous person (Margaret Thatcher and Marilyn Monroe, respectively).

In the foreign language category, I was at least a little disappointed that Mexico's Miss Bala didn't make the cut. The fast-paced, suspenseful tale of a beauty queen who gets caught up in the drug wars brought a human face to the destruction the drug lords have wrought in the area. Maybe it just had too many machine guns?

I'm surprisingly unfamiliar with the Best Documentary contenders. Pina, a 3D dance doc, has been a critical darling and has drawn plenty of audiences since it opened in late December. It's also earned three-quarters of a million dollars, along with over $11 million abroad. The rest of the nominees aren't so lucky--yet. I caught If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front when it played on PBS this year (pretty good). When the environmental activism doc played for nine weeks this summer, it earned just $61,000. Soldier doc Hell and Back Again has played for fifteen weeks while only grossing $37,000. Undefeated won't even open properly until February 10th. Neither has Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, which will probably be seen by the most people when it plays on HBO, not in theatres.

Overall, Hugo leads with eleven nominations. Two-thirds of the time the most-nominated movie also wins Best Picture. There's a chance this might be the one-third of the time. The second-most nominated movie, The Artist, didn't have as much of a chance to pick up the technical nominations as Hugo. After all, who would nominate The Artist for sound editing or sound mixing? Like The Artist, The Descendants, which had just five nominations, still scored in all the major categories: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Editing (which almost always goes along with Best Director). Despite its win for Best Drama at the Golden Globes, it now seems like more of a dark horse. Most people have been predicting The Artist for Best Picture, but Hugo's multiple nominations now make me think perhaps the Scorsese picture could win for Best Picture. With its mix of snubs and surprise nominations, this year's ceremony should have plenty of suspense, and pose at least a few challenges for those looking to win their Oscar pool.