Oscar night: out on a limb

Here are my hopes and expectations for the big ceremony on Sunday in Los Angeles. For the first time in about four years, I'll be in London watching through the night - the ceremony runs roughly from 2am to 6am, with Best Picture awarded just as the sun is coming up.

This year's awards race has been the strangest in ages, with no runaway favourite. Most but not all of the categories have someone who is odds-on to win (Supporting Actor is the hardest to predict), but Oscar voters have a way of confounding expectations. So as always I'm cheering for upsets...

P I C T U R E
Will win: Argo
Should/could win: Life of Pi
Also quite possible: Lincoln
Dark horse: Silver Linings Playbook

D I R E C T O R
Will/should win: Ang Lee
Possible: Steven Spielberg
Dark horse: Michael Haneke

A C T R E S S
Will/should win: Jennifer Lawrence
Very possible: Emmanuelle Riva
Dark horse: Jessica Chastain

A C T O R
Will/should win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Possible: Hugh Jackman
Dark horse: Bradley Cooper

S U P P O R T I N G    A C T R E S S
Will/should win: Anne Hathaway
Possible: Sally Field

S U P P O R T I N G    A C T O R
Will/should win: Alan Arkin
Very possible: Tommy Lee Jones or Christoph Waltz
Dark horse: Robert De Niro

O R I G I N A L    S C R E E N P L A Y
Will/should win: Django Unchained
Possible: Zero Dark Thirty
Dark horse: Amour

A D A P T E D    S C R E E N P L A Y
Will win: Argo
Should/could win: Lincoln
Dark horses: Life of Pi or Silver Linings Playbook

F O R E I G N    F I L M
Will/should win: Amour
Dark horse: A Royal Affair
(NB. I haven't seen War Witch or Kon-Tiki in this category)

D O C U M E N T A R Y
Will win: Searching for Sugar Man
Should/could win: How to Survive a Plague
Dark horse: The Gatekeepers

A N I M A T E D   F E A T U R E
Will/should win: Frankenweenie
Very possible: Wreck-it Ralph
Dark horses: Brave or ParaNorman

32nd Shadows Awards: Best of 2012

Here are my top 10 films of 2012, as well as my favourites in the main categories. Full top-10 lists in each category, and rather an awful lot more, are on the site...

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2012:

1. Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
2. Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard)
3. Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
4. Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow)
5. Amour (Michael Haneke)
6. Chronicle (Josh Trank)
7. Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
8. The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki)
9. Sightseers (Ben Wheatley)
10. Pitch Perfect (Jason Moore)

DIRECTOR:
Ang Lee (Life of Pi)

SCREENPLAY:
Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain (Rust and Bone)

ACTRESS:
Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games)

ACTOR:
Denis Lavant (Holy Motors)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises, Les Miserables)

SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables)

ENSEMBLE: Pitch Perfect

BREAKOUT FILMMAKER: Bart Layton (The Imposter)

BREAKOUT ACTOR: Dane DeHaan (Chronicle, Lawless)

MUSIC: The Master (Jonny Greenwood)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Life of Pi (Cloudio Miranda)

EDITING: Argo (William Goldenberg)

PRODUCTION DESIGN: Berberian Sound Studio (Jennifer Kernke)

EFFECTS: Life of Pi

STUNTS: Haywire

~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~
GETTING BACK TO NORMAL:
OK, so arriving back home with eight hours of jet lag on New Year's Eve is great if you want to stay up late, but it's not going to help me get back in the correct time zone very quickly. Especially since I have hours (if not days) of work ahead to get caught up after a few weeks away. On the flight home, I was able to revisit Pitch Perfect, cementing its place in my top 10 of the year (it's just as funny and clever the second time round). And ahead of me this coming week is a teetering stack of DVD screeners to catch up with. My first actual press screening will be the indie horror film Midnight Son on Friday, with Ryan Gosling's Gangster Squad, Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand and the film doc Side by Side following soon behind.

Critical Week: Tiger taming

London critics have finally been able to catch up with some big awards contenders this past week, including Ang Lee's remarkable Life of Pi, a staggeringly beautiful film with rich, moving themes. Frankly it's difficult to believe that such a complex, delicate film made it through the Hollywood system. Even bigger is Tom Hooper's film of the long-running musical Les Miserables, with a powerhouse cast including Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried. It's a bit too much to fit in a movie, frankly, and rather exhausting. But also unmissable.

More award hopefuls appear in Hitchcock, an enjoyable, lightweight look at Alfred Hitchcock's battles to make Psycho. Anthony Hopkins plays the title role exactly like Hitch's screen persona, but Helen Mirren steals the show as his wife. There's probably no chance of awards attention for The Man With the Iron Fists, a messy 1970s-style kung fu romp cowritten, directed and scored by and starring RZA. Genre geeks might enjoy it, but not many others will. And finally there was the doc Ballroom Dancer, following a world champion's attempt at a comeback while he alienates everyone around him. Compellingly dark but not easy to watch.


This coming week I've got screenings of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher and Carlos Reygada's Post Tenebrus Lux, among other things. It'll also be voting time at the end of next week for a couple of critics awards - my own meagre contribution to the awards-season hubbub.