Julie's Predictions for the 85th Annual Academy Awards: The Winners

On the race in general, which cuts across the writing, directing, and Best Picture contests...

Lincoln began in the fall as the 800-pound gorilla, the most prestigious, important, serious, blah-blah-blah, sure-fire bet to win everything.  It got the highest number of nominations on that January morning, but the seismic shift in the Best Director race – the stunning omissions of Argo and Zero Dark Thirty – turned everything upside down.  The film community fiercely rallied around Argo, while quietly admitting their discomfort with the depiction of torture in Zero.  Instead of the nominations functioning as a lead-up to the winners, alliances were practically redrawn from scratch.  Everyone who didn’t like Spielberg’s procedural – whether for its historical inaccuracies, racial representation, or for the sheer boring predictability of a victory – lined up behind Affleck’s thriller.

Then Lincoln lost the top three Golden Globes to Django Unchained (screenplay) and Argo (director and picture.)   Sure, the Golden Globes are silly things that do no more than set the tone of the Oscar race, one the Academy can easily ignore.  (Crap-fests like Babel and Avatar took the Globe for Best Picture, and Oscar said, “Yeah, let’s make sure we don’t do that.”)

But then came the Guild awards, and Argo topped them all.  The SAG award for Best Ensemble Cast is NOT an “equivalent” of Best Picture, but it does indicate where the actors’ branch is leaning.  The Producers’, Directors’, and Writers’ Guilds all chose Argo at the expense of Lincoln.  All Academy members are also Guild members, which is why the Guild awards are the only ones that really matter.  So how will the Civil War politics flick shape up against the Carter-era politics flick?  Let’s pick apart the races and see…