• Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave
  
• Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
• Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
• Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
• Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
• Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
• Best Foreign Language Film: The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino
• Best Animated Feature: Frozen
• Best Documentary Feature: 20 Feet from Stardom
• Best Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave
• Best Original Screenplay: Spike Jonze, Her
• Best Cinematography: Gravity, Emmanuel Lubezki

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Enter our contest, if you haven’t already.  

Our BIG BAD PREDICTIONS CHART – special thanks to Marshall Flores for helping out with that.  

Must-read: Finding the real Patsey from 12 Years a Slave

Add your predictions for 3 major upsets, if you haven’t already.

Check out Kris Tapley’s annual Ten Best Shots of the year, if you haven’t already. Part one | Part two

Enter Gold Derby‘s prediction contest, maybe win $1000! If you haven’t already.

Read Hollywood-Elsewhere’s fury over Oscar voters, if you haven’t already.

JustJared will always have all of the best photos of the night.  Oh No They Didn’t gives the best links. 

Epicurious has great Oscar menus.  

This member abstained from voting in the animated branch because she did not see all of the nominees but could not do the same for Best Picture. Moreover, did she watch The Act of Killing? There was no film harder to watch than that one. She sat through Wolf of Wall Street, harder to watch than 12 Years a Slave. Someone put out the word early that this movie was “too hard to watch,” thus, ancient members like this voter simply felt entitled not to. I don’t know how this year’s outcome will turn out but I do know that it’s time for the Academy to do some major house cleaning – encourage these members to retire. If they can’t bring themselves to see a film that is the frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar they should realize it’s time to step aside. They are finished. Their choices and expertise is better put to use in the AARP. Her choices are not bad. But they are incomplete. This is a woman who did not see all of the nominated films and therefore should not be put in charge of deciding which is best. It’s as simple as that.

My favorites were Her, which is about the future, and Nebraska, which is about the past. Gravity I liked very much because I’d never seen anything like it and I just love George Clooney — but when she [Sandra Bullock] climbed out of the water I thought, “This is where an alligator is gonna get her.” Dallas Buyers Club is a good movie with something important to say. I had problems with American Hustle. The best thing in it was that scene with Robert De Niro; I didn’t find any of the characters particularly likable. The Wolf of Wall Street? N.O. I did not like that movie. And I have not been able to bring myself to watch 12 Years a Slave. [I pressed the member to explain why.] Here is my problem: As you know, I am a senior. I have a lot of stuff in my head [I believe this is a reference to death]. What I don’t want is more terrible stuff to keep in my head. I have never liked movies that have severe violence. Yes, I saw Schindler’s List, but — Look, I’ve lived long enough to know what it was like for a person to be a black person in America. I mean, it’s not anything that I’m not aware of. I may still go and see it [the film], but I just don’t want to. Is that terrible? At five o’clock tonight I’m gonna watch Going My Way on TCM. That’s my kind of a movie — even if Bing Crosby was actually a bad person. Is there one picture this year that makes you feel better?

She also votes for 20 Feet from Stardom but admits to never having seen The Square. Dollars to donuts she never saw The Act of Killing either. You know, it being about genocide and all.

20 Feet from Stardom has been well publicized and I liked it very much. Those women featured in the film are delightful. I wish it had focused more on Phil Spector, though, who was the worst person in the world and should have been in jail long before he got there. My friends tell me The Square is one of the best documentaries that they ever saw, but I haven’t had a chance to see it.

MY PICK: 20 Feet from Stardom

Rain and wind soaked the proceedings at yesterday’s Spirit Awards, held inside a tent right on the beach. Massive, folding waves twisted themselves around before pounding the shoreline. For the first time in my 15 years on the Oscar beat I was covering the Independent Spirit Awards in person. For this, I’d been given a red carpet spot, a seat in the press room, and a ticket inside the tent. But inside the tent I was not assured wi-fi and a plugin for my computer so I figured the press room was the better place to be. I don’t normally work the red carpet — actually I never have. For some reason I thought it would be fun to try it out this time. I would later learn that you must high tail it to the press room upon arrival to find a spot to plugin, otherwise you have to depend on the kindness of strangers to let you snuggle in and share an ethernet connection.
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Our friend Sam Juliano at Wonders in the Dark and AD’s Pierre de Plume.

Well my dear Oscarwatchers, as Iggy Pop would say, “it’ll all be over soon.” And indeed, 2013 is almost over. What a year for movies. Here’s hoping tomorrow’s results have been worth the blood, sweat and tears. Many of us think there will be upsets but we don’t know yet what those upsets will be. Here is your chance, without messing up your predictions, to predict those upsets.

The rules – please pick only three and make them actual upsets, not alternatives. Martin Scorsese winning Director would be considered an upset. Even American Hustle winning Best Picture isn’t really an upset since Best Picture is really down to three.

I will start.

1. Steve McQueen wins Best Director
2. 12 Years a Slave wins Editing
3. All is Lost wins Sound Editing

Your turn!

Best Film: 12 Years a Slave
Best Director: Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
Best Lead Female: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Best Lead Male: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Supporting Female: Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
Best Supporting Male: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Best Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt, 12 Years a Slave
Best Screenplay: John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave
Best Editing: Nat Sanders, Short Term 12
Best International Film: Blue Is The Warmest Color
Best Documentary: 20 Feet from Stardom
Best First Feature: Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station
Best First Screenplay: Bob Nelson, Nebraska
John Cassavetes Award: This Is Martin Bonner
Robert Altman Award for Best Ensemble: Mud

Tomorrow, on a rainy midday afternoon, the Independent Spirit Awards will host their own version of the year’s best.  In year’s past, the Spirit Awards have been sort of the anti-Oscars in a way, the alternative to what is the moneyed world of the popularity contest that takes place on Sunday.  This will be an interesting year because it will put the Spirit Awards possibly in line with the Oscars for Best Picture for the third time in their history. Only Platoon and The Artist have won both.

I am attending the Spirit Awards for the first time tomorrow.  While the weather has made it a tad less than ideal (beachside awards on a beautiful day is probably divine) but I will be happy to see what I hope is a good day for 12 Years a Slave.

Let’s take a look at the nominees, shall we?

Best Picture
12 Years  Slave <–Predicted Winner
All is Lost
Frances Ha
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska <–but maybe

It isn’t as easy a call as you’d think.  Inside Llewyn Davis could easily win this, as could Nebraska. Probably not Frances Ha or All is Lost.  Still, I’ll put my chips behind 12 Years a Slave.

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Erik Kohn on what the potential loss for 12 Years a Slave might be:

Whether or not the Oscars exist to acknowledge first-rate cinema or first-rate campaigns, this one deserves to go all the way. If it doesn’t win, the Academy has collectively — if not consciously — rejected an unparalleled opportunity to recognize the strongest achievement in motion pictures released last year. Should “12 Years a Slave” lose, the outcome will amount to a statement of carelessness and naiveté on the part of the only voting body with the strength in numbers to correct clichés associated with American movies’ downward-spiraling dumbness. Fortunately, even if we don’t see “12 Years a Slave” onstage this Sunday, when the hype dies down, we’ll still have “12 Years a Slave.”

Meanwhile Richard Corliss at TIME is probably going to have a better night – he feels Gravity should win:

Gravity should win Best Picture — says the man who called it the finest movie of 2013, and also included Hustle and Slave, and for that matter Her, on his 10-best list — and it will earn the most Oscars. I’d say at least six: Alfonso Cuarón for Director, and for Cinematography, Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects (plus maybe Original Score). Piling up wins in the “little” categories is nice, but it’s like a Presidential candidate taking a lot of states with few electoral votes; he won’t get into the White House unless he wins the big states.

Our BIG CHART is up.  We do this every year – but keep checking back because we improve it, add to it, correct it in the days/hours/minutes leading up to Sunday’s Oscars. These charts go back to my favorite Oscar year, 2006. It’s fun to look at them through the ages.

Previous Years - MAIN PREDICTS 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Current
Previous Years - TECH PREDICTS 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Current

And the winners are…
Akumax!
J.A.H.!

Since all the haiku were smart and elegant, this had to be a random drawing, one chance at entry per reader.  I just wanted to add though: all the efforts of everyone who participated gave me a great deal of pleasure to read and put a smile on my face during a very rough time offline. So thank you all so much for your clever efforts.  I’ll contact the winners by email and we’ll work out details to give Sasha your info.  Thanks again to everyone who joined in!

Epicurious has done the heavy lifting for us and created menus designed for Oscar night based on the Best Picture contenders:

a menu inspired by american hustle

• Clams Casino
  Prosecco
• Chicken Piccata
  (double recipe to serve 8)
• Sauteed Broccoli Rabe
• Old-School Garlic Bread
• Dry Italian white wine, such as Pinot Grigio
• Sicilian Cannoli
  Italian digestivo, such as grappa, amaro, or limoncello

And for 12 Years:

a menu inspired by 12 years a slave

• Braised-Pork Hash
• Creamed Collard Greens
• Johnnycake Bread
• Apple and Blackberry Polenta Cobbler

Any party plans, Oscar watchers?