Final Oscar Predictions

Will The Artist sweep the Oscars?  Will Meryl Streep FINALLY win a long overdue second Oscar for lead actress?  All will be answered this Sunday night when the awards will be handed out.  The real question is… will people really care?  Compared to last year, most of the films nominated this year haven’t really polarized the general public as much while the current frontrunner is a black and white silent film most are hesitant to see at first.  Regardless, I’m still a faithful Oscar watcher and prognosticator (read my post from Feb 1) and I’ll still make my annual predictions.  Here’s who I think will win in all 24 categories.
 
Best Picture: The Artist
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants
Best Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Best Actress: Viola Davis, The Help
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help
Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life
Best Art Direction: Hugo
Best Costume Design: The Artist
Best Makeup: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II
Best Visual Effects: Hugo
Best Editing: The Artist
Best Sound Mixing: Hugo
Best Sound Editing: War Horse
Best Original Score: The Artist
Best Original Song: “Man or Muppet”, The Muppet Movie
Best Animated Feature: Rango
Best Documentary Feature: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation
Best Live Action Short: Tuba Atlantic
Best Animated Short: A Morning Stroll
Best Documentary Short: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

And… to make a shameless plug, we have a special promotion in honor of the Oscars.  Anyone who purchases a Producers Badge to the 2012 Austin Film Festival & Conference by Sunday, February 26th will be entered for a chance to win a copy of the screenplay of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, signed by Academy Award®-winning writer Steven Zaillian!

Zaillian, who was awarded with the Distinguished Screenwriter Award at the 2009 Austin Film Festival, wrote both THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and MONEYBALL, each earning a handful of Oscar nominations.

And everyone who has purchased a Conference Badge or below by February 26th will be entered in a raffle to win an upgrade to a Producers Badge!  Click here to buy your Badge.

--Matt Dy, Screenplay & Teleplay Competition Director

Why the Awards Season Really Does Matter

The cinematic juggernaut that is The Artist continued steamrolling toward the Best Picture Oscar with several wins at the Golden Globes this past Sunday. Not too shabby for a black-and-white silent film from France that initially scared away several distributors before being picked up by The Weinstein Company. Anyone who has seen the film would say that these awards have been justly earned based on the film’s quality, and they would be correct. The Artist is an absolute delight. However, that doesn’t stop industry cynics from crediting this silent film’s accolades to one of the most aggressive campaigners in the history of awards, Harvey Weinstein, who is anything but silent.

The validity of film awards has increasingly come under question over the years, and the lengths to which awards campaigners will go to win awards for their films are the stuff of legend. Listen to rumors and hearsay, and you’d think that Weinstein stops just shy of threatening murder to get his films the recognition they deserve, which leads many to believe that these awards are meritless and unimportant. But I’d like to take this opportunity to make a bold statement: They’re wrong.

Ask any filmmaker or production studio, “Who do you want in your corner come Oscar season?” and you’ll more than likely hear them say Harvey Weinstein’s name. That’s because they recognize how important these awards truly are. The value of having “Academy Award Winner” stamped on a DVD cover is immeasurable; in fact, it is almost required if an independent or foreign film hopes to sell any copies at the local Target. That’s because, for the average moviegoer, the Oscars provide a quick summary of the best (well, one version of the best) films in a given year, films that an average moviegoer may not have had access to in their local movie theater.

I can speak to this issue from a personal angle. As a young film lover growing up in small-town Texas, my first chance at seeing a film like The Artist would’ve been home video. Films that run for weeks in LA or NYC cinemas never make it as far as Southeast Texas, so I used award nominations and critics lists as a guide to what I should look for at my local movie rental. Although the circumstances have changed a bit (rentals have given way to iTunes and Netflix), the basic facts are still the same: many great films don’t reach a broader audience until after they leave the cinema. That’s why these films need the awards season, and that’s why we need it, too.

-- Stephen Jannise, Film Program Director