There’s a general feeling in the air among Oscar prognosticators that this year’s big prize could be a huge surprise. With nary a front-runner in sight, it’s up to historical perspective to hopefully provide an idea of what may happen Oscar night.
As last year, we’re starting things off with the tech categories. These categories are more often about craft than about substance, so we look here mainly towards guild awards than we do to the personal desire of the voter (though there will always be a measure of this built in).
Cinematography
When looking at cinematography, the big outdoor production is generally the most heavily favored (Master and Commander, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). If it doesn’t pick up the award, then it usually goes to the most colorful (Memoirs of a Geisha, American Beauty).
Looking at this year’s nominees, we haven’t a single production that is heavily produced out of doors. They range from the overtly bright and colorful (The Black Dahlia, The Prestige) to the mostly dark with bursts of color (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Illusionist) to the completely dark and washed-out colors of Children of Men.
That’s not telling us a lot. The Black Dahlia would seem to be the most flashy of the productions and in any other year, might be the winner (heck, it’s even a close second in this race). However, the current front runner is Children of Men. It took home the coveted American Society of Cinematographers award, which should be an indication of its strength. But we’ve all seen how the ASC’s choices of small, unobtrusive cinematography is regularly beaten by more obvious jobs (Master and Commander beat out Seabiscuit, A Very Long Engagement lost to The Aviator, Fellowship of the Ring won over The Man Who Wasn’t There), so it’s quite possible that the more lauded work on Men could be supplanted by the more glossy production The Black Dahlia or one of the other films.
The thing working most in Children of Men‘s favor is the precursors. Men leads with nine mentions over Pan’s Labyrinth with three and The Illusionist‘s two. Neither Dahlia nor Prestige managed wins anywhere else.
Looking historically at the precursors, two groups hold the record of housing the eventual Oscar winner among their cinematography nominees every year since they were created. The Satellite Awards only mentioned Black Dahlia of this year’s five productions. The Online Film & Television Association selected Children, Pan’s and Prestige. Since neither converge, we’re looking at a new record holder likely among the precursors…that is unless Illusionist wins…
Looking at the three next best precursors in Oscar Win-Precursor Nod match up are the ASC, Chicago critics and Online critics. All three included Children, only ASC included Dahlia and only OFCS included Pan’s. The Illusionist managed its only precursor nod among these groups with ASC.
The signs would point towards a Children of Men victory, but will the Academy go for such a dark film for this award? We’ll have to wait to see but it remains my prediction to take the award.
Makeup
Though hairstylists are a part of this branch, you might as well ignore anything with great hairstyling as a winner unless it’s accompanied by significant amounts of prosthetic makeup.
In what has to be one of the Academy’s more laughable categories, year after year, the choices for this category have included some of the most insipid productions that probably shouldn’t have been anywhere near the Oscars (Life, The Time Machine). But looking at history, the film with the most and generally more fantastic work typically wins.
This year we have three relatively diverse productions to examine. Pan’s Labyrinth is the hit foreign entry of the year and satisfies the fantasy style of past winners. Its chief competition comes from Mel Gibson’s production of Apocalypto. Gibson’s first big production, Braveheart, managed to win over a more modern grouping of nominees. His second big film, The Passion of the Christ, failed to take the prize because it was against the fantasy film A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Click is the third production, but no one really takes it seriously. In the last ten years, only one film has won this prize while being set in a modern environment. The Nutty Professor had an overabundance of makeup that Click doesn’t seem to feature, making it the more distant choice.
There are no guilds for makeup and hairstyling (at least that give out awards anymore), so we must look to the limitedly few groups that do recognize such work. Three groups have makeup prizes. The Phoenix Film Critics have only correctly picked two of five winners but eliminated the award this year. The British Academy has been a little more consistent in recent years as has the OFTA.
Pan’s Labyrinth was the only film of these nominees to make the OFTA or British Academy lists. This seems to indicate Pan’s is the front-runner. It has the fantasy milieu, plenty of obvious makeup and is generally the best of the bunch. I think it’s safe to say that the more popular Labyrinth will be the victor.
Editing
This category may well be the bellwether of this year’s race. Only four of the five best picture nominees appear in the tech categories. Of those, each has only one nomination, meaning we may have a hard time finding a suitable early-show vision of an eventual winner for Best Picture. The Queen is nominated for Costume Design and Letters from Iwo Jima for Sound Editing. Those categories are hardly great for picking Best Picture winners but the Editing category is another story.
Two of the three leading contenders find themselves facing off in this category. Babel and The Departed benefit greatly from their inclusion here. In the history of the Academy, it is seldom that a film wins Best Picture without a corresponding nod in the Editing category. Next to Best Director, it is the most predictive of all the categories.
The precursors don’t help a great deal with this category since there are very few. Of them, the best at predicting the winner of this award is the American Cinema Editors. Being a guild, they tend to be more prescient when it comes to picking winners, but they have an unfair advantage in that they feature two awards, one for comedy and one for drama. This year, they have three chances of getting it right. They sat on the fence and awarded The Departed and Babel both the award. No other organization has a better track record.
Since ACE didn’t shed any light on this race, we’re forced to look at other precursors for how they nominated as both the OFTA and the British Academy are again capable groups for yielding a winner from among their ranks. The British Academy featured Oscar nominees United 93, Babel and The Departed. They picked United 93.
The OFTA picked all but Oscar nominee Blood Diamond. They chose Children of Men. With four of the five Oscar selections taking home precursors, we can’t really use them to predict a winner. Instead, we must go on gut. Looking at the productions, Blood Diamond is so left-field that it seems unlikely a selection and without a single precursor mention in the Editing arena, it remains the least likely to carry a victory.
United 93 is the most flashy and cross-cuts incredibly well. It is my choice for the winner, though if either The Departed or Babel take this category, look for a likely corresponding Best Picture victory.
(Fact: Since 1934 when the Editing Oscar was first awarded, only 10 times has the Best Picture winner not been among the nominees. The more interesting factor is that this hasn’t happened since 1980. Here are the years where it diverged: 1980: Ordinary People, 1977: Annie Hall, 1974: The Godfather, Part II, 1966: A Man for All Seasons, 1963: Tom Jones, 1955: Marty, 1948: Hamlet, 1944: Going My Way, 1937: The Life of Emile Zola, 1934: It Happened One Night)
(A Companion Fact: Of those ten years, only twice has the film not also won Best Director: 1937: The Life of Emile Zola and 1948: Hamlet. And those two years also saw a director nomination. This means that for Little Miss Sunshine to win Best Picture, it would have to break 73 years of precedent)
Art Direction & Costume Design
I’m combining these two categories this year for one simple reason: They should be. These two categories so seldom diverge in winners it’s difficult not to think of them as the same category. In the last twenty years, only seven times have the categories diverged. Twice of those the winner of the Costume Design award wasn’t nominated for Art Direction (nine times in the last 40 years) and twice for the opposite (six times in the last 40 years). The last time the category split was six years ago.
That means one of two things, this is the year for a split or it’s not. That’s not very helpful, I’m sure, but let’s look at both scenarios.
If the categories converge again, the only film that would benefit is Dreamgirls. It’s incredibly rare that the category wouldn’t have more than one matchup. Since 1951 when Costume Design and Art Direction were each yielding five nominees, only one film has managed to carry over between the categories nine times. Of those, only three times did that film not carry home one of the two Oscars and twice it received both.
Dreamgirls is battling for its life against Pan’s Labyrinth in the Art Direction category while it seems likely to carry Costume Design. But let’s look at a couple of other factors besides Oscar history…after all, it’s been more than 20 years since the Academy had only one film in both categories.
No group is great at predicting winners, even the Art Directors Guild has failed several times (and they had two categories…now three). However, ADG, along with the British Academy, Satellites and OFTA, have good chances of yielding the winner from among their nominees.
The ADG is no help here as all five Oscar nominees have nods with the Art Directors (who chose Pan’s Labyrinth and non-nominated films Curse of the Golden Flower and Casino Royale for its winners this year). The British Academy chose non-nominee Children of Men and only featured Oscar nominees Pan’s Labyrinth and Pirates of the Caribbean among its number. Satellite Award winner Flags of Our Fathers didn’t manage an Oscar nod but Dreamgirls and Pan’s Labyrinth did. Then we have OFTA which picked Pan’s Labyrinth for best Art Direction and featured Pan’s, Dreamgirls and Prestige.
Without a corresponding nom, The Good Shepherd is the also-ran. Pan’s has mentions with all four groups making it a solid contender while Dreamgirls figures in three listings making it the second most likely. It also helps that Pan’s managed wins from the ADG and the OFTA.
Glimpsing at Costume Design, we have the same four groups looking differently. Costume Designers picked all five Oscar nominees much like their counterparts. The other three had far more carry-over than they did in Art Direction. OFTA featured The Prestige instead of Curse of the Golden Flower, Satellites picked Black Dahlia over Queen and BAFTA selected Pirates 2 and Pan’s Labyrinth over Dreamgirls and Curse of the Golden Flower.
With non-nominated Pan’s winning at the CDG and BAFTA awards, Prada winning the Satellites and Marie Antoinette winning OFTA, it is a very difficult task to pick a winner. Since CDG is horrid at predicting the winner, Queen doesn’t seem to have a shot and since they couldn’t even pick the more lavish Devil Wears Prada, that film seems less likely to win. It’s been nearly twenty years (1987’s Last Emperor) since a film featuring Chinese design work won the prize meaning Curse has a lot going against it (if Crouching Tiger couldn’t win, why would Curse of the Golden Flower?). That leaves Marie Antoinette and Dreamgirls. The slight edge goes to Dreamgirls because it’s the only film of the two that has a corresponding Art Direction nomination but this category could be up in the air all the way to Oscar night.
(For those looking for details, here are the years and the films: 1983 (Fanny & Alexander-both), 1979 (All That Jazz-both), 1978 (The Wiz-neither), 1976 (The Incredible Sarah-neither), 1963 B&W (Federico Fellini’s 8 ½-Costume), 1962 B&W (Days of Wine and Roses-neither), 1960 B&W (The Facts of Life-Costume), 1953 B&W (Roman Holiday-Costume), 1951 Color (A Streetcar Named Desire-Art))
(Interesting Fact: Only three times in Oscar history have the nominees in the Art Direction and Costume Design categories matched up 100%. The 1964 Color categories, the 1965 Color categories and the 1969 awards.)
Visual Effects
The easiest category to predict on Oscar night might just be Visual Effects. Outside of the acting categories, there are few films as likely to win an award as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Having lost the award its first outing against Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, POTC2 has the added benefit of being the most obvious in its use of visual effects. Several precursors have been good at predicting this category, so just looking at the nominees, POTC2 has three awards, Superman Returns has two and Poseidon hasn’t even a nomination outside of the Visual Effects Society.
Pirates of the Caribbean is the odds-on favorite to win this category and there’s little that can be said that doesn’t point towards its victory.
Sound Editing
Letters from Iwo Jima is the only Best Picture nominee among these films. It is also the only category that could yield a second award for Clint Eastwood’s film if it were to win Best Picture. Also nominated for the Oscar are Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Flags of Our Fathers, Apocalypto and Blood Diamond.
If the Sound Mixing, Sound Effects and Visual Effects categories diverge, they diverge significantly. In the last twenty years, only five films have won the trifecta of awards. Three films have won both Sound Effects and Visual Effects and three have won both Sound and Sound Effects only. That leaves nine times the awards have split. This year, it seems possible that POTC 2 will win only Visual Effects but other factors point to a different outcome.
Flags didn’t seem as popular to Academy voters as one would have expected and much of the focus will be on its companion film Iwo Jima. Apocalypto and Blood Diamond are certainly the least likely winners. This battle comes down to a fight between a Best Picture nominee and a Visual Effects winner. If Flags siphons off votes from Iwo Jima as I expect it might, Pirates could win this award.
Sound Mixing
The last of the categories for this update is the more difficult one to predict. Ray won this award for its musical mixing but the similar Walk the Line failed to win. Dreamgirls thus has a chance but not a solid one. Also nominated are Flags of Our Fathers, Pirates 2, Apocalypto and Blood Diamond.
Dreamgirls is the only film that doesn’t have a corresponding Sound Editing nomination. This actually helps Dreamgirls significantly. In all nine years that Sound, Sound Effects and Visual Effects categories didn’t match any films, the Sound winner was not a Sound Effects winner. While this might not be as indicative with this year’s change to five, non-bake-off nominees in Sound Editing, it is a good way to point towards a Dreamgirls victory. The only possible spoiler is Pirates of the Caribbean. If it wins both Sound Editing and Visual Effects, it may win Sound Mixing as well but for now, signs seem to point towards Dreamgirls, including its position as Top nominated film of the year and without a single Best Picture contender amongst the nominees.
Like the early days of Oscar, the tech categories are consistently less predictive than in recent years. We look at these potential winners and see that we are in for one rough Oscarcast with few signs of a final winner. Tomorrow’s update should be better at pointing towards end-of-night victories, so you’ll just have to wait until then to find out more.
-Wesley Lovell (February 20, 2007)
