For our fourth Rundown article, a category least in line with general expectations. After the jump, you'll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Foreign Language Film as well as general commentary about the race. Tomorrow, we'll discuss a category that has many different faces.
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Last year, I did amazingly well with my Annie Awards predictions. This year, I'm not as confident because the playing field is so stranegly different, especially considering the Oscar nominations, so most of my guesses (and those of Peter and Tripp) are simply that: guesses.

ANNIE AWARDS

Best Animated Feature

The Adventures of Tintin (Peter)
A Cat in Paris
Arrugas (Wrinkles)
Arthur Christmas (RU:Tripp)
Cars 2
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2 (Wesley)
Puss in Boots
Rango (RU:Wesley / Tripp / RU:Peter)
Rio

Wesley Lovell: While the Oscars will almost assuredly choose Rango, Annie Awards voters are more likely to give its prize to either A) the most nominated film or B) the film created by DreamWorks. And since both of those factors apply to Kung Fu Panda 2, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict it to win.

Peter J. Patrick: I haven't the faintest clue of who or what will win in any of these categories. This is pure shot-in-the-dark guesswork on my part.

Best Animated Short Subject

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Anything can happen with the Art Directors Guild. Sure, they are an adequate precursor, but sometimes they go out on a limb (as in the case of Oscar non-nominee The Curse of the Golden Flower). This year, however, I think they'll stick with more Oscar-friendly fare and give us a preview of what could win the Oscar.

ART DIRECTORS GUILD (ADG) AWARDS

Best Period Art Direction

Anonymous
The Artist (RU:Wesley / Tripp)
The Help
Hugo (Wesley / RU:Tripp / RU:Peter)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Peter)

Wesley Lovell: This is one category I would be shocked if Hugo loses. Recreating the sets and props of Georges Méliès' workshop is enough to snag it the trophy, but the beautiful train station and dark, oily clockworks are fantastical enough to elevate it far above the competition (but why isn't this competing in Fantasy Art Direction?). While I'd like to say Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy could upset, the design work is far too subdued to appeal to a group that loves its opulence. Which is why I'm surprised I didn't choose Anonymous for the runner-up. It's got all the earmarks of a classic Art Direction winner. However it, like Tinker was not nominated at the Oscars. The same goes for The Help. This leads me to believe that they may not be as favored as we would normally expect. I think the black-and-white recreations of familiar locations and styles of the silent era could appeal to nostalgic voters. But Hugo should to since it was set just prior to The Artist in film history chronography.

Best Fantasy Art Direction

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For our third Rundown article, we've got a rare race between a slew of veterans and one neophyte whose recognition is in the nomination. After the jump, you'll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Supporting Actor as well as general commentary about the race. Next week, we'll start Monday off with a category that has the potential to anger or disappoint many people.
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For our second Rundown article, we're looking at two categories that cover the non-fiction portion of Oscar's evening. After the jump, you'll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Documentary Feature and Documentary Short Subject as well as general commentary about the race. Friday, we'll cover one of the top-tier categories which features an irregular race between four aging legends.
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Every year, Cinema Sight's contributors submit their selections for who they think will win this year's Oscars. In addition, we handicap the race for you. Today is our inaugural post and we're covering two categories for you today. After the jump, you'll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Original Score and Best Original Song as well as general commentary about the races. Thursday, we'll cover two categories alike in name, but divergent in results.
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Saturday and Sunday, two of the major Oscar precursors present their awards. The DGA will announce first on Saturday at a gala dinner that we'll get snippets from, but won't be able to see. If you see anyone with a giant medallion plaque in the media, be wary. The first four silver ones will be given to the nominees. It's the final gold one that will be handed out to the winner.

Then, on Sunday, the SAG Awards will be presented live on TNT. Yes, the DGA winner is 95% likely to win the Oscar, but the SAG Awards are slowly building a reputation as an influential precursor. The winners here (outside of Best Cast) will be seen as frontrunner going into the Oscars. Here are our takes (and predictions) on the various races from each guild announcing over the weekend.
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Now that the nominations have been announced, it's time to share with you our predictions for this year's winners. Now, with only the PGA having announced of all of the guilds, we cannot be certain on any of these. These are based on a number of factors, including hunches.

Starting next Wednesday, we'll be posting daily synopses of the races category by category (and some days we'll have a couple of categories). Where guild awards are handed out, these will be factored into our predictions. You'll get a list of predictions for the category in question and our commentary on why we think the candidate we've selected will win. We'll also highlight our choices for who the runners-up will be. Then, on the Friday before the Oscars, when we announce our predictions for Best Picture, we'll also provide our final predictions for all categories going into Oscar weekend. But, until then, please enjoy our initial post-nominations predictions.

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The time for hemming, hawing and vacillating is complete. Tomorrow, the nominations for the 84th Academy Awards will be revealed. Without much time left, we're giving to you our final predictions for this years awards. It's interesting to see all the differences between our predictions over the past several months begin to coalesce into a list of frontrunners. While we cannot guarantee everything on our lists, when the three of us (Wesley, Peter and Tripp) agree, it's a safe bet the nomination will happen. Here are predictions in all of the categories that will be announced tomorrow. All of us contributed predictions in each category with the exception of the Documentary Short Subject, Live Action Short Film and Animated Short Film Categories, for which only I submitted predictions.

If you want to see my final list, check it out at the link in the sidebar at the right under "Oscar Hopefuls". You can also take a look at my Oscar Monring primer which will post at 11am Eastern today. But, without further ado, here are our final nomination predictions.

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From now until the Oscar nominations, we'll be bringing you periodic updates to our personal predictions for this year's Oscar nominations (and after that our predictions for the winners). Today, after a series of guild nomination announcements and before we head into the first major awards-giving ceremonies of the year (Broadcast Critics tonight, Thursday, and Golden Globes on Sunday), we're giving you an update of our predictions to this point. We've added Cinematography, Art Direction, Visual Effects and Documentary Feature since the associated guilds have presented their nominations. We'll do the same thing next week after the remaining guilds go up and then if the next update isn't our final, we'll do one final list right before the nominations are announced on the morning of the 24th.

Here's what we're thinking at this point. While we have quite a bit of discrepancy in several categories, Best Picture, the most unusual of all of them, is the only one where we agree what ten films are competing for five to ten nomination slots. We don't agree on which order, but our prevailing thoughts seem to lean towards 7 nominations, though they could get ten with the solidity of all of these contenders.

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From this point until the end of the year, we'll be taking Guild nominations announcements as impetus to dive into our own predictions. This past week, the Screen Actors Guild announced their nominees for the best performances of 2011. based on this new information, we're updating our Oscar predictions. The two paragraphs after this discuss information on Best Picture (which we're partially correlating to the SAG Best Cast category) and Animated Feature (however, we aren't updating those predictions this week). This update's picture of choice represents the sudden definition of Tilda Swinton as a nomination contender, an occurrence we had not expected until SAG gave her candidacy legitimacy.

The Academy changed their nominations procedures for both Best Animated Feature and Best Picture. This created a bit of a quandary for us as the only way we could adequately share our predictions while giving the possibility of fewer than 10 (Picture) or 5 (Animated Feature) nominees. Now, the rules are different for each category. Animated Feature could have anywhere from 0 to 5 nominations depending on the quantity of animated features in release. With the number of entries, Animated Feature is likely set to feature 5 full nominations.

The rules for Best Picture are a bit more complex, To get a nomination for Best Picture, you must have at least 5% of the total vote. This isn't necessarily just first place votes as the preferential balloting method the Academy uses, which is unnecessarily complex, can put votes into a film's column even if they are second- or third-place votes. How this will all play out is a mystery to us. All we do know is that Best Picture could have anywhere from 5 to 10 nominations. There could be 5 or 7 or 8 or 10...we won't know until the nominations are announced. Each of our contributors selected ten films for Best Picture and ranked them in the order they think the film is most likely to get an Oscar nomination. We then totaled the results and ranked the final list by our totals. 10 points for a first place vote, 9 for a second and so forth. In addition, we still color-code each predictions so you know how many of us put that contender on our lists. Below are the results of our labor.
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Every month, we're posting our predictions for the 84th Oscars. It's now November and the picture is beginning to clear up, though there are many more surprises still in store. No one knows what's going to happen between now and Nominations morning, so let's just get ready to have some fun in the meantime. We shall see how things go from here on out. And with critics groups giving out prizes starting next week, we wanted to give this one last stab before they begin.

The Academy changed their nominations procedures for both Best Animated Feature and Best Picture. This created a bit of a quandary for us as the only way we could adequately share our predictions while giving the possibility of fewer than 10 (Picture) or 5 (Animated Feature) nominees. Now, the rules are different for each category. Animated Feature could have anywhere from 0 to 5 nominations depending on the quantity of animated features in release. With the number of entries, Animated Feature is likely set to feature 5 full nominations.

The rules for Best Picture are a bit more complex, To get a nomination for Best Picture, you must have at least 5% of the total vote. This isn't necessarily just first place votes as the preferential balloting method the Academy uses, which is unnecessarily complex, can put votes into a film's column even if they are second- or third-place votes. How this will all play out is a mystery to us. All we do know is that Best Picture could have anywhere from 5 to 10 nominations. There could be 5 or 7 or 8 or 10...we won't know until the nominations are announced. Each of our contributors selected ten films for Best Picture and ranked them in the order they think the film is most likely to get an Oscar nomination. We then totaled the results and ranked the final list by our totals. 10 points for a first place vote, 9 for a second and so forth. In addition, we still color-code each predictions so you know how many of us put that contender on our lists. Below are the results of our labor.
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Every month until Oscar season and then regularly after that, we'll be posting our predictions for the 84th Oscars. Of course, this is still September, so take the predictions with a grain of salt. No one knows what's going to happen between now and Nominations morning, so let's just get ready to have some fun in the meantime. This is the first month where some images are starting to come into focus with the major film festivals having winded down and several promising entries emerged into the marketplace. We shall see how things go from here on out.

The Academy changed their nominations procedures for both Best Animated Feature and Best Picture. This created a bit of a quandary for us as the only way we could adequately share our predictions while giving the possibility of fewer than 10 (Picture) or 5 (Animated Feature) nominees. Now, the rules are different for each category. Animated Feature could have anywhere from 0 to 5 nominations depending on the quantity of animated features in release.

The rules for Best Picture are a bit more complex, To get a nomination for Best Picture, you must have at least 5% of the total vote. This isn't necessarily just first place votes as the preferential balloting method the Academy uses, which is unnecessarily complex, can put votes into a film's column even if they are second- or third-place votes. How this will all play out is a mystery to us. All we do know is that Best Picture could have anywhere from 5 to 10 nominations. There could be 5 or 7 or 8 or 10...we won't know until the nominations are announced. Each of our contributors selected ten films for Best Picture and ranked them in the order they think the film is most likely to get an Oscar nomination. We then totaled the results and ranked the final list by our totals. 10 points for a first place vote, 9 for a second and so forth. In addition, we still color-code each predictions so you know how many of us put that contender on our lists. Below are the results of our labor.
Click here to continue reading this article

Every month until Oscar season and then regularly after that, we'll be posting our predictions for the 84th Oscars. Our last update was back in May, so there have been a few changes. Of course, this is still August, so take the predictions with a grain of salt. No one knows what's going to happen between now and Nominations morning, so let's just get ready to have some fun in the meantime.

Since our last set of predictions, the Academy changed their nominations procedures for both Best Animated Feature and Best Picture. This created a bit of a quandary for us as the only way we could adequately share our predictions while giving the possibility of fewer than 10 (Picture) or 5 (Animated Feature) nominees. Now, the rules are different for each category. Animated Feature could have anywhere from 0 to 5 nominations depending on the quantity of animated features in release.

The rules for Best Picture are a bit more complex, To get a nomination for Best Picture, you must have at least 5% of the total vote. This isn't necessarily just first place votes as the preferential balloting method the Academy uses, which is unnecessarily complex, can put votes into a film's column even if they are second- or third-place votes. How this will all play out is a mystery to us. All we do know is that Best Picture could have anywhere from 5 to 10 nominations. There could be 5 or 7 or 8 or 10...we won't know until the nominations are announced. Each of our contributors selected ten films for Best Picture and ranked them in the order they think the film is most likely to get an Oscar nomination. We then totaled the results and ranked the final list by our totals. 10 points for a first place vote, 9 for a second and so forth. In addition, we still color-code each predictions so you know how many of us put that contender on our lists. Below are the results of our labor.
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