And here we have our final category: Best Picture. We always save this one for last even if it is the most predictable category of the night. Sure, we all hope for upsets, but we don’t expect them. Later today, we’ll recap our predictions and update to our final predictions.
Best Picture
- Black Swan
- The Fighter
- Inception
- The Kids Are All Right
- The King’s Speech (Ja) (R) (Ja)
- 127 Hours
- The Social Network (O)
- Toy Story 3
- True Grit
- Winter’s Bone
Runners-Up
- The King’s Speech (H)
- The Social Network (Ja) (R) (Ja)
KEY:
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Appears on Four Lists Appears on Three Lists Appears on Two Lists Wesley Lovell Peter Patrick Tripp Burton Wes Huizar |
(New) = New Prediction (O) = Original Prediction (H) = Post-Hangover Prediction (R) = Rundown Series Prediction |
Wesley Lovell: I like The King’s Speech, but it’s journeyman craftsmanship at best. It good entertainment, not good art. I prefer both art and entertainment in a film, but if I’m forced to choose, art will win out. While the Producers Guild alone isn’t a reliable precursor, winning the Directors Guild prize and the Screen Actors Guild Ensemble award pretty much lock it in as a Best Picture frontrunner. Harvey Weinstein believes he needed to reemerge into the game and this may well be his moment to shine. It will justify his self-named company’s existence and probably draw a number of important stars and financiers. So, he’s been heavily flogging the film as a crowd-pleaser, much like he did with Shakespeare in Love 12 years ago.
The entire Best Editing slate has a chance of winning, for without a Film Editing nomination, you don’t stand much of a chance. And while I’d like to think both Black Swan and 127 Hours have chances, they really don’t, leaving things up to The Fighter and The Social Network to slide in for a win. Social Network is often mentioned as the most likely due to its dominance of the pre-Oscar awards season. However, The Fighter is a touching story of triumph-over-adversity and could be the one remedy to a King’s Speech win. Still, if there’s a film to beat Speech, it’s probably Social Network since director David Fincher is running a strong showing in the Best Director category.
Peter J. Patrick: I was slow to warm to this critical darling about a subject I don’t care about with characters I don’t much care about either, but in the end I think it’s the right film at the right time, and so, I’m betting, does the Academy. The recent demonstrations in the Mid-East, spurred through the use of Facebook and other social media have given the film an immediacy no one could have seen coming.
Tripp Burton: This race has certainly turned completely around in the last few weeks; a month ago, I would have bet my mortgage on The Social Network here, and now I would bet my mortgage on The King’s Speech. With the SAG, DGA and PGA wins, The King’s Speech certainly has the biggest branches supporting it, and also feels the most like a “Best Picture Winner,” being a period piece, a surefire Lead Actor winner and an audience favorite.
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