Oscar predictions for 2013

Time Out looks at the contenders for the 2013 Academy Awards

The Oscars race is well and truly on. The frontrunners for the 2013 Academy Awards are ‘Argo’ and ‘Lincoln’, with ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ and ‘Les Misérables’ bringing up the rear. The nominations have been announced and the ceremony is on February 24 2013. Here, Time Out’s tipsters weigh up the chances of this awards season’s fancied runners and riders.

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Best picture

Who’s been nominated?
‘Argo’ is now the clear favourite to win Best Picture on Oscar night. It has everything the Academy loves. It’s a story about filmmaking (like last year’s winner, ‘The Artist’). It’s a true-life tale. It’s political, but not heavily so. It lightens the load with humour. It features endearing performances from actors close to Hollywood’s heart, like Alan Arkin and John Goodman. And it continues to do well at the US box office, proving that more serious-headed films can make money too.

There are eight other nominees for Best Picture. Since 2012, the Academy nominates between five and ten films in this category, depending on how many votes each receives. This makes room in 2013 for less populist films like ‘Amour’, a French-language story (from an Austrian writer-director) of two octogenarians dealing with illness and death, and the US indie ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ – as well as Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’, which was probably too out-there and violent to get many nominations across the board.

The other five nominees are more traditionally suited to the Oscars arena: Steven Spielberg’s 1860s historical drama, ‘Lincoln’; Ang Lee’s magical literary adaptation, ‘Life of Pi’; David O Russell’s romcom with a difference, ‘Silver Linings Playbook’; Kathryn Bigelow’s hunt-for-Bin-Laden saga, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’; and Tom Hooper’s big and bold musical, ‘Les Misérables’.

Who’s going to win?
We’ve come full circle this Oscars season, and now ‘Argo’ has the edge. The film has already won Best Film at the Baftas, the Golden Globes and several other American awards ceremonies in recent weeks, making it the clear favourite for Oscar glory. It’s possible, too, that the lack of a nomination for Affleck in the Best Director category has won him some late sympathy among voters.

But we still can’t bring ourselves to rule out Steven Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’. It’s the story of America’s favourite president and Spielberg last won an Oscar in 1999 (he nabbed the Best Director award for ‘Saving Private Ryan’). Are there any other contenders? We should remember that the Academy has recently favoured films like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and 'The Artist' – feelgood, popular movies with something of the exotic about them. So if we have to pick a third, dark-horse contender for the top prize, we’d go for ‘Life of Pi’.

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The 2013 Oscar nominees for best picture

Rated as: 4/5

Les Misérables

A dream cast of Hollywood’s finest performing live
Rated as: 5/5

Zero Dark Thirty

Lean, mean storytelling: no backstories, no-frills
Rated as: 4/5

Lincoln

Kushner’s script is a masterpiece of miniature portraiture
Rated as: 4/5

Silver Linings Playbook

The film zips along on its off-beat energy and fast-paced script
Rated as: 5/5

Beasts of the Southern Wild

A fairytale in which we regularly slip out of the real world

Rated as: 5/5

Amour

A staggering, intensely moving look at old age
Rated as: 4/5

Argo

A nail-biting thriller based (fairly loosely) on real events
Rated as: 4/5

Django Unchained

A meaty spaghetti western, heavy on the spicy sauce and ketchup
Rated as: 4/5

Life of Pi

A film with astonishing visual confidence and narrative force

See the full list of 2013 Oscar nominees

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Comments & ratings

(11 ratings)

horaba;l

gffghb Sun Mar 3
Rated as: 1/5
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Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild are the best movies and both (the oldest and youngest) actresses deserves to win.

kim Sun Feb 24
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Argo, a lot like The Artist, came out of nowhere for me, which leads me to believe that it has a good chance of winning for Best Picture this year. I’ve already added Argo to my Blockbuster @Home queue that I have through DISH since they let me add titles that are still in theater or net yet on Blu-ray disc. This way I can forget all about it until the day I’m pleasantly surprised to find it in my mailbox. I’ve even added the other nominees like Lincoln and Life of Pi since it’s rare that I make it out of my office at DISH in time to catch a movie.

Molly Fri Feb 22
Rated as: 5/5
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Best picture "ARGO"

Ayomi Sun Feb 10
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Best Supporting Actor & Actress: my personal favourites are Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master & Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables respectively!.

DutchFilmFan2013 Tue Feb 5
Rated as: 4/5
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Best Director: My personal favourite is Mr. Ang Lee, being a really big & long-time fan of most of his movies but I really think that Mr. Michael Haneke might just be the surprise winner for this prestigious prize (for Amour)!

DutchFilmFan2013 Tue Feb 5
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Best Foreign Film: I have only seen A Royal Affair but Amour will and should win I think based on the really great reviews almost everywhere for this movie.

DutchFilmFan2013 Tue Feb 5
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Miss Jessica Chastian will and should win in this Best Actress category in my humble opinion!

DutchFilmFan2013 Tue Feb 5
Rated as: 5/5
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I have not seen Flight and Silver Linings Playbook. But I really that Daniel Day-Lewis is unbeatable in this category in Lincoln and that he will most probably go back home to Ireland with his third Best Actor Oscar on Sunday 24th February 2013 in L.A.!

DutchFilmFan2013 Tue Feb 5
Rated as: 4/5
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I have not seen Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook. Of the six movies that I have already seen, my personal favourite is *Life of Pi* for Best Picture, being a big & long-time Ang Li fan. *Lincoln* might just win though or who knows even *Argo*. I really think that *Zero Dark Thirty* might just prove too controversial for the Academy Award voters. *Les Miserables* might just be the surprise Best Picture winner on Sunday 24th February 2013 in L.A.! That said, all the six films that I have seen deserved at least four stars in my humble opinion and I give *Zero Dark Thirty* five stars.

DutchFilmFan2013 Tue Feb 5
Rated as: 4/5
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