RT's Oscar Picks

We got together to place our bets. Who do you think will win?

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards are this Sunday, and amid the frenzy of films and fashion everybody's got their opinion about who will be taking home that coveted little golden boy (no, we're not talking about Justin Bieber). Naturally, we at Rotten Tomatoes decided to add our voices to the noisy din. For seven hours, we locked ourselves in a climate-controlled, airtight bomb shelter, where we hammered out our picks in every category based upon Oscar precedent, current buzz, and a complex algebraic formula involving runes and ostrich feet. But hey, nobody's perfect -- what do you think of our choices? Who do you think will win big on Oscar night?

If you'd asked us six weeks ago for our predictions, we'd have told you that The Social Network would win Best Picture. And although The Social Network won the Golden Globe for Best Drama, the momentum seems to have shifted to The King's Speech. In the last couple of weeks The King's Speech has been honored by both the Director's Guild and the Screen Actors Guild. Since the DGA award is a excellent barometer for the Best Picture award, and the acting branch is the biggest part of the Academy, we're betting that The King's Speech will take the crown on Sunday night.
With the Best Picture race shaping up to be a close call, we think this might be one of those years that the Picture and Directing Oscars get split -- in this case between The King's Speech and The Social Network. You have to go back to Ang Lee winning for Brokeback Mountain while Crash took Best Picture in 2006 to see a precedent, but it's happened before (Soderbergh for Traffic vs. Best Pic winner Gladiator, for example). David Fincher (who got nommed for Benjamin Button) has more than paid his dues -- plus, turning a Facebook movie into an engaging thriller is kind of miraculous next to sticking your camera in front of a bunch of superlative actors, right?
Is there any question that this is going to Firth? He put in a terrific performance, and this is the perfect opportunity for the Academy to honor someone that's been nominated, but hasn't won, before (he missed out just last year for A Single Man). We think that this is one of the easiest predictions of the year.
Among RT editors, this was the most heavily debated category. For months, Natalie Portman seemed like the odds-on favorite, but recently, buzz has swung back toward Annette Bening, a four-time nominee who's never won an Oscar. Bening earned deserved praise for The Kids Are All Right, but the movie was released in the middle of the summer, and Black Swan remains fresh in the mind. So we're going with Ms. Portman.
It would be tempting to think that Geoffrey Rush, who's already won this year's BAFTA for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, might benefit from the massive love that The King's Speech is reaping right now. But after a turn in The Fighter that had everyone whispering "Oscar" from the get-go, as well as a Golden Globe, a SAG award, and a Critics' Choice Award already tucked away, Christian Bale is poised to close the deal on Sunday night.
Most people will say that this award will go to Melissa Leo, for her performance in The Fighter, but they're wrong. Steinfeld's going to get it, and here are five reasons why:

1. According to Time Magazine's Richard Corliss, in the last 10 years there have been six instances in which two actresses have been nominated for the same film, and in five of those cases, neither nominee won an award. The only winner from that group was Catherine Zeta-Jones, who won for Chicago. Melissa Leo is a great actress, but she doesn't have the glam factor that Zeta-Jones had (and still has).

2. We think Leo is going to lose votes not only to her Fighter co-star Amy Adams, but also to Jackie Weaver, who played a very similar role in Animal Kingdom.

3. Hailee Steinfeld has a better shot that a lot of people realize. Performers get nominated in the category for which they received the most nominations, so even though Steinfeld plays what seems like a lead role in True Grit, more Academy members nominated her for Best Supporting Actress than Best Actress. But we think that she probably got a lot of nominations for Best Actress too, except that she can't be nominated in both categories. Anyone that nominated Steinfeld for Best Actress will likely cast their vote for her in the Best Supporting Actress Category, and that will put her in front of Melissa Leo.

4.Melissa Leo undoubtedly lost votes for the "for your consideration" ads in the trades that she paid for herself. The Academy likes humility (or at least the appearance of it) and although Leo says the ads are more about Hollywood's ageism, we think that voters ultimately won't appreciate her self-financed campaign.

5. Hailee Steinfeld's uncle is bodybuilder Jake Steinfeld, of "Body by Jake" fame. There's no way Melissa Leo can compete with that.

The highest-grossing animated movie ever is up for a Best Picture award it won't win, so those votes will cascade down towards Animated Feature Film. Obvious. And, sure, How to Train Your Dragon was a sleeper hit with long legs that swept the Annies, but that didn't help Kung-Fu Panda (also a sweeper) in its bid against WALL-E in 2009.
Inception was the year's most fervently-discussed head trip, with audiences and critics ceaselessly debating its labyrinthine dreamscape. Whether you've "figured it out" is beside the point; Inception's complexity and originality likely impressed Academy voters. It's already picked up the Writer's Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay, and we think it's a safe bet in the equivalent Oscar category as well.
How do you make a startup seem exciting to non-coders? Ask Aaron Sorkin, whose rapid-fire script for The Social Network was praised nearly as much as David Fincher's direction. Plus, it already picked up the Writer's Guild Award in this category, so this seems like a safe bet.
Exit Through the Gift Shop was probably the most buzzed-about doc this year, but given Banksy's elusive nature and the questions that have been raised about some elements of its veracity, we think Oscar voters are going to go with a safer choice. Namely, the timely, angry Inside Job, which adeptly chronicles the financial crisis and won't come back to bite the Academy. What we'd give to see Banksy prank the ceremony, though...
We'll make this easy: there are only two movies in this category that a large majority had ever heard of before the Oscar noms came out, and they are Biutiful and Dogtooth. For one, we don't think the Academy is likely to honor a film as bizarre and controversial as Dogtooth. But more significantly, Biutiful is the only foreign language film with a horse in the Best Actor race (Javier Bardem), and that says a lot. (1 - 20 of 26 Discussions)

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