Two Tickets For... Our Oscars Analysis & Predictions: Best Picture & Full Predictions!

Andrew: Hello readers! All week long leading up to this Sunday's 85th Academy Awards, Sarah and I have been discussing some of the acting categories, the screenplay categories, the directing category and a couple others, but it's all been leading up to the big one - Best Picture. Remember, four years ago after many people thought Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight got snubbed in this category, the Academy made the drastic change to up the number of nominees to 10. After two years of that, with some thinking the category was too bloated, the Academy changed the rules again so that between five and 10 films could be nominated based on first place votes. Even so, a total of nine films were nominated for Best Picture last year and we have the same number in 2013. 

BEST PICTURE

The nominees for Best Picture are:

- Amour

- Argo

- Beasts of the Southern Wild

- Django Unchained

- Les Miserables

- Life of Pi

- Lincoln

- Silver Linings Playbook

- Zero Dark Thirty

A: Sarah, we saw all of the nominated films except for Amour, and we follow the awards that lead up to the Oscars relatively closely. Taking everything in to account, even though there are a whopping nine nominees, which ones do you think we can whittle it down to that actually have a chance at winning?

Two Tickets For... Our Oscars Analysis & Predictions: Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay & Best Director

Andrew: Hello readers! As you may or may not know, Sarah and I are celebrating the upcoming 85th Academy Awards this week by posting our analysis and predictions of various categories. Yesterday we kicked things off by covering the Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song and Best VisualEffects categories, and today we are going to discuss the two screenplay categories and the Best Director category. So without further ado… 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The nominees for Best Original Screenplay are:

- Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal

- Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino

- Flight, Mark Gatins

- Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola

- Amour, Michael Haneke

A: At first glance this appears to me to be a relatively competitive category, and one that we’re relatively familiar with since we saw all of these films except for Amour, but I personally think it comes down to two candidates for the prize. Can you guess which ones I’m thinking of?

The 85th Academy Awards Nominees! (How Did Our Predictions Fare?)

Andrew: Hello readers! All week we've been posting our predictions for who we think will be nominated for this year's 85th Academy Awards, and this morning the awesome duo of Emma Stone and Seth MacFarlane announced those nominees. 

So...how did our predictions fare? Listed below are all of the nominees that were announced today - nominees that are in italics are the movies that we got CORRECT. (And a reminder that we did not predict the short film categories, so those will not be posted below.)

BEST PICTURE
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty
Lincoln
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Amour
Django Unchained
Argo

BEST DIRECTOR
David O. Russell
Ang Lee
Steven Spielberg
Michael Haneke
Benh Zeitlin

Andrew's Top Ten Films of 2012! (And Sarah's Bottom Five!)

Andrew: Hello readers! First off, Happy New Year! Secondly, ymight remember that at two separate points last year we posted articles called Sarah & Andrew’s Top Ten Lists for 2012 So Far. We posted our first at the start of July and we posted our second at the start of October (so the halfway point and three-quarters point of the year). Now that 2012 has come and gone, it’s time to reveal our final lists that includes films that we saw in the final quarter of 2012! In those last three months we saw 17 new releases in the theatre, including a bunch of Oscar contenders.

So here’s the deal – just like the last two times, we have criteria for our lists: the films included have to be films we’ve actually seen and reviewed, and they had to be films that were released in theatres for public consumption in the United States during the 2012 calendar year. This means that a movie like Zero Dark Thirty, which doesn’t get a wide release in the USA until January 11^th, would qualify because it’s been playing in cities like New York for a couple of weeks. Again, these are from among all the movies we've seen and reviewed this year, so if a movie isn't on this list, it's possible we just didn't get around to seeing it.

And one last thing: because I personally found that each of our last two Top Ten Lists were a little lengthy, we’re splitting them up into two different posts. And at the bottom of each post will be the other’s BOTTOM five of the year (the post headline kinda gave that away though, didn’t it?). So check out my personal Top Ten List for 2012 and Sarah’s Bottom Five of 2012 after the jump!

David O. Russell Makes the Right Call With a Phenomenal Cast: Our Review of "Silver Linings Playbook" (2012)

Directed By: David O. Russell (The Fighter) 

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jackie Weaver

Rating: R for language and some sexuality/nudity

Run Time: 2 hours, 2 minutes

Synopsis: Pat (Cooper) is released from his psychiatric hospital into the care of his parents (De Niro & Weaver), 8 months after beating up his wife's lover. In an attempt to get back together with his wife, Pat tries to become a better person by reading classic books, working out and agreeing to help a new friend, the recently widowed Tiffany (Lawrence), compete in a dance contest.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Earlier this week Sarah and I took a day trip down to New York City to take in some delicious food from some of our favorite food trucks (shout out to Wafles & Dinges [@waffletruck] and Trusty Truck [@trustytruck]!) and to catch a showing of David O. Russell’s latest directorial effort, Silver Linings Playbook! Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro, it’s based on the Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel “The Silver Linings Playbook”.

Cooper (The Hangover) plays Pat, a Philadelphia schoolteacher who is brought home by his parents from the psychiatric hospital 8 months after he found his wife cheating on him and had a psychotic breakdown, which included him beating the crap out of his wife’s lover. De Niro (Meet the Parents) plays Pat’s dad, Pat, Sr., who suffers from OCD and who, after having recently retired, has become a bookie to raise money so he can open his own restaurant. And Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games) plays Tiffany, sister-in-law to Pat’s best friend and a recent widow, who is also a little crazy and takes a shine to Pat. Basically everyone in this film is just a little bit crazy.

Sarah: Yeah…and there are a lot of other recognizable faces in the movie, like Julia Stiles (The Bourne Ultimatum) and Chris Tucker (Rush Hour).

A: This is a movie that we've wanted to see for quite some time. We've been hearing a lot of great things about the performances from Cooper, Lawrence and De Niro, but because it’s only in limited release so far we had to go to Manhattan to see it. Now that we HAVE seen Silver Linings Playbook, what did you think of it?

S: I liked it, but I believe that the strength of the movie lies solely in its cast.

Jennifer Lawrence (left) and Bradley Cooper headline a fantastic cast in
David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook Expect Oscar love for them.