Michael Haneke’s “Amour” has won Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th annual Academy Awards. It falls in line with films like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Life is Beautiful” which were nominated for Best Picture and won the award in this category.

“Thank you very much for this honor,” Haneke said from the stage of the Dolby Theatre. “I have to thank Michael Barker and Tom Bernard from Sony Classics,” the second shout-out for the distributor this evening. Haneke also thanked his film’s stars Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, “because without them, I would not stand here.”

This is the second film from Austria to win the prize. Haneke is also nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director.

“Critics are more interested in the theoretical aspect of film and less with the practical aspects of film,” Hanke told HitFix earlier this month. “That’s what disturbs filmmakers when they read critics, because critics are more interested in questions of ideology than they are with questions of craft. You can only learn your craft from making films.”

“Amour” is one of this year’s nine Best Picture nominees.

It was a David-versus-Goliath battle for the Best Animated Short Oscar, and the heftier opponent won out as Disney”s black-and-white romance “Paperman” took the award. 

Mainstream appeal also won out in the Best Live Action Short race, as Shawn Christensen’s “Curfew” — the only English-language, American-set nominee in a highly international field — took the award. The Best Documentary Short Oscar, meanwhile, went to Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s “Inocente.”

The animated short result may seem an obvious outcome, but it”s actually the Mouse House”s first win in the category since “It”s Tough to Be a Bird” in 1969. John Kahrs, a Disney animator who has previously worked on such features as “Tangled” and “Bolt,” directed the whimsical film, about a lowly office clerk who finds love at first sight on the subway, and is surprised to find magical stationery products playing Cupid.

As Kahrs explained in his speech, this was the first time the Academy opened voting in the shorts categories to the entire membership, which many speculated could account for a more populist slant to the outcome. “Paperman” enjoyed the greatest theatrical exposure of the five nominees, having played in front of animated feature nominee “Wreck-It Ralph” upon release. (Only half that double-bill was triumphant tonight, however, as “Ralph” lost its race to Pixar’s “Brave.”

Kahrs was the favorite for the award, having won this category at the animation industry”s Annie Awards recently – though one of his competitors, Minkyu Lee for “Adam and Dog,” won that award last year. Ironically, Lee is also a Disney animator, though his was an independent production.

“Curfew” director Christensen was clearly overwhelmed by his victory for the quirky New York-set dramedy, in which he plays a suicidal junkie given a new lease on life when called upon to babysit his precocious 12-year-old niece for a day.

Amid heartfelt thanks to his family, Christensen singled out his young co-star Fatima Ptacek. “Nobody even remembers I’m in the film because of you,” he quipped. “You’re incredible.”

The award is an auspicious one that has previously been awarded to such eventual feature-film luminaries as Taylor Hackford, Andrea Arnold and Martin McDonagh.

Though Christensen is an Oscar newcomer, the Best Documentary Short winners have been to the dance before: Fine and Nix’s film 2007 film “War Dance” was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature award. They accepted their award onstage together with the eponymous subject of “Inocente,” a teenaged artist whose struggle to overcome homelessness is the subject of this powerful film.

“She’s an artist, and all of you are artists, and we feel like we need to start supporting artists,” said Fine. “Because they’re dying in our community.”

After first premiering way back at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2012, Malik Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugar Man” has won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards.

The film tells the story of singer/songwriter Sixto Rodrigeuz, whose album “Cold Fact,” released in 1970, became a rally cry for anti-Apartheid sentiment in South Africa for decades. Myths circulated the performer, who had not been heard from in years and had even been feared dead.

“Thanks to one of the greatest singers ever, Rodriguez,” Bendjelloul said to the Dolby Theatre audience with Oscar in hand. “And to Sony Classics, the best distributor on this planet.”

The film has dominated the precursor circuit, winning awards from the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Writers Guild and International Documentary Association. Fellow nominee “5 Broken Cameras” won the Cinema Eye Honor. That film’s Palestinian director, Emad Burnat, was recently detained by security at LAX when attempting to enter the country for the ceremony.

“It”s the kind of enchanting story you couldn”t make up,” HitFix’s Katie Hasty wrote of “Searching for Sugar Man” out of Sundance, “though all the archetypes are there: music industry mismanagement, fan fiction, revolution, Detroit decay, the essence of rock and roll and redemption, old men made young again.

Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” has picked up its first two Oscars at the 85th annual Academy Awards. The CGI spectacle, which has grossed over $580 million worldwide, won in the categories of Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects.

“The irony is not lost on any of us up here in that [‘Life of Pi’ is] a film that asks the audience to accept something as real that is not real,” said visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer, of embattled effects house Rhythm and Hues Studios. “That’s the magic of visual effects.”

Meanwhile, Rhythm and Hues filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month. Unfortunate, then, that Westenhofer was played off stage while speaking to that. The company was responsible for the animal and tiger effects of the film and a number of ex-employees and current employees of the company protested outside the Dolby Theatre this afternoon due to recent layoffs and failed payment for tentpoles like Legendary’s “Seventh Son.”

The Moving Picture Company had a large hand in some of the bigger, broader effects of “Life of Pi.”

Claudio Miranda’s win in the cinematography category, meanwhile, marks the third 3D digital production in four years to win the award. He was previously nominated for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in 2008, also a digital production.

“Ang [Lee] said, ‘I really want to shoot this in a new visual language,'” Miranda told HitFix about using 3D technology in January “He really wanted to experiment and felt that people were not doing enough in this medium, that they were just making gags and were not sensitive to the material and that you can actually make a story point of this.”

“Life of Pi” was nominated for 11 Oscars in total, including Best Director and Best Picture.

Pixar Animation Studio has claimed its seventh Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film to date. “Brave” may have missed the bar the brand has set in the eyes of many (reviews and box office failed to live up to that of recent successes like “Toy Story 3” and “Up”), but it will be walking out of the Dolby Theatre a winner this evening.

The film’s co-director Mark Andrews (kilted, in fact) and Brenda Chapman accepted the award.

The category was perhaps more competitive than it has been in a great many years. Much of that is because Pixar has frequently been the runaway favorite going into the show (the studio picked up four straight from 2007-2010). And when “Cars 2” failed to make much noise last year, Paramount’s “Rango” was right there to take up slack.

This year, though, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Wreck-It Ralph” came on strong at the end of the season, winning big at the Annie and Producers Guild Awards. Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie” was lurking as a sentimental possibility, while LAIKA’s “ParaNorman” was also in the hunt. But “Brave” landed a number of industry awards along the way for elements such as visual effects, sound mixing and film editing.

“We wanted to make a very strong-willed, dynamic person, a girl who doesn’t need to quest for a ‘happily ever after,'” Andrews told HitFix of crafting a very different Disney princess in a respected lineage. “She’s just figuring out who she is, and that automatically separates her from the princesses that have come before her.”

Unlike recent Pixar entries, this was the only nomination for “Brave” on the night. Pixar’s first Best Animated Feature Film Oscar came for “Finding Nemo” in 2003. “Monsters, Inc.” lost the prize in the category’s introductory year to “Shrek,” but will be back for seconds with the sequel “Monsters University” later this year.

Disney’s “Paperman,” which played with “Wreck-It Ralph” in theaters, won the Best Animated Short Oscar.

Christoph Waltz has kicked off the 85th annual Academy Awards much like he did the 82nd annual Academy Awards: by taking to the stage to accept the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The “Django Unchained” star came out on top in a fiercely contested category featuring veterans like Alan Arkin (“Argo”), Robert De Niro (“Silver Linings Playbook”) and Tommy lee Jones (“Lincoln”).

“Mr. De Niro, Mr. Arkin, Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Jones, my respect,” Waltz said from the stage of the Dolby Theatre. “My unlimited gratitude goes to Dr. King Schultz. That is, of course, to his creator and the creator of his awe-inspiring world, Quentin Tarantino.”

Waltz previously won for Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” the film that launched him into the public eye in 2009, at least on these shores.

Back in December, when Tarantino’s violent revisionist western was set to hit screens nationwide, Waltz praised the writer/director’s “Baroque” way with language to HitFix.

“There’s an old saying that words are sharper than knives…especially when it comes to this topic,” he said at the time. “Words are being used as weapons. The injury inflicted by a word does not heel. So we have to guard our language. Quentin’s words are Baroque poetry, and if you understand that, you have a very direct way into them. You don’t have to tinker with them. All you need to do is let them live.”

“Django Unchained” is up for four other Oscars this evening, including Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture.

The Oscars red carpet is well underway down at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. It feels weird being this far away from ground zero. And not a bad weird.

There are shows on ABC and E! so we can all ogle the stars as they make their way in. I don’t know anything about fashion, sorry. I thought that was just an awesome stuffed animal, not a puppy purse. But hey, I’ll say that Jessica Chastain has nailed it a second year in a row. She just looks different at this awards show than she does anywhere else. Rockin’ it. But Jennifer Lawrence is owning it, too.

Anyway, here’s your space to say what you will on the pre-show shenanigans. We’ll be back during the ceremony for various filing throughout. Enjoy the show!

In a normal year I would have been working on an interesting blood-Jameson content on the beach of Santa Monica today. Film Independent’s Spirit Awards are, after all, the great stretch of the legs at the tail end of the season with the big Sunday showdown on the horizon. It’s a good party, even if it still seems to be chasing what “independent filmmaking” is in this day and age. (I don’t know that they’ve caught it.)

Nevertheless, it’s a good bridesmaid roll call for films like “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Silver Linigns Playbook” to have their day while Oscar’s heavies go at it the following day. But there is the rare occasion, like a Harvey Weinstein player last year, that dominates both ceremonies and feels like synergy, if for a moment. Could that play out again?

This year, alas, I was trying to catch a ray of that Southern California sunshine (it was an annoyingly nice day over there) via Twitter from my rain-drizzled New York hovel. That distance from the lion’s den, by the way, has been an interesting and illuminating experience this year.

The show will air tonight on IFC at 10pm ET. If you’d like to stay spoiler free (though I guess the headline pretty much took care of that), hold off and watch at home. Otherwise, follow along with today’s winner announcements and on-going commentary below. But before that, a little pre-game fun from Roadside Attractions:

First #SpiritAwards winner of the day: Prometheus! twitter.com/roadsidetweets…

– Roadside Attractions (@roadsidetweets) February 23, 2013

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Moving on to the actual ceremony…

Best First Screenplay: Derek Connolly, “Safety Not Guaranteed”

Comments: Vindication for the Indiana Film Journalists Association! “Beasts of the Southern Wild” isn’t the only film lasting the big bad breadth of the season since Sundance. Apparently Connolly was wasted during his speech. And was ultimately escorted out the tent by security. When you have tubs of Jameson on the table…

Best First Film: Stephen Chbosky, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”

Comments: Despite the fact, that, you know, it’s not his first feature. Way to track that research down, guys. Nevertheless, this was a stellar film that should have gone farther this season. I kind of wish I had been louder about it myself.

Best Supporting Male: Matthew McConaughey, “Magic Mike”

Comments: And expect to be hearing plenty more from him around this time next year. Between “Mud,” “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Dallas Buyers Club,” with plenty of goodwill from performances like this one, “Killer Joe” and “The Paperboy” from 2012, he’s bound to set serious sail, right? “I had to drop my drawers to win an award,” he said. Too true…

Piaget Producers Award: Mynette Louie

Chaz and Roger Ebert Fellowship: “Mr. SOUL!”

Robert Altman Award: “Starlet”

Comments: Gotta say, I never saw this one. But I’m intrigued. Also a nominee for the John Cassavetes Award.

Best International Film: “Amour”

Comments: Naturally. The question remains what it’s able to pull down tomorrow night. And intriguingly, the Best Foreign Language Film category may not be one of them. We’ll see how it plays out.

woohoo i get best of foreign film at the spirit awards!!1! up until 2day i always thort they was prizes 4 the bst ghosts lol #spiritawards

– Michael Haneke (@Michael_Haneke) February 23, 2013

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CONTINUE READING “‘Silver Linings Playbook’ dominates 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards

John Cassavetes Award: “Middle of Nowhere”

Comments: This is really the “Best Picture” prize, if you’re awarding independent cinema, yeah? Budgets under $500,000. No, “indie” isn’t merely about budget. But…well, that’s a can of worms. Congratulations to Ava DuVernay, a talented filmmaker with a bright future.

Best Supporting Female: Helen Hunt, “The Sessions”

Comments: A brave performance and the one Oscar nominee of the bunch. It’s a shame her co-star John Hawkes couldn’t share in the Oscar love but he’s nominated along side her at the Spirits. Happy to have Hunt back in the fold like this.

Best Cinematography: “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

Comments: I’m very happy for Ben Richardson here, whose name I didn’t get to mention often enough during the season. He really should have been in the serious conversation for his work on the film, which is just stellar. At least this moment gives me reason to point back to my interview with him upon release of the film. Good guy with a good head on his shoulders.

Best Screenplay: David O. Russell, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Comments: The first award of the day for the presumed frontrunner of the lot. Harvey Weinstein has done a nice job getting his players to soak up a lot of love at this event the last two years. But unlike last year, is today the last hurrah for the film? Or can it turn out wins for its screenplay and perhaps more tomorrow? We’ll see.

Best Documentary: “The Invisible War”

Comments: First prediction I got wrong today (I turned them into IndieWire’s CriticWire survey). And it’s a great win at that. I’d love to see a surprise like this happen at the Oscars. I don’t know what else I can say about Kirby Dick’s amazing effort that I haven’t said, but it’s one of few films in the season that deserve a genuine, “Thank you.”

Someone To Watch Award: Adam Leon, “Kimme the Loot”

Truer Than Fiction Award: Peter Nicks, “The Waiting Room”

Best Director: David O. Russell, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Comments: Why was I so silly as to think Benh Zeitlin’s vision might take this? Of course not. “Silver Linings Playbook” is a locomotive at this show, naturally. And Mr. Weinstein pulled that string brilliantly once again.

Best Female Lead: Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”

Comments: Naturally. But…kiss of death for tomorrow?

Best Male Lead: John Hawkes, “The Sessions”

Comments: And here I was thinking I must have been out of my mind to predict this. It’s nice that something slowed the “Silver Linings” express down a touch, and this is nice vindication for Hawkes, who was shut out of the Oscar quintet. It was a beautiful performance, endearing, capturing a lot of spirit. That kind of accomplishment can’t be diminished.

Best Feature: “Silver Linings Playbook”

Comments: And despite the Hawkes detour, the writing was on the wall with that one. That’s two years in a row that typically dubious qualifiers for the Independent Spirit Awards have dominated, and they’ve emanated from the same distributor. So bravo to Harvey Weinstein. Navigating these waters is in his bones. If you’re gonna do something, you might as well be good at it.

And that’s a wrap! I wish I could have been in the tent, despite my point of view on the presentations going on inside it. It’s a fun party. So congrats to the winners. And someone check on poor Derek Conneolly.

(Remember you can relive all the ups and downs of the 2012-2013 film awards season via The Circuit.)

What are your thoughts on the 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards turnout? Have your say in the comments section below!

The César Awards aren’t quite the final stop on the circuit for “Amour” ahead of Sunday’s Oscars. There is still the Independent Spirits Awards tomorrow. But it was probably the last opportunity for the film to have a big final hurrah of the season, and it seized it.

Michael Haneke’s film swept the top categories, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay. Will Emmanuelle Riva turn the same trick at the Oscars that she did at the BAFTAs and now the Césars? We’ll see.

Elsewhere, Benoît Jacquot’s “Farewell, My Queen” predictably muscled through the crafts fields, winning for its art direction, cinematography and costumes. Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone,” meanwhile, picked up wins for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Original Score (for Alexandre Desplat, nominated at the Oscars for “Argo”).

Speaking of “Argo,” you didn’t think the film was going to let an awards show go by without having a presence, did you? The film won the Best Foreign Film prize, asserting further its dominance on the circuit.

Finally, in a bit of a preview of next year’s animated feature race, it’s worth mentioning that “Ernest and Celestine” triumphed there. The film was picked up for US distribution by GKIDS and will be released here this year.

Check out the full list of winners below, and as ever, keep up with the season at The Circuit.

Best Picture
“Amour”

Best Director
Michael Haneke, “Amour”

Best Actor
Jean-Louis Trintignant, “Amour”

Best Actress
Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”

Best Supporting Actress
Valérie Benguigui, “What”s In A Name”

Best Supporting Actor
Guillaume de Tonquedec, “What”s In A Name”

Best Adapted Screenplay
“Rust and Bone”

Best Original Screenplay
“Amour”

Best Art Direction
“Farewell, My Queen”

Best Cinematography
“Farewell, My Queen”

Best Costumes
“Farewell, My Queen”

Best Editing
“Rust and Bone”

Best Original Score
“Rust and Bone”

Best Sound
“Cloclo”

Best Animated Film
“Ernest and Celestine”

Best Documentary
“Les Invisibles”

Best Foreign Film
“Argo”

Best Short Film
“Le Cri Du Homard”

Best First Film
Louise Wimmer, “Cyril Mennegun”

Best Newcomer (Female)
Izia Higelin, “Mauvaise Fille”

Best Newcomer (Male)
Matthias Schoenaerts, “Rust and Bone”

I think we’ve covered it, yeah? The season has been recounted, the big expected outcome has been laid out, we’ve consoled you if that outcome is troublesome and we’ve offered up our guesses on what to expect otherwise (including our unique crafts category analysis). The season, in so many words, is nearing its end.

It’s been interesting to see a number of pundits slowly shift over to my logic in a few areas during phase two. Ang Lee for Best Director, Emmanuelle Riva for “Amour” (along with Michael Haneke for his screenplay), Robert De Niro for “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Argo” for Best Film Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay (there was a time when it COULD NOT WIN ANYTHING OTHER THAN BEST PICTURE OMG), all predicted here and there now, all possibilities I’ve been mulling over for weeks. And yet, a number of these don’t feel secure. Not in the slightest. We could all be dead wrong.

Indeed, Jennifer Lawrence may well have fought off that Riva surge. Christoph Waltz may have found his way through the circuit to the gold (or Tommy Lee Jones may have owned it all along). The Best Director prize, which feels more “honorary” than usual this year given the absence of the frontrunner, may well go to Steven Spielberg — or, in a shocker, to David O. Russell. It’s all over the place. None of us will look brilliant Monday morning by design, that’s for sure.

So it is (and I do say this often, because always be prepared) that I’m banking on a poor showing in my predictions Sunday night. My picks are a mixture of gut and head, as I think a lot of peoples’ are this year, and I’m ready to just see the chips fall where they may. But as I said in Monday’s final Off the Carpet column, it was an exciting season to watch unfold. And I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more excitement, as indeed, the whole thing feels ripe for the unexpected this weekend.

Expect us to be live-blogging the Independent Spirit Awards in some fashion on Saturday. Greg will be at the beach in Santa Monica for the proceedings and will offer thoughts later in the evening. (I’m jealous; it’s the best awards show of the season.) Sunday I’ll be filing stories throughout the evening and I imagine there will be this and that in between.

So, my final predictions here. Guy’s here. Greg’s here. Gerard’s here. Or you can just flip through the gallery below, which went up last night. You can also hear final thoughts from Anne Thompson and myself in this morning’s podcast, if you haven’t given that a listen yet. Also, you can read back through (or watch, in some cases) our interviews with 50 of the nominees.

Finally, you can dig back through all the Oscar Guide analysis via the links in the Oscar Guide section below this post. Please note, the only guides that I went back and changed were the Best Documentary – Short Subject category (switching my prediction from “Inocente” to “Mondays at Racine”) and the Best Animated Feature Film category (switching from “Wreck-It Ralph” to “Brave”). The only one Guy changed was Best Director (switching from Steven Spielberg to Ang Lee). Gerard is sticking with his picks.

And I guess that about covers it. Postmortems on Monday. Let’s see what happens…

(Oh, before I forget, don’t forget to download the annual HitFix Oscar Ballot for your Oscar polls!

As Kris has mentioned before, it’s a shame that “Searching for Sugar Man” appears to be cruising to such an easy win in the Best Documentary Feature race. That’s not because the film, an engaging audience favorite that has won nearly ever major precursor in sight, wouldn’t be a respectable Oscar winner, but because the standard of the competition this year merits a bit more of a fight. Someone who hasn’t seen any of the films this year might simply look at how little the wealth has been spread and assume that “Sugar Man” stands inarguably apart from the field, and that simply isn’t the case.

With most of the films still awaiting a UK release, I’ve been slow to catch up with this year’s nominees. “The Invisible War” still eludes me, but “How to Survive a Plague,” “The Gatekeepers” and “5 Broken Cameras” are all impressive feats of personal and political reportage, as are any number of non-nominees no less (and often rather more) substantial than the frontrunner.

Still, even if the game’s already won, it’s nice to see all the nominees getting their due at an AMPAS showcase for the category, with Oscar-winning documentarian and branch governor Michael Moore hosting a panel discussion with all the nominated directors. It’s a meaty discussion that the Academy has now made available in its entirety on YouTube, and well worth investigating if your interest in this high-level race runs deeper than simply calling the winner.

The Academy also held similar showcase evenings for the documentary short category (hosted again by Moore) and the live action and animated short categories (hosted by Jason Schwartzman), both of which you can view by clicking on the links.

Are you rooting for a major upset in the Doc Feature race? Or are you still sweet on “Sugar Man?” 

There are three ways to predict the Oscars. The first is to go strictly on facts, stats and precedents. The second is to use a mixture of sentiment and psychological projection. The third, and best, combines a bit of both with good old-fashioned gut instinct.

Statistician extraordinaire Nate Silver, unsurprisingly, opts for the first method. His election-style Oscar predictions are based purely on how nominees have fared in previous awards: a system that poses some problems this year, when the Academy’s earlier-than-usual deadline for nominations voting resulted in less correlation than usual with several major precursors — the Actors’ and Directors’ Guilds in particular. (Stat geeks love to tell us, or example, that Marcia Gay Harden is only person in the 19-year history of the SAG Awards to win the Oscar without a Guild nod — but there’s a strong possibility that number could triple on Sunday.)

Silver’s justification for factoring only precursor awards into his predictions is other external factors — industry sentiment, campaign savvy, potential backlash, and so on — often amount to “more noise than signal.” He writes: “If a film is the cinematic equivalent of Tim Pawlenty – something that looks like a contender in the abstract, but which isn”t picking up much support from actual voters – we should be skeptical that it would suddenly turn things around.”

Fair enough. There’s certainly no arguing with Silver’s method when he predicts landslide wins for “Argo” in Best Picture, Daniel Day-Lewis in Best Actor and Anne Hathaway in Best Supporting Actress — when a contender wins that many of of the key precursor awards, it’s usually only outside observers, as opposed to actual voters, who get hungry for a momentum shift. Still, Silver’s rankings in these locked-and-loaded categories are open to question: does anyone really think “Zero Dark Thirty” is currently running second to “Argo” simply because of its early run of critics’ prizes? Is “Silver Linings Playbook” really coming in sixth? Surely not.

Silver has trouble with Best Director, where the fact that the most significant precursors have been won by a non-nominee leads him into grayer territory. Taking previous nominations into account leads him to predict Steven Spielberg, by a hair, over Ang Lee, though he admits this is the same method that made him predict Taraji P. Henson over Penelope Cruz four years ago (ha!), and that it’ll be “blind luck” if he’s right on this occasion.

He also has Emmanuelle Riva — my prediction or Best Actress, as well is Kris’ — down in third place, claiming that the BAFTA is a less reliable indicator than SAG in the acting categories. True, though could as easily mention that the Brits have called six of the last seven Oscar winners in the category. And the reliance on past wins is highly questionable in Best Supporting Actor, which he’s currently calling, reasonably enough, for SAG winner Tommy Lee Jones — but with BAFTA and Globe winner Christoph Waltz in third, and Robert De Niro rather implausibly in last place. 

Anyway, it’s all a bit of fun. Check out Silver’s pick’s here, and ours here.

(Welcome to the Oscar Guide, your chaperone through the Academy”s 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 24, with the Best Picture finale today, February 22.)

And here we are, the final category after two-and-a-half weeks of the 2013 Oscar Guide. I hope you’ve enjoyed the entries, which you can click back through in the dedicated section below this post. The Best Picture field proved, in its second year of featuring a slate that could include between five and 10 nominees, to be a full one. Nine films were nominated again, and they ran the gamut from foreign languages to political thrillers, big-scale musicals to epic fantasies, scruffy indies to prestige biopics and romantic comedies.

In the end, one film stood out and showed dominance at a time when it appeared to be at its weakest. Whether that perceived weakness was ultimately a source of sympathy is up for debate, but it asserted its dominance nevertheless. And in this, a year when the stats can absolutely go out the window given the shifting of the Academy’s calendar and its introduction of online balloting, “history” was going to be made. And so it shall, no matter what happens.

The nominees are…

“Amour” (Margaret Menegoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka and Michael Katz, Producers)
“Argo” (Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck and George Clooney, Producers)
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” (Dan Janvey, Josh Penn and Michael Gottwald, Producers)
“Django Unchained” (Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin and Pilar Savone, Producers)
“Les Misérables” (Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward and Cameron Mackintosh, Producers)
“Life of Pi” (Gil Netter, Ang Lee and David Womark, Producers)
“Lincoln” (Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, Producers)
“Silver Linings Playbook” (Donna Gigliotti, Bruce Cohen and Jonathan Gordon, Producers)
“Zero Dark Thirty” (Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow and Megan Ellison, Producers)

Just missing the line-up after showing strength in the precursor circuit were films like “Skyfall” and “Moonrise Kingdom.” Chalk their downfall up to any number of reasons, but I would suggest that the campaign for the former seemed a bit reserved, while the campaign for the latter perhaps waited too long to seize the day.

The biggest surprise for most (though as you know, we were calling it around these parts for months) was the fact that Michael Haneke’s rigorous “Amour” ended up finding the right amount of passion to secure a spot. Not only that, but it also showed up in Best Director, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, it could have been one of five nominees in a typical year. Perhaps, but its win is this nod (and whatever other Oscars it might pick up elsewhere, of course).

The odds-on favorite quickly became Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” and with PGA, DGA, WGA, SAG, BAFTA, BFCA and HFPA wins, it’s clear to see why. When Affleck was “snubbed” by the directors branch, it seemed all was lost. But quickly, the film turned the corner, and whether by sympathy or, more likely, genuine consensus approval, it has lined itself up to take the big prize. A miss at this stage would be an upset, and in a crazy year like this, you never know.

In many ways, a Best Picture nomination for “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a testament to the film’s power to generate passion, absolutely. But it’s also a feather in the cap of Fox Searchlight Pictures, which is a studio that simply knows how to play this game. It even landed a surprising Best Director nomination, which could lead you to believe it has more of a shot in these major categories than most expect. Nevertheless, the fairytale year has been great, but isn’t likely to go much farther… is it?

I had my doubts that Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant “Django Unchained,” the best film of the Best Picture nominees this year in my opinion, would get there. But I hung it out on faith and it showed up at the end of the day. This blatant revisionist tale packed with cathartic violence is a tough sell to the Academy at large, however. It could be recognized in the original screenplay category, but it would be lucky to even have that. It has some support from the Brits, though, evidenced by BAFTA wins.

Early on it seemed to me that Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables” would be our Oscar winner. It has genuine passion in the Academy; members who love it LOVE it. But the lesson learned is that, while passion is great for nominations, it’s not necessarily helpful for the win, because a love it/hate it movie, which this one ended up being, is always going to have trouble in a preferential balloting system. Nevertheless, it won the most BAFTA prizes and could win its share on Oscar night.

Ang Lee’s visionary “Life of Pi” could land him an Oscar for Best Director. He is, after all, the star of the film in many ways. And it picked up 11 nominations, more than anyone saw coming, surely. It might even be seen as second to the formidable “Argo” in this category, but I wonder about that. It has skipped along with a subdued campaign all year long, which, with all the chatter, was a welcome scenario, frankly. But did it rally enough troops in the end?

Most think that, if not Affleck’s “Argo,” then Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” surely has to be considered a strong contender to win Best Picture. But why? Because it netted 12 nominations? Okay, fair enough. But hey, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” had 13, so that’s not everything. It hasn’t fared well on the industry awards circuit at all save for notices for Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones. Was it ever really the one to beat? If it were to surge to victory now, it would be a surprise, plain and simple.

I would keep my eye on “Silver Linings Playbook” in races for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, which means I would say it’s entirely likely that this is the film nipping at “Argo”‘s dust rather than films like “Life of Pi” and “Lincoln.” It is, along with “Argo,” one of the most universally loved films in the Academy and will have its champions for Best Picture, make no mistake. It’s also the kind of film that does well with a preferential ballot.

And finally, “Zero Dark Thirty,” the great beast that was toppled by Capitol Hill, liberals and conservatives alike, and maybe even some dirty tricks. Kathryn Bigelow’s film came out of the gate swinging as the undeniable critics choice, but soon gave way to “Argo” in that respect amid lies and nonsense directed at its depiction of torture. Maybe that kind of thing could have been handled more smoothly or preemptively by publicity, maybe not, but it suffered a gut shot in December and bled out slowly the rest of the season.

Will Win: “Argo”
Could Win: “Silver Linings Playbook”
Should Win: “Django Unchained”
Should Have Been Here: “The Grey”

Is “Argo” going to continue its victory march right on through the Oscars or is it going to be stopped by something formidable? Have your say in the comments section below!

Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

Well, it looks like there’s just one more order of business to cover before the big show on Sunday: FINAL PREDICTIONS! Anne and I ended up differing in six categories. Who’s gonna have bragging rights when we come back to close out the season on Monday? We’ll see.

Have a listen to the new podcast below. If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. You to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here. And as always, if you have a question you’d like us to address on a future podcast, send it to OscarTalk@HitFix.com.

“Here I Come” courtesy of Stuart Park.

Amid all the fuss over Ben Affleck in the run-up to Sunday’s Academy Awards — with his path from surprise omission to probable vindication, all in the space of a few weeks, likely to be the lasting narrative of this year’s Oscars — there’s been markedly little attention paid to his nominated co-producers. That wouldn’t normally be very surprising: producers, by and large, don’t tend to be as photogenic or as headline-friendly as the Ben Afflecks of this world. But it’s slightly different when one of the co-producers in question in George Clooney.

Clooney has been a typically urbane, but graciously quiet, presence on the campaign trail for “Argo” all season long: it’s Affleck’s film, after all, and he’s been selling the hell out of it, so there’s no call for his fellow A-list star to switch on the jazz hands.

Still, I can’t help thinking the Clooney association has been a subtle ace in the hand for “Argo” from the beginning, underlining the impression of “Argo” as an old-school Hollywood property, made — perhaps reassuringly, after the foreign invasion of “The King’s Speech” and “The Artist” — by people voters know, trust and are maybe just a tiny bit in love with. The mental image of both Affleck and Clooney clutching Oscars at the podium — two golden boys squared, if you will — is one reason I haven’t been able to let go of my “Argo” Best Picture prediction since October.

Back then, I wrote about the impressive Oscar record Clooney would claim with a Best Picture nomination for “Argo,” one that would bring his career tally up to eight nominations across six different categories — the latter number unmatched in the modern era (and previously matched, arguably only on a series of technicalities, by Walt Disney). Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actor (his one previous win, for 2005’s “Syriana”) … the man’s done well for himself. It’s a stat Pete Hammond picked up on in a column yesterday, but his is the first mention of it I’ve come across since my idle post last year.

Still, it doesn’t stop there for Clooney, who’s poised to enter, if not quite the record books, at least a very elite Academy club if/when he wins Best Picture for “Argo” — as one of a small handful of Oscar-winning actors to have also won competitive awards in non-acting categories.

From Shirley MacLaine (did you know she was nominated for Best Documentary Feature in 1976?) to Alec Guinness (a writing nominee for “The Horse’s Mouth”) to screenwriter-turned-actress Ruth Gordon, a number of names have scored nominations in multiple fields while landing their lone win for performance. On the flip side, any number of overachieving multi-hyphenates — Warren Beatty, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, even Affleck and Clooney’s buddy Matt Damon — have been nominated in vain for acting while striking Oscar gold elsewhere. 

But only a select few — five, to my surprise — have nailed down wins for acting and another filmmaking discipline. Some of them you may remember; some of them may surprise you — all are listed in the gallery below. Click through to see the company George Clooney looks likely to enter on Sunday.

I’m not sure “Skyfall” represents the best work in the field — though I prefer it to the presumed frontrunner in the category — but it’s hard not to root for Roger Deakins in the Best Cinematography race on Sunday. The British DP’s perennial bridesmaid status at the Oscars has grown into a widely publicized sticking point, and Vulture has further highlighted the debt with a great piece on 10 key shots from his career, and how he got them. (Hey, that sounds not unlike one of our favorite annual features.) For “Skyfall,” they’ve selected Bond’s arrival at the Macao gambling palace for scrutiny. Deakins explains the difficulties of faking mass candlelight, and brushes off talk of how he excels in the digital department: “Whether or not it’s film or digital, much more of my career has been about choosing the location, getting an idea of the look of something, and choosing the practical kinds of lighting and the positions of the windows, anything that enables you to get the look you want.” [Vulture] 

Mary McNamara bemoans the Academy’s neglect of blockbusters — a slightly picky argument to make, I think, in a year when most of the Best Picture nominees have grossed over $100 million. [LA Times]

David Cox offers a British perspective on what this year’s Oscar nominations say about America. [The Guardian]

Mekado Murphy talks to Peter Swords King, Oscar-nominated makeup designer of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” Can he score Middle Earth’s third win in the category? [The Carpetbagger]

An impressive feat: Bryan Parrill has reviewed or capsule-reviewed every film nominated for Sunday’s Academy Awards. [Shooting the Script]

33 years after “The China Syndrome,” Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas will reunite to present Best Director on Sunday. And there I was so sure it’d be Jennifer Garner. [@JaneFonda]

Though “Amour” will likely be a worthy winner, Jason Bailey is still unhappy with a Best Foreign Language Film system that never gave two other French-language Cannes hits a chance. [The Atlantic] 

Nathaniel Rogers gathers the 12 films that rank as the biggest “losers” in Oscar history — well, going by nomination count, at least. Could a 2012 nominee join them on Sunday? [The Film Experience] 

I love this ongoing series by Nick Davis: the films and moments in which he loved this year’s nominees best. [Nick’s Flick Picks]

Doing much this weekend? Jenny Peters rounds up the exhaustive schedule of industry Oscar parties. [Variety]

The 85th annual Academy Awards are right around the corner as Oscar weekend is ready to descend on Tinseltown and, indeed, the world stage. Is it smooth sailing for “Argo” and Daniel Day-Lewis? Did the tight races for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor yield surprises? What mysteries do the envelopes still hold? We’ll know for sure next week and the Monday morning quarterbacking will be fascinating to behold, but in the meantime, it’s last call on predictions.

Once again this year, HitFix’s awards pundits have come together to help shed some light on this or that category with our final calls. Though perhaps no light is shed at all, as there are plenty of places where Gregory Ellwood, Guy Lodge and myself disagree. But that’s been the story of the season, hasn’t it? While a frontrunner for Best Picture may have emerged from the fire of phase two, a great many races are wide open. And it suggests a few promises may yet be in store.

For now, click through the video gallery below to soak up what we’re thinking. I think I speak for all three of us when I say a number of these are built on shaky foundations of “logic” and confidence, but you have to put the pencil down sooner or later. And so we have. All three of us agree in 14 categories. In eight categories, two of us agree while one was a lone wolf. And in two categories, all three of us went in completely different directions.

Find out more below, and feel free to offer up your own predictions in all categories below. Good luck!

Mychael Danna was awarded Film Score of the Year by the International Film Music Critics Association for his work on Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi.” Danny Elfman was recognized as Film Composer of the Year while “Lincoln,” “Ted,” “Skyfall,” “John Carter” and “Rise of the Guardians” won throughout the genre categories. Check out the full list of winners below and keep track of the 2012-2013 film awards season at The Circuit.

Film Score of the Year
“Life of Pi” (Mychael Danna)

Film Composer of the Year
Danny Elfman

Breakout Composer of the Year
Nathan Johnson

Best Original Score for a Drama Film
“Lincoln” (John Williams)

Best Original Score for a Comedy Film
“Ted” (Walter Murphy)

Best Original Score for an Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
“Skyfall” (Thomas Newman)

Best Original Score for a Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror Film
“John Carter” (Michael Giacchino)

Best Original Score for an Animated Film
“Rise of the Guardians” (Alexandre Desplat)

Best Original Score for a Documentary Feature
“Metsän Tarina” (Panu Aaltio)

Film Music Composition of the Year
“The Impossible Main Title” from “The Impossible” (Fernando Velázquez)