Oscar predictions
Below are our last-minute Oscar 2014 predictions. The 86th Academy Award nominations are going to be announced on Thursday, January 16, at 5:30 a.m. Pacific Time in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. We will be posting the list of Oscar 2014 nominations here.
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, the Oscar nominations always offer some kind of surprise that will leave some elated and others mighty pissed off. Last year, for example, left out of the Best Director roster were favorites Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty and Ben Affleck for Argo. The latter film, predictably, went on to take home the Best Picture Academy Award. Also, a few years ago, Christopher Nolan was bypassed for Inception, while a couple of years before that, Nolan and his film, The Dark Knight, were bypassed for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Amy Adams and Christian Bale American Hustle image: Columbia Pictures | Sony Pictures.
Oscar Predictions 2014 Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence and/or Scarlett Johansson to make Oscar history?
The 2014 Academy Awards’ Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor races seemed quite fuzzy at first. The picture became clearer following the announcement of the SAG Award nominations: now, there are three or four top contenders in each category; these performers will probably – or rather, in a couple of cases, surely – be shortlisted for this year’s Academy Awards.
Yet, there’s quite a bit of room for a couple of upsets. In other words, pay close attention to our list of runners-up for Best Supporting Actress. In fact, even one of the “long shot” actresses might manage to squeeze in; admittedly, that’s highly unlikely – but not impossible.
Also worth noting is that unlike the Oscar 2014 Best Actress race, currently dominated by Blue Jasmine star Cate Blanchett, there is no runaway favorite in the Best Supporting Actress category, though Jennifer Lawrence could be considered the tentative front-runner for American Hustle. If she wins, she’ll be making Oscar history. More on that below.
Scarlett Johansson to make Oscar history?
Note: On our Best Supporting Actress Oscar 2014 predictions list, SAG Award nominee Oprah Winfrey has been replaced by Golden Globe nominee Sally Hawkins.
Also, bear in mind that Amy Adams, though being pushed as a Best Actress contender for American Hustle, could theoretically find her way into the Best Supporting Actress roster for her performance in that movie. Stranger things have happened.
And speaking of “strange,” if Scarlett Johansson gets shortlisted for her voice work in Her – she’s the voice of the computer with which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love – that’ll be stranger than the premise of her movie. After all, no voice (or “hybrid”) performance, no matter how enthusiastically praised – e.g., Robin Williams in Aladdin, Andy Serkis in Rise of the Planet of the Apes – has ever been nominated for an Academy Award.
Best Supporting Actress Oscar 2014: First Kenyan nominee?
In case our Best Supporting Actress Oscar 2014 predictions are on target, three of the nominees will be first-timers (Sally Hawkins, Lupita Nyong’o, June Squibb) while two have previously won Academy Awards (Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts):
- Five years ago, potential Oscar newcomer Sally Hawkins was bypassed for her critically acclaimed and heavily buzzed performance in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky.
- Mexican-born Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o not only will become the first Kenyan acting nominee, but (to the best of our knowledge) the second African actress ever to be nominated for an Academy Award – following South African Charlize Theron (who won for Monster, 2003, and was nominated for North Country, 2005). Note: Glynis Johns, Best Supporting Actress nominee for The Sundowners (1960), was born in South Africa while her parents were touring that country, but she grew up in Wales.
- The 84-year-old June Squibb will become the fourth oldest acting nominee ever, after two previous Best Supporting Actress nominees – Titanic’s 87-year-old Gloria Stuart and American Gangster’s 85-year-old Ruby Dee – in addition to last year’s Emmanuelle Riva, who was 85 at the time she was nominated in the Best Actress category for her performance in Michael Haneke’s Amour. Note: Thanks to a commenter, we’ve corrected our info regarding oldest nominees in the acting categories. We previously had June Squibb trailing only Emmanuelle Riva. Reason for the mistake: although we checked every acting category, we inadvertently saw only the list of Best Supporting Actress Oscar winners. For the record, the oldest winner in that category is Peggy Ashcroft, who was 77 when she won for David Lean’s A Passage to India in early 1985.*
- Jennifer Lawrence will be receiving her third Oscar nod, and her first in the Best Supporting Actress category. Lawrence was shortlisted for Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010) and won for David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (2012). If she wins for American Hustle, Lawrence will be making Oscar history: the first performer to win back-to-back Academy Awards – in two different acting categories. To date, only five performer have won consecutive Oscars: Best Actress Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld, 1936; The Good Earth, 1937), who turns 104 (!) next January 12; Best Actor Spencer Tracy (Captains Courageous, 1937; Boys Town, 1938); Best Actress Katharine Hepburn (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967; The Lion in Winter, 1968 – shared with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl), Best Supporting Actor Jason Robards (All the President’s Men, 1976; Julia, 1977); and Best Actor Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, 1993; Forrest Gump, 1994).
- Julia Roberts, for her part, will be getting her fourth Oscar nomination, and second Best Supporting Actress nod. Roberts was shortlisted as Best Supporting Actress for Herbert Ross’ Steel Magnolias (1989), and as Best Actress for Garry Marshall’s Pretty Woman (1990) and Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (2000). She won for the Soderbergh film.
*As an aside, veteran Peggy Ashcroft (Romeo and Juliet, opposite Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud onstage; Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps) was absent from the 1985 Oscar ceremony. She canceled her appearance on the show to attend the funeral of Michael Redgrave, father of Best Actress nominee Vanessa Redgrave (The Bostonians, 1984). Ashcroft ultimately came down with the flu, and was thus unable to attend Redgrave’s funeral as well.
Likely Best Supporting Actress Oscar contender Jennifer Lawrence American Hustle image: Columbia Pictures | Sony Pictures.
Oscar Predictions: Best Director
In brief, here are our 2014 Oscar Predictions in the Best Director category.
Note: The one difference between our Best Picture shortlist below and the Producers Guild of America nominations is Inside Llewyn Davis replacing Blue Jasmine. Also: bear in mind that the list below features ten titles; however, as few as five may end up nominated. Hence, our listing the 2014 Oscar predictions for Best Picture in order of importance. All other lists are in alphabetical order, including Best Picture runners-up and long shots.
Best Director
If our Best Director Oscar 2014 predictions are on target, then two of the nominees will be newcomers in that category (Alfonso Cuarón and Steve McQueen). Spike Jonze has one previous nomination, for Being John Malkovich, 1999, while Alexander Payne and David O. Russell have been both shortlisted twice before: Payne for Sideways, 2004, and The Descendants, 2011; Russell for the mid-level box office hit The Fighter, 2010, and Silver Linings Playbook, 2012.
Also worth noting, Steve McQueen will be only the third black filmmaker(and the first black British filmmaker) shortlisted for Best Director, following John Singleton for Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Lee Daniels for Precious (2009).
Alfonso Cuarón, for his part, will be the second Mexican filmmaker nominated for a Best Director Oscar, following Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel (2006).
Leonardo DiCaprio The Wolf of Wall Street image: Paramount Pictures.
Best Actor Oscar Predictions: Robert Redford to Make the Cut?
Note: Our list of likely Best Actor nominees matches four of the 2014 SAG Awards’ five nominees in that category. Now, it’s good to remember three things regarding the SAG Awards vs. the Academy Awards:
- The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Actors Branch, about 1,100 members, tends to be more “elitist” (or rather, “sophisticated”) than the Screen Actors Guild membership, about 120,000 strong, approximately 2,100 of which select the SAG Awards’ nominees. Just about anyone with three speaking roles to their credit and enough cash to pay SAG’s membership fees can become a SAG member, whereas only those invited by the Academy, usually (though not always) after years of renowned film work, can become Academy members.
- The SAG Awards and the Academy Awards have different voting rules. The latter uses the preferential voting system, which allows a minority of enthusiastic voters to have their pick shortlisted for the Oscars.
- Timing and the availability of early screeners is crucial for a nomination in any category.
Best Actor
Note Pt. 2: On our list of Oscar 2014 predictions, Robert Redford is the sole Best Actor nominee bypassed by the SAG Awards. In Redford’s place, SAG voters picked Forest Whitaker.
If our 2014 Oscar Best Actor predictions are on target, two actors will be Oscar newcomers: Chiwetel Ejiofor (who failed to be nominated for Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things in 2000) and Matthew McConaughey (who, deservedly or not, failed to be nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category last year for Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike).
The other three Best Actor nominees would be making Oscar comebacks after a long absence:
Two-time winner Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, 1993; Forrest Gump, 1994) would be up for his sixth Best Actor Academy Award. His most recent Oscar nod was for Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away (2000).
Bruce Dern would be receiving his first ever Best Actor nomination, but his second in the acting categories. Thirty-five years ago, Dern was shortlisted in the Best Supporting Actor category for playing Jane Fonda’s Vietnam War veteran husband in Hal Ashby’s Coming Home. He lost to Christopher Walken for 1978’s other Vietnam War drama, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter.
Robert Redford would be getting his second Best Actor Oscar nomination. Redford was first shortlisted 40 years ago, for George Roy Hill’s eventual Best Picture winner The Sting (1973). He lost to Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger. Additionally, Robert Redford has taken home a Best Director Oscar for the 1980 family drama Ordinary People, and 14 years later was nominated in that same category for Quiz Show, losing out to Forrest Gump’s Robert Zemeckis. Best Picture nominee Quiz Show also earned Redford a nomination as one of the film’s producers, and he was handed an Honorary Oscar at the 2002 ceremony.
Robert Redford: Potential Oscar near-record
If Robert Redford does get nominated for the Best Actor 2014 Oscar, he’ll be almost breaking two records: oldest Best Actor nominee and longest gap between acting nominations. The current oldest Best Actor Oscar nominee is Richard Farnsworth, who was 79 when nominated for David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999). Robert Redford and Bruce Dern are both 77; with Dern actually a couple of months older than Redford. So, 2014 may end up with two of the three oldest Best Actor nominees in Oscar history.
The record for longest gap between acting Oscar nominations belongs to Henry Fonda: 41 years, from John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) to Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond (1981). Fonda, 76 at the time of his nomination for On Golden Pond, is currently the second oldest Best Actor nominee and the very oldest Best Actor Oscar winner ever.
Robert Redford All Is Lost image: Daniel Daza | Lionsgate Pictures.
Best Actress Oscar 2014: Academy to honor veteran actresses
If our Oscar 2014 Best Actress predictions are on target, the Academy’s Actors Branch will select five Academy Award veterans. In fact, all five likely Best Actress nominees have already taken home – at least – one Academy Award. Also worth noting, all five are over 40 years old.
- Cate Blanchett has five previous Oscar nominations: Best Actress for Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998); Best Supporting Actress for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004), in which she played four-time Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn; Best Supporting Actress for Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal (2006); Best Actress for Kapur’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007); and Best Supporting Actress for Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There (2007), in which she played – sort of – Bob Dylan. Blanchett won for The Aviator.
- Sandra Bullock has one previous Oscar nomination, for John Lee Hancock’s 2009 blockbuster The Blind Side. Bullock became that year’s sentimental favorite, and ended up taking the home the Best Actress Oscar statuette.
- Judi Dench has six previous Oscar nominations: Best Actress for John Madden’s Mrs. Brown (1997); Best Supporting Actress for Madden’s Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Lasse Hallström’s Chocolat (2000); and Best Actress for Richard Eyre’s Iris (2001), Stephen Frears’ Mrs. Henderson Presents, and Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal (2006). Dench won for Shakespeare in Love. Note: Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett have twice been nominated in the same year (1998, 2006), but in different acting categories; if they’re both shortlisted this year, that’ll mark the first time they’ll be competing with one another.
- Meryl Streep has 17 previous Oscar nominations.
- Emma Thompson has four previous Oscar nominations in the acting categories: Best Actress for James Ivory’s Howards End (1992) and The Remains of the Day (1993); Best Supporting Actress for Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father (1993); and Best Actress for Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995). Thompson won for Howards End, and also took home an Oscar for her adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility. If she does get nominated, Thompson will be returning to the Oscar fold after an 18-year absence.
Meryl Streep to break Oscar record?
In case Meryl Streep gets nominated for August: Osage County, she’ll be breaking the current Oscar record in the acting categories. Who holds that record? Huh … Meryl Streep herself: 17 nominations.
If Streep wins – which is highly unlikely, but never underestimate The Weinstein Company – she’ll be taking home her fourth Oscar statuette. In case that happens, she’ll tie with Katharine Hepburn as the top Oscar winner in the acting categories.
Meryl Streep August: Osage County image: The Weinstein Company.
Best Supporting Actor Oscar Predictions: Jared Leto vs. James Franco?
As explained in our previous Oscar 2014 predictions post, this year’s Academy Award nominations in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories initially looked impossible to predict. For Best Supporting Actor, Jared Leto was the front-runner for his performance as a transsexual with AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club, and Michael Fassbender was another strong possibility for his evil planter in 12 Years a Slave – but who else?
Best Supporting Actor Oscar 2014: First Somali, third Spanish-born (and sixth German), and eighth posthumous nominees?
If our Oscar 2014 predictions for Best Supporting Actor are on target, all five actors will be first-time nominees.
- Bakhad Abdi will be the first Somali to be nominated for an Academy Award in the acting categories (or, likely, in any category). Abdi will also be one of the rare African-born actors to be nominated; previous acting nominees and/or winners include South African-born Welsh actress Glynis Johns (The Sundowners), Egyptian Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia), and South African Charlize Theron (Monster, North Country). (Note: Best Actress Oscar winner Anna Magnani – The Rose Tattoo – was reportedly born in Italy, not Egypt as some have claimed. Also, this year’s likely Best Supporting Actress nominee, Kenyan performer Lupita Nyong’o, was actually born in Mexico.)
- If James Gandolfini is nominated, he’ll become the eighth performer to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination, following Jeanne Eagels (The Letter, 1928–1929; no official nominations that year, but Eagels was “considered” for the award); James Dean (East of Eden, 1955; Giant, 1956); Spencer Tracy (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967); Peter Finch (Network, 1976); Ralph Richardson (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, 1984); Massimo Troisi (The Postman / Il Postino, 1995); and Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight, 2008). Only Finch and Ledger won, the latter as Best Supporting Actor. Richardson was also nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category.
- If Daniel Brühl gets shortlisted, he’ll become only the third Spanish-born performer to receive Oscar recognition, following Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls, 2000; No Country for Old Men, 2007; Biutiful, 2010) and Penélope Cruz (Volver, 2006; Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 2008; Nine, 2009). Now, though Spanish-born (and fluent in Spanish), Daniel Brühl was raised in Germany – his mother is Spanish, but his father was a Brazilian-born German television director. Thus, if nominated Brühl will also become only the sixth German actor shortlisted for an Academy Award, following Emil Jannings (first Best Actor winner, for The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command, 1927–1928), Marlene Dietrich (Morocco, 1930–1931), Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld, 1936; The Good Earth, 1937), Albert Bassermann (Foreign Correspondent, 1940), and Armin Mueller-Stahl (Shine, 1996). (Note: Vienna-born two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz – for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained – is half-German, and so is U.S.-born and -raised Sandra Bullock, Best Actress Oscar winner for John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side.)
- And if Jared Leto does get a nomination, he won’t be the first gender-bending performer to do so. Previous such nominees include Jack Lemmon for Some Like It Hot (1959), Chris Sarandon for Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Julie Andrews for Victor/Victoria (1982), John Lithgow for The World According to Garp (1982), Dustin Hoffman for Tootsie (1982), William Hurt for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Jaye Davidson for The Crying Game (1992), Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Hilary Swank for Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Felicity Huffman for Transamerica (2005), Cate Blanchett for I’m Not There (2007), and Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs (2011). Oscar winner Linda Hunt is a unique case: she actually played a man in Peter Weir’s 1983 political drama The Year of Living Dangerously. And it’s true that Marlene Dietrich sort of crosses the line here and there in Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 romantic melodrama Morocco, but tux or no, “lesbian kiss” or no, no one could perceive Dietrich’s character as anything but a woman.
notes
Jared Leto Dallas Buyers Club image: Focus Features.
Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle. The Hunger Games movies’ determined Katniss Everdeen and a Best Actress Academy Award winner for David O. Russell’s 2012 comedy-drama Silver Linings Playbook, Jennifer Lawrence plays the sexually alluring and emotionally unbalanced Rosalyn Rosenfeld – the wife of con artist Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and, later on, the lover of mobster Peter Musane (Jack Huston) – in Russell’s real-life-inspired crime comedy-drama American Hustle, based on the late 1970s/early 1980s FBI ABSCAM anti-corruption operation and one of 289 films in contention for the 2014 Academy Awards.
Oscar 2014: 289 movies in the running for Best Picture & other regular categories
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that no less than 289 feature films are in the running for the 2014 Academy Awards.
As the Academy’s press release explains, to qualify for the 2014 Oscar, “feature films must open in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County by midnight, December 31, and begin a minimum run of seven consecutive days.”
Additionally, eligible films “must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or in a qualifying digital format.”