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This is unfortunate. The work, research, and effort that some of these technicians put into their projects is astounding and jaw-dropping. They should not be punished because the story of their movie is not serious enough to be a Best Picture contender. The branch most guilty of this, arguably, is the Editing branch.

Best Film Editing is widely considered to be the “Best Picture” of the technical races, and for good reason. A film’s editor puts together the movie and delivers a finished product once all the elements (sound, effects, etc.) have been superimposed on the takes. Indeed, many argue that a Best Film Editing win early on during Oscar night for any of the contenders can augur good things to come for that movie. I don’t buy it, by the way--in the last sixteen ceremonies Best Film Editing has gone on to win Best Picture only seven times.

Indeed, the Academy has not hesitated to give the award to what is the best edited movie over a Best Picture frontrunner, like when The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Bourne Ultimatum triumphed over The Artist and No Country for Old Men, respectively. But none of this has stopped the Editing branch from considering themselves the cool man at the technical awards party, and their penchant for trying to predict the Best Picture/Director line up can result in frustrating choices, like Dallas Buyers Club this year.

The saving grace is that each branch does tend to reserve a slot and maybe two for well-crafted movies regardless of their broader Best Picture appeal, and it is always refreshing to see these works recognized, like Prisoners showing up in the Cinematography race, All is Lost in Sound, and The Great Gatsby in Production Design.

With all the preliminaries aside, let’s dive in to some of the easier races today, reserving the closer calls for the next installment of the column.

Best Cinematography

Let’s start with an award that was in the news this weekend - Best Cinematography. On Saturday, the American Society of Cinematographers guild gave their top prize to Gravity’s Emmanuel Lubezki, and I predict that the Mexican cinematographer will emerge victorious on Oscar night.

From the other nominees in this category, one can likely and safely eliminate The Grandmaster, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Nebraska. The first movie, The Grandmaster was neither well reviewed nor widely seen. The nomination is well-deserved, as the photography for the movie including overseeing the shooting of single scenes which took over three full weeks to film - with eerie smoke and opaque lightning. It is the kind of lightning that brought Oscars to Road to Perdition and Inception’s cinematographers, but those movies were highly respected.

Nebraska is also a deserved nominee - I understand it is singularly difficult to film a movie in black and white and still give some vibrancy to the ultimate effect and carefully distinguishing between tones of gray. But, ultimately, black and white may seem too “simplistic” to the lay Academy member to vote for this film, and despite some nominations for black and white films since Schindler’s List took home the prize, none has emerged victorious on Oscar night.

Inside Llewyn Davis also shows some gumption from the cinematographers’ branch - they must have admired, like I did, the faded color palette that gave a stale, near black and white aesthetic to the movie. Indeed, its nomination shows that at least a small group of the Academy respects that movie and, I suspect, is deeply passionate about it. But its weaker-than-expected showing across the other branches likely dooms its chances here.

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