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Best Costume Design

If there is one branch that can be counted on to deliver oddball choices outside of the mainstream Best Picture flicks, it is the costume designers’ branch, and this year is no exception. With nods for The Grandmaster, The Invisible Woman, and the Great Gatsby, the branch showed once more that they are not as beholden to sheep mentality as some of their peers are. Still, they could not resist themselves and had to let American Hustle and 12 Years a Slave slip in (both of which arguably are less deserving than the three other nominees), at the expense of my favorite costumes of the year - Catching Fire.

The presence of those two Best Picture front-runners and the “consolation prize” mentality thus make this a more difficult category to predict. The Grandmaster, arguably the most deserving here, is likely on the outside looking in simply because most have not seen that movie. Any other year I would easily predict The Invisible Woman - despite the costume branch’s best efforts, the Academy consistently returns to period pieces, rewarding Anna Karenina, The Young Victoria, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age in recent years. Still, in the last 20 years, only one movie has won Best Costumes when that prize was its only nomination, and that movie was the more widely seen Marie Antoinette. Thus, I think we can safely discard The Invisible Woman.

So we are down to the showier costumes of Gatsby, and two serious Best Picture contenders. Patricia Norris’s costume work in 12 Years a Slave has a chance if that movie wins Best Picture. Norris has been nominated six times, but ballots do not include an individual’s name in the “below the line” categories, so, like Roger Deakins in the Cinematography category, persistent snubs will not help her. But a last minute Best Picture rally could sweep Slave to a win here if the Academy is looking for somewhere else to reward it. Alternatively, some are predicting it as a consolation prize to Hustle if it is to be shut out of the major categories. Others still think that Catherine Martin, who designed Gatsby’s costumes as well as its sets, could walk away a double Oscar winner on March 2nd. This is certainly not unheard of, most recently with Alice in Wonderland, and Gatsby definitely has the more memorable and the closer-to-period-piece type costumes. Thus, as of right now, I expect Gatsby to take this, with Hustle close behind it, but this category remains in flux.

Best Original Score

We come now to my favorite technical category. To me, a movie’s score can be as important as its dialogue in many ways - it sets the tone, causes changes in pace, evokes emotion, or causes fear. How many memorable movies are remembered in part because of their unforgettable scores?

As we delve deeper into the technical races and find harder categories, I find the best results come from scratching off the two or three nominees that have no chance, and then select from the remaining candidates based on a combination of artistic merit and buzz for the movie. What this means in Best Original Song is that we can quickly eliminate two nominees, The Book Thief and Saving Mr. Banks, which earned their respective movie’s sole nomination in this category. It is a shame that these excellent film went under-appreciated by the Academy, but alas it likely means that they will walk away empty handed on Oscar night.

Like Costumes, I can see this Oscar going in all of three directions between the remaining contenders. My favorite of the three is Alexandre Desplat’s scoring of Philomena. Desplat, a five-time loser in this category, delivers a subtle yet touching score that correctly sets the temperature of the movie and is remarkably emotional. Philomena is likely helped by its support amongst the British contingency of the Academy, but hurt because it is not your typical epic-type score. It is thus likely in third place as of right now, but a consolation prize-type victory here is not out of the question yet.

This year’s Golden Globe for Best Original Score went to All Is Lost, which has a haunting, profound score that seamlessly moves the viewer through an otherwise essentially silent movie, and it is too bad that the Academy could not find space for it in this category. That film’s slot seems to have yielded to the scoring of Her and, again, I am left to wonder at the Academy’s seeming adoration of that movie. In any case, between Gravity and Her, I would prefer to see Gravity emerge victorious. The score in the closing scenes of the movie as Sandra Bullock’s character struggles for her life and as a meteor shower of debris descends on Earth is nothing short of hair-rising. Her’s score, in my view, was mostly muted and uninspiring. That said, the Academy has somehow shown a penchant for thinking outside the box and not always falling for traditional-type compositions, such as when they rewarded Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Social Network, or A.J. Rahman’s completely different work in Slumdog Millionaire.

But given the lack of recognition by other awards groups for Her’s score, I’m chalking this one up to Gravity for the time being. Again, stay tuned for changing winds in this race.

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