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Into the Woods is another crossover, and the carpentry is of course a big part of the movie and the forest setting. But I just can’t see this winning here, and it is likely a distant third place.

For the win, the easy money is on The Grand Budapest Hotel, the winner of the top prize at the Art Directors Guild ceremony this past weekend. The vignettes rely heavily on the scenery, and the overall color and camera scope of the movie accentuates the different sets. You’ve heard my logic by now: the movie is essentially the Hugo or Gravity of its year, and members will be wanting to click it off in several boxes. Indeed, Grand Budapest will likely win the most Oscars of the night, an astounding outcome for a March release.

Best Cinematography

This category provided perhaps the most-tweeted about moment on nominations morning other than #OscarsSoWhite. When Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced that the cinematographer for Mr. Turner, “Dick Poop,” was a nominee, she created a moment that will live in Academy infamy. Mr. Poop (Pope, actually) will have to settle for the 15 minutes of fame that the Academy President’s gaffe brought him, because arguably the other four nominees here are ahead of his beautiful lighting in the boat and lake scenes in Mr. Turner.

Roger Deakins, meanwhile, the photographer behind Unbroken, landed a 13th career nod. The branch loves him, but the Academy has yet to recognize him with a win, placing him one shy of the record for most nominations without a win. It surely doesn’t help that the ballots do not list names in the technical categories. Otherwise, the brilliant cinematographer, nominated for Prisoners, Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, and No Country for Old Men just in the last few years, may have walked away a winner. But with Angelina Jolie’s movie tanking badly before critics and the Academy, this too will not be his year.

Meanwhile, the branch showed some love for a black-and-white entry, something they have a penchant for doing so every once in a while, by nominating the somber tones of Best Foreign Language Nominee, Ida. That crossover, however, did not help a movie like The White Ribbon in 2009, nor has a black and white film won here since Schindler’s List. Ida’s hopes lay in the foreign film race, but will not be fulfilled here.

The Grand Budapest Hotel features one of the prettiest-colored movies of the year, and could likely eke this award out too if it becomes a technical tidal wave. But I think that Emmanuel Lubezski, last year’s Best Cinematographer for Gravity, will or should win his consecutive Oscar for another collaboration with a Mexican director, this one for Birdman.

If Birdman is indeed the Best Picture front-runner, this is the obvious place to shore up its Oscar tally, as the Academy likes to do its Best Picture winners. Moreover, the camera work is on full display throughout the movie with the complex transition shots between scenes, sets, and actors. It really is remarkable work. That said, I do wonder whether it is a bit too subtle for the Academy. Lubezski’s prior work of similar ilk was the nominee Children of Men, but ultimately that lost out to the more exquisitely colored Pan’s Labyrinth. Right now the smart money is with Birdman, but watch out for a Grand Budapest and maybe even Mr. Turner upset here, if enough people see the latter. Cinematography tends to go to pretty colors, not subtle camera work. The pundits are all saying Birdman but my gut says that’s not where this is headed.

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