Oscar - Best Picture

What a weird year for Best Picture. So many good films, yet such a strange turnout. Let's recap:

Argo

Metacritic: 86
US Box Office: $128 Million
7 Nominations: Picture, Supporting Actor, Editing, Adapted Screenplay, Music - Score,  Sound Editing, Sound Mixing
Awards: Everything (Critics Choice, Golden Globe, BAFTA, Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild Ensemble, Writers Guild, Editors Guild, Scripter Award, 9 Critics Groups' Best Picture)

For:

• Admired since its release to date
• No one hates it, everyone can agree on it
• A (mostly) true story with suspense, comedy & a weight of political importance
• NB - Hollywood & the CIA working together to make a happy ending
• When critics scared off Zero Dark Thirty, they nearly unanimously flocked towards Argo, making Ben Affleck seem like a lock for a Best Director nomination
• When the Oscars felt otherwise and excluded Affleck from the Best Director race (marking it as less significant than Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild), Affleck and Argo became overnight underdogs. And everyone loves an underdog.
• Immediately after Affleck's Oscar "snub" as Director, Argo wins Picture and Director from the Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards
• Argo becomes the little Iranian comedy / thriller that could and goes on to win the Directors Guild Award, the Producers Guild Award, the Screen Actors Guild ensemble award and everything else (significantly, its adapted screenplay beats logical frontrunner Lincoln to both the Scripter and Writers Guild award).
• When even the British Academy Awards name it Best Picture and Affleck Best Director, it's clear we have an unstoppable juggernaut on our hands, barring the Oscars resisting groupthink enough to stick by their guns. 
• NB - Ben Affleck's charm offensive, backed by Producer George Clooney's legendary smile,  continue to win hearts as their film wins all the awards.
• All in all, Argo remains the film everyone likes and no-one hates. That does tend to win Oscars these days. It's not the 1970s anymore.

Against:

• Argo still has no Best Director nomination. No film has won Best Picture without it's Director being in the race since Driving Miss Daisy in 1990.
• Even Lincoln - a period film about a law being passed - has better Box Office
• Lincoln, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook & Les Miserables all have more Oscar nominations than Argo. Box Office and Nominations aren't everything, but they are something. They show to what extent the public and the Oscar voters responded to the film.
• The Academy may resist the peer pressure from the Guilds and stick to their guns - they presumably excluded Ben Affleck for a reason and may decide to back the films they did initially respond to.
• There may even be Argo backlash at this point, considering it's a very good film being held up as a great one. Don't count on it, though. It didn't work for The King's Speech. 

Amour

Metacritic: 94
US Box Office: $4 Million (lowest)
5 Nominations: Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film
Awards: Cannes Palme D'Or, European Film Awards, Cesars, National Society of Film Critics Best Picture of the Year

For:

• Started off with a bang, winning the Palme D'Or (or Parmz Dorz, as Twitter Michael Haneke would say) at Cannes and went on to win every Foreign Language Film Award (excepting the Golden Satellites who went with Intouchables) and clean out the European Film Awards and the French Cesar Awards
• The frontrunner by a mile to win the Best Foreign Language Oscar
• A dark horse to upset Best Actress 
• With the Oscars announcing their nominees early, they couldn't copy and paste the Producers Guild and Directors Guild. Thinking for themselves, they lavished love on Amour, nominating it for five big ones.
• Michael Haneke previously contended for Best Foreign Language Film for The White Ribbon in 2010 but lost, unexpectedly, to The Secret in their Eyes. That gives Haneke a bit of an Oscar IOU.  

Against:

• Subtitles scare the average Cinema goer, and a film that requires them has never prevailed as Best Picture
• Amour is an unsentimental film about the decay of old age, and death. Not a feel good situation. 
• The lowest Box Office of all the nominees suggests that the arty Amour has a select audience only 

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Metacritic: 86
US Box Office: $12 Million
4 Nominations: Picture, Director, Actress, Adapted Screenplay
Awards: Sundance Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic)

For:

• Micro-budget Sundance Jury Prize winner
• An Indie Spirit favourite, with four nominations
• A very early, dark horse Best Picture and Best Actress contender that somehow survived the hype & release of Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Miserables and Django Unchained to be embraced by the Academy 
• A wildly unique cinematic experience with a bold perspective and execution, it marks the arrival of a distinct new talent in producer / director / writer / composer Benh Zeitlin  

Against:

• Shoestring indies about poor, 8-year-old black girls' metaphorical, emotionally cathartic journeys, flooded with poetic impressionist imagery and ambiguous magic realism don't tend to win Oscars.
• If the Academy loved it enough to give it Best Picture, they wouldn't have overlooked its exceptional cinematography and score.

Django Unchained

Metacritic: 81
US Box Office: $158 Million
5 Nominations: Picture, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Sound Editing  
Awards: None

For:

• Tarantino is a true original with only one Oscar to his name - for writing Pulp Fiction
• Django joins Lincoln in bringing America's slave history back into the zeitgeist. It's a topic worth talking about 

Against:

• Django is a morally challenging, abrasive film. It is also indulgent and unfocused and, though significant and daring, certainly not Tarantino's best. The only equality at play here is the equal right to an unhealthy gun culture. That is my opinion, but I raise it because I am sure Django is not everyone's cup of tea. It's highly unlikely to be backed by enough Academy members.
• The film's strong black performances - by Jamie Fox, Samuel L Jackson & Kerry Washington - were overlooked
• Leonardo DiCaprio's much buzzed villain was similarly overlooked, indicating a lack of support from Academy voters.

Life of Pi

Metacritic: 79
US Box Office: $112 Million
11 Nominations: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, Production Design, Music - Score, Music - Song, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects 
Awards: None (other than every Visual Effects Award, almost every Cinematography Award, a Golden Globe for Score and two surprise Sound Mixing Awards)

For:

• Eleven nominations suggest the Academy loved Life of Pi, and certainly it's an easy film to like and a hard one to hate.
• With Life of Pi, Ang Lee filmed an "unfilmable" book (can we please stop using that clearly irrelevant term?) which previous directors (Jean Jeunet for one) had attempted and walked away from. He stretches himself technically and has to balance the spectacle of the film with its nuanced spiritual undertones. He pulls it off beautifully and clearly the Academy noticed. It's a distinctive visual film with enough heft and gentle emotion to feel like a significant Oscar contender.
• It's the clear frontrunner to win Score, Cinematography and Visual Effects, and a strong contender for Sound and Sound Mixing as well. Wins beget wins and these could translate to bigger categories like Best Director and, at a stretch, Best Picture.
• Ang Lee appreciation has really taken off in the weeks leading up to Oscar night

Against:

• It may be too lightweight or family friendly for a Best Picture winner.
• No wins so far other than the technical categories.

Lincoln

Metacritic: 86
US Box Office: $177 Million (highest)
12 Nominations: Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, Music - Score, Production Design, Costumes, Sound Mixing
Awards: None (other than every Best Actor Award, a Screen Actors Guild award for Supporting Actor and some Critics Awards for Supporting Actress)

For:

• Spielberg's biopic is such a lovingly detailed, layered, respectful, immersive work. It's a pity it has so many people actively campaigning against it - wait, that's against. I'll get there.
• Pre-release, it was already considered a strong Best Picture contender, just based on calibre
• Post-release (to critics), it had lived up to expectation, even exceeded it, and was cemented as a Best Picture contender
• Post-release (to the public), the public loved it, earning it the highest box office of all the Best Picture contenders, the president loved it, screening it at the White House, Bill Clinton loved it, endorsing it at the Golden Globes
• With 12 nominations, the most of all this year's contenders, the Academy clearly loved it.
• If any director was to join ???, a??? and ??? in the distinction of having three Best Director Oscars, wouldn't you want it to be Spielberg?
• A huge cast led by the brilliant and universally acclaimed Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

Against:

• Jeff Wells, & a whole bunch of critics / bloggers actively campaigning against Lincoln, mainly on grounds of it being boring (regardless of its great box office)
• The NY Times, at least for more ostensibly moral / historical reasons 
• Spielberg already has two Oscars
• Despite consistent nominations across the board, Lincoln has yet to win a major award outside of the acting races.
• There's no way Tony Kushner should have lost the Scripter and Writer's Guild awards for his adapted screenplay. But he did. 
• Although each of its 12 nominations are richly deserved, it is the frontrunner in only one - Best Actor. It's even only a strong threat in two - Best Supporting Actor and Best Director.

Les Miserables

Metacritic: 63 (Lowest)
US Box Office: $146 Million
8 Nominations: Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress, Music - Song, Production Design, Costumes, Make Up & Hair, Sound Mixing
Awards: Golden Globe Best Picture (Comedy / Musical) (Also every Best Supporting Actress award and Best Actor (Comedy / Musical) Golden Globe)

For:

• Pre-release expectations for Les Miserables were epic
• Although divisive on release, those who loved it were giving tear-soaked standing ovations and declaring it the obvious, hands-down Best Picture winner.
• Anne Hathaway's live, single-close-up-take rendition of I Dreamed a Dream is zeitgeist dynamite
• Wolverine sings in a tenor and weeps, and wins a Golden Globe
• Les Mis beat Silver Linings Playbook, which is understandable as the Globes are such suckers for Musicals they even nominated Mama Mia, but still significant, considering Playbook's general momentum

Against:

• Wall to wall singing isn't everyone's cup of tea
• Hooper's creative choices - mostly his preference for extended close-ups - have been criticised
• The live singing trick has been as much criticised as celebrated; mostly it is celebrated in reference to Anne Hathaway & criticised in reference to Russell Crowe.
• Hooper's snub in Best Director implies appreciation, but not passion, from the Academy

Silver Linings Playbook

Metacritic: 81
US Box Office: $103 Million
8 Nominations: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Editing
Awards: Golden Satellites Best Picture (and sweep)

For:

• It's this year's quirky little indie that could. Who can resist a quirky, crowd pleasing romantic comedy? Well, many, actually, but far many more ate it up hook line and sinker and those who really support it, really support it
• No one really cares about the Golden Satellites, but when an indie comedy wins pretty much everything, people do notice, and wonder if the movie can repeat the trick elsewhere
• Bradley Cooper - he of The Hangover - gives a career-changing performance, and instantly ups Oscar telecast ratings
• Jennifer Lawrence's brilliant, sudden rise to the very top of the A-List with this & Hunger Games' $408 Million box office
• David O'Russell's comeback - he fell badly out of favour when he screeched insane insults at Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees - yes, you can relive it here - and pissed off George Clooney by allegedly assaulting extras, but made a big comeback with 2010's The Fighter, earning universal praise, his first Best Director nomination and Oscars for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo. That appreciation clearly remains, as he is the very unlikely recipient of a Best Director nomination over presumed frontrunners Kathryn Bigelow & Ben Affleck.
• More than that, O'Russell has a great PR story, making no secret of the fact that he adapted Matthew Quick's book to make his son, who suffers from unspecified mental illness, feel he has a place in the world. Even I can't resist that story, and I only mostly like the film.
• The film was nominated in every category it reasonable could have been - including each of the four acting categories: an honour it share with Sunset Blvd, A Streetcar Named Desire, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Network and, most recently, Reds (amongst others). The Academy clearly like this movie. A lot.
• Dr Oz, who has helped lend the film a heft of seriousness as an important film about the stigmas around mental illness.  The jury's out on that one, but the speculation can't hurt it's Oscar campaign.

Against:

• Don't tell anyone, but ultimately this is just a romantic comedy, which drops in quality somewhat in the second half. It's still a really good rom com, but as a film about mental illness it feels underdeveloped, and it may not hold up well as a Best Picture winner. 
• Bradley Cooper gives a good performance, yes, but his portrayal of bi-polar highs and lows doesn't stand up against 10 minutes of Claire Danes in Homeland. Sorry bro.

Zero Dark Thirty

Metacritic: 95 (highest)
US Box Office: $90 Million
5 Nominations: Picture, Actress, Original Screenplay, Editing, Sound Editing
Awards: National Board of Review Best Picture, 10 Critics Groups' Best Picture

For:

• Still the best reviewed film of the year
• Jessica Chastain's Maya remains one of the definitive screen characters of 2012 (okay that's just my opinion, but it will endure to be true. Just watch!)
• Pre-release, Zero Dark Thirty was one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year and, post-critics-release, it didn't disappoint, being hailed almost universally as a masterpiece
• Before the torture debate started, it was winning every single Critics Choice Award available, paving a seemingly unstoppable path to an Oscar clean sweep.

Against:

• Even before the torture debacle really took off, the possibility of Bigelow joining the distinguished company of Frank Capra, Fred Zinneman, Robert Wise, William Wyler, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, David Lean, Milos Forman & Clint Eastwood as history's two-time Best Picture / Best Director winners - in the span of only three years no less - freaked people out. Some felt her career filmography simply doesn't warrant this kind of distinction, which is probably a fair point. Personally, I feel if she made the best movie of the year twice in a row, power to her. As for being distinguished by Oscars, Kevin Costner had one before Scorsese. Sandra Bullock has one, but Julianne Moore doesn't. Mira Sorvino has one, but Annette Bening doesn't. The list goes on. Career filmographies and Oscar wins are clearly separate things.
• Then the torture debate began and things got really ugly. Bigelow & writer Mark Boal were accused of being pro-torture, the CIA was accused of sharing classified information and actors like Ed Asner & Martin Sheen (although he later clarified his position) actively campaigned against Zero Dark Thirty. It stopped winning awards and ended up nominated only in the most unavoidable fields.
• Critics needing something new to vote for quickly bandied behind Argo, a lighter, happier, non-controversial middle eastern alternative to Zero Dark Thirty.
• Its lack of nominations for Directing, Sound Mixing, Score and Cinematography are telling.

What will win: Argo
What should win: Zero Dark Thirty
What might win: Lincoln

After the cut, the Best Picture contenders ranked by Metacritic scores & Box Office:

Independent Spirit Awards - 2013

Mostly as expected. Not that that's a bad thing. These are good movies. Brit Marling & Zoe Kazan make a showing, Middle of Nowhere does pretty good business, as does Bernie & Matthew McConaughey.  

Naturally Beasts of the Southern Wild, Moonrise Kingdom & Silver Linings Playbook lead and between the three I'd say Beasts takes the top prize. What a bummer they snubbed Dwight Henry - what a performance! And count this as the start of Ann Dowd's Oscar campaign. Moving her to supporting was a smart move. I'm also always glad to see Sam Rockwell get noticed.

Much thanks to Awardsdaily, from whence I lifted this.

2013 FILM INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD NOMINATIONS

BEST FEATURE
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Bernie
Keep the Lights On
Moonrise Kingdom
Silver Linings Playbook

BEST DIRECTOR
Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom
Julia Loktev, The Loneliest Planet
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

BEST SCREENPLAY
Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom
Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks
Martin McDonagh, Seven Psychopaths
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On

BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to the director and producer)
Fill the Void
Gimme the Loot
Safety Not Guaranteed
Sound of My Voice
The Perks of Being a Wallflower

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Rama Burshtein, Fill the Void
Derek Connolly, Safety Not Guaranteed
Christopher Ford, Robot & Frank
Rashida Jones & Will McCormack, Celeste and Jesse Forever
Jonathan Lisecki, Gayby

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD

Breakfast with Curtis, WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Laura Colella
Middle of Nowhere, WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Ava DuVernay, PRODUCERS: Howard Barish, Paul Garnes,
Mosquita y Mari, WRITER/DIRECTOR: Aurora Guerrero, PRODUCER: Chad Burris
Starlet, WRITER/DIRECTOR: Sean Baker, PRODUCERS: Blake Ashman-Kipervaser, Kevin Chinoy, Patrick Cunningham, Chris Maybach, Francesca Silvestri
The Color Wheel, WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Alex Ross Perry, WRITER: Carlen Altman

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Linda Cardellini, Return
Emayatzy Corinealdi, Middle of Nowhere
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Smashed

BEST MALE LEAD
Jack Black, Bernie
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
John Hawkes, The Sessions
Thure Lindhardt, Keep the Lights On
Matthew McConaughey, Killer Joe
Wendell Pierce, Four

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Rosemarie DeWitt, Your Sister’s Sister
Ann Dowd, Compliance
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Brit Marling, Sound of My Voice
Lorraine Toussaint, Middle of Nowhere

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike
David Oyelowo, Middle of Nowhere
Michael Péna, End of Watch
Sam Rockwell, Seven Psychopaths
Bruce Willis, Moonrise Kingdom

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Yoni Brook, Valley of Saints
Lol Crawley, Here
Ben Richardson, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Roman Vasyanov, End of Watch
Robert Yeoman, Moonrise Kingdom

BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the director and producer)
How to Survive a Plague
DIRECTOR: David France
PRODUCERS: David France, Howard Gertler

Marina Abramoviæ: The Artist is Present
DIRECTOR: Matthew Akers
PRODUCERS: Maro Chermayeff, Jeff Dupre

The Central Park Five
DIRECTORS/PRODUCERS: Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon

The Invisible War
DIRECTOR: Kirby Dick
PRODUCERS: Tanner King Barklow, Amy Ziering

The Waiting Room
DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Peter Nicks
PRODUCERS: Linda Davis, William B. Hirsch

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM (Award given to the director)
Amour
Once Upon A Time in Anatolia
Rust And Bone
Sister
War Witch

16th ANNUAL PIAGET PRODUCERS AWARD – The 16th annual Piaget Producers
Award honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources
demonstrate the creativity, tenacity, and vision required to produce
quality, independent films. The award includes a $25,000 unrestricted
grant funded by Piaget.

Nobody Walks PRODUCER: Alicia Van Couvering
Prince Avalanche, PRODUCER: Derrick Tseng
Stones in the Sun, PRODUCER: Mynette Louie

19th ANNUAL SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD – The 19th annual Someone to Watch
Award recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet
received appropriate recognition. The award includes a $25,000
unrestricted grant.

Pincus, DIRECTOR: David Fenster
Gimme the Loot, DIRECTOR: Adam Leon
Electrick Children, DIRECTOR: Rebecca Thomas

STELLA ARTOIS TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD – The 18th annual Truer Than
Fiction Award is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features
who has not yet received significant recognition. The award includes a
$25,000 unrestricted grant.

Leviathan
DIRECTOR: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel
The Waiting Room, DIRECTOR: Peter Nicks
Only the Young, DIRECTOR: Jason Tippet & Elizabeth Mims

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD – (Given to one film’s director, casting director, and
its ensemble cast)
Starlet, Director: Sean Baker

Best Actor - in Trailers

The big dogs:

Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln

Joaquin Phoenix - The Master

Hugh Jackman - Les Miserables

Denzel Washington - Flight

John Hawkes - The Sessions

The guys in the wings:

Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook

Anthony Hopkins - Hitchcock

Richard Gere - Arbitrage

The Dark Horses:

Jean-Louis Trintignant - Amour

Bill Murray - Hyde Park on Hudson

Best Actor

It's just a freaking strong & frankly exciting year for Best Actor with too many real contenders for the five available slots. But more just the great performances that will inevitably be snubbed, this is also a year with at least four strong front runners to win, which means we have ourselves a real race (for now at least).

1. Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln 
Daniel Day-Lewis still leads the race for now as honest Abe in Spielberg's much-celebrated, much-watched (good combination) biopic. He walks a touchy line of impersonation with grandiose speeches and a weird voice which could easily add up to hammy scenery chewing. But this is Daniel Day-Lewis and he has now pretty much stepped up to being the greatest actor alive. For now. Like the very best of impersonation performances (think Helen Mirren in The Queen), Day-Lewis inhabits his character, living & breathing but never over-playing him. Audiences and critics have taken to both the skill of his performance and the venerable stature of his character and, in a significant political year for America, his performance already feels a little bit iconic. When you're the frontrunner for your third lead Oscar, and no-one begrudges you, you've done something right. Incidentally, if he wins, he joins the ranks of:

• Ingrid Bergman - 3 wins (2 lead, 1 supporting)
• Meryl Streep - 3 wins (2 lead, 1 supporting)
• Jack Nicholson - 3 wins (2 lead, 1 supporting)

But still stands back for Katherine Hepburn with 4 wins (all lead).

2. Joaquin Phoenix - The Master
Critics are divided on Paul Thomas Anderson's latest masterpiece, particularly around what it means and whether it means anything at all, but the one thing everyone seemed to uniformly agree on was that the Oscar already had Joaqion Phoenix's name on it. That was until Lincoln came along, and Phoenix called the Oscars "bullshit" and "the worst carrot I've ever tasted". To be fair, he was referring mostly to the horror of campaigning for an Oscar, which it's easy to agree can get ugly, and he did later try to retract his comments or at least place them in context. Does this negate his Oscar chances? With so many strong contenders, it probably does take his name solidly off the Oscar, but given the strength of his performance as an odd, wild alcoholic destructive finding refuge under the wing of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's titular Master, he shouldn't have much trouble still getting nominated. (as a side note, I see the ugliness and ludicrousness of campaigning people and putting them in competition with each other, and of course being acknowledged by your industry as the "best" is as weird as it must be flattering, but the prestige of the Oscars does keep the industry actors are privileged to work in going and, if nothing else, it means a lot to the bottom line of the movie they signed up for & for the fans who fell in love with it, one of which must surely be the reason they do it all in the first place).

3. Denzel Washington - Flight
Robert Zemeckis' first live action film since 2000's Cast Away slipped in under the radar to become a sleeper hit with audiences and critics on the strength of three things: Denzel Washington's dense, deep character study of a complex man at the center of an enigmatic disaster, John Gatins' sharp script and basically a kick ass crash scene. Washington has his Oscar for Training Day, but honestly he's got so much momentum right now it could easily take him all the way back to the podium. The industry loves him &, historically at least, Oscar loves on-screen drunks. Another threat keeping the Best Actor race edgy. A win would make him the first black actor with three Oscars.

4. Hugh Jackman - Les Miserables
Who doesn't love Hugh Jackman? The one-&-only embodiment of Wolverine has also effortlessly shown his sensitive (The Fountain) and funny (Kate & Leopold) side, and made a good case for his serious actor credentials in Chris Nolan's The Prestige. He's also in better shape at 44 than most of us will likely ever be. Now he takes the all-singing, much-wretched, ultimately-heroic lead in Tom Hooper's adaptation of the ultimate serious-minded musical, and everyone has been simply waiting to make this his moment, provided he didn't screw it up. And the first semi-reviews from critics and bloggers who have attended early screenings suggest he has done quite the opposite of screw it up. I'm not sure when last a male Actor won for a musical performance, if ever, (if anyone knows, let me know), but if momentum for Les Miserables keeps building, he poses a serious threat for the win. And just imagine what a Jackman win would do for the notoriously uncool award show's ratings.

5. John Hawkes - The Sessions
John Hawkes has become a household name of late (in, you know, indie film and awards-obsessed kinda households) with awesome, celebrated, creepy turns in Winter's Bone and Martha Marcy May Marlene and this year his and Helen Hunt's central performances, as a real-life quadriplegic poet wanting to lose his virginity and a compassionate sex surrogate, respectively, have been riding (no pun intended) a wave of joint acclaim since Sundance that shows no sign of slowing down. Hawkes' performance has repeatedly, and annoyingly (but probably unavoidably) been compared to Daniel Day-Lewis' (first) Oscar-winning performance in My Left Foot, but funnier. It's frustrating to have his performance reduced to an Oscar paint-by-numbers when the strength of his performance is not merely the complexity of his physical limitations, but the great sensitivity and humour he brings to a frankly awkward story. He's got the goods to win, but probably not in a year like this.

That seems like a pretty unshakable top 5 but, if we've learnt anything, it's that nobody knows anything.

The strongest contenders waiting in the wings, are:

6. Bradley Cooper - Silver Linings Playbook
In a career-shifting performance, that good-looking guy from The Hangover and The A Team, plays an obsessive compulsive man moving back in with his parents after a stint in a mental institution, hoping to patch things up with his estranged wife, but faced with a dilemma when he finds himself drawn to Jennifer Lawrence's depressed nymphomaniac instead. Silver Linings Playbook has proven to be an unshakably popular feelgood dramedy with legitimate Best Picture chances (although it would be a shame in a year with such strong contenders). If the film keeps building momentum, so will the chances of it's leading man. And again, the words "Bradley Cooper" will do wonders for the Oscars' TV ratings.

7. Anthony Hopkins - Hitchcock
What could be more exciting than the great Sir Anthony Hopkins playing the legendary Alfred Hitchcock? Well, at least 6 other actors, apparently. But still this has to remain a strong contender on the strength of Hopkins' star power, Hitchcock's legend and the humour Hopkins and director Sacha Gervasi bring to the part. It's not an attractive portrait of the great director, and reportedly not a very accurate one either. But that doesn't mean it's not entertaining. Most likely, the attention will be on Helen Mirren as Hitch's largely unsung partner in crime, Alma Reville. Hopkins shows no interest in doing the campaigning thing (why should he?) and in the wake of iconic performances in major Best Picture contenders, his movie and performance seem doomed to obscurity very soon after the inevitable Golden Globe nominations (presuming it contends as a comedy). But anything can happen.

8. Richard Gere - Arbitrage
To be fair, the man has had quite a career, and he's never played the Oscar game, danced the AMPAS dance, had his face in the little squares after a beautiful Actress said "and the nominees are...". And that, together with many reviews declaring this the best work of his career, by far, is the basis of the fairly strong campaign for Richard Gere as Best Actor for his performance in Arbitrage. I haven't seen the film, but the reviews are pretty convincing (especially as I found the trailer very tiresome), and if he can build a strong enough campaign.

And lastly, these dudes really have no chance of getting in, but it should be mentioned that they did contend, on the outskirts:

9. Bill Murray - Hyde Park on Hudson
Who wouldn't want to see Bill Murray nominated for playing Teddy Roosevelt? In the same year that Daniel Day-Lewis wins for playing Abraham Lincoln? It seems meant to be, but this has been far too competitive a year and Bill Murray's performance is ultimately too understated, with no wow moments. Also the film kinda tanked. Pity. Still can't wait to see it though.

10. Jean-Louis Trintignant
Don't get me wrong, this could happen, if Michael Haneke's Palme D'Or winning film hits in a big way, but it's highly unlikely. As an elderly, retired music teacher watching his wife succumb to the ravages of old age, Jean-Louis Trintignant really should be an Oscar contender. But that, of course, doesn't mean he will. There are younger, more attractive men turning in more popular performances in movies without subtitles. Again, a pity.