This Sunday the Academy Awards are being handed out for the 85th time and if you haven’t taken a moment to enter to win a 12-month VIP pass for two from each of the Landmark Cinemas theatres in the Central Okanagan, here are my predictions in the top six categories.
However, be warned, if I was talented enough to pick the winners every year, I would likely not be a movie theatre manager.
Starting with Best Supporting Actress, it looks like the favourite is Anne Hathaway. She not only won the Golden Globe for her performance in Les Misérables, but also won at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award.
Best Supporting Actor is a little tougher to predict. Vegas has odds on Phillip Seymour Hoffman in The Master, but Tommy Lee Jones won the SAG award for his portrayal of Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln and Christoph Waltz won the Golden Globe for his role in Django Unchained. I think Jones deserves a Best Supporting Actor bookend to accompany his win for The Fugitive almost 20 years ago.
My personal favourite for Best Actress is Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook. I am not the only one who thinks that as she has won both the Golden Globe (Comedy or Musical) and the SAG award.
However, upsets could be provided by Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) or even Emmanuelle Riva, who won the British Academy Film Award for Amour.
Best Actor will go to Daniel Day-Lewis as he has already won every award possible for his portrayal of Lincoln.
Best director is usually easier to predict, but since Ben Affleck was unfathomably snubbed in this category for Argo, the money seems to be on Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. But Ang Lee’s achievement that was Life of Pi could also be recognized as well as David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook.
The real upset could come from Michael Haneke for Amour, which is a shoe-in for Best Foreign Language Film.
Ben Affleck will get his well deserved recognition when the Academy awards him with Best Picture for Argo. What will live on in infamy is if Lincoln takes even that deserved award away from him.
With Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, Ted) hosting, this should be an interesting Oscars to watch.
Opening this weekend is Snitch, in which Dwayne Johnson stars as a father whose son is facing a minimum 10 year prison sentence after being wrongly accused of drug trafficking.
Desperate and determined to free his son, he makes a deal with the U.S. attorney (Susan Sarandon) to work as an undercover informant and infiltrate a drug cartel on a dangerous mission.
Dark Skies stars Keri Russell (TV’s Felicity) and Josh Hamilton star in this supernatural thriller as a couple who witness an escalating series of disturbing events involving their family. When it becomes clear that they and their children are being targeted by an unimaginably terrifying and deadly force, they take matters in their own hands.