CNN list of 2013 movie Oscar nominations in 2014 and our picks

Oscar picks for the 2014 (2013 movies) Oscars

Kal Kat chooses from the list called CNN Oscar ballot: Make your choices, share your picks

Best picture
"12 Years a Slave"
"The Wolf of Wall Street"
"Captain Phillips"
"Her"
"American Hustle"
"Gravity"
"Dallas Buyers Club"
"Nebraska"
"Philomena"

I think Captain Phillips will win, but 12 Years a Slave could, if it weren't political, and since Phillips isn't currently political it might win. I would be surprised if Gravity won and would choose that one when I suspect Oscar will not.

Best director
Steve McQueen -- "12 Years a Slave"
David O. Russell -- "American Hustle"
Alfonso Cuaron -- "Gravity"
Alexander Payne -- "Nebraska"
Martin Scorsese -- "The Wolf of Wall Street"

If Gravity wins, Caron will win, but they aren't likely to go there. They will pick 12 years a slave just because they did not pick Phillips at all. They've been not picking the same movie as director lately.

Best actor
Bruce Dern -- "Nebraska"
Chiwetel Ejiofor -- "12 Years a Slave"
Matthew McConaughey -- "Dallas Buyers Club"
Leonardo DiCaprio -- "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Christian Bale -- "American Hustle"

They will likely snub 12 years a slave for picture, but to woo the audience and prove they're not out to lunch, they will give it to the dude for 12 years a slave. They can then say, look, we gave it to another person that isn't white. We're not all white old men. 

The reason why Leo won't win, he's Leo and this is again an attempt for him to win. 

Christian is just not that deep an actor, but he is committed to a role. His performance was more of an ad lib session during Hustle. They all did that.

Why Nebraska and Dallas were even mentioned is beyond us.

Best actress
Amy Adams -- "American Hustle"
Cate Blanchett -- "Blue Jasmine"
Judi Dench -- "Philomena"
Sandra Bullock -- "Gravity"
Meryl Streep -- "August: Osage County"

Sandra just can't win again over Meryl. It shall not be,. She deserves the Oscar over any of these others, except maybe Judy Densh.  Will Oscar just try to be hip and give it to Amy Adams? That would be silly. She also ad libbed her lines in the movie, given that was the idea, and she wasn't posting acting range. Same for Sandra in space. Gravity was a cool to look a movie, but it was hardly an acting marvel.

Really the only reason August and Philomena are even mentioned (late in the voting movies once again) is because those two grand ladies of acting were in them, and deserve something. The movies were not wide release until Christmas weekend really. 

Jasmine is too controversial to get a nod. 

Best supporting actor
Barkhad Abdi -- "Captain Phillips"
Bradley Cooper -- "American Hustle"
Jonah Hill -- "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Jared Leto -- "Dallas Buyers Club"
Michael Fassbender -- "12 Years a Slave"

They aren't going to give the supporting actor to 12 years if they give it to the actor category.  They thus will not give it to the guy from Phillips for the same reason. If they don't give it to the actor category, they might give it to the guy from Phillips to appear more political. 

However, they love popular guys, so the snubbed otherwise American Hustle guy will get it. He doesn't really deserve it, but it will get it.

Johah Hill is not going to win.

Best supporting actress
Jennifer Lawrence -- "American Hustle"
Lupita Nyong'o -- "12 Years a Slave"
June Squibb -- "Nebraska"
Julia Roberts -- "August: Osage County"
Sally Hawkins -- "Blue Jasmine"

Even though Julia Roberts wins, or she did sometimes, the new sweetheart of Jennifer Lawrence, who shall take the crown this time around. Yes once Julia would be a shoe in, but not anymore. It’s not that her ad libbing was any better in Hustle, but rather that she is better known than the others, second to Roberts.  

Best original screenplay
"American Hustle" -- David O. Russell and Eric Warren Singer
"Blue Jasmine" -- Woody Allen
"Her" -- Spike Jonze
"Nebraska" -- Bob Nelson
"Dallas Buyers Club" -- Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack

Spike is going to walk away with this one. It’s a quirky story trying to be deep and it will trick the Oscar fogies into going for it.

Best adapted screenplay
"12 Years a Slave" -- John Ridley
"Before Midnight" -- Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater
"The Wolf of Wall Street" -- Terence Winter
"Captain Phillips" -- Billy Ray
"Philomena" -- Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope

This one goes to 12 years a slave over Phillips, especially if Phillips doesn’t get anything else.

Best animated feature
"The Wind Rises"
"Frozen"
"Despicable Me 2"
"Ernest & Celestine"
"The Croods"

Really all of these other choices, and no Epic, are just sad, so Frozen wins.

Best music (original song)
"Frozen": "Let it Go" -- Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez
"Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom": "Ordinary Love" -- U2, Paul Hewson
"Her": "The Moon Song" -- Karen O, Spike Jonze
"Despicable Me 2": "Happy" -- Pharrell Williams
"Alone Yet Not Alone": "Alone Yet Not Alone" -- Bruce Broughton, Dennis Spiegel

Come on, it’s a Disney movie. It has to win. They have a rule. It helps that for several years they owned the presenting theater and the judges because of a terrible Oscar show in the late 1980s they will never live down, leading to 7 years of Disney winning (1989-1996). Let it happen again.

Best music (original score)
"Gravity" -- Steven Price
"Philomena" -- Alexandre Desplat
"The Book Thief" -- John Williams
"Saving Mr. Banks" -- Thomas Newman
"Her" -- William Butler and Owen Pallett

Well the music in Banks is fun, but unless it’s another nod to Disney songs, it will not pass. They will go with Gravity, which has been snubbed so far, but we liked it.

Best costume design
"The Great Gatsby" -- Catherine Martin
"12 Years a Slave" -- Patricia Norris
"The Grandmaster" -- William Chang Suk Ping
"American Hustle" -- Michael Wilkinson
"The Invisible Woman" -- Michael O'Connor

The costumes were about the only thing going for Gatsby, which shouldn’t be on the list. But they might go with Hustle to stop this, although really the costumes weren’t all that smashing.

Best film editing
"Gravity" -- Alfonso Cuaron, Mark Sanger
"12 Years a Slave"-- Joe Walker
"Captain Phillips" -- Christopher Rouse
"American Hustle" -- Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten
"Dallas Buyers Club" -- John Mac McMurphy and Martin Pensa

Gravity is basically science fiction and they’re not going to let it have editing, but if by some miracle it does, best picture may happen. They would then show us up. But really it should be Captain Phillips with the jarring camera. It really makes you nauseous. I don’t get motion sick so what it did was go to my head and make me have a headache. Still it was something they will go for over the space movie with them funny newfangled space effects.

Best makeup and hairstyling
"The Lone Ranger" -- Joel Harlow and Gloria Pasqua-Casny
"Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa" -- Stephen Prouty
"Dallas Buyers Club" -- Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews

The Lone Ranger was a POS. What is it doing on the list? Jackass winning an award would be hilarious. Yes!

Best production design
"12 Years a Slave" -- Adam Stockhausen and Alice Baker
"The Great Gatsby" -- Catherine Martin and Beverley Dunn
"American Hustle" -- Judy Becker and Heather Loeffler
"Gravity" -- Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin and Joanne Woollard
"Her" -- K.K. Barrett and Gene Serdena

This is a tough call because even Gatsby with its flaws had good production design. Hustle not so much. Going to go with Gravity. Her looked too much like today.

Best visual effects
"Gravity"
"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
"Star Trek Into Darkness"
"Iron Man 3"
"The Lone Ranger"

The Lone frakking Ranger was a travesty to the Lone Ranger mythos. No. Hobbit 2 will nail this. Sure Trek 12 is also equally kinetic, and that’s what you want.  Hobbit movies are just breathless. They have no equal except themselves.

Best sound mixing
"Gravity"
"Captain Phillips"
"Lone Survivor"
"Inside Llewyn Davis"
"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"

Lone Survivor is controversial, so no. Captain Phillips will win here. Hobbit should but it won’t get both. I could be pleasantly surprised though.

Best sound editing
"Gravity"
"All Is Lost"
"Captain Phillips"
"Lone Survivor"
"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"

Here is a category where Gravity might win, but Smaug would also be nice.

List is taken from the CNN.com Oscar list web site.

Asides and comments from Kal Kat

Review: "Her" is an odd retread of the lonely guy story

"Her" R
Spike Jonze has a knack for quirky movies that don't really seem to go anywhere. In this one he tries to find deep meaning though, via an oddball romance card writer who falls in love with his IPad. Set in the not too distant future of a Los Angeles with super high rises, where apparently they've eliminated earthquakes, a businessman who works in a cubicle writing letters that people don't want to write themselves, seems lonely after his divorce. (Tree of Life comes to mind at first).

He has two friends, a fake happy couple that he apparently knows from way back, who work near him. They both want him to date and get on with his life. After trying some rather amusing 'phone sex' and playing a virtual video game (plug for some new game), he is introduced to a new operating system called OS1, a Macbook like idea with some Vorizon tossed in, where they've invented a virtual pen pal, a live Tamagachi pet, and it can be female if he likes. He chooses it to be female and begins an odd relationship. It is however not too original. (Heart Beeps, You've Got Mail, Simone, etc). He eventually builds up the courage to finalize his divorce, but his ex finds out about the odd affair he's having and chides him, but his friend has been dumped by her husband, and she also has a computer pal.

The odd psychological ramifications of a world where half the city is jacked into those things is similar to Gattica and the Matrix, but without dark undertones. The way i is filmed, you think it's going to end badly. We get a lot of shots of up close Joaquin Phoenix (the late River's brother), and various other characters, in this weird iFuture with a lot of people plugged into headset ear buds and talking to themselves, texting each other instead of conversing in coffee shops and whatnot. (This is not unusual for Silicon Valley, where it's like that now).
    
The story could be set a mere 10 years from now.

Is it Oscar worthy? Not really. Sure it has a lot of talking, but like Simone, (a late 90's movie about a simulated actress), half of the acting is doe via a voice over through an avatar, even if it's Scarlett Johassen this time. Certainly it is quirky and worth a rental, but will likely be on the bargain bin by next December.

This is also one of those movies that is only R rated because they added the f word over 20 times. Really they didn't need it, and their audience could have been bigger had it been PG 13. It really didn't need to be R. I don't mind some movies to use profanity, but it wasn't necessary here. 

Review by Adam Browne

Review: "Saving Mr. Banks" is cute behind the scenes based on Mary Poppins

"Saving Mr. Banks" PG 13
John Lee Hancock's lavish and sweeping tale of PL Travers' famous book turned to movie, Mary Poppins, is sometimes charming and interesting, and the acting is solid. This late comer to the winter line up means Oscar will notice, but as best picture, it might be lacking a bit. Scenes of the distant past of the early 1900s Australia are inter cut with the 1961 Los Angeles US sale of Mary Poppins to the Walt Disney company. Even if it isn't quite what actually happened, Hollywood hits the right tune in this flick.

What really happened is PL Travers had already sold the rights to the book before she even jetted to LA to help direct the pitching of the movie and what was going to be in it, according to many sources and the biographies.

They do no dispute the father figure angle though, so all the bleak and dreary contrast with young PL and her drunk father are canon.

The stuff almost 50 years later is where the magic is, even though it's not the kite song that got to the author, but the one about birds.

She never did like that movie and after the premiere refused to see it again. Twenty years later, she apparently relented and watched it again.

The emotional resonance they're trying for does work, and Hanks and Thompson are certainly performing Oscar worthy roles, and it's Oscar time.

Oh and the broken down white horse is different in the riding scene, as someone noticed.

Even though it's a fine film and trying to tell a story. It doesn't need to be picked apart all that much.  They give you a feel for an old western like town, in Australia, and a feel for 1960's LA and a redressed Disneyland, made up to look like it did back then. I wasn't there. In 1978 it looked much like that.

Oh and the Disney visits Travers at home scene is total fiction, but visually they had to do that as it needed closure. Had they ended it in a non typical Hollywood way, it would have been jarring.

I wonder though, was it necessary to even include the old Australia parts? Maybe without them it could have been more like a Disney movie. 

Review by Adam Browne