Predictions: The 83rd Academy Award Nominees

Day 235

I’m already super-excited because I’m leaving for Florida on Wednesday(!), but I have another reason to be excited this week: tomorrow morning the 83rd Academy Award nominations will be announced. Every year I make my own predictions about the nominations, then I get up at 6:30 to watch the announcement on TV and see how well I predicted. My predictions in the past have been fairly accurate, although I have never been 100% correct with all of the nominees; there’s always one or two surprises thrown in, which is typical of the Academy.

Anyway, here are my predictions for the nominees in the categories of Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Animated Film:

BEST PICTURE

127 Hours

Black Swan

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids Are All Right

The King’s Speech

The Social Network

The Town

Toy Story 3

True Grit

* These are the movies that have been nominated the most this awards season, with The Social Network being the unstoppable movie; it has won nearly every critic award, so the Academy Award seems to be a foregone conclusion.

BEST DIRECTOR

Darren Aronofsky - Black Swan

David O. Russell - The Fighter

Christopher Nolan - Inception

Tom Hooper - The King’s Speech

David Fincher - The Social Network

* I went with these 5 directors because all 5 are nominated for the Directors Guild Award, which has been quite accurate with matching up to the Best Director Academy Award nominees. Fincher is an absolute lock and guaranteed to win the Oscar.

BEST ACTOR

Jeff Bridges - True Grit

Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network

Colin Firth - The King’s Speech

James Franco - 127 Hours

Ryan Gosling - Blue Valentine

* The race for Best Actor really comes down to Eisenberg, Firth and Franco, with Firth ultimately the most likely to win, based on the critical acclaim and awards he’s received this season.

BEST ACTRESS

Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right

Nicole Kidman - Rabbit Hole

Jennifer Lawrence - Winter’s Bone

Natalie Portman - Black Swan

Michelle Williams - Blue Valentine

* Bening is a strong contender (and has been nominated 3 times before), but Portman (nominated once before) is the one to beat this year.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale - The Fighter

Andrew Garfield - The Social Network

Jeremy Renner - The Town

Mark Ruffalo - The Kids Are All Right

Geoffrey Rush - The King’s Speech

* I’m going with a lot of the critic’s choices and the actors that have been nominated the most often this awards season. Of these 5 actors Bale is the absolute lock in this category.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams - The Fighter

Helena Bonham Carter - The King’s Speech

Mila Kunis - Black Swan

Melissa Leo - The Fighter

Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit

* As with the Supporting Actor category I’m going with the actresses that have been nominated the most often; there is a possibility that Hailee Steinfeld may end up being nominated in the Best Actress category (as there has been a lot of debate based on the size and presence of her role in the movie), but I think she will be nominated here because of her age (she’s 14), which is where the younger actresses have been nominated before (like Tatum O’Neal, Anna Paquin and Abigail Breslin).

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Despicable Me

The Illusionist

Toy Story 3

* Only 3 animated movies will be nominated this year, so I picked two that I’ve seen and one that I’ve just heard about. But it doesn’t matter what gets nominated because Toy Story 3 is going to win, hands down! Sequels are rarely as good or better than their originals, and a “3-quel” is even more rare! But Toy Story 3 is the exception!

So, there you have it. We’ll see how accurate I was

with this tomorrow morning!