This year, the technical categories are giving us a run for our money. I can't remember the last time so many categories seemed so up in the air with a week left in the running.
Even beyond places like foreign film, where I can legitimately see it going about three different ways, or Documentary, where Exit Through the Gift Shop is suddenly in place to take down Inside Job, not to mention the huge question mark over whether the supporting categories will cause chaos to erupt, things are getting tricky.
Best Art Direction: I wrote a lengthier piece about art direction the other day, wondering if Inception or The King's Speech would be the way to go. Inception lacks a directing or editing nomination, signaling it may not be as popular as we think. Meanwhile, here's an interesting stat I saw on Twitter this morning: when a Tim Burton-directed film is nominated for Best Art Direction, it wins: Batman, Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd. Granted, that's a small stat, but a very interesting one.
Best Costume Design: Alice in Wonderland seems right up the Academy's alley, as they usually go for the most extravagant costumes. But here's something weird: Since 1996, every time a film has won Best Picture and been nominated for Best Costume Design, it has also won Costume Design (The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator, Chicago, The Lord of the Rings).
Best Original Score: I have no statistics for this one, but after its BAFTA win it does seem like The King's Speech is a prime candidate to beat The Social Network, especially considering the older Academy members may not "get" all that electronica.
Best Sound Mixing: Conventional wisdom says to go with Inception for mixing and editing, but as I said earlier, can we predict Inception to be as dominant with the Academy as it's been with other guilds? The CAS is about 50/50 when it comes to Oscar, so Sound Mixing may be a potent place to reward True Grit, giving Inception the Sound Editing Oscar. Also - The Dark Knight did not win both sound awards; it won Sound Editing, while Slumdog Millionaire won Mixing.
Also, you want to think about Fincher's odds going up to win Best Director? Historically, more splits happened back when there were 10 Best Picture nominees (but I rarely pay attention that far back in Oscar's history). Two of the last four splits happened when Harvey Weinstein-backed films with inexperienced directors won Best Picture, while an established veteran won Best Director (98 - Shakespeare in Love wins Picture while Spielberg wins Director; 02 - Chicago wins Picture while Polanski wins Director). Spielberg won the DGA in 98, while Rob Marshall won in 02. Also, two of the last four splits happened with a director who did not win the DGA winning Best Director (the aforementioned 2002, and in 2000 when Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar and Ang Lee won the DGA).
Confused yet? I know I am. One week to go.
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