Now that The King's Speech has turned this from a predictable Oscars race to an unpredictable Oscars race and then straight back to predictable in a mere two weeks (and let's not bemoan that fact, the time between the Critics Choice and the Screen Actors Guild has made this one of the most interesting years since 2006), there are some who are not simply saying the Best Picture race is over, they're saying the whole darn thing is sewn up.
The King's Speech performing a coup de grace sweep? I'm not buying that yet, but that's partially because the technical guilds (the American Society of Cinematographers, the American Cinema Editors, the Cinema Audio Society, etc) haven't announced yet, and I'm hard-pressed to believe Speech will dominate there, or at the Oscars.
The last time there was an out-and-out sweep was Slumdog Millionaire, which won eight. Certainly, Hurt Locker's six-win stand counted as a pretty bold win, but apart from those years, the previous Best Picture winners had four wins (No Country, The Departed), three (Crash), and four (Million Dollar Baby). I think even if The King's Speech is destined to win, there's going to be some wealth going around.
You can go ahead and expect Speech to win Picture, Actor and Original Screenplay. There's a groundswell group that sincerely think this year is destined to be a "split year" where veteran Fincher will win Best Director, but I'm not at all mentally prepared to predict a split year. Supporting Actor/Actress are all but The Fighter's. They represent "career wins" for Bale and Leo (even if both of them are pretty young, they still have pretty deep resumes), and Rush already has an Oscar.
The King's Speech will have to beat True Grit and Inception at Art Direction; the latter two are much flashier and complicated in that department. It will have to beat Black Swan, Inception, Social Network and True Grit to win Best Cinematography. True Grit's Roger Deakins has been nominated nine times and hasn't won yet. Think he's due? Me too. And while Costume Design seems like a good bet, it still has to edge out the fantasy wardrobes in Alice in Wonderland and The Tempest. It goes toe-to-toe with The Social Network in Best Film Editing, and its relatively standard score has to contend with the grandeur and complexity of Inception, 127 Hours and, most importantly, The Social Network. And Sound Mixing? Yes, I know exactly why it's nominated, but watch The Social Network and True Grit in a theater and not be awed by the mixing.
The "major race" may all but be over, but the tech categories are war zones. Inception, True Grit, The Social Network and King's Speech might as well be bringing knives to a fist fight; that's how uncertain I see many of the above categories. And while the remaining Guilds will certainly point us to whether or not we should expect a total sweep or a "spread the wealth" year, the tech guilds do not match the Oscars in the same way the PGA, DGA and SAG are useful indicators. They represent different cross-sections of voters, are much more specialized, and look for different things.
I always use one example from 2006: Children of Men has some of the best cinematography I've ever seen. It's radically awesome, it has some of the most complex extended tracking shots you'll ever watch. Virtually every group was giving Emmanuel Lubezki accolades, including the ASC. What won on Oscar night? Pan's Labyrinth. It's a gorgeous film, but in the tech categories there are a few "traditional rules" - the prettiest film wins Best Cinematography, the most-edited film wins Best Editing (The Bourne Ultimatum over No Country for Old Men), musicals have a leg up in Best Sound Mixing, etc. These are not codified and end-all, but they're trends I'm more than ready to bet on.
Don't expect the sweep until there's more evidence; there are too many films with rabid fan bases to think King's Speech will win more than six. Which six that could be is an entirely different story.
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