Oscars race 2013

Oscars race 2013: Argo in pole position after winning Writers Guild award

Argo remains an Oscar frontrunner and Zero Dark Thirty rejoins the Academy race, winning top honours at the Writers Guild of America awards

On a mission … Argo leads this year's Academy power list. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros/Sportsphoto Ltd

Argo has solidified its place as the Oscar frontrunner after carrying off the best adapted screenplay award from the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Argo scriptwriter Chris Terrio defeated Lincoln's Tony Kushner, Life of Pi's David Magee, and David O Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) in the race for the award, reflecting the likely most powerful films in this year's Academy Awards race.
In the best original screenplay, Zero Dark Thirty's Mark Boal triumphed over John Gatins (Flight) and Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master) among others, reversing a trend that has seen the controversy engulfing the hunt-for-bin-Laden thriller affect its award chances. In his acceptance speech, Boal told director Kathryn Bigelow: "You took this script, and you made it live and breathe and fly, and you led all of us unflinchingly and bravely to a place of truth and beauty."
In its third film-related category, the WGA gave the best documentary screenplay award to Malik Bendejelloul for Searching for Sugar Man, confirming the film's near-certain naming as best documentary at the Oscars.
The same night saw the Golden Reel awards, handed out by the Motion Picture Sound Editors. Life of Pi emerged as the favourite, winning for best sound editing of dialogue and ADR, and best sound editing of music in a feature film, while Les Misérables won for best sound editing of music in a musical. Skyfall took the award for best sound effects and foley, while Wreck-It Ralph took best sound effects, foley, dialogue and ADR in an animation.

2013 Oscar Predictions: Best Animated Short

George and Meg (voices by John Kahrs and Kari Washlgren) in John Kahrs’ Paperman

Indiewire will provide regular updates of our predictions for the 85th Academy Awards through February 24th, when the winners are announced.

The short film races are always extremely tough to call -- especially now that the entire Academy membership is eligible to vote for them. This race seems to be between two films: Disney character animator Minkyu Lee's "Adam and Dog" (which is made from money he saved while working at Disney, though Disney had no involvement) and actual Disney production, John Kahr's "Paperman." The latter won the Annie and will probably win here, but both are great and either could win.

Nominees and predictions below. Check out all predictions in all the categories here, and this list of all the Oscar-nominated films available ON DEMAND right now.
 

The nominees:
"Adam and Dog"
"Fresh Guacamole"
"Head Over Heels"
"Maggie Simpson in the Longest Daycare"
"Paperman"

Will win: "Paperman"
Could win: "Adam and Dog"
Should win: "Paperman" or "Adam and Dog" would be fine by me.
 

Oscar By The Numbers: Predicting Academy Award Winners Nate Silver-Style

The quest to predict this year's Oscar winners with the same mathematical precision that fivethirtyeight blogger Nate Silver called the 2012 presidential election has got a new contestant. The filmmaking website The Credits has teamed up with the social analytics and monitoring company Brandwatch, to create a predictive data visualization that it has dubbed "Social Oscars."  East Coast Editor Bryan Abrams says the algorithm, which was created by British quant Edward Crook, predicts the Oscar front-runners by focusing on the positive mentions that nominated films, directors and actors generate via critics and social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Abrams explains that the algorithm is created to filter out mentions that are negative or that don't specifically pertain to a nominated film or an actor's performance in it. "If there's a positive story about Best Supporting Actress nominee Anne Hathaway having lunch at The Ivy, that's not going to be counted," he says.
The editor also estimates that, by the time the Academy Awards are handed out on Feb. 24, the algorithm will have evaluated more than a million mentions that it has evaluated on the Internet.
The Social Oscars works differently than, for instance, The Huffington Post's Oscar Predictions Dashboard, which incorporates box-office results and Rotten Tomatoes critics and audience scores.  For one thing, it predicts frontrunners via two categories:  Public Choice and Critics Choice. So, for instance, as of Feb. 15, Robert De Niro is the Critics Choice favorite for Best Supporting Actor, while Christoph Waltz is leading in the Public Choice category.  In the Best Actress category, Jennifer Lawrence is far and away the public's choice, but she's virtually tied with Jessica Chastain with critics. And though some pundits are pushing a scenario in which Amour actress Emmanuelle Riva walks away with the prize, the French actress is a distant third in the Social Oscars race (but a rising number two on HuffPo's dashboard).
And for those rooting for Argo to upset Lincoln as Best Picture, there's good news. The Ben Affleck-directed picture is the clear frontrunner, according to the Social Oscars algorithm. (See the graphic above.)  Stay tuned.

Oscars 2013: Afghan boy's astonishing journey to the Academy Awards

When Fawad Mohammadi attends the Oscars ceremony next week, he may be the only guest who until recently had never heard of showbusiness's biggest party.