Oscars 2013 Category Breakdown: Best Picture

Every year, leading up to the Oscars, I break down every single category. It’s essentially a precursor to my picks. I explain all the stuff that needs to be explained in detail, so when the time comes to make my picks, I can refer to it as a shorthand.

In the articles, I’ll go over each category’s history, show previous winners and nominees, then list the current year’s nominees, talk about the guild history, if it’s important, what the guilds went with this year, whether that means anything for that particular category — all the background you need to know to make an informed decision. And then, once that’s all done, I’ll rank the nominees in that category in order of their likelihood to win, based on how I see it at the present.

The only difference between this year and previous years is that this year, I’ll be doing only one category a day instead of multiple categories. This is so I can take more time with each category and not stuff a bunch into a single article for information overload, and, simply, so I don’t have to do as much work. Though it is also easier this way. One category, one day.

Today is the big one — Best Picture.

Let’s state another obvious thing before we get started:

The PGA is typically a very reliable precursor for guessing Best Picture.

Since it’s inception in 1989, the PGA Award winner has matched the Oscar all but eight times:

1992, The Crying Game wins the PGA, Unforgiven wins the Oscar.

1995, Apollo 13 wins the PGA, Braveheart wins the Oscar. (Hint, hint, people. Space precedent.)

1998, Saving Private Ryan wins the PGA, Shakespeare in Love wins the Oscar.

2001, Moulin Rouge! wins the PGA, A Beautiful Mind wins the Oscar.

2004, The Aviator wins the PGA, Million Dollar Baby wins the Oscar.

2005, Brokeback Mountain wins the PGA, Crash wins the Oscar.

2006, Little Miss Sunshine wins the PGA, The Departed wins the Oscar.

That’s it. Otherwise, it’s matched.

This year, there was a tie in the PGA between Gravity and 12 Years a Slave, which means that, if we assume they’ll continue to be reliable, we have a 50/50 shot at this. (Also assuming we’re throwing American Hustle out the window completely. Which, after the BAFTAs, maybe we do?)

The other thing you have to take into account is how Academy voting works. Which is as such:

Everybody is supposed to rank all nine of the Best Picture nominees from 1-9. Obviously some people don’t, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Now, assuming everybody ranks at least a #1, we’ll have a set of votes. Now, after the first round of voting, you have number one votes. If, somehow, one film got 51% of the votes right off the bat, then that’s it, it’s over. But say that doesn’t happen, since, as we all figure, this year will be a tight race. So let’s say each of the top three films is hovering around 40%. Fine. They’re there. The film, then, with the least amount of votes #1 is out. I will not speculate on films just yet, since that’s for Sunday. For now, the film that ranks 9 of 9 in first place votes is out. What happens then is, they take the ballots of the people who voted that ninth place film #1 and look to see what film they ranked #2. And those #2 films all get that vote. And then they do it again. The 8th place film is now the least and that’s out. And the votes are distributed based on what was ranked #3. And so on and so forth, until the film with the most consensus high votes becomes Best Picture. Now, to address the people who say, “Well I’m gonna vote for (this film) and nothing else” — those people are actually hurting their desired winner. Because if there’s someone who, for argument’s sake, puts Her #1 and refuses to vote anything else — the minute Her gets eliminated, all of those votes are now gone. So now not only is their film out, but we’ve just lost overall votes. I’m sure the people who do that don’t care what happens at that point, but it still hurts everything else, and is a pretty shitty thing to do. If you want to hurt a film, rank it #9. That’s what you do.

The idea is for the film that the most people like wins Best Picture. So the odds favor not the film that gets the most #1 votes, but the one that has the most #2, #3 and #4 votes on top of their #1 votes, with the least #8 and #9 votes. Theoretically, a film could still place fourth on a lot of ballots and still win, even if another film had more #1 votes, if enough people had that other film toward the bottom of their ballots. That’s why this year is pretty difficult to pick. It could legitimately go any one of three ways.

However, just writing that system of voting, I feel like we can pick a consensus frontrunner from that alone. We also, of course, have the precursors to guide us as well. So that helps.

Best Picture

American Hustle (Columbia)

Captain Phillips (Columbia)

Dallas Buyers Club (Focus Features)

Gravity (Warner Bros.)

Her (Warner Bros.)

Nebraska (Paramount Vantage)

Philomena (The Weinstein Company)

12 Years a Slave (Fox Searchlight)

The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, Universal)

No real surprises here. I mean, I figured they liked Dallas Buyers Club, but I wasn’t expecting that to get on over Saving Mr. Banks. I just assumed they’d vote by the book, and I’m glad they didn’t. Also, now, more

Rankings:

9. Philomena – It feels weird putting a Harvey Weinstein-backed film dead last, but let’s face it… this doesn’t have the juice to go all the way. Tops, this is a #3 choice for a lot of people. This won’t be high enough on enough ballots to make any noise. Of  the nine nominees, this is the one we all see getting the fewest #1 votes. And, if by some chance Harvey pulls strings, it still own’t get any higher than 7th for #1 votes. So it doesn’t matter. It’s not winning. No way.

8. Captain Phillips – Once this lost the Director nomination, you saw exactly how the feeling for this film went… they like it a lot, but they don’t love it. And that’s everything for this category. It’ll get mid votes, but not #1s. And that’ll eliminate it faster than anything else. Not enough people will have this higher than #3 or #4 to bring this to the top half of the list of contenders. It didn’t even win at the BAFTAs (outside of Supporting Actor, which we know isn’t happening at the Oscars). If this takes home anything, it’s Editing. That’s it. Nothing else. Even the Sound categories are too much of a lock in another direction to consider this a contender. It has little to no shot here. It’s one of those movies that looks good on the list of nominees, but will never seriously contend for the win.

7. Dallas Buyers Club – It got enough love to make it on the list, but will it have enough love to do anything? I doubt it. Okay, so a few people will vote it #1. But not enough to make it that far. Maybe this pulls a spot or two higher than this based on a lot of #2 or #3 votes, but even then, I doubt it gets very far in the process. It’s a film a lot of people love, but it’ll settle for other awards.

6. Her – There’s a lot of support for this, but not enough where it matters. It might end up top five when the votes are tallied, but we know this is a three-horse race, and this just doesn’t have enough steam to make any play for it. Put it this way… this isn’t even guaranteed to win Screenplay. How can they vote it for Picture if we’re not sure they’re gonna give it Screenplay? It’ll get votes, and it’ll hang around for a while, but eventually it won’t get very far. Not enough people will have this high enough to make a dent.

5. Nebraska – It has all the important nominations, and Alexander Payne’s name will carry weight with the older and more independent crowd. I look at this the way I look at Her – it has people who love it, and it clearly will hang around for a while when the votes are tallied, but ultimately it’s not gonna get very far because not enough people are gonna give it votes as compared to the top three. It’ll be in that mix, but it’ll fall out near the end.

4. The Wolf of Wall Street – When nominations were announced, I’d have put this way down on the list. I thought there was no way anyone would vote for it. Now… it’s probably top five. They’re pushing hard for it. It won’t matter, of course, but they are pushing. And it will get votes. Potentially this could be out as early as 6, but I’ll keep it fourth just because of the amount of campaigning they’re doing for this. It might make it all the way to here, but it won’t crack the top three. Nothing’s cracking the top three at this point.

3. American Hustle – A month ago, I’d have put this #1. This was getting an Argo level push when nominations were announced. Now… it’s mostly faded to the back of the pack. It can still strike, but I think most people are figuring this to end up the bridesmaid again, adding fuel to the David O. Russell fire, making his next film all the more dangerous to take home the big one. It can still very much win, but right now, the fervor that was there for this a month ago (well… I guess six weeks by now) just isn’t there anymore. So I’ll leave this at 3. Since… it didn’t even win the PGA. Or tie. It won SAG, so that’s something, but if it was up there for the PGA, then I could have said higher. But, as it is, it’s still #3, and will remain #3 all the way until Oscar night. Not that #3 can’t win this year, but in terms of likelihood to… it has to be there until it does.

2. 12 Years a Slave – You’d think I’d have this #1, but it did tie the PGA with Gravity, and I know it won BAFTA, but it didn’t really win BAFTA. Two awards isn’t that big a haul. Plus, thinking about how voting works… it’s a real close race. I just don’t know if this is #1 or #2 right now. I’d rather leave it in the underdog spot, just because… well, I’ll explain in a second. But, it’s right there, and I think it might pull it out at the very end, but… I just don’t know. For all we know American Hustle pulls this one out. I’ll keep this two, because of the PGA tie, but I’m still not sure where this one is going.

1.  Gravity – I… can’t really see anything else being the favorite right now. The way to win the Oscar is to get the highest amount of votes overall. That is to say, not the most #1s, but the most 2s and 3s and 4s as well. So, in that case, which film do you think will be ranked in the top three on the most ballots? I think it might be this one. So in that sense, I’ll keep this as the frontrunner. We’re so close to predictions that it doesn’t really matter what I do. We all know it’s a two, possibly three horse race. So as long as we know that, right now, what I put number one… doesn’t matter. But I say this has to be considered the frontrunner by default. But, I will say… the fact that this won Best British Film at the BAFTAs over Philomena, despite not really being a British film (not as much as 12 Years a Slave, anyway)… that means it does have a lot of support. So the BAFTA win for 12 Years doesn’t mean as much as it would have if it straight up beat it. They had an out there. That’s another reason why I won’t let anything tip in 12 Years‘ favor just yet. I think it’s tight, but I think this has to be considered a frontrunner at the moment.

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So that’s that.

Tomorrow, I do what I always do the day before the Oscars… celebrate all the Best Picture nominees by going over my favorite moments in all of them. And then, on Sunday, I’ll put up my predictions for the big night, and we’ll all sit down and watch the festivities.

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