With the Oscars so close, the Buffer editors love nothing more than to debate the outcomes of each category. Here are our predictions for the winners of some of the top categories for this year’s Academy Awards.
All posts by Zach Saldacher
The Buffer Predicts: Oscar Nominations 2014
Thursday, January 16, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces this year’s Oscar nominations, and Buffer writers Amy Solomon and Zach Saldacher are as excited as can be. They were thrilled to prioritize Oscar betting above homework, so they have spent their valuable time compiling their nominee predictions. See their lists and reactions to each other’s predictions below.
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Inside Llewyn Davis: A Musical Unlike any Other
Joel and Ethan Coen’s brilliant film Inside Llewyn Davis is not, by definition, a musical. The characters do not break into spontaneous song to express their deepest emotions. There is no dancing. There is very little performance. No, Inside Llewyn Davis is something else entirely. It is a movie with real, honest music. A movie with real, honest people dealing with real, honest problems. Somewhere between film and real life, bridging the gap through song, it is a movie about love and loss and beauty, and it is absolutely one of the best films of 2013.
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Captain Phillips Definitely a Ship Worth Sailing
It seems that every year around Oscar season, the studios release a plethora of excellent films based on true stories, and soon after their release several of these films inevitably become embroiled in factual controversy. They take a lot of flak, gain a lot of free publicity, and then ironically go on to win an Oscar or two. Last year the highest profile cases were Argo (which won Best Picture) and Lincoln (which won Daniel Day-Lewis his third lead actor Oscar). This year, that Oscar-caliber, true-story film may be Paul Greengrass’ phenomenally thrilling Captain Phillips.
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Tipping Of The Scales
When it comes to glitz, glamour, and giant profits, there’s no question that the film industry is still Hollywood’s crown jewel. Movies bring worldwide acclaim and billions of dollars of box office returns; in an age of globalization and outsourcing, they have become the main American export to the world. Nonetheless, due in part to the rise of cable and the rigid corporatization of the major film studios, the television industry has recently made exceptional progress in shrinking the gap between the two media. We examine how TV has caught up with film and what the future holds for the two industries.
This Man of Steel Not So Super
Man Of Steel had so much potential. It looked to be a gritty new take on Superman in the same way that Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy rewrote superhero rules for Batman. Nolan himself even worked on the film as an executive producer. But while the movie performed very well at the box office and already has a sequel in the works, it unfortunately doesn’t live up to the expectations raised by an excellent trailer.