Any major-race hopes that Focus Features may have had for the film were basically dashed this week.
Consider Bigelow a virtual lock, tightening up the Best Director field alongside Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, Ben Affleck, and, perhaps, Tom Hooper or David O. Russell.
The film’s strongest bit of buzz has been swirling around the lead performance from Naomi Watts, whose tortured turn as the quintet’s mother hen has made her a Best Actress frontrunner.
What remains in the air is just how many plays the David O. Russell film can pull off.
Though it boasts the strongest pedigree of all 2012 awards contenders, Lincoln doesn’t play like obvious Oscar bait while you’re watching it.
Biopics may have the strongest track record in currying Academy favor, but tales of overcoming physical obstacles aren’t far behind.
Check out which films feel shy of making our list of the greatest films of the 1990s.
At this stage, the alternately thrilling and unwieldy three-hour epic is the season’s closest thing to a wild card.
Be them morphine sellers, pot distributors, or even moonshine runners, the party has to stop some time.
There seems no reason why the film’s Art Direction, Set Decoration, and Production Design can’t compete right along with this year’s showy heavy-hitters.
Most filmgoers who see Lee’s magical-realist marine life, from bioluminescent jellyfish to migrating trout that fly, will be quick to dub the film the Visual Effects frontrunner.
The film emerged from Toronto as virtually every pundit’s Best Picture frontrunner.
Does Looper have a prayer in the Visual Effects race, where tigers and hobbits and Avengers will be sprinting, neck-in-neck?
Conventional wisdom says this film would surely have the sound categories in the bag.
Time will tell if the Academy’s newest rule adjustment will throw off the mojo of latecomers like Les Misérables.
Will the Academy really go for a star-free, Sendak-esque allegory, whose rugged charms are tied to its loose lack of answers?
Like the movie it touts, the one-sheet has some end-of-the-line authenticity.
Sometimes it’s hard to separate a movie from the hype.
This is a complete list of our predicted winners at the 2012 Academy Awards.
That the Best Picture category’s “Will it be six or will it be seven?” question was settled as close to 10 as possible without actually being 10 isn’t merely a mark of how much of a mess this year’s Oscars are.