MarketBOB Oscar Predictions 2012 Part 2

The remaining 14 categories are for the arts and crafts portion of movies, lighting and editing and getting recognition for starting small, as in short films or supporting roles to the lead actors. Everyone has to start somewhere and learn a trade, so we need these categories to maintain a healthy movie industry, but do they make great TV watching? Nope. Who really cares who wins art direction? Or sound mixing? Just other craftsmen in the biz, but we also can up our Oscar pool performance by "guessing the geeks" preferences.

Supporting Actor is a battle between two oldies, Christopher Plummer and Max van Sydow with the favorite being Plummer for his performance in Beginners. He also won the SAG award so he's going to win and probably dance all over the Bavarian Alps with the Von Trapp family chorus.

Supporting Actress belongs to The Help, with Minnie Jackson taking the SAG award and joining her star lead actress for gold on Oscar Night.

Foreign Language Best Picture praise is lined up for A Separation, a powerful story about a couple torn by conflicting desires which escalate to dramatic conflict. It is a heart-wrenching film, as you can see from the trailer...

Documentaries are interesting when you're in the mood and thank God for Netflix which features a terrific library of past Oscar-winning films (because they're cheap to license). Usually, films about children, genocide or cruelty to the environment/animals usually wins. It is a difficult category, but the oscar nominees include an artistic dance feature (Pina) and a re-examination of a horrible crime (Paradise Lost 3). Two movies miles apart in tone but voters will probably reward the injustice of Paradise Lost 3 over the artistic Pina.

Short films are experiments in storytelling and visual effects, sometimes student films or passionate experiments or corporate lead-ins to larger films. This year, we have animated shorts from Pixar (Luna) in the critical lead, Raju for live short and The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom for short documentary (who can ignore tidal waves after last year's horrible disaster).

Finally, we have the true crafts of film, from lighting and editing to sound and make-up. Hugo is the elephant in this world, and this film is superb from a technical point of view, with 3D effects that are not gimmicks and fully rendered worlds of clocks and trains and early movie studios. It deserves all the awards it gets. The Tree of Life was a hard movie to watch, but there were some exceptional imagery interspersed between the boys playing and dad yelling and dinosaurs splashing.

The Artist may sweep past the crowd of oscar nominees and get on a roll, taking all the categories it was nominated in, but Oscar voters also try to reward films they liked with a craft award, giving their own a great deal of future work. These will be the competing forces in this categories; momentum for the big winner vs. rewards for the neglected stories that did one thing exceptionally well.

Here is the list and probable winners (from my own personal tastes mixed with general consensus of critics):

Art Direction: Hugo

Cinematography: The Tree of Life

Costume Design: The Artist

Editing: The Artist

Make-up: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (the last movie in the huge franchise deserves an Oscar for something)

Sound Editing: Hugo

Sound Mixing: Hugo (do you get the impression I like the Hugo movie a lot?)

VIsual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (those chimps were so human, it was scary and fun and just the best part of the movie, when usually faking animals with human mannerisms is usually the lamest part of most movies).

There you go, the Academy Awards handicapped for you, all the oscar nominees ranked and sorted into MarketBOB's top Oscar Predictions for 2012. Of course, NO ONE can predict the future so all bets are off, except for your own Oscar pool. Good luck and enjoy the show, which will be lame as usual but at least you can score points for your picks.