Oscar race remains close
Kyle Arensdorf
February 21, 2014
By Kyle Arensdorf
With voting to close within a week and Oscar night on the horizon, it’s time to take a look at who could come away with the top prize on March 2.
This year’s Best Picture race is the closest in recent memory. “Gravity,” “12 Years a Slave” and “American Hustle” seem to have risen to the top of this crowded field.
“Gravity” and “Hustle” led Oscar nominations with 10 apiece, but “12 Years” earned nine. Each led guild nominations and won some form of Best Picture at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.
Since its first year of existence in 1989, the Producers Guild of America has been a nearly foolproof Oscar predictor. It has mirrored the Academy’s choice for Best Picture in each of the last six years and 17 times in the last 24 years.
The PGA is a perfect precursor to the Oscars because it uses the same preferential balloting system as the Academy. Preferential balloting is a system in which voters rank the films from top to bottom. In short, the system crowns a winner when 51 percent of the first place votes are given to one film. If one film does not have 51 percent of the votes, the film with the least amount of first place votes gets eliminated and its votes are reallocated to the voters’ second favorite film.
With preferential balloting, a tie is virtually impossible. But this year, it happened. “Gravity” and “12 Years” tied for the PGA’s top prize, and “Hustle” nabbed the Screen Actors Guild’s top honor a night before.
“Gravity” is a pretty safe bet to win Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effect. For my money, it wins Best Director and Best Film Editing as well, and Best Original Score is certainly within reach.
Could it really win seven Oscars and not win Best Picture?
It certainly seems so, as “12 Years” and “Hustle” have garnered the majority of buzz as of late, while “Gravity” has been catching some flak from critics lamenting its simplicity. But the momentum behind winning a majority of the minor Oscars, which “Gravity” is prime to do, cannot be understated.
