Today and tomorrow, Franklin Laviola, director of the acclaimed short Happy Face, gives us his Academy Award predictions. Read what he thinks, send us your predictions (and maybe win a prize!), and watch the Oscars on Sunday night!

Best Picture:

127 Hours

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids Are All Right

The King’s Speech

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter’s Bone

Will Win

Depending on how you view the Oscar sweepstakes, the top category is either the battle of the stammering king against the Harvard computer geek, the old-fashioned crowd-pleaser against the hip zeitgeist film, or Oscar-hounding mogul Harvey Weinstein against Oscar-hounding mogul Scott Rudin.  The latter’s The Social Network swept the critics awards in December and won the Golden Globe for Best Picture in January, but Weinstein’s The King’s Speech has gained tremendous momentum over this past month, garnering the most Oscar nominations with twelve, picking up the SAG Best Ensemble award, and winning Best Picture at the BAFTAs last week.  It also doesn’t hurt that The King’s Speech is fresher in voters’ minds, now a bona fide box-office hit, and damn rousing.  On Sunday night, the stammering king will reign supreme.

Should Win

It seems like I’m one of the few who had some major problems with The Social Network.  David Fincher’s quasi-docudrama is certainly a film of its moment, and, like its moment,  it’s slick, superficial and uncomfortably worshipful of wealth, power, and youth.  Of the nominees, my three favorites are The King’s Speech, The Fighter, and Black Swan.   Honestly, when I heard the first overwhelmingly positive reports out of Telluride and Toronto for The Kings Speech, I was dreading having to sit through the film.  It seemed like the worst kind of Oscar-baiting Anglophilia.  And then, several months later, I was pleasantly surprised.  Tom Hooper’s film is well-acted across the board, handsomely-crafted, and the most dramatically solid of all of the ten nominees.  A little charm doesn’t hurt either.

Should Have Been Nominated

The three best films, released theatrically in 2010, were: Marco Bellocchio’s historical drama Vincere; Roman Polanski’s crafty thriller The Ghost Writer; and Peter Weir’s old-fashioned epic The Way Back.

Best Director:

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan

Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit

David Fincher, The Social Network

Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech

David O. Russell, The Fighter

Will Win

Tom Hooper won the DGA award for his work on The King’s Speech, but that doesn‘t always guarantee an Oscar win.  Critics favorite, Golden Globe winner, and industry veteran David Fincher will win over the newcomer Hooper.  Therefore, we’ll see a split — Picture for The King’s Speech and Director for The Social Network.

Should Win

Shockingly, all of the nominated directors, except Joel & Ethan Coen, are viable candidates.  While they might be the most accomplished filmmakers of the pack, the Coens aren’t able to replicate the unique tone of Charles Portis’ novel.  Unlike their brilliant adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, their True Grit is highly inconsistent.  Fincher’s dazzling style disguises the fact that The Social Network is essentially above average premium cable television material … but only for the first half hour.  Darren Aronofsky made his best film with Black Swan and deserves credit for maintaining tension throughout.  Working with inspirational material, Hooper’s tight focus kept full-blown sentimentality at bay.  But my favorite directorial contribution comes from David O. Russell for his work on The Fighter.  Hired by producer-star Mark Wahlberg to direct the film after Darren Aronofsky dropped out, Russell chose to emphasize the importance of character and the ensemble, made the HBO documentary on crack addiction a key plot device, and brought the grotesque sisters of Wahlberg and Christian Bale to the fore.  In short, Russell brought a tremendous amount of personality to what could have been a totally routine boxing picture.

Should Have Been Nominated

Balancing the personal with the political at an operatic fever pitch, Italian maestro Marco Bellocchio made one of his very best films with Vincere.   Roman Polanski brought his absurdist wit to every frame of The Ghost Writer, and, shot-for-shot, it could be the most perfectly-directed film of the year.  Australian great Peter Weir is undeniably a master of the natural landscape, and The Way Back proves, once again, that, like David Lean, he can move effortlessly and with great effect, from the panoramic shot to a close-up of a human face.

Best Actor:

Javier Bardem, Biutiful

Jeff Bridges, True Grit

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

James Franco, 127 Hours

Will Win

Colin Firth, as the British king who overcame his stutter to give a rallying speech against Nazi Germany, easily wins his first Oscar.  Only the skillful Jesse Eisenberg, as the calculating, distant Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has a chance of upsetting Firth, but that’s not going to happen.

Should Win

This is the rare instance, where the clear Oscar frontrunner has actually given the best performance of the five nominees.  Javier Bardem might be the best film actor in the world right now, and he certainly gives a committed performance in Biutiful, but he is also let down considerably by Inarritu’s unfocused script, over-burdened by one too many subplots.  Last year’s Best Actor winner, Bridges has done far better and more nuanced work over the course of his nearly fifty year career in the business.  Oscar co-host James Franco would be my second pick for his work in 127 Hours, which is all the more impressive for basically being a one-man show.  Firth should have won last year in this category for Tom Ford’s A Single Man, and, combining an old Hollywood brand of charisma with an expert stutter, he should win this year too.

Should Have Been Nominated

Danish star Mads Mikkelsen doesn’t utter a single word in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising, but his hulking, still presence is absolutely riveting, as the one-eyed Viking warrior, who might actually be more god than man.  For years now, Ciaran Hinds has played memorable supporting roles in big name films like Munich and There Will Be Blood.  The small Irish drama The Eclipse provides him with a rare leading role, and, as a grieving widower, who might be seeing ghosts, Hinds does some of his most subtle, moving work.

Best Actress:

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right

Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole

Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Will Win

At the start of the awards season, Oscar prognosticators were billing this category as a showdown between the veteran Annette Bening and the starlet Natalie Portman.  While both won Golden Globes for Best Actress (in Comedy/Musical and Drama, respectively), Bening is now barely in the race.  Portman won both the SAG and BAFTA this past month, and she will win her first Oscar this Sunday night.

Should Win

I must admit that I haven’t seen Nicole Kidman’s performance in Rabbit Hole, and I suspect that neither have many voting members of the Academy.  Michelle Williams is one of the better American actresses of her generation, but I found her character in Blue Valentine, as written, to be more of an assembly of tics and anxieties, than a convincing, coherent personality.  As the stable half of a long-term lesbian relationship, Annette Bening is very good and has probably never given a more sympathetic performance.  At nineteen Jennifer Lawrence single-handedly carried Winter’s Bone, but I have a feeling her best work is ahead of her.  Both physically and psychologically demanding, Natalie Portman’s role in Black Swan feels tailor-made for an Oscar win.  As a meek, but deranged ballerina, Portman gave her best performance since The Professional.

Should Have Been Nominated

In Vincere, Giovanna Mezzogiorno plays Ida Dalser, the woman scorned by Mussolini, as impassioned, even possessed.  It’s a tribute to her considerable craftsmanship that this obsessed, monomaniacal character never feels shrill or loses the audience’s interest.  In Mike Leigh’s Another Year, Lesley Manville had the unenviable task of embodying an everyday character with whom nobody would ever want to spend more than five minutes.  By the end of the film, Manville’s alcoholic Mary has worn her jealousy and neediness on her sleeve, but has also earned our sympathy.

Best Supporting Actor:

Christian Bale, The Fighter

John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Jeremy Renner, The Town

Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right

Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech

Will Win

Christian Bale won the Golden Globe and the SAG award for Best Supporting Actor, and I predict he will also win the Oscar.  His only competition here is Geoffrey Rush, who won the BAFTA for portraying Colin Firth‘s unorthodox speech therapist.  If The King Speech sweeps, then Rush could be carried along to his second Oscar victory.

Should Win

Perennially one of the strongest categories on the board, this year is no exception.  Laid-back seducer Mark Ruffalo is arguably the best thing about The Kids Are All Right, but his performance is disappointingly compromised by the filmmakers in the third act, in their decision to defy story logic and demonize his character, in order to further their pre-packaged message.  A year after earning his first Oscar nomination for his star-making turn in The Hurt Locker, the chameleonic Jeremy Renner is back with another electrifying turn, as an on edge Boston bank robber — definitely the best thing about Ben Affleck’s The Town.  As an Ozarks crystal meth dealer, the great character actor John Hawkes commanded his every scene in Winter’s Bone with a frightening intensity.  Rush provided ample support to Colin Firth in The King’s Speech and in the process might have given his finest performance yet.  And then there’s Christian Bale.  His fully-immersed characterization of Dickie Ecklund, the former boxer and crack-addicted brother of Mark Wahlberg’s Mickey Ward, might be the best work by any actor, nominated in any category this year.  Looking back at his stunning feature film debut at twelve in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, it’s shocking to think that this is only his first nomination.

Should Have Been Nominated

Michael Fassbender plays a married cad, who seduces his mistress’ teenage daughter in Fish Tank.  Niels Arestrup plays a vicious Corsican crime boss, who controls the inside of a French prison in A Prophet.  Both actors brought depth and complexity to what could have been obvious villains.

Best Supporting Actress:

Amy Adams, The Fighter

Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech

Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Will Win

Melissa Leo might have won both the Golden Globe and the SAG award, but, at this point, a sizeable backlash having formed, she is no guarantee for the Oscar.  Make no mistake, this is the most open race of all the major categories. In fact, a case could be made that Adams, Bonham Carter, Leo, and even Steinfeld, each have a legitimate shot at winning on Sunday.  If the Academy chooses to recognize the latter for True Grit, it wouldn’t be the first time an actor won in a supporting category for an obvious lead performance.  But the more likely scenario has the women of The Fighter canceling each other out, allowing BAFTA winner Bonham Carter to sneak in for the win.

Should Win

Category fraud isn’t the only problem I have with Hailee Steinfeld’s nomination. The Coen Bros needed to discover the next Linda Manz to faithfully bring Charles Portis’ pugnacious protagonist Mattie Ross to life.  What they found instead, in the form of Steinfeld, was a thirteen year old with a contemporary suburban vibe.  The girl is simply not very convincing as a creature of the 19th century American West.  Bonham Carter does some of her best and most subtle work in years, as the Queen Mother, and I wouldn’t mind seeing her win at all.  As fine as Melissa Leo’s performance is as the selfish mother of The Fighter, it’s Amy Adams, as Wahlberg’s tough girlfriend, who gives the more surprising and multi-faceted performance, within the same film.  Sadly, the performance that has the least chance of actually winning, is also my favorite of the pack.  Australian actress Jacki Weaver began her film career with Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, back in 1975.  In Animal Kingdom, she plays the diabolical matriarch of a Melbourne family of criminals, who orders a hit on her own grandson (!), with a smile on her face.

Should Have Been Nominated

As the icy wife of Pierce Brosnan’s exiled British Prime Minister, Olivia Williams was the year’s best femme fatale in The Ghost Writer.  Newcomer Alice de Lencquesaing was the heart and soul of The Father of My Children, playing a quiet teenager, who slowly comes to terms with her film producer father’s sudden suicide.

Franklin P. Laviola is a filmmaker and freelance writer, based in the New York area. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film “Happy Face,” which has screened at over twenty film festivals.  Check back tomorrow for the rest of his Oscar picks.