RACE REVIEW - GRAVITY, HER UP, HUSTLE, WIND RISES DOWN

This doesn't make much sense to me. Best Picture is Best Picture. You win the Best Picture Golden Globe. You win the Best Picture Critics Choice. And you win the Producers Guild of America in a tie, against stronger competition, which shared the award. And people start to say that that strong competition is the frontrunner. 12 Years a Slave has continued, since then, to win the London Critics' Circle award for Best Picture; like many voting bodies this season, the LCC gave Best Director to Alfonso Cuaron for the new frontrunner, Gravity, just like the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice and the guild body for directors, the Directors Guild of America. Is it Gravity's enormous popularity with audiences? Is it the fact that it has a legitimate shot at winning nine out of its ten Oscar nominations? Whatever it is, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that 12 Years a Slave's chances have dropped, even if Gravity's are on the up. And there's still time yet for 12 Years a Slave to regain the lead, in the public opinion - it could end up winning a fair few BAFTAs, and I'm still predicting it to win Best Picture at the Oscars.

Rather than Gravity's upward surge in Oscar potential affecting 12 Years a Slave's, it has instead affected American Hustle's. The film which looked likely to win Picture, Director, Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay at the Oscars, and which led the nominations tally with ten nominations (alongside Gravity) now looks likely to win a grand total of zero Academy Awards. Lupita Nyong'o now leads Jennifer Lawrence in the Best Supporting Actress race, and Spike Jonze's Her has won every major Original Screenplay award to date. What looked like the film that would finally scratch the industry's itch for David O. Russell now looks like the film that will end up tying as the second-biggest Oscar loser in history. You don't see me complaining...

Meanwhile, other Oscar categories look to be dominated by Gravity. And there's a serious chance it could walk off with every single technical award it's nominated for; in fact, even with Best Actress in mind, it's at least the second favourite for each of its ten nominations. In the specialist Best Picture categories, populist fare leads the way - no The Wind Rises for Best Animated Feature, as Frozen stands on the precipice of beating Despicable Me 2 as the highest-grossing animated film of 2013 at the domestic box office, which would be an extraordinary feat. And The Act of Killing faces major competition from 20 Feet from Stardom for Best Documentary; wouldn't a more progressive choice be The Square, if anything must beat The Act of Killing, one of the year's best films? And The Broken Circle Breakdown is pure Academy fodder in the Best Foreign Language Film category, but facing off against The Great Beauty and The Hunt won't be easy. My picks for that one would be either The Hunt (my personal favourite, if only marginally) or The Missing Picture, which I'm unspeakably delighted to see nominated.